Bush, the non-read meat thrower, via @anniekarni and @EliStokols http://t.co/OqGKg7B0fU
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 31, 2015
One of those deep-psych typos, no doubt. The NYTimes weeps into its weak tea:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Jeb Bush and his aides had envisioned a big, inclusive, high-minded speech about race on Friday in his home state of Florida, a chance to bring his message of colorblind opportunity to a prestigious group of African-American leaders.
In a rare gesture of bipartisanship, Mr. Bush even planned to warmly quote President Obama, usually the object of his derision.
Then Hillary Rodham Clinton stomped all over those plans.
In a biting surprise attack, delivered as Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, waited backstage here at the annual convention of the National Urban League, Mrs. Clinton portrayed him as a hypocrite who had set back the cause of black Americans…
Mr. Bush appeared unprepared to respond, thanking Mrs. Clinton for joining him at the event but otherwise leaving her criticism unanswered in his own speech.
Mr. Bush’s aides, however, could barely hide their disgust over Mrs. Clinton’s remarks, which they spoke of, bitterly, as uncivil and uncalled-for…
Politico, apart from finding the perfect AP photo [see tweet above], stuck with its preferred politics-as-sport angle:
… In the first instance of the two top-tier legacy candidates appearing back to back at the same event, Clinton and Bush demonstrated the starkly different ways the two candidates are addressing each other on the campaign trail, despite their shared commanding advantages.
“I don’t think you can credibly say that everyone has a right to rise and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare, or repealing Obamacare,” Clinton said, a jab at Bush’s well-known PAC slogan, “Right to Rise.”
“People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care,” she continued. “They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education. And you can’t seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote.” The crowd cheered.
When Bush finally took the stage to address issues of race and repairing American cities, he didn’t hit back…
He’d made a point of attending this conference of several thousand African-American leaders to offer a unifying message to a traditionally Democratic audience, one “that laid out how his record of success in Florida, increasing minority income and student achievement — can be replicated nationally and give people facing unjust barriers to success the opportunity to rise up,” said Bush’s spokesman, Tim Miller, after the speech. “He didn’t see a value in delivering divisive, false cheap shots like…Clinton did.”
Still, beneath the avowed high-mindedness is a cold reality: had Bush criticized Clinton before this audience, he would have risked getting booed…More than any other Republican, Bush is content to contract out the job of attacking Clinton with real vigor to others: the Republican National Committee, organizations like America Rising and his own super PAC (led by adviser Mike Murphy, who has told contributors their money will be “weaponized” to go after Clinton).
Comfortably near the top of the GOP field, Bush doesn’t have to ratchet up the rhetorical red meat; moreover, doing so would undercut his effort to distinguish himself from his party’s unrestrained grievance-based politics with his self-described “optimistic” and “joyful” message….
Yet, for some reason, JEB! seems to have come across as leaden and cliche-ridden…
… He quoted both the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mr. Obama. “When President Obama says that ‘for too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present,’ he is speaking the truth,” Mr. Bush said to applause.
But he did not directly address the rash of police shootings of unarmed black men that dominated discussions at the Urban League conference this week. Instead, he called more obliquely for rebuilding trust in “America’s vital institutions.”…
In her remarks, Mrs. Clinton took a more direct approach, ticking off the names of African-Americans who have died after interactions with law enforcement — including Eric Garner, Walter L. Scott and Freddie Gray — to knowing nods in the audience…
Cherie LaCour-Duckworth, a Clinton supporter, said she had paid little attention to what Mr. Bush said. Mrs. Clinton, she said, “set the stage for him.”
Norma Richards, who traveled to the conference from Ohio, said she was struck by Mr. Bush’s decision to talk about race so indirectly. “He wasn’t really strong about social injustice,” she said.
But her real objection to Mr. Bush, she said, stemmed from the presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000, in which Florida played a decisive role. “They stole the election,” she said. “I can’t get that out of my head.”...
Gosh, who knew some people might hold a grudge over that?… I gotta admit, the only thing better than electing America’s first woman president, and a Democrat, would be doing so as a direct rebuke to the Bush Crime Cartel and all its supporters.
***********
Apart from looking forward to watching the RNC’s robber barons pour more money down the rat hole, what’s on the agenda for the weekend?
Keith G
By and large, it has never been the Bush preference to personally “hit back”. For that, they hire the Atwaters and the Turd Blossoms. I have been following this story for the last 12 hours and this has made me hopeful.
I think the quote from Harry Truman when a supporter from the crowd cried out, “Give them hell, Harry!” was, “I”m going to give them hell and make them like it.”
The best way for HRC to firm up the support she needs is to play “elbows out” and give them hell as she focuses on the ingrained unfairness so evident in our political-economic system. She may not be a dream candidate, but she may be poised to show she is good enough and tough enough.
Robert Sneddon
At the moment, still fifteen months out from the only poll that counts, Governor Bush is presenting himself as the “deer in the headlights” candidate that Senator Clinton was back in 2008 i.e. they want to be President but they’re not actually running for their Presidential nomination, expecting it to be handed to them on a plate.
Back then in 2007 I saw Obama as actively running for the Presidency even during the nomination battle, not assuming he would win the nomination but looking ahead (a good characteristic to have in a President, you must admit — what happens next?). Senator Clinton was going through the motions of being handed the nomination guaranteed by her name and family connections within the Democratic Party’s hierarchy. The experience of losing seems to have been a wake-up call for her and she’s following the Obama battle-plan this time round. I’ve heard about long-term planning, boots on the ground and recruiting going on in states that won’t be part of the nomination process for a year or more which is a good sign. And no Mark Penn.
Suzanne
Can’t sleep. Clowns will eat me.
Amir Khalid
I like that Presidential Candidate Hillary Mk. 2 has so far been better able to think on her feet than any Republican candidate. This seems to be one area where Bernie Sanders needs to up his game.
Arclite
Sounds like Hillary brought a gun to a knife fight. And used it.
Another Holocene Human
JEB!’s just lucky he can spin “Hilary was meeeeeean to me” instead of having a Romney at the NAACP morning after.
That’s probably why he stayed on his focus grouped script.
Betty Cracker
Power is out at our house for some reason. Not just our house — the whole ‘hood. It has rained for days on end, but no lightning recently, so I don’t know what knocked it out.
I hope it comes back on before it gets hot enough to make me miss the air conditioning. Also, it would be a bitch to have to buy ice and transfer the food to coolers. Le sigh.
Duane
I think she did great. You want to win, start calling them out right now.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Damn. It actually feels cool here. I was just out taking moon shots and the humidity is down and it’s 75.
gf120581
@Robert Sneddon: More then that, it seems like Jeb’s heart really isn’t in this race. Often he seems like he’s just going through the motions. The fire in the belly that people say winning presidential candidates need doesn’t seem to be there.
NotMax
Tres weird. TCM site insists on displaying the monthly schedule for August of 2013.
David Koch
The NYT article reads like a gossip page
Whining that mean-ole Hillary pantz the smart bush
Of course, if it was the other way around, they would praising ¡Jeb! for strength and strength, while hammering Clinton for weakness and indecision.
Amir Khalid
The Donald aside, the 2016 Republican field seem an awfully timid bunch. Jeb and his staff could surely have thought of a few comebacks to Hillary to put in his speech. Why didn’t they?
FlyingToaster
@Betty Cracker: Probably a transformer’s cover gave way to the rain and it went.
The last time that happened here, the cover deteriorated and a squirrel got in. We’re only a block from the transformer and it sounded like a mortar.
They put up a temporary without securing the cover, and three days later it happened again, this time with a starling.
I only know this from walking up the street to see what went and noting the debris. And refusing to let WarriorGirl go look at the exploded squirrel.
Then, and only then, did NStar put up a “new” replacement.
Changing their name to “Eversource” isn’t going to wipe out their reputation for replacing crappy equipment with crappy equipment.
NotMax
Dinner consumed, cleaning up done in a snap. Chastising myself over waiting so long to get some silicon baking mats. What a boon for anyone who cooks!
mai naem mobile
Guess.Bush’s advisors.thought the Dems didn’t learn from the attacks on Kerry.
OT – I saw an attack on the Iran deal based on – I am not kidding – the best man at Vanessa Kerry’s 2009 wedding was the son of the Iranian nuclear deal negotiator. Vanessa Kerry’s husband’s an Iranian American neurosurgeon. Kust so we’re keeping track – the Iranians had this neurosurgeon get engaged to Vanessa Kerry in 08 because they knew Obama was going to win in 08 and then in 2012 and that John Kerry was going to be SOS and, oh,yeah, his family left Iran during the revolution so that makes him really want to go to Iran.
Betty Cracker
@raven: It’s 77 here with 100% humidity, and the sun isn’t even up. Missed the blue moon because of the cloud cover, damn it.
FlyingToaster
@Arclite: Finally.
I’ve been fairly lukewarm towards the Hillz; honestly, I still can’t get the taste of Mark Penn out of my mouth.
But her moves the past couple of months, and Bernie cancelling meetings with activists, gives me a feeling that she learns from her mistakes.
I don’t watch the cable channels, but are Serpenthead and Donna Brazile still making the rounds, or is it only Goopers now?
Gimlet
If only Americans weren’t so lazy and had the skill set for this work, right cacti?
Donald Trump is staking his run for U.S. president in part on a vow to protect American jobs. “I will be the greatest jobs president that God every created. I will bring back our jobs from China, Mexico and other places. I will bring back jobs and our money.”
Trump owns companies that have sought to import at least 1,100 foreign workers on temporary visas since 2000
Nine companies majority-owned by Trump have sought to bring in foreign waitresses, cooks, vineyard workers and other laborers on temporary work-visa programs administered by the Labor Department.
The candidate’s foreign talent hunt included applications for an assistant golf-course superintendent, an assistant hotel manager and a banquet manager.
gf120581
@Amir Khalid: Another reason why I don’t think Jeb’s heart is in it.
Also, Jeb does not have his brother’s political skills. Dunce he may be, but Dubya could play the game. Jeb is like their father, awkward and often uncomfortable among others. His limp wrist reaction to Hillary here reminds me of his father with Bill in 1992.
It often seems like the Bushes don’t know how to handle an opponent who rapidly puches back.
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: Wow 100% humidity. I just wish it would stop raining where I live. Cool temps but the gosh darn rain.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
With my manuscript off to my editor’s desk, I’m now trying to put together a marketing plan. More accurately, I was trying to put together a marketing plan. Just looking for blogs to solicit for a review and preparing a list of people to ask for an endorsement (a very short list, since I just don’t know many authors and editors) was enough to induce a panic attack.
Before I can come up with a marketing plan, I need a plan for how to survive coming up with a marketing plan. This was not a good night.
Tommy
@gf120581:
He did. I don’t know if that was Bush or Rove but it knew the dance and played it well. Not sure if Bush could think his way out of a wet paper bag but as for winning a campaign, well he was pretty good at it. Did it time and time again.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: 66 and humidity down here. I love the cool nights. I get up at 3-4 and take a cup of coffee outside and just sit and listen to the night sounds. Heaven.
Tommy
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I have 20+ years marketing background if you have any questions. Totally open to any questions you may have.
Steeplejack (phone)
It has been slightly odd to realize how unphotogenic Jeb is. He always seems to look clueless and slightly taken aback. In that picture at the top he looks like a stupid Donald Rumsfeld. I don’t remember him looking so weird in so many photographs when he was governor, but maybe I just didn’t see that many photographs of him then.
NotMax
@Tommy
Well, he was a cheerleader while otherwise going through the motions of attending college.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Sweet, the roofers go Monday so I hope it holds.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Tommy: It isn’t really a question of knowing what to do. It’s having an irrational fear of asking favors from people I don’t know very well. Running the Kickstarter was stressful enough, and I could do that just making appeals to people in general, such as all of my friends on Facebook or general comments here. The stage where I have to address the people I need something from directly and individually may be more than I can handle.
NotMax
@raven
End in sight for exterior work?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Under roof!!!
Tommy
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Keep in mind I totally understand what you are saying. But talking to the press/blogs for help, well people bombard them 24/7. They are used to people asking them for something. I often joke it is easier to give advice than to take it, but if you have done something you are proud of promote it!
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Tommy: Emphasis on the word “irrational.” I know all that. This finds the intersection of two of my major irrational fears: self-promotion is unethical, and make sure that you don’t make people uncomfortable by asking favors of them.
I’ll say again: irrational. Telling me that I should do those things in no way alleviates the fears.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Taxes. That’s what does it to me. Always wondering if there is something out there I might take advantage of, combing thru every piece of literature they print, scared half to death I’m gonna screw something up, “WHERE’S THAT DOGDAMN BOX OF JUNE MATERIAL RECEIPTS!!”…. Then I found the miracle of accountancy. I give her money, she does my (now our) taxes, we sign on the line, and a few weeks later money shows up in the account.
Screw turbo tax. Just seeing Janet’s reassuring smile is like val!um to me.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: 60 here and humidity down as well. But after all the rain the mosquitoes are horrible, which gives me a sad because I would normally be having my coffee outside right now. But I can’t bear the thought of covering myself with deep woods off before I even have a sip of coffee.
I feel like an itchy pincushion.
Major Major Major Major
So my date did end up going through, after all, and uh we had a great time and then I went home. So hooray for everyone.
Tommy
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Why I said it is easier to give advice than to take it ….. well I would be in your position and not even listen to myself. But you got to ask other people for help.
raven
Early morning blue moon.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Uh, it’s not blue.
ETA: Too late for any moon pic here tonight, eh this morning, marine layer came in.
Kay
They know it has nothing to do with “bipartisanship”. He didn’t attack Obama (like he does in every other speech) because it was a speech at the Urban League.
Why fill in the blank like that and provide an honorable motive? Why not just say he didn’t attack Obama like he does every other speech and leave it at that?
They did the same thing with George W. He’d do the most hackish, obvious political moves and they’d paint it as some kind of evidence he was a “good man”. For some reason their ultra-savvy cynicism fails to engage when in the Bush family orbit.
JPL
@raven: It’s going to be hot on Monday and Tuesday so hopefully they are okay. You could share your pictures of the moon, btw.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
My guess is, they needed to say something good about an otherwise totally lacklustre speech.
ETA: As a Democratic candidate, Hillary had a home-ground advantage with this particular audience. She was entirely right to seize that advantage. Whereas Jeb would have conceded an own goal by sharply criticising Obama before them.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
It’s 4am and 66 degrees. I haven’t slept.
We need rain desperately.
raven
@JPL: I stopped worrying about these dudes, they do it all the time and they seem to be fine.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
I should add that the humidity is 48%. And we need rain desperately.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
It was always going to be a tricky venue for him. She made it even trickier. Rixk-aversion is not the same as timidity. For him at that moment, discretion may well have been the better part of valor.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Cervantes: Yes.
Whining about it doesn’t enhance his image though.
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
It’s just funny to watch it starting again because this is a constant theme in Bush campaigns- their opponents are horrible, low-class brawlers while they are civic-minded “good men”. If you add to that the NYTimes firm belief that the Clintons ARE horrible, low-class brawlers this disparity could get ridiculous :)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): Not sure it was JEB!, but his campaign folk. Sort of the problem HRC had in 2008.
The Other Bob
I am now that thinking Bush will be the nominee. By being calm and rising above the Trump types he is running like B. Clinton in the 1992 primary. I think he might juat wait for the rest to implode and then look like the adult in the room.
bago
Gahscrewme this Alaskan can’t handle 90 degree weather. I moved to Seattle for a reason.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
It was entirely possible to come back at Hillary, I think, without coming off as indifferent or hostile to African-American voter concerns.
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid: Cruz could get a twofer by responding to Hillary on behalf of Bush. Make himself look tough (and of equal stature) while making Bush look so weak that he needs help responding.
Jeffro
@Steeplejack (phone):
A little redundant there, eh?
currants
@FlyingToaster: Heh. Had a similar experience one calm Sunday morning during breakfast out on the deck. Very loud sound from the road side of the house, but nothing else–so after we’d finished coffee and papers went inside to discover the power was out. Found out a couple hundred households were out, so called the electric company (NStar/Eversource). After a couple hours, I called again. ‘Oh, you’re still out?’ Eventually they showed up, and whaddya know–electrified red squirrel at the bottom of the pole on the other side of the fence. It had done whatever it takes to pop the circuit-breaker thing on the lines, so the guy with the cherry-picker truck and the rubber outfit and the long pole had to hook it back up. Still seems kind of unbelievable to me that that’s all it took to knock out power–a damn squirrel.
QFT.
The Golux
@OzarkHillbilly:
I know exactly what you mean. My wife wonders whether it’s worth the money, but she doesn’t go to the accountant’s office to watch her do her stuff. The reduction in anxiety makes it worth every penny.
Svensker
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
You don’t need to know them, although of course it helps. Come up with some people who you’d like to get endorsements from — be realistic and focus on ones whose work or interests match up with your book — then find a contact for them. Either their website or their agent. Google “sample letter asking for a blurb.” Write up a request and send it off. If you’re reasonable in your requests, you should get a decent response rate.
Shakezula
And this morning the WaPo ran its 1st “GOP has plans to win over black voters” story of the cycle. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I wonder if it will mention this. Or the fact that the GOP has been running Disenfranchisement 2.0 for over a decade now.
Clinton, at the very least, has obviously been keeping an eye on criticisms of her campaign and the Democratic party from African-American voters. But of course the Bushies think it is mean and nasty to point out that Jeb! is part of the problem.
@Kay: Right? The NYT admits he’s a fucking hypocrite, but all’s fair in love and tricking the darkies into voting for you.
shortstop
@gf120581: Yes. Is this how Ted Kennedy came off in 1980? Seems so, from everything I’ve read.
I’d assumed that Jeb would be the nominee no matter how many fringers and freaks threw their hats in — just as Romney had to be, as bruised and bloodied as he was before he limped across the finish line. I’m now no longer sure of that.
Princess
Jeb! didn’t hit back because he isn’t quick enough or smart enough to go off his prepared speech and come up with something pointed and clever.
W really was the “smart one” all along, and that is scary.
Svensker
@TissueThin
And, yuh, I know all about that anxiety about asking folks to do something for you. Doesn’t matter. Ask anyway. And just think how lucky we are to be able to ask via e-mail rather than in person!
shortstop
@Princess: Well, W had more of a gut feel for political interaction. He’s stupid and venal, but that may be in his favor in some ways: he wasn’t smart enough to give off the “I’ve got to mix with the masses now” vibe we got from Dad and are now getting from Jeb. All these years in politics, and most of the family still clearly hates doing the work of campaigning.
debbie
@Kay:
Have you caught any of the ads from OpportunityLives.com? I don’t know who’s backing them, but they purport to be a news organization spreading the word that Republicans want the same things ordinary people do. Last night, I saw their latest, about how the GOP is working to better the education for all of America’s children. I waited for a giant white hat to float by in the background, but no luck.
NorthLeft12
@Gimlet: Yes, Trump operated companies were active in outsourcing and importing workers but don’t hold your breath waiting for a GOP candidate to call him on it.
That business strategy is a key part of the owner’s class operation. They won’t go there.
Frankensteinbeck
I agree that for Jeb, all he could hope to give were vague platitudes that he would not be a complete asshole to African Americans. Even that eludes most GOP candidates who go to speak to them. Now that it’s a political story, I think it will work slightly against him with his own base. They want racism, and they want it now. He’ll make the ones who really, really don’t want to be labeled a racist more comfortable, but the GOP is driven by Trump’s audience and the ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ crowd. If you don’t at least throw some condescending superficially polite insults in, they’ll get turned off. Yet again, Jeb is just… clumsy. He’s worse than Romney at this, and he’s not getting the nomination if there’s even one other semi-organized candidate.
Hillary, on the other hand, sounds like she knocked this out of the park. I am whiter than bleached grocery store bread, but I’m pretty sure that with the bullshit (and that word is a vast understatement) African Americans are dealing with right now (and always have, really, but now it’s public) they want, need, and deserve a candidate who’s spitting mad about it. Directly calling out the details of institutional racism and being willing to address that African Americans are being murdered is a good start, and one I didn’t expect.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@David Koch: Yup, poor JEB! got sucker-punched by mean ole Hillary.
The spin on the story is so blatant…
Just for fun, search the NY Times story for “applause”. JEB! got the word twice as many times as Hillary (2:1). Why, he was speaking to his natural (and historical) constituency and she was just so mean!!!1
:-/
(I haven’t watched the full video of their remarks.)
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
@NotMax: Hopefully. The siding is stacked next to the shingles so it should be soon. There girl is off the rails with tile and paint color choices. I’ve seen this movie, she goes nuts, picks stuff at the very last second, hates it when it’s done and then loves it in a couple of months. None of it makes any sense to me.
Germy Shoemangler
NYTimes:
Bobby Thomson
Damn right good for Hillary. Bush comes to address a group when he knows they know he knows they know he’ll do nothing for them, just to fool credulous white reporters or to give those on in the con something to work with. If Clinton had not challenged the actions of one of the worst vote stealers in the 20th century, I would have been upset.
Kay
@debbie:
I haven’t. My grown children jeered at me until I was shamed into going to streaming tv, so I wouldn’t. I listen to local news on the radio, and I haven’t heard the ads there. I think it’s probably a good sign that they believe they need a general “Republicans are good” ad campaign though.
After 2012 I heard over and over from Republicans that their voters “didn’t come out” They don’t say it outright but they mean white working class men. I wonder if the ad campaign is a result of that theory.
I just sort of question the whole premise because Obama campaign here targeted white working class women and they’re sporadic voters, like most lower income people. It’s plain hard work getting them out. It is one by one. I don’t think Republicans can do it from 30,000 feet. They always say voting reliability tracks with education but I think “education” is just a more socially acceptable way of saying “income”.
They are simply running out of higher-income white males! Maybe it’s because some of those higher-income white people are no longer higher-income! :)
Brachiator
Of course, the thing is, Obama is not running for president, Hillary is.
Before this, I would suggest that those who thought that the NYT hated Hillary Clinton were exaggerating, but this story (by a Michael Barbaro) was deliberately slanted hackwork. Instead of simply reporting on the event, you have this nasty bit of editorializing:
And from there it goes on with this simpleminded image of Big Bad Hillary lying in wait for innocent Little Red Jeb!
Hell, all of politics is theater, especially these events where candidates preen for assemblies like the Urban League gathering. And if you wanted to decode this candidate appearance, you could say that Hillary seized an opportunity to demonstrate her pro-black and pro working class bona fides, while Jeb! was unable to stray far from the GOP’s commandment never to try to seriously woo black voters except by offering the tiresome bland free market platitudes that gives the GOP base stiffies.
Is the upcoming Koch sucking affair closed to the press, or will we be able to look forward to an NYT piece on what a high minded event this was, what with the GOP hopefuls happily dropping trou for the Koch brothers.
Robert Sneddon
@Frankensteinbeck:
How many legbreakers does Cruz have, how many politically made men stand in the shadows behind Santorum, how many tame journalists does Huckabee have on tap, how many generational favours can the Jindal clan call in on behalf of their favoured son?
There is the money/influence/organisational wing of the Republican Party and there are the other cats in a sack. The fundies loathe each other and will quite happily drag each other down to climb to the top. By the time the Seventeen Dwarves have fought it out to a standstill the survivors will look around and find Jeb standing there with a smile on his face and a VP slot to fill. And he’s not going to choose one of them. He’ll choose one of him, meaning a button-down money guy or gal like him.
And it doesn’t matter. The fundies and the Dixies and the Old White Guys will crawl over broken glass to turn out and vote for him come November 2016.
Bobby Thomson
@Germy Shoemangler: pound cake is so
2004rapey.Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
I think it’s tricky when one is actually hostile to those concerns.
In any event, you may well be right. What come-back would you have whispered into his ear before he went on stage?
Cervantes
@shortstop:
Unmotivated? Not the way I remember it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Brachiator:
Isn’t everything barbaro writes hackwork? Is he the one who wrote admiringly about Jeb’s diet, saying the electorate was craving someone more “relatable” than “tea-drinking” Obama?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes:
HeShe (?) may be referring to Ted flubbing the softball “Why do you want to be President?” question in his first big TV interview (2:14) around the start of his campaign…Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Kay:
They sat back, assuming there was no way people wouldn’t think the GOP was the best party in the universe and then were stunned that people hadn’t flocked to their side.
I remember listening to a young woman who was a higher up in some young GOP movement, right after the election. The interviewer ran a bunch of remarks from other young people explaining why they hadn’t voted GOP (the usual reasons: Wall Street, gays, immigration, etc.).
Her first reaction was “I find those remarks very hurtful.” No acknowledgement that maybe others didn’t think as she did or maybe she was on the wrong side of the issues. Just a bewilderment that she and the GOP hadn’t dazzled everyone.
The GOP’s real problem is that they don’t realize people won’t take them at their word, even though it was the GOP policies that taught people not to take politicians at their word. These new ads, I think, are proof that the GOP still hasn’t learned.
danielx
There are few pleasures (read complete and total relief) in life like going in for a biopsy and finding out that what had been diagnosed as a tumor is not only not malignant but not even a tumor. Having to limit your activities/work for only two days instead of two weeks afterwards is a just a bonus.
Brachiator
BTW, we will soon be hearing how the Clintons are hypocrites because they are rich plutocrats, just like the worst Republicans, as the press digs into the details of the release of more Clinton tax returns:
This CNN story even tossed GOP heir presumptive Jeb! a bone:
If he wants, I’m sure that Jeb! can work the angle that he has freely revealed more than that old tire biter Mittens Romney ever did in releasing his tax returns.
However, even though this little move by the Clintons is totally legal, it’s still a little cheesy in my book:
Here I would like to see the filings of the Clinton Foundation and see how much was actually distributed to charities, vs how much to the operating expenses of the foundation.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/31/politics/hillary-clinton-tax-returns/
Germy Shoemangler
dedicated to Jeb…
“How’m I doin’, hey hey”
Schlemazel
@danielx:
Congratulations!
Sly
@Keith G:
Truman’s impromptu response was, “I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.” It was first said to a crowd in Harrisburg, Illinois from rear platform of the Presidential Rail Car during his famous Whistle Stop Tour in 1948 after someone shouted “Give ’em Hell, Harry.”
So, yeah, a good historical analogue.
shortstop
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: That line, yes, but much more than that. News accounts and stories from inside the campaign all seem to indicate he just didn’t have the fire in his belly. It was expected that he’d run, but he didn’t run like he really wanted it.
(She, but no worries. Here it’s only about text on a screen.)
Germy Shoemangler
dedicated to HRC
“Swing It Sister”
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator:
Quite a difference from Mitt 14% (leaving money on the table) Romney, eh?
As to giving most of their money to their own charity, if I had a charity of my own, I’d do the same. When it comes to how they spend that money, most of that data should be available.
shortstop
Haven’t deep dives into voting stats disproved the story that Republicans “didn’t come out” in 2012? I seem to recall that every subgroup, from evangelicals to establishmentarians to tea partiers, came out in about their usual numbers. It’s just that there are more of us now — when we get ourselves out to vote. And we did in 2012, against all GOP predictions.
shortstop
@danielx: oh, hey, that’s great news!
Hal
Jeb almost seems to be losing the will to run. He’s boring and stiff, and I’m starting to wonder if his main impetus for running was the assumption that he would have an easier time getting the nomination. Now he’s being shown up by people like trump and that has to sting.
RSA
Fixed. Obama’s first-term gestures mostly went unnoticed; it’s fair to highlight who has spiked bipartisanship over the past couple of decades.
SiubhanDuinne
@danielx:
What great news! I’m very happy for you.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Brachiator: The Clinton Foundation financial reports are public info (as they are a tax-exempt charity). The WaPo had a story about their efficiency, etc., a while back.
It strikes me that the Gates Foundation should get a lot more scrutiny than it does. Just about every puff piece about how wonderful they are talks about how many billions of dollars they spend out of the goodness of Bill’s heart, while not mentioning that in order to maintain their tax exempt status they have to spend 5% of their assets every year. And, low and behold, if one does the figuring or checks the numbers they spend almost exactly 5% (the bare minimum) every year… (And that’s independent of the larger issue of whether it’s a good idea for our society to let a billionaire try to impose his views on public education, or the larger benefit of letting a single person or small group hoard and control such a vast fortune, or …)
Bill and Hillary giving to their foundation strikes me as fine. They would be criticized if they didn’t give it lots of money while asking others to do so, of course. It’s a lot better use of the tax code, it seems to me, than Rmoney socking (up to) $101M in his IRA.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Germy Shoemangler:
Prior to this, I didn’t know anything about him or pay attention to who was filing campaign stories.
The first draft of his story about Jeb! and Hillary’s appearance at the Urban League meeting is just as slanted, and quotes a lot of GOP hacks who blast Hillary for being mean and having no achievements of her own.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/07/31/hillary-clinton-suggests-jeb-bush-has-hurt-black-americans-cause/
He is apparently a young, up and coming reporter, with a working class background even though he is a Yale graduate:
He worked at a couple of other papers before and even did journalism at Yale:
But here is the fun part. Evidently he runs with some shady right wing pundits:
God bless the Internet. With a little digging, you can find all kinds of good stuff.
BTW, Barbaro once got blasted for being young and stupid by commenters to a story that he wrote about Joe Biden:
It’s going to be a long campaign season.
dmsilev
@shortstop: Pretty much this. Romney won about the same fraction of the white vote that Reagan did in 1980. However, the electorate today is just a wee bit more diverse than it was 32 years ago.
Cervantes
@Bobby Thomson:
[I am not, not, not going to ask.]
Kay
@debbie:
I wonder if Romney just got ripped off, I really do. It is inexplicable to me why he wouldn’t have an organizer in a GOP-majority county in Ohio. John McCain had an organizer. He was this tattooed sort of vaguely threatening and grim person, but he was there. I don;t know what Republicans pay them but Obama paid them +/- 30k for 9-10 months plus health insurance. They work a million hours a week. It’s a bargain. Romney couldn’t put at least one in each of 88 counties? Bush had those crazy rallies here, where he wasn’t there but they rallied anyway. How did he manage that?
Schlemazel
@Hal:
I think he saw his incompetent, wasterial brother float through 8 years of pretending to be the most important man in the universe and figured if that loser can do it I can too. You know he would have the same cadre of advisors doing the work while he enjoyed all the trappings of power without any of the work that should be expected. I actually would prefer Trump to JEB! because I don’t see Trump bringing in the same set of thieves and morons as the Bush clan would. Either would be a disaster but Bush would be worse; I don’t think Trump is as stupid as he plays on TV.
danielx
Thanks for the good thoughts! It’s a beautiful day following another beautiful day, and after the rainiest summer in 137 years (so far) and the usual miserable pre-procedure prep, it’s even better.
Brachiator
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The WaPo story is pretty fair, but I don’t know that they give the Foundation a full pass. One of the watchdogs notes:
And there is this:
However, they got strong marks from other groups, and as you note they appear to be very efficient in distributing donations. In this, they have a far, far better record than many other more established organizations.
BTW, since Gates is not really a political figure, I am not as much concerned with what he does as I might be with Clinton, Romney and others. And a huge chunk of what he is playing with is his own personal fortune. At his level of personal wealth, he could peel off a chunk for hookers and blow, and I might still give him a bit of a pass.
Keith G
@Sly: Thanks for the correction. I see I conflated two separate quotes. Besides the one above the other one I was thinking of was when he said he would, “…win the election and make the Republicans like it.”
Davis X. Machina
@Frankensteinbeck:
She doesn’t mean it, though.
You can tell.
Karen S.
@Germy Shoemangler:
My dad, a now retired chemist, is a member of the American Chemical Society. He’s not an active in ACS as he used to be because age and illness have slowed him down. Anyway, years ago, Ben Carson was an invited speaker at an ACS convention. I think Carson may still have been working as a neurosurgeon at the time. My dad, unfortunately, doesn’t remember exactly what Carson talked about, but he remembers quite vividly that several people had walked out before Carson finished. I don’t know if he was a bad speaker generally or if he said something in particular that rubbed a lot of mostly white middle aged and elderly male chemists the wrong way, but my dad thinks it’s bizarre that Carson is, in some quarters, now considered a serious presidential candidate.
Schlemazel
@Brachiator:
NPR did a hack job in which they noted that a large percentage of donations made from the Clinton FOundation were to the charitable foundations of other stars that had attended fund-raising events for the Clinton foundation. That is not necessarily bad (although NPR tried hard to make it sound that way) but it does open the door for a lot of questions.
raven
@danielx: Great! When I sliced my ulnar nerve in May they picked up something on a bone that they thought might be cancer. It wasn’t but it didn’t make the time it tool finding out much better! Glad you’re cool.
Brachiator
Holy crap, it’s my birthday. Since I’m logged into google stuff, the google doodle shows a birthday cake and other goodies. Now, if the ringer on my phone sings “Happy birthday to you” today, then I will bow down to all the Internet deities.
Don’t have much planned for they day, except for a little dinner with friends. Unless the Koch brothers call to invite me to their Klown kar shindig.
Oh, well, back to your regularly scheduled open thread.
Germy Shoemangler
@Karen S.:
I’ve seen so many people post racist crap on facebook and other places, and then when challenged they pull out “I’ve got a black friend” bullshit. The latest one I encountered coughed up a litany of foxx nooz racist crap then denied being a racist because his “daughter is engaged to a black guy.”
Carson is simply the black friend/future son-in-law. He will not win anything, of course, but he will be displayed like a badge of honor by wingnuts to deflect any accusations of bigotry.
Germy Shoemangler
@Brachiator: happy birthday.
Enjoy your day!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Brachiator:
I know I’m starting to derail the thread with a personal hobby-horse, so I’ll try to be brief.
Usually politicians put their financial holdings in a blind trust when they take office.
Vast personal (and corporate) fortunes would not exist these days without the benefit of specific features of the political and legal system. They don’t arise spontaneously.
Microsoft crushed competitors, used lots of shady anti-competitive practices, stole DOS from a competitor, etc., etc. This is ancient history and well documented (review the Judge T.P. Jackson trial findings for an example). Microsoft used the copyright, trademark, and patent system to build a near monopoly. They influence legislation that lets them increase their control over their industry. That’s a huge piece of how they built their fortune.
Vast fortunes have political power. It can be used, as Gates does, to get access to politicians and to push their views. Gary Kildall (the creator of CP/M) and Tim Paterson (the creator of DOS) didn’t and don’t have the political power that Gates does. The Mars family dynasty (the candy, dog food, etc., etc. magnates) and the Waltons push their views on things like the inheritance tax. It’s political power even if they don’t hold elective office.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bobby Thomson
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: giving out only 5% of ASSETS isn’t something nefarious. That’s how you preserve capital and long-term health. Give out all the assets and you can’t plan for shit.
Cervantes
@danielx:
Good news. Savor it!
Keith G
On a story related to press and politics, I’ve been hearing a lot the last couple days about how Ted Cruz crossed a line and was uniquely hostile to Senate Majority Leader McConnell. Some commentators in the press were breathlessly opining that,”Gee, this had never been done before in the Senate.”
That got me around to thinking about this poor victim, Senator Mitch McConnell. And I realized that he also has been uniquely hostile as a leader in the US Senate. His hostility towards Obama has been unique and at least publicly without precedent. Funny, how I don’t seem to recall a lot of breathless opining on that front.
shell
Awwwww,
Its amazing how sensitive these GOPers are when the slightest criticism is sent their way. Uncivil
Karen S.
@Germy Shoemangler:
Exactly. He’s like the wingnut shield against accusations of bigotry and racism.
Germy Shoemangler
@danielx: Glad you’re OK… I can relate. Last summer I had a biopsy… had a yoooge lump on my shoulder/neck area. It was tiny at first, so I ignored it (don’t like fussing with doctors and their invasive medical tests that often do more harm than good). It got bigger and bigger, and I was reminded of a former co-worker who ignored a lump, and by the time he had it checked they told him it was cancer and had spread through his body. It was so far advanced they told him he didn’t even qualify for experimental therapies. He died last year.
So this was on my mind as this fucking lump grew bigger and bigger.
Finally I presented my case to a physician. By then I’d worked it up in mind as a terminal illness. I was thinking they’d send me right to hospice care after the examination.
They took a biopsy, and it was not cancer. They removed it with local anesthesia, and a few stitches.
Went home after and got quietly drunk.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Germy Shoemangler: Indeed! HBD!
Cheers,
Scott.
shell
Hmmm. Can’t remember names, but in the run-up to the civil War, wasn’t there an incident of a Southern congressman beating a Northern one with his cane? That sounds pretty hostile.
shell
@Germy Shoemangler: Good news!
When symptoms pop up, as wer’e waiting for a diagnosis, we have to keep telling ourselves that medical saying “When you hear hoofs, its usually a horse, not a zebra.”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bobby Thomson: Maybe not, but Gates said that the foundation will spend down everything by 20 years after he and his wife have died. She’s 50. If she lives to be 90 (say), that’s the year 2075.
Doesn’t sound like they’re in any hurry to spend down the fortune….
Do you think it’s a good idea for them to control that much wealth for that long? I don’t. YMMV.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris
@Keith G:
That’s true. Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Bolton, and others like them all had the attack role themselves at various times. But W pretty much just sat back and snickered.
@gf120581:
The one talent I always credited George W. Bush for was being a good campaigner; he always felt like the kind of extrovert who actually enjoyed it. Which is hugely important if you’re campaigning. The contrast with the Marquis de Mittens’ style couldn’t have been more striking. And iJeb! is following in Mitt’s footsteps.
Germy Shoemangler
@shell:
I tend to be very negative, so when I hear hooves I always assume it’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or Satan himself, tip-toeing on his little feet: “Germy! I’ve read your anti-GOP comments on Balloon-Juice and I’m here to fuck you up!”
Chris
@mai naem mobile:
This is the most insane part of the right’s Islamophobia (whose main targets are Muslims living in the U.S) – tons and tons of the people they’re targeting are people who came to America to escape the people who are now America’s enemies.
At least during the Cold War they had the sense to play up and appeal to this kind of sentiment in the Polish-American, Cuban-American, etc communities. Not anymore. Now it’s “you all look alike” all the way down the line.
Davis X. Machina
@shell:You are correct! US Rep Preston Brooks (S.C.) beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane.
Brooks was deluged with replacement canes from supporters all over the country.
Mike J
Two points:
Republicans view speaking to black groups the way they view the US speaking to Iran or Cuba. It’s a privilege for the other side to even be there, they should be grateful for the opportunity to hear from their betters, and should never be under the mistaken impression that the Republicans or the US will actually listen to them.
Secondly, Politico refers to the “rash of police shootings of unarmed black men”. I’m not sure “rash” is the right word. It sounds like a temporary aberration, something that’s never happened before and will soon just go away on its own. The police have been murdering people, especially black men, for centuries. The only thing new is the reaction to allowing murderers to walk free and continue to “protect and serve”.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Davis X. Machina: Wikipedia:
That’s what Sumner gets for not having a gun with him on the floor of the Senate. Amirite?!!
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mike J: the only difference now is body cams and citizen cell-phone videos.
Chris
@shortstop:
What I remember hearing back then was that if white people were as large a share of the population as they were in the Reagan years, McCain and Romney’s margins among white people would’ve easily put them in the White House.
That’s the problem. The GOP’s basically been playing the Nixonland card for fifty years. It’s just not working like it used to.
ETA: dmsilev beat me to it.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yes, the Mudd interview, a few days before the campaign was announced, was awkward.
It’s just that I don’t think the awkwardness stemmed from a lack of motivation.
shell
Ah, Southern chivalry. I guess pistols at dawn were out of the question.
Chris
@Kay:
The “unskewed polls” moment in the last election was when I realized the Romney campaign had completely fucking lost it. But I don’t think Romney got swindled, I just chalk it up to the fact that Republicans have been living in an echo chamber for years, and their general belief that the very fabric of reality will distort itself to bend to their wishes.
The people who rose to the top of the Romney campaign were the people who told Romney et al what they wanted to hear. Anyone who’d given him bad news would probably have been dismissed exactly the way Nate Silver was. Romney wasn’t screwed, he screwed himself.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Happy birthday!
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Brachiator: Gates is a political player in Washington state, and a pretty big one.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@shell: The Wikipedia article discusses that. Sumner wasn’t “worthy” of being challenged to a duel, you see. :-/
There has been some progress over the centuries, but too many of our fellow humans want to roll that progress back. And some of them are even running for President (e.g. JEB signed the first stand your ground law in Florida).
Cheers,
Scott.
gogol's wife
@FlyingToaster:
You haven’t started calling them “Neversource” yet, then?
Mike J
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The whole idea of a foundation is “don’t touch the principal.” Having a large stack of money generates income. If the foundation lasts more than 20 years they’ll spend more money in toto than if they had simply spent it all up front.
If Gates were running commercials of sad eyed dogs with Sarah McLachlan playing in the background, I’d expect them to spend more money each year. The money is mostly Bill & Melinda’s, and they’ve structured it in a way they believe will do more long term good.
shell
@Chris: were the people who told Romney et al what they wanted to hear”
And plenty of RW pundits. Remember that weird pre-eelection column by Peggy Noonan. Where she bases a Romney landslide on the new lawnsigns she’s been seeing. Its like they all were retreating into magical thinking.
Schlemazel
@shell:
The Senate has very strict rules about what you can call another Senator. Breaking those rules could result in the harshest of penalties – HAVING TO APOLOGIZE ON THE SENATE FLOOR! the horror, the norror
shell
Aha. “You, Suh, are beneath my contempt!”
Chris
@Cervantes:
The funny thing is I can relate to Jeb’s problems, to an extent. Reminds me of how I don’t typically do well with job interviews (selling yourself is a skill I’ve never really been good at), and indeed, it’s not usually lack of motivation. Being an introvert with sub-average people skills are more of a factor. But that’s why people like me don’t usually run for president. If it’s a handicap in job interviews, imagine it on the campaign trail.
The other thing is that for Jeb, and Mittens before him, it was pretty clearly not only a matter of being awkward or introverted, but also a deep contempt for people they saw as beneath them. For Romney, look at the 47% video. For iJeb! and this audience in particular, I’d say look at his comment from 1994 that he would “do nothing” for black people. They just don’t like the people they’re being forced to talk to.
gelfling545
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: But if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. Keep in mind that some people, maybe even a lot of them, like to help others.
danielx
@Germy Shoemangler:
Couldn’t do that yesterday because they put me out for the procedure, but I’m thinking today may be a day for drinking margaritas outside or something of that nature.
Bobby Thomson
@Mike J: this.
Cervantes
@shortstop:
Kennedy had said to Carter several times that he would not run. That commitment ended with the “malaise” speech in 1979 and other factors that news accounts did not cover until later (in some cases much later).
For example, Kennedy, long a supporter of national health-care (“the great unfinished business of the Democratic Party,” he called it), had a detailed plan in mind and re-started a negotiation — not the first time — with Carter: if enough of his plan were to become law, he might be convinced not to challenge the President for the nomination. The negotiations were drawn out — but in any event a deal was almost reached — I’d estimate it was 95% complete — when Carter’s team simply rejected everything. As a result, Kennedy’s campaign began late (with consequences financial and therefore organizational).
As for the Mudd interview, taped weeks before Kennedy announced his campaign, it wasn’t just “that line.” It was entire paragraphs of less-than-fiery rhetoric! If you’re thinking he was unprepared, you’re right: the interview was actually supposed to be with his mother, who took ill at the last moment. Kennedy stepped up as a personal favor to Mudd, thinking the feature was meant to be the same gauzy, soft-focus thing Mudd had been describing — which clearly it was not on the day of.
So, I agree — not fiery — but once the campaign began in earnest there was a lot of fire. The announcement speech in Boston was pretty toasty. For even more fire you can locate a transcript of the speech delivered at Georgetown in January, 1980. Carter’s people did not think it lacked warmth!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mike J: Yes. I’m well aware of the arguments for why they do the things they do. I’m just trying to point out that there is a down side to the political and legal system that let such a huge fortune be accumulated and exist for so many decades.
I don’t buy the idea that the Gates Foundation will necessarily make better choices than anyone else on what to do with those resources.
Would the computer industry in the US be more vibrant, advance faster, have lower prices and more choices if MS hadn’t crushed their competition? Would the people of Seattle and Washington and the US be better off if there had been, say, a 90% marginal tax rate on Gates’s income and that money had been used for free pre-school and post-school activities, vastly reduced college tuition, improved infrastructure, etc., etc.?
Someone made the case not too long ago that the royal family was an important and valuable institution in the UK because political leaders can talk with the queen and she can give her insight on the way things are and the history because she has lived it for the last 60 years and can tell personal stories about meeting with other leaders. Ok, maybe. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t lots of bad things about an expensive monarchy.
Huge fortunes are corrupting. They distort policy choices and incentives. They divide people and give too much political power to the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
We make policy choices. The world can be different if we chose to make it so.
/soapbox
Cheers,
Scott.
Tyro
@Chris: The people who rose to the top of the Romney campaign were the people who told Romney et al what they wanted to hear.
That reflects the kind of person Romney himself was. In management consulting and private equity, he would “close the deal” by telling potential clients what they wanted to hear so they would sign up with Bain & Co. or Bain Capital. So people who also had the same talent that he did in that regard were the ones who got promoted and became part of his inner circle.
Chris
@Cervantes:
@Chris:
(Too late to ETA): Whoops. Sorry, mixed up the parts of the thread and thought the “lack of motivation”/”awkwardness” still referred to iJeb! and not Ted Kennedy. (Whose campaign I don’t remember).
Robert Sneddon
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Actually the Queen and the Royal family in general are nowhere near the richest people in the UK, indeed they aren’t even the richest of the aristocracy. The Duke of Buckinghamshire holds that position as he and his family own large chunks of London and get paid rents on it. Ka-ching!
The Crown is a national institution and Crown property like Buckingham House and most of the other trappings of the monarchy belong to the country, not to the Queen or her family personally. Any earnings from those properties such as farm rents and the like go to the Treasury. The Royals pay income tax on their own earnings and holdings just like anyone else does. Most of the Queen’s actual holdings in land and fixtures (art, furniture etc.) are family property, entailed and not able to be sold for cash by a given generation.
In return the Sovereign Grant (the successor to the Civil List) pays for several of the top Royals to do their job as representatives of the nation, the sort of things the POTUS and VPOTUS do, opening hospitals, giving speeches, being Presidential generally like any other head of state. It frees up the Prime Minister who doesn’t have to do all that schmoozing shit and who can get on with his or her real job. In 2014 the Grant was about UKP 40 million, less than the pricetag for one of the two replacements for the President’s personal bizjets.
The key job the Queen does though is to just be there, as an anchor that doesn’t shift with the political winds. She is Head of State come what may. Soldiers and police officers swear allegiance not to a politician or elected demagogue but to the current monarch, Parliament is prorogued under her hand, the elected government is enabled by her and laws passed in her name.
It works. The institution changes over the years, adapting to the circumstances and to the national will — the eldest child of a given monarch is now automatically next in line, not just the eldest male child for example, due to a recent change in the rules of inheritance.
Cervantes
@Chris:
You would guess his two gubernatorial campaigns/victories were easier, perhaps because they were limited to Florida?
It’s a charade, I agree. I’m not sure why either side bothered, except to give the NYT something to fill its pages (or yet again reveal itself) with.
debbie
@Kay:
Following your line of thought, maybe the Ohio GOP told him no one would be needed. Was Bennett still in charge back then? If so, I’d bet he told Romney to never mind that blackity-black guy’s win, Ohio was definitely in the GOP’s pockets (just look at the record of GOP state and local wins).
Even now, they’re touting Kasich’s 62% win — leaving out the part that the Dems didn’t even run a campaign against him. How many people elsewhere in the country will fall for that BS?
Bobby Thomson
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: foundations aren’t allowed to donate to political campaigns.
ETA: you seem to be conflating Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
Robert Sneddon
@Kay:
I recall reading a report around September 2012, a couple of months before the vote that the FEC reported that the Romney campaign had paid out a few six-figure bonuses to senior campaign managers. The press report suggested these managers were personal friends of the Romneys and in many cases fellow members of the Mormon church.
Can you be “ripped off” if it’s you that’s doing the ripping?
See also Jeb Bush’s consulting company that paid his wife $220,000 for unspecified services some time in the last decade.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I have said it before and will say it again; when the 2016 election is all done and President Clinton has been sworn in, George W. is going to be remembered as the “smart and competent” one.
The GOP better be praying for anyone but JEB!, because Hillary can and will destroy him.
boatboy_srq
Let me see if I have this right. The GOTea goes all-out for HRC while she’s First Lady, fang-and-claw and looking for blood, for over eight years (since the mess dragged on well past 2000); the party – to an individual – goes right for the jugular on Kerry on -04, then ’08-present goes full-blown wingnut over BHO as twice-duly-elected POTUS, stopping just short of calls for a public lynching of the uppity niCLANG on the WH lawn… and now because HRC has called them out for flaws in their own proposals, her remarks are “uncivil and uncalled-for”? I’m torn between digging up Mustang Bobby’s rusty garden rake and powering up the electron microscope to find my violin.
Chris
@Cervantes:
When Romney did something like this in 2012, I was convinced that he was simply putting on a show for the GOP. He knew that he couldn’t make a dent into the Democratic appeal to the black vote, so he just went, spoke the usual Republican platitudes, so that when they gave him the cold shoulder he could just go back and say “but there’s just no reasoning with these people! See?”
Not sure if that’s what iJeb! is doing.
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
George W. Bush being the smart and competent one. Heh. That reminds me of the stories we heard about in the mid to late 2000s, that Dick Cheney was all ready to go for a third war in the Middle East (Iran), but Bush was the one who vetoed him, being smart enough to see that that wasn’t feasible militarily, economically or politically.
It’s terrifying to think that Bush was more grounded than so many other people in the party.
Althea
@bago: I suppose this is sick but I love it
Althea
@boatboy_srq: This is a group with gossamer feelings. They are very fragile and easily hurt. Handle with the utmost care and caution.
Cervantes
@Chris:
It could also be that in both cases, Romney and Bush, the goal was to avoid the minor criticism that would attend their not attending.
And as for the event organizers, I imagine they don’t want to be criticized by Republicans for not inviting Republicans to speak to them.
Cervantes
@Althea:
They’re just playing the refs, as usual.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Robert Sneddon: Thanks for all the info. You make good points.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who doesn’t like monarchies, however relatively inexpensive they may be. ;-)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bobby Thomson: The money for the Gates Foundation came primarily from his holdings of Microsoft. It’s natural to conflate them.
Cheers,
Scott.
shortstop
@shell: Yes, but he didn’t do it every day.
Tom Q
To chime in late on the Ted Kennedy thing:
When Kennedy decided to run, Carter’s poll numbers were ludicrously low. Kennedy in a sense didn’t need a rationale to run, beyond “I’m not the sure loser this guy is”. But, by the time of the Mudd interview, the hostages had been taken in Iran, and, for a brief period, the public did a rally-round, and Carter’s poll numbers jolted upward. This left Kennedy a bit flat-footed, and his failure to supply “This is my reason for a campaign” with Mudd didn’t impress people (Mud also raised the elephant in the room — Chappaquiddick — and Kennedy as always had no persuasive explanation for it).
Eventually, Kennedy DID come up with a coherent reason for his campaign — something along the lines of Howard Dean’s “I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party” — and it worked well for him in later primaries, starting in NY. But Carter’s early victories in that period when Kennedy was uncertain turned out decisive, as he narrowly held onto nomination.
By then, of course, his poll numbers had plummeted again, with the result that even Reagan was able to beat him. But I don’t see any evidence Kennedy would have won, either. The history of successful intra-party challenges against the incumbent is, they’re only successful when the incumbent is unpopular, and, when the incumbent is unpopular, the incumbent party loses, even with a different candidate (see: 1952, 1968).
Ramalama
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Who’s your ideal audience?
shortstop
@Chris: I really, really enjoyed that election night…and savored the bewildered reaction of the Romneys and their campaign staff in the days that followed.
shortstop
@shell: It wasn’t just lawn signs! It was a “special energy” at Mitt rallies, okay?! As a result, Peg declared a couple of days before the election, “Nobody knows anything” about how it was going to turn out.
God, I loved every minute of these people’s buffoonery.
Ruckus
@danielx:
Yes it is. Second to that is to find out that while the docs thought you might have kidney cancer the testing shows you don’t even have kidney stones, let alone kidney cancer. Of course that’s not the end of it but still, good news is good news.
shortstop
@Tom Q: Good summation, and consonant with the impressions of most other observers of the time.
shortstop
Ruckus! I’ve been looking for you! First, congrats. Second, thanks for the recommendation for Foyle’s War you gave me a few months back. Into the third episode now and enjoying it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@shortstop: I guess in a world where the Iraq War was just something that kinda happened, and not that big a deal, and a long time ago so who cares, the fact that La Nooner’s Very Serious status survived her magic dolphins column shouldn’t surprise me, but after all these years, it still does.
ETA; also, too, John McCain and pretty much everything John McCain has said or done over the last ten or fifteen years
Ruckus
@boatboy_srq:
They are both running for president, a somewhat confrontational task, she talks about him, truthfully, and he talks bullshit and she’s the one with a potty mouth.
That about cover it?
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Keep walking, Jim!
Ruckus
@shortstop:
I think that was raven with the Foyle’s War rec. Either that or Alzheimers does run in the family.
CaseyL
@danielx: Great news, congratulations!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@shortstop: and from 2004, an attempt at triumphalist snark: The Democrats’ rising star is a man named Barack. Hussein. Obama. Let us savor.
/paraphrase, she ain’t worth a google at this point
shortstop
@Ruckus: Mmmmm, pretty sure it wasn’t. Must have been someone else. That was a good thread. Did you recommend another series about British civilian life during WWII? Can you remind me of its name?
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: you’d only find 3,456,987 references to vodka-soaked arrogance if you did. I wonder how she ignores the widespread mockery. I’m quite sure she does.
BBA
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The modern press would focus on Sumner’s nasty speech calling Butler a whoremonger. Which is totally equivalent to beating someone half to death. Both sides do it!
Ruckus
@shortstop:
There was a great BBC series about WWII called Danger UXB, stands for unexploded bomb. A small army group went around and defused german bombs that hadn’t gone off. Lots of drama, well done.
shortstop
@Ruckus: That’s it! Thank you so much.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ahhhhhhhh, the good little racists (I’m sorry, they’re not racist: they have black friends!) giggling up a storm because they just knew the country would never elect a man named Hussein (because, y’know, These People. But they’re not racist!) and were totally perfectly fine with that (BUT THEY’RE NOT RACIST!)
And then getting slapped in the face when the country proceeds to do exactly that, twice. The schaden just freuds itself.
Losing to a black man named Hussein; you can really trace the losing-their-shit moment of the entire Republican political class back to that.
Bruce Webb
@Brachiator: The Clinton Foundation makes relatively few grants but instead engages in direct action on the ground. So their returns are totally misleading. I mean directly hiring people in Africa is going to look like ‘staff’ spending. And buying materials and supplies on the ground is going to look like ‘supplies’.
On the other hand a lot of charities themselves have high overhead. So it is not clear that large sums actually donated to ‘charities’ is actually doing anything other than paying six figure salaries for their administrators. Personally I like the Clinton, Gates, Soros approach of finding projects and funding them directly.
Cervantes
@Tom Q:
The Mudd interview aired the night the hostages were taken in Teheran but it was taped weeks before that.
Certainly by the time of the speech at Georgetown in January, his motivation was clear, even to the NYT.
But that’s a different question than the one addressed above, which was about his motivation or lack thereof.
Brachiator
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
It would not matter one way or another. In technology, people always worry about the lumbering giant controlling everything, but usually long after that lumbering giant has lost all power. There was a time when IBM and HP absolutely dominated the industry and wise pundits were writing about how they would control everything forever. But Big Blue could not foresee or hold off the rise of the personal computer.
Later, Microsoft became the Big behemoth. And yet they cannot even crack the mobile phone market and are giving Windows 10 away to many users. Google is the leader in innovation, and Apple has more money in the bank than God, but only a small but important share of the total smartphone market.
Tech companies can wield tremendous influence and can make or break competitors in many ways, but in the long run cannot forestall innovation or the rise of new companies. This impacts other companies and industries as well. The traditional music companies killed Napster, I guess, but they could only delay, not stop the rise of music streaming companies. Didn’t matter how much money or power they had.
There have been and continue to be great fortunes made in the tech industry, but the personal goals of these moguls are diverse and for now not as focused on world domination as the Koch brothers and some others.
A fun economics question is whether it is more efficient for a plutocrat to amass great wealth and later disperse his or her money or for the state to tax people and collectively decide how to spend the money. Did Andrew Carnegie do more good endowing schools and libraries and museums with his personal fortune than the state might have done?
Uh, no. The queen is forbidden to have or to publicly express political opinions. You can’t even be sure whether she has any informed opinions about domestic or foreign affairs. No prime minister is obliged to pay any formal attention to anything that the monarch might be concerned with.
I sympathize with your view and favor a strongly progressive tax system. However, I don’t believe in punishing the wealthy for pre-crime, under the theory that they may become corrupt.
There may also be some historical lessons here. We suffer from wage stagnation and a tremendous assault on the middle class. The idea of people being able to rise economically is being challenged and there are all kinds of doomsday stories about the influence of a perpetual wealthy class. But I remember seeing a Forbes magazine about the richest families in 1900. Very few were around to make the Forbes 400 list of 2000. They had lost their fortunes, seen it dispersed among numerous descendants, been displaced by up and comers, etc. And progressive income tax helped somewhat.
Also, I’ve never known what the income level is when money officially becomes corrupting.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
By definition forestalling is something that happens in the short run — and it does happen.
Mike G
@shortstop:
The Bushes are in their minds Born to Rule. Having to campaign vigorously is an affront to their sense of entitlement.
Brachiator
@Bruce Webb:
High overhead and administrative costs are a warning sign. I stopped giving to the United Way because of problems in this area, especially the large salaries of the charity’s main staff.
It is tough to know sometimes how well charity money is being spent, even for direct on the ground projects. There have been some accusations that an African water pump project Jeb! was involved in was a huge scandal-ridden endeavor.
And some reports that the Red Cross relief effort in Haiti was a massive waste of money has me re-evaluating ever donating to them in the future. I note here, though that there is a lot of complexity to this story.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/04/americas/american-red-cross-haiti-controversy-propublica-npr/
The Clinton Foundation looks pretty good by most comparisons.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Do you remember Bill Aramony?
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
Hmm. Let’s see.
I don’t see that this is by definition something that happens in the short run.
In any event, there has been a long and steady history of today’s tech giants becoming tomorrow’s also rans.
In a related story, there are news reports about Sharp getting out of the tv manufacturing business, leaving only Panasonic and Sony as the only Japanese companies in the market. And even the South Koreans, who displaced Japan, are now being pushed aside by China. And of course the glory days of US and European tv manufacturing are long over.
J R in WV
Glad to see Hillary isn’t going to allow the republicans to get around her by being polite to them. They don’t deserve polite from Democratic candidates, as they are willing to lie and distort both Democratic proposals and persons at the same time they use smoke and mirrors to fabricate their own positions and actions in office.
Bush obviously has no intent of every lifting a finger to help any minorities with regard to their being attacked and murdered by police, or to the economic distortions created to keep minorities down. He would rather keep his boot on their neck to prevent them from exerting the smallest influence on American affairs than spend on red cent on helping them accomplish anything.
H. Clinton may not be the perfect candidate, but she so far exceeds any of the republican candidates so far revealed that I don’t know why the republicans don’t just mail it in and go home. I think that with a possible exception for wall street / banks / insurance regulation she will be an excellent leader for the country.
She seems to have learned a lot about public politics, how to defend herself, how to propose her policies in a positive light, with historical details in support of both her own intentions and the party’s past and future. All good, so far.
ETA:
@danielx:
Congratulations on your new diagnosis, not threatening, so fine!
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
Nope. Ah, I see that he was longtime CEO of the United Way. I would appreciate your perspective on this.
I recall that the United Way was so mainstream that one company I worked for had an election to have an automatic payroll deduction for the charity.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Low level people “hired” by the Red Cross only get paid from funds that they raise for their agency, which means that they may not get “paid” at all if they can’t carry that freight.
This is the sign of a multi-level marketing scam if I ever saw one. So sorry those folks don’t know they’re getting scammed by a “charity” which seems now to exist in order to pay very high wages to senior management, while stiffing both the low-level employees, the contributors, and the disaster victims who so badly need help recovering from earthquake / flood / fire / tidal wave, etc.
Applejinx
@J R in WV: I’m pretty worried about the exception for banks/wallstreet/insurance regulation, hence my berniation (TROGDOR! THE BERNIENATOR!)
But if I can actually believe Hillary is super pissed about the constant cop murder of black people, I can get behind her if she carries the nomination. I would anyway on ‘anybody but a Republican’ principles, but I’ll trade the economic collapse of the USA due to neoliberal bullshit (which would happen anyway on a Republican watch) for some goddamn justice.
Maybe she’ll even drop the neoliberal bullshit. It’s early days yet. And all the time she was supporting neoliberal bullshit, the country was being stupid and wanted that. Times change. The country doesn’t want that anymore.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
My first attempt at posting this vanished. Trying one more time…
@Brachiator: People may be arguing about Microsoft and what it did or didn’t do until the heat death of the Universe, but I can’t resist…
A wise man once said, ‘In the long run, we’re all dead. ;-)
Apple may have a relatively small fraction of the cell phone market, but they’re earning (almost) all of the profits.
I remember DEC and HP and Sun and Silicon Graphics and Amdahl and Cray lots of other computer companies. I’m not arguing that they would all be around if Microsoft (and IBM before them) hadn’t specifically crushed them. Under any reasonable circumstances, companies grow and shrink and some die.
My views are colored by what I saw in the early Windows 3 QuarterDeck DesqView and OS/2 2.0 days (very early 1990s). Microsoft had restrictive per-processor agreements with OEMs that installed Windows. There were strong disincentives for companies to offer other operating systems because they were already paying MS for Windows for every machine whether it shipped with Windows or not. Back in those days, there was a lot of innovation on the desktop, but it wasn’t coming from Microsoft. HP’s NewWave object oriented desktop. IBM’s Workplace Shell. Lots of innovation in Linux and various desktop environments. Even innovation in DOS. MS had competition in networking as well. And there was a lot of innovation in the Internet/Web Browser space (remember Gopher?).
Once Windows 95 came out, MS had locked up so much of the market that the others were relegated to niches and MS had no effective competition on the PC desktop. And they still don’t now.
MS crushed WordPerfect, Lotus, dBase, etc., though their cheap bundled office suite. They crushed Borland in the compiler space through control and churning of their various APIs.
MS tried to extend their near monopoly in these areas to the Internet by welding IE into the OS and claiming it couldn’t be removed. That was done specifically to crush Netscape and to try to gain control over the interface to the Internet. (Again, see T.P. Jackson’s ‘finding of fact’ in the anti-trust trial.)
Though counterfactuals are always subjective, I think a compelling case can be made that there would have been a lot more innovation over the last 25 years if MS had felt the pressure to innovate to compete with other products on the market rather than trying to keep all of the market to itself.
The specific thing I had in mind is the dance that happens in the UK after a parliamentary election. The PM visits the queen and they have a conversation. Part of that conversation apparently is the PM at least having the opportunity to get her views on the history of various things. Afterward she makes her speech about ‘my government’ doing various things.
I may have been imprecise. I didn’t mean corrupting in the ‘you violated Section XYZ.123(b) of the Penal Code’ sense. It’s corrupting in a more general sense. ‘Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, therefore he must have thought deeply about public education or how to optimize the training of new workers.’ No, that doesn’t follow.
People are not entitled to keep a certain percentage of their earnings based upon some law of nature. It’s not a ‘punishment’ to pay taxes. Another wise man once said, ‘Taxes are price we pay for a civilized society.’ It makes sense, for all kinds of reasons, for those who earn vast salaries and who have accumulated vast wealth to pay more as percentage than for those who struggle to get by to do so.
100 years is a very long time in human and economic terms. Yes, there is turnover. But General Electric is still around. IBM is still around (but struggling). Ford is still around (after dodging a bullet better than GM). Closer to the topic, the Ford Foundation is still around too, and has something like $10B in assets. The Carnegie Corp. has something like $3.3B in assets, all these years later.
Given all the vast number of investment opportunities all over the world that exist now that didn’t exist in 1900, the sophistication of lawyers, the need for politicians to raise vast amounts of money to win office in modern and developing economies, and the importance of network effects, patents, trademarks, etc., in modern economies, do you really think that the Koch Brothers, the Mars family, the Waltons, Carlos Slim, etc., are in danger of falling out of the billionaire class without action of governments?
I’m not arguing that all charitable foundations are bad. I do think, though, that we should think long and hard about the value and costs to society of vast accumulations of wealth – especially when that wealth is locked up in a tax-exempt organization for many generations.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Brachiator: I posted a long reply, twice, but they both got eated by FYWP. I guess the world will have to do without my iron-clad arguments that I continue to be right about this stuff.
;-)
Dead thread, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
mclaren
This is exactly how you want your remarks to be described if you’re a liberal. The real brass ring, though, is “shrill” and “ranting and raving.” That’s an indication that you’ve hit paydirt and you’re now starting to speak tough truths about America that the corrupt oligarchs don’t want to hear.
“Crony capitalism” and “American torturismo” and “a culture of military and financial failure” and “we need a revolution” are all phrases that every Democrat should be honing like knives while repeating as often as possible in front of every available TV camera.
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!
mclaren
@Amir Khalid:
Twenty years of envenomed personal attacks and sadistic smear campaigns from Republicans will do that to you.
One (small) advantage of a Hillary presidency? She’ll haul out the verbal meat hook to rip Republicans’ faces off before they can even finish accusing her of some new lurid enormity. You deal with these psychopaths day in and day out as their punching bag, and after a while you develop valuable rhetorical reflexes.
mclaren
@shortstop:
Well, but remember these are the political equivalent of the Corleone family. You didn’t see Don Corleone with a tommy gun blasting away at his enemies. He hired other guys to do that. You never saw Michael Corleone carrying briefcases of cash for bribes. Michael Corleone followed an approach more along the lines of “My offer is nothing.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPmTp9up26w
And then the guy who laughed in his face mysteriously wakes up with a dead hooker, and Michael Coreleone generously offers to “fix everything” for him…in return for certain considerations.
That’s how the Bush crime family works.
boatboy_srq
@Ruckus: @Althea: About covered. Still leaves me with a quandary as to whether I’d prefer teaching JEB! what uncivil feels like (courtesy said rusty garden rake) or simply laughing hysterically at his discomfort (rusty garden rake or no).
Robert Sneddon
@mclaren:
Actually you did see the Don doing his own dirty work in the early days. Michael Corleone, not so much and Michaels’s son will never have to get his hands dirty, ever. The Bush fortunes started with Prescott Bush helping to finance the Nazi war machine back before the US got seriously involved on the British side of things after Pearl Harbor. Two and three generations down the line they have the likes of Cheney and Bolton breaking kneecaps for them publicly and other less-prominent folks shuffling money and influence, pressing the Press (“sources close to the Governor…”), dropping op-eds in various “respected” journals here and there and causing favourable reports from think-tanks to somehow spontaneously create themselves. You will turn around in the middle of next year and somehow, magically, Jeb will be the nominee even though no-one could have foreseen it happening.
The Bushes and their sworn vassals have decades of experience in making this sort of thing happen. Everyone else in American politics (apart from maybe the Kennedy crime family, and they are a pale shadow of their former selves) doesn’t, and it shows.