By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
2016
Policy
“Guest Editorial: I Support Bernie Sanders for President and I Also Support the Black Lives Matter Takeover in Seattle” [The Stranger].
The Voters
Latest GOP National Poll (Fox): Trump 25%; Carson 12%; Cruz 10%; Bush 9%; Huckabee 6%; Walker 6%; Fiorina 5%; Kasich 4%; Rubio 4%.
The Trail
“Who’s who in Trump world” [The Hill]. To me, the message of this story is that when the time comes to take The Donald aside, and explain to him that he’s reached the end of the trail, that Ivanka, Donald Jr., and/or Eric Trump are the appropriate messengers (“quiet professionalism in their public images”).
Biden milks his son’s death for votes in Chattanooga [Los Angeles Times]. “‘They were my son,’ Joe Biden says of servicemen killed in Chattanooga attack.” Well, no. They weren’t.
“With his blessing, confidants to Vice President Joe Biden have begun strategizing about travel to early primary states and identified potential donors who could bankroll a campaign even as he remains undecided about whether to pull the trigger on a late-entry 2016 run for president” [Politico].
“A Biden candidacy — assuming the vice president ran a credible effort with some decent percentage of support in early states — would be the best possible thing for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) chances of actually winning the nomination” [WaPo]. “Biden and Clinton occupy lots and lots of the same space within the Democratic Party.”
“Based on the current polling, Sanders’s summer surge has left him with a realistic chance of winning one of the first two primary states, and of scaring the favorite in the other. For an insurgent candidate whom some political observers are still dismissing as a no-hoper, these are considerable achievements” [The New Yorker]. So far, however, Clinton is avoiding any leftward pull whatever.
“Iowans could hardly get close enough to take photographs of the former secretary of state, much less talk to her. “What did she say? We couldn’t hear a word!” a woman with an H (for Hillary) campaign button shouted after Mr. Harkin’s remarks” [New York Times].
On Christie: “Picture some bigwigs sitting around smoking Cuban cigars wondering who’s the man to stop Trump” [Star-Ledger]. “Hey, I’ve got an idea: Let’s pick the guy who’s dropped so far down the polls that he’s within the margin of error for zero?”
Kasich: “Passionate” but “not a marshmallow” [The Hill]. “[W]ill seek to achieve major goals in the White House by building bipartisan consensus.” Oh my.
Clown Car
Sanders goes on Meet the Press (the only transcript I can find is behind a paywall, so I’ll use this version from Shakespeare’s Sister).
CHUCK TODD: BuzzFeed has an article out this morning. Headlines is this: Sanders’ campaign reaches out to Black Lives Matter activists. Quote, I apologize it took our campaign so long. Tell me more about it.
BERNIE SANDERS: Well, that was sent out by a staffer, not by me. Look, we are reaching out to all kinds of groups, absolutely. I met with people at Black Lives Matter. We’re reaching out to Latino groups. We’re reaching out to the unions. We’re fighting to expand Social Security and we’re reaching out to senior groups. We’re reaching out to health care groups because we believe that everybody in America is entitled to health care. We’re reaching out to everybody. But on this issue of Black Lives Matter, let me be very clear, the issue that they are raising is a very, very important issue. There is no candidate for president who will be stronger in fighting against institutional racism and, by the way, reforming a broken criminal justice system. Chuck, we have more people in jail in the United States of America than any country on Earth. And we need real changes. We need to do away with the militarization of local police departments. We need to do away with minimum sentencing. We needed indication and jobs for our young people rather than jails and incarceration.
TODD: I understand that. But you said a staffer put it out but you felt an apology was necessary?
SANDERS: No. I don’t. I think we’re going to be working with all groups. This was sent out without my knowledge.
Eesh. Senator, with all due respect, WTF do you think you’re doing? First, you just threw a staffer under the bus. Do you not think you need those staffers? Second, the “apology,” justified or not, is out there, and it’s not toothpaste to be put back in the tube. Policy matters more than personality, and it also matters a lot more a candidate’s stiff neck. Unlike Shakespeare’s Sister, I’m not filing this under dogwhistling, because it’s not clear to me Sanders can carry a tune. But sheesh!
“Mike Huckabee: 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry rapist’s baby” [Raw Story]. Wowsers.
Our Nation’s Capital
Whip count on the Iran deal [WaPo]. “Congress has until mid-September to review the nuclear deal President Obama just reached with Iran. Lawmakers will vote on a yes-or-no resolution that could give the deal the go-ahead — or halt it at least temporarily.”
“[T]he Finance Committee … deadlocked on the questions at the center of the IRS’s singling out of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status: Was there intentional targeting of conservative organizations because of their political beliefs? And did the White House have any influence over the IRS’s actions? [The Hill]. “[T]he bad blood between the IRS and congressional Republicans puts the agency in jeopardy of facing further budget cuts.” Since the ability of the State to require that taxes be paid in dollars creates demand for the dollar, what happens when the IRS enforcement capability rots from within?
Stats Watch
Empire State Manufacturing Survey, August 2015: “Out of the blue, the Empire State index has plunged deeply into negative column this month, to minus 14.92 in August vs plus 3.86 in July. This is by far the weakest reading of the recovery, since April 2009” [Bloomberg]. “A reminder that weak exports and weakness in the energy sector are stubborn negatives.” However: “As this index is very noisy, it is hard to understand what these massive moves up or down mean – however this regional manufacturing survey is normally one of the more pessimistic” [Econintersect]. What it means: “The lack of support from the lost oil capex continues to ripple out” [Mosler Economics]. And: “This survey has a lot extra bells and whistles which take attention away from the core questions: (1) are orders and (2) are unfilled orders (backlog) improving? Econintersect emphasizes these two survey points – and both remain in contraction.” And Mr. Market: “While the Empire manufacturing report is typically a lower-tier indicator, markets reacted sharply to the weak reading due to the proximity of the September FOMC meeting just a month away. We look for investors to remain jittery as even lower-tier indicators increase market volatility, but note that the weaker August Empire manufacturing reading still needs confirmation from its peers” [Across the Curve].
Housing Market Index, August 2015: “The new home sector is increasingly a central source of strength for the economy and builders are increasingly optimistic” [Bloomberg]. “Strength in the labor market is the driving force behind strength for new homes where lack of supply continues to motivate builders.”
E-Commerce Retail Sales, Q2 2015: “Year-on-year, e-commerce sales rose 14.1 percent. These readings dwarf growth in total retail sales” [Bloomberg].
“[T]he biggest cautionary warnings – rising junk bond yields and the rising spread in yields between junk and U.S. Treasuries – are commanding far less attention than they should be” [Wall Street on Parade].
“With recent U.S. macroeconomic data doing little to undermine the current consensus that the Federal Reserve will act at its meeting in mid-September, redemptions from EPFR Global-tracked high yield bond funds accelerated during the second week of August and outflows from emerging markets bond funds climbed to a nine-week high as bond funds overall experienced net redemptions for the seventh time in the past 10 weeks,” [fund data provider EPFR Global] said [Market News].
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“Given the Panthers’ cultural significance, it’s surprising that The Black Panthers is the first documentary to present a thorough examination of the group” [The Intercept]. Or not!
Katrina’s not a disaster; it’s a blueprint [The New Yorker].
Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans, and his “preoccupation with the homicide plague afflicting black America” [The Atlantic].
“Why Pinellas County is the worst place in Florida to be black and go to public school” [Tampa Bay Times]. Well-meant data journalism optimizing for swiping, the new stupid.
“At protests to mark the one-year anniversary of Brown’s killing, the police show of force has been only a little less aggressive” [Mother Jones]. It’s entirely possibly the Ferguson cops, and the Stasi generally, regard Ferguson’s approach to policing as a model for future efforts.
“A reporter for The Guardian newspaper has sued the custodian of records for St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s office, claiming he will not provide emails from last year about the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and its aftermath, including the grand jury investigation” [Business Journal]. “[U]nder Missouri Sunshine Law, all records of public governmental bodies are public records.” McCulloch is such a slimeball. A Democrat, of course.
Police State
“The Sergeants Benevolent Association in New York has been urging officers and their friends and families to photograph signs of disorder and post them on Flickr. The goal, as the New York Post wrote, is to ‘document the decline of the city”” [WaPo]. Call me crazy, but I’d call cops whacking people with impunity a sign of “the decline of the city.” #JustSaying.
“Yet police killings of black men by police have continued despite moves toward reform, such as equipping police with body cameras or requiring officers to get out of their vehicles and walk the streets of the neighborhoods they serve” [Duluth New Tribune]. Take away their guns, take away their cars, and make them walk the beat. All of it.
Corruption
“For years, for-profit colleges have been accused of predatory tactics and taxpayer fraud” [Miami Herald]. And in on the scam: Bill Clinton (“Honorary Chancellor”), Marco Rubio (running interference; contributions); Jebbbie (contributions); Donald Trump (“Trump ‘University'”). Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. It’s like the only real conflict is which puppy gets to the food dish first.
“The three partners book almost $3 billion in profits a year tax free, by charging their Australian arms for related-party loans at more than 10 times the interest rate that the majors paid to third-party lenders in the United States.” [Australian Financial Review, “ATO looks into Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell’s $60b tax-free windfall]. $60 billion! That’s real money, even if the dollars are Australian!
Class Warfare
Some handy maps on global trends from [Bloomberg]. “Income inequality” is terra incognita, it seems.
“So that’s the scenario I’m looking for over the next few years. Higher wages, borrowing, and demand for/from households. Higher labor costs, interest rates/expenses, capex, and taxes paid by corporations. Less borrowing and fewer buybacks by corporations. If that sounds like inequality reduction and rebalancing that’s because it is. It’s not clear that financial markets will benefit at all from this scenario, but in any case it’s hardly a “recession” in any broad-based sense of the word” [Conor Sen].
“Less recognized is the prominent role Wall Street is playing in the background of two campaigns: the employer of spouses:” Christie and Cruz [Wall Street Journal, “Wall Street Wives Lend a Hand to Republicans Cruz and Christie”]. “This unusually direct connection is simply one more illustration of how Wall Street is deeply entangled with presidential politics this time around. It once provided employment for two GOP candidates—Jeb Bush and John Kasich—and is a prominent funding source for leading Democratic contender Hillary Clinton.”
Big Oil trolling real-life meetings [Bloomberg]. It’s a form of astroturfing, but more corrupt and reprehensible than usual, since people are paid to take what appear to be sincerely held positions, without disclosing their interests.
“Eric Foner on the abolitionists, Reconstruction, and winning “freedom” from the Right” [Jacobin].
“I call the Civil War the Second American Revolution, as historian Charles Beard did, and as abolitionist Wendell Phillips did. But the Revolution is the destruction of slavery, that’s the revolutionary quality. That’s Du Bois’s point. I call it a capitalist revolution. I don’t know if that’s the same thing as a bourgeois revolution. It destroys a system that is both capitalist and non-capitalist in ways that are quite difficult to explain, but the consequence of the Civil War is capitalist hegemony throughout the entire United States.
News of the Wired
“Permaculture and the Myth of Overpopulation” [Permaculture News]. I took a hack at the same question here.
“The Neuroscience of Drumming: Researchers Discover the Secrets of Drumming & The Human Brain” [Open Culture].
“OwnStar Wi-Fi attack now grabs BMW, Mercedes, and Chrysler cars’ virtual keys” [Ars Technica]. But when cars are self-driving, this won’t be a problem!
“Metropolitan Museum Initiative Provides Free Access to 400,000 Digital Images” [The Metropolitan Museum of Art].
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (Alex):
Sunset near Tarpon Springs, Florida. I’ve gotta say, that looks like a good situation….
If you enjoy Water Cooler, please consider tipping and click the hat. TAhis is turning into a tough month, and I need to keep my server up!
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This home burned to the ground b/c not a SINGLE @DetroitWaterDep hydrant worked: http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2015/08/14/house-fire-spreads-after-every-hydrant-in-detroit-neighborhood-fails/ … @MCmuckraker
https://twitter.com/DETWaterBrigade/status/633043968402526208
This article contains a very misleading graph that shows projected population growth rates for each continent. According to the chart, with the exception of Europe, every continent’s population will still be growing in 2050. It’s only the rate of growth that is declining. In other words, the worlds population is projected to continue growing through 2050. The world’s population continues to grow by about the same number of people as it grew by in 1981. It’s just that the percentage increase is smaller. See this for more:
https://www.populationmedia.org/2015/08/11/a-suggested-correction-to-the-recent-undesa-2015-world-population-prospects-report/
Let’s provide adequate food, housing, and indoor plumbing for today’s 7.3 billion people before we make rosy predictions about how well we’ll be able to feed the future’s 9 or 10 billion people.
Let’s provide adequate food, housing, and indoor plumbing for today’s 7.3 billion people before we make rosy predictions about how well we’ll be able to feed the future’s 9 or 10 billion people.
Indoor plumbing is one of those great evils that is causing the planet to be overly burdened by the 7 billion people we have on it now. So let’s not go around trying to promote more of it. I’d suggest that composting toilets should be mandatory for every household instead.
Anyway in fact, the earth could support 20 billion people easily, if all those people understood and practiced ecological principles and lives a realistic lifestyles. A billion “middle class” people, let alone 7 billion–with their bizarre and unreasonable lifestyle expectations and fetish for unrestrained consumption–will bankrupt the planet in short order though.
“Hear, Hear!”,
but who wants to live with 20 BILLION PEOPLE?
So composting toilets are outside? Really? In winter?
I don’t believe you. To paraphrase my previous post, let’s have a proof of concept with our current population. Wishing for something won’t make it happen. 20 billion people???? Soylent Green, anyone?
A composting toilet does not require plumbing and doesn’t require water, whether indoors or outdoors. Using potable water to shuttle your waste around is nonsensical.
I am not so sure about 20 billion either, but Donella Meadows, co-author of Limits to Growth once wrote in her column “Global Citizen” that the earth could support 9 billion easily IF humanity lived in ecologically harmonious ways, IIRC. I cannot spend the time to find it as you seem to be able to only search titles in the archive at donellameadows.org (I think it was in 1995/96). She did write this column back in 1999 about the “day” that there became 6 billion of us, which kind of ties in to Lambert’s older post and the post over at permaculturenews.org.
Great! Let us know when all of the people of India and Africa have access to a toilet (composting or other). Also, let us know when they all have adequate housing and enough food. And please don’t destroy any more wildlife habit when growing the food and building the housing — there’s been far too much human caused extinction over the past few millennia, and it has accelerated in the past few centuries.
One more point: Showers, clothes washing machines, and faucets and sinks in both bathrooms and kitchens also require indoor plumbing. You won’t get rid of plumbing even if you convert all toilets to the composting variety.
Why does Sanders owe anyone an apology? Call me when BLM hits Hillary as hard as they tried to hit Bernie.
Agreed!
I mostly agree with Lambert here—Sanders has had something of a tin ear on how to respond to #blm. His reaction to the “apology” became more newsworthy than the “apology” itself. Not what his campaign needs.as far as coverage—more like this local news story on Sunday’s rally in Dubuque, IA (pop. 60,000):
—-Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders hosted a rally Sunday night in Dubuque at Loras College.
The rally was originally scheduled to happen in the Fieldhouse at Loras, but had to be moved to a location with more room because of the mounting numbers of RSVP’s.
Altogether, 2,000 people attended the meeting.—-
http://www.kwwl.com/story/29799734/2015/08/16/bernie-sanders-hosts-rally-in-dubuque
If BLM wants something from Sanders, they should want it from everyone. They should have one or more demands, and they should make those demands without fear or favor to any one candidate.
What are the specific demands BLM has made of Sanders, or anyone? How about demands made of someone with actual power, like, say, I don’t know — the current sitting president*?
If BLM has nothing to say to Obama, then it has nothing to say to Sanders. Or me.
* Yes, I understand Sanders is a sitting US senator. I also understand common sense, and I see no need to engage with anyone who lacks it.
If BLM has nothing to say to Obama, then they have nothing to say. Period.
A stage invasion would be impossible – in fact, very dangerous – if the President were on it. They have no way of approaching him that’s similarly photogenic.
Granted, this doesn’t address your central point, but it probably does explain their tactics.
Holder would do.
Insomnia and hypertension strike again.
Sorry Lambert, but Holder has the cachet of a “retired” Third World Dictator. His ex minions will protect him like it were their own lives on the line, which indeed they should be.
I’d be more afraid of what Covington could do to them than the Secret Service.
What “specific” demand are you looking for – other than their demanding an stop to police mowing down black people? It’s not specific enough for you? You would rather they take the red herring path of presenting new police training manuals or something.
These murders are to do with the entire framework of our society, in which these people are basically seen as sub human for the most part. BLM is not going solve that with policy detail – they are doing what they must which is to raise a stink until society is forced to go look in the mirror and political leaders lack crdibility unless they start implementing solutions – fast.
They are doing the right thing. This is completely different from prostesting about tax exemptions ro venture capital or whatever. This is about the core of our humanity. Just laughable to be refusing to move yourself without “specific demands”.
Except how are you deciding what effect if any that any of this is having ?
It’s only having effect among writers and pundits. Just like Trump supporters ignore Fox, Bernie supports aren’t going to care about this.
And everyone will be amazed, when it’s frankly pretty obvious if you know what to look for.
Lly that logic we will continue I have swift boating
You just wrote a variant of what Ted Koeple said to Jon Stewart
Essentially it absolves people of trying to figure out the truth or cutting though bs
What also does us to say black lives really don’t matter
Black lives really do matter, That is inarguable.
The incredibly rude idiots storming the stage in seattle are the ones who owe Sanders, the crowd they insulted and the movement they supposedly support an apology. It was like the worst, most toxic people in online leftist circles decided to inject themselves into the real world, carrying with them a whining need for attention that is looking for a cause to latch onto and desperate to manipulate people sympathetic to that cause into paying attention to THEM. I seriously question, especially after reading interviews with them, whether they particularly care about anyones life except insofar as it impacts their own, and I’m very certain they have no concept whatsoever of how many lives of any ethnicity are damaged by poverty or inaccessible health care, or how the expansion or withdrawal of social security and medicare would impact black or any other lives, which last point would seem particularly relevant given that this was an event about social security and medicare that had invited Bernie to speak, not a Sanders rally per se. Someone somewhere probably said something to them at some point in their lives that warrants an apology, but it wasn’t Bernie.
I don’t want to make comments on what I think of the movement as a whole, because it contains a lot of different elements, some of which are clearly very sincere in trying to make things better. Others seem to be primarily devoted to, as BAR and others have said, advancing themselves into well paid activist slots. And then there are factions among factions, et al. But full agreement with those who notice the difference between how Sanders and other people are being treated here.
We don’t know yet. Thumbs down on my Twitter list, though.
Do you honestly not see this for what it is? And honestly, even if you don’t, regular Sanders supporters will.
That’s the lesson of Trump — and he’s a doofus.
You think I’m being dishonest? Way to put forward your ideas, there, big guy.
” Sanders has something of a tin on how to respond to #blm ”
Maybe not- getting sucked into narrow Indentity Politics causes ( whether noble or not ) would guarantee never being able to move out of the fringe into being a genuinely serious national candidate.
If anyone is owed an apology here, it is Sanders- not#blm.
I believe that he handled well a question that he should never have needed to handle in the first place.
If anything, the episode shows amateurism in the staff- the staff member should be thanked profusely for his/her contributions and sent home.
I agree that identity politics is the hidden issue here. Sanders doesn’t practice it. For vast swathes of the Democratic nomenklatura, that’s a big problem.
That the Democratic nomenklatura is is captive to Identity Politics ( in addition to being corrupt and visionless ) is one of those things that make the impossible-to-parody GOP a viable political force.
Perhaps a failed Bernie bid for the nomination might put the necessity of a class based economic reform party into sharper focus.
A coalition of tunnel vision minorities probably generates more opposition than strength.
Once it’s out there, it doesn’t matter whether it’s owed or not.
The it you are referring is a statement commonly written into letters as a form of politeness when one is interacting with the public.
When I receive a form letter from a job that I did not get, I don’t believe the people in charge of the company are doing anything but being polite.
Substantively, he’s talking to BLM, other black leaders, coming up with policies, etc
Not so substantively, people are turning gaffes into a major political issue at the expense of black lives.
I think you’re confusing “Meet the Press” with a business letter. Why do you think the two cases are comparable?
It was a gotcha moment using form language in a letter.
You are of the view, then, that there are communications from a Presidential campaign that don’t have the potential to blow up — or be blown up — into stories that appear on national TV? Seems odd.
I’m of the view that mistakes happen and just bc parts of the press will manipulate and spin it does not mean I need to play along with the spin. One of the more important reasons as I point pout below is bc these are not just “Gotcha” to me. It is not my job to make spin easy for the spinner by uncritically ignoring the spin. I work in the private sector. Mistakes happen.
“Not so substantively, people are turning gaffes into a major political issue at the expense of black lives”
.I read “people” as the MSM. Sanders popularity has to a large degree come from “word of mouth” but the PTB media are not trivial—-they can drive narratives and create ones where little substance is actually there. Sanders needs to improve in his spontaneous actions/reactions.
And blindly repeating it here helps, how ?
It’s ultimtely lazy
Jon Stewart, who I don’t always like, discussed how the press contributed to the swift boating of Kerry in a scathing inretraction betweem Stewart and Tedd Koeple
I would apply that same critique here
The nature of viral allows prople to lie
“Sanders needs to improve in his spontaneous actions/reactions.” Exactly. We’re not in Burlington any more.
I disagree. It’s out there now because it’s an attempted hatchet job by establishment Democrats on Sanders. The people behind BLM could give a rip about black lives — at least not poor or working-class ones.
Sanders has already addressed it. If BLM is seriously not just a cudgel invented for the bludgeoning of Bernie by Wall Streeters who don’t want to see their quite lucrative apple cart upset, then it’s time they train their guns on Hillary or, preferably, His Holiness the Dali Obama.
Absent that, then I frankly don’t give a rat’s butt what they think.
More precisely, ”
The people behind BLMemerging Black Misleadership Class…”Synecdoche! Watch for that!
Well the actual activists are trying to be constructive
http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/democratic-presidential-candidate-bernie-sanders-to-meet-with-ferguson-activist/article_ef1048ea-ee65-5b3c-ae06-e6762ad00b30.html?mobile_touch=true
One issue is to be clear om that
Well, we’ll see; shows confidence to meet with @deray. I think you pressed Submit prematurely.
Just typos
Should say something like :
One thing to be ckear on is who is being constructive and who has no interest
Well, of course it matters! The point of the exercise was to embarrass, to humiliate and thereby gain a national soapbox, why would he accede to their wishes when all they had to do was to book a meeting with him to achieve the same thing? That would only make him look weak; a meme, by the way, that is fast being propagated by those in the Hillary camp.
He needed to fire that aide. The campaign may be running on a shoestring, but that does not mean that message control is not important. If they are unprofessional then they need to be treated as people who are unprofessional and deprofessionated. :)
I’d say the issue is more who let the letter go out. I view it as ungracious, to say the least, to retract an apology once it’s offered in my name. Best thing to do IMNSHO is suck it up and move on and learn from it. Trump will say something in the next hour or so and then that will be the story.
I would normally agree with you that it would be ungracious to retract an apology like that, unfortunately, in our new political world order graciousness is not a valued concept and nice guys always finish last. He may not be able to control the spin, but he should be able to control his own message.
I have no doubt that the spokesman meant well, but he has not been in politics long enough to recognize that it is never a good idea to give the opposition ammunition. This should be seen as a learning experience for him.
I think you’ve got this right, Lambert. The fastest way to bury this is to go with what was put out in the press and move on as quickly as possible. Retracting the apology and dishing out blame suddenly throws kindling on this where there was virtually nothing before. It makes his campaign seem like it’s struggling to stay on message. Media can now take this and run Daily Mail style headlines like “Chaos in the Sanders campaign staff?”
President Obama and Attorney General Lynch are the ones who currently have (some) power to do something about the epidemic of killing by police. Shouldn’t Black Lives Matter activists be pressuring them?
Well, that would imply that #BlackLivesMatter challenges powerful Democrats, right? Still waiting on that one, along with the demands.
Is it really true that they aren’t? I truly don’t know, but they wouldn’t be able to use the same sort of techniques, thanks to the Secret Service.
I want to believe Bernie has a chance, really I do. But Americans are so completely self-engrossed and image-obsessed I just don’t see how it would happen. Bernie is a triumph of substance over style…precisely what Americans have rejected across the culture. Is it too late to put up someone, anyone, who isn’t an old, slightly hunched, haranging and very average public speaker? Hell let’s go to Hollywood if we need name recognition, Alec Baldwin or Leonardo Di Caprio or Matt Damon or George Clooney could draw crowds and probably talk “people-speak” just as well as Bernie
Bernie’s heterodox appeal though is in his perceived authenticity, as largely is Trump’s. Authenticity shouldn’t be hard to market when that market is already saturated to near the precipitation point with the shared perception that politicians are en masse phonies and liars. Bernie doesn’t need great marketing really, he just needs to ride the tide and watch it swallow up competitors one by one. Put Bernie up in front of a national audience with a big graphic list of Hillary’s top ten donors on an easel and a pointer and he hardly has to say a word. I’d have Bernie say, “this is who she will be really working for if elected, not you” but maybe even that’s too negative for his style. And I do admire his stubborn resistance thus far to going negative. The situation however may at some point arise where, with everything on the line, going negative might be the coup de grace on a tottering opponent that could decide winning or losing.
Part of the brilliance of a populist grassroots campaign, though, is that there is no scenario in which he would really need to go negative, he has his supporters for that. As you say, all he needs to do is delineate substantive differences and let everyone else fill in the blanks at whatever level of negativity works for them.
Yep. The “No Bullshit Oldster” persona has legs. Rove would always attack strength….
I fear Hillary’s rhetoric might be much better and people will think that *that* somehow *matters*. Well people seldom seem to have really admitted Obama was all a great rhetorical hoax. But he’s a lame duck, look forward not back!
A significant number at Daily Kos would agree as indicated by the response to a piece entitled Why Bernie’s fake apology to black folk really bothers me (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/17/1412728/-Why-Bernie-s-fake-apology-to-black-folk-really-bothers-me?showAll=yes)
Approvals: 158
Strong Disapprovals: 54
The first comment, “I’ve yet to be enlightened on what he needs to apologize for” , received 363 approvals. There then ensued a battle of words consisting of 1,472 separate comment.
As paranoid as I am of my own paranoia, I can’t help but think there’s the stink of something fishy going on.
Re Black Professional ” Activists”, the Clinton swift boating of Sanders and gullible White Liberals
Dear White Liberals:
I got to admit Clinton is playing your anxieties and guilt over race perfectly. You want to know what this is about ? It is about claiming Clinton is better on race;
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2015/08/sorry_not_sorry_bernie_sanders_nixes_aide_s_apology_to_black_lives_matter.html
It is about swift boating.
Does that mean Black people like me aren’t exoeriencing racism? No, we rxperience many types on a daily basis. Police brutality is not even the one we experience day-to-day. I live in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. I’m well-educated. I have seen all types. I’ve been homeless. I’ve worked in factories and blue collar jobs. I’ve lived in other regions.
You take quotes by Sanders out of context and accept false memes. Wh? Because BlackLivesMatter..
Thanks, I know my life and those of other AAs matter. It matters more than gotcha politics. It matters more than theatrics. It matters more than your guilt.
If you want to do something meaningful about the value of my life- discuss policies and actions you are prepared to take. Discuss how you plan to show courage. Discuss what outcomes you want to come from all of this.
I’m old school in my Black pragmatism. I was taught look for outcomes , not for someone to feel my pain.
Please don’t waste my life by playing into attempts to capture an important issue by allowing such manipulation to go unanswered.
If you do, it tells me my life does not matter as much as putting on the right face.
With due respect to you Lambert, I am afraid you are among those White Liberals that I’m describing.
I hope you will post my message because it is one that is lacking. You admitted the other day that you don’t know much about the intersection of race and class. To be honest, that shows. If you think Black Lives are helped by turning a mole hill into a mountain, you are not very serious about the underlying crisis.
If you don’t know much about these issues, I would be happy to walk you through them. They are complicated even if politics isn’t.
I’m policy focused, too. If I said “didn’t know much” what I meant was that I haven’t seen anybody come up with a formulation that works in the context of electoral politics as I cover it. If you’ve got one such, by all means feel free to post it here so that all can benefit; I really don’t see the point of a private “walk-through,” for pity’s sake.
For the rest of it, I really fail to see how pointing out the Sanders is throwing a staffer under the bus adds up to Swiftboating him. I fail to see how saying Sanders isn’t likely to be dogwhistling is Swiftboating him. I fail to see how qualifying the word “apology” with “if justified” is Swiftboating him. Please read more carefully.
I don’t wear a team jersey or wave pom poms. Sanders did something dumb. The way to prevent him from doing dumb things is to point out they’re dumb. Maybe if he doesn’t do dumb things, people will keep paying attention to his policy proposals.
I think the Swiftboating involved the Rovian tactic of taking someones’ strong suit and turning it against them. In this case that would be attacking the guy who has historically supported civil rights legislation whilst not attacking those actually in a position to do something about it who have not, but will benefit from the attack nevertheless.
Walking away from an unwinnable fight is never dumb.
Yes, we have had multiple claims about Sanders creating smoke without any real fire.
The next step as one can see in the Roots article is spin the smoke claiming Clinton is better on race.
It uses vagueness, legitimate concerns about race, and historic tensions to push the right buttons
The good news is that I don’t think anyone was actually harmed thus far, and both the BLM movement and the Sanders campaign have gotten quite a boost in public awareness. From what I read the tactic has fallen kind of flat, in spite of the furious media spin. Hopefully it will stay that way.
It is interesting that the video of their meeting with Hillary has yet to surface. It would have been very interesting to see. There will be a meeting with Sanders and hopefully they will video that one. So, it looks like everyone will get their chance to speak their minds on actual policies that could benefit everyone, and that was always the best case scenario.
They did not get the Dean Scream this time, and that is always a good thing.
Sure, maybe Sanders dodged a bullet (metaphorically, thank heavens).
It’s like “ZOMG!!!!! Can you believe it?!?!!? American politics ain’t beanbag!!!!!! There’s– There’s people like Karl Rove out there! Even today!!!!!!!” And so forth.
All the more reason not to do stupid stuff, so far as I’m concerned. Life isn’t fair, last I checked.
Good point on that video. Add that to the list of #BlackLivesMatter non-deliverables, including (2) policy demands and (3) disruptions of powerful Democrats. (Everything seemed organic up until the die-ins. Those were accelerating, with a lot of participation, and then suddenly…. No original tactics anymore, and everything moved to “social media.” I suspect that the decapitation/co-optation happened then*…. But no way to prove it and, again, there’s plenty of useful, real work being done under the name. Synecdoche-as-symbol is a big problem here…)
* The issue became the Confederate Flag, for example. I certainly would like to extirpate the thing, and I’ve had the chance to talk to a few crazy Uncles, but wouldn’t introducing some concrete policy demands have been better?)
It depends on the activist
Some are constructive
Some aren’t
The challenge is figuring out which is which and to not be pushed into believing they are all the same
Indeed!
Re: Confederate flag.
As you know I live in the deep South. So, after the Charleston church shooting the flags came out around here; mostly on the back of old trucks, mostly ratty and tacked to a broom handle, always driven by pimpled young high schoolers. Which was pretty sad, until I was at the gas station and saw one that was being driven by a young black guy, which was even more so.
That was a couple of weeks ago.
Now what we are seeing are shiny trucks with US flags attached by the usual flag standards in back driven by old goats; sometimes two of them. And, notably, far fewer Confederate flags. I think it is in the process of extirpation as we speak. Southern hospitality is still considered a thing by us old goats, and that is just not right. I suspect that the grand kids are getting an earful.
I live in northern Iowa and see confederate flags on bumper stickers occasionally. There was a high school around here whose sports teams were the “rebels” who used the confederate flag as a school emblem–actually hung it in their gym. This was within the past 5 or so years.
I always thought some Iowa great, great grandfathers would turn over in their graves at their descendants’ behavior since, if I’m not mistaken, Iowa lost a higher percentage of Union soldiers during the civil war than any other state.
Some locals around here seem up in arms about a supposed influx of “thugs” from dreaded Chicago and Detroit, resulting in the closure of 2 bars allegedly patronized by the so-called thugs.
We live in southern Mississippi and have been having similar experiences with the “ganged up” bar scene. I don’t know about Iowa, but we have been having semi regular shootings and killings at these particular bars, and or ‘nightclubs.’ These places have been the traditional venues for the drugs trade. With the advent of the ‘organized’ gangs, turf wars over said drugs trade has resulted in a great deal of the local violent crime increase. My admittedly imperfect sampling of the local ‘scene’ has garnered mentions of: The Gangster Disciples, Fourth Street Crips, Los Reyes Latinos, Aryan Nation Action Commando, a nebulous Bloods group, the Brotherhood of the Struggle, the Dixie Mafia, and local small time gangs. All this in a mini metropolitan area of roughly 143,000 population. Remember, this is what I and others can find “on the street.” This doesn’t count various gangs more sophisticated enough to have learned the lesson of “out of sight, out of mind.”
Almost all of these gangs support themselves through drugs sales. Another consequence of Americas unconscionable “War on Drugs.”
If your ‘contacts’ on the street are making noises about big city gangs infiltrating, do take them seriously. The gangs are not stupid, they follow the money trail almost as assiduously as do Los Politicos. (Another kind of criminal gang.)
I don’t find that to be the case here.
In my Iowa town of 27,000 there has been 1 murder in ten years–2 local kids fighting over a woman. The crime rate is extremely low. There is about zero gun violence.
Ten years ago, the black population was less than 1%. It’s now 5%. People here are not used to seeing black people walking around–it’s a culture shock for them, and they associate blacks with crime, using the “baggy pants thugs from Detroit/Chicago shacking up with white girls” description. And there are no gangs.
One of the reasons for closing one of the bars was that the police had been called there 15 times in a one year period. That’s it.
I am from Louisiana and know crime when I see it, and here, imho it’s garden variety racism.
Parallelism of great minds.
Using the fact you are policy focus is not a justification for repeating a meme that’s political manipulation. If you are not sure of something, there is only shame in running with a misleading meme.
The point of me talking in an email is to actual avoid embarrassing you.
I’m aware that you fail to see how your repeating a meme plays into an endorsement of Clinton using the meme you have now repeated. Indeed, I’m sure you believe that this really is about black lives. That’s why I linked you to the article. You will see more of them
If you want to talk about smart politics, one of the first is realizing when you are being used throigh the dynamics of social media to uncritically repeat a meme.
Oh please. If you’ve got the goods, put up. It will help NC commentariat, and surely you must see that embarrassing me is a small price to pay for that? Lordy.
(I do notice that after I refuted your “meme” argument in detail, you have no response, but repeat the original point.)
I have given you the “”goods”
In fact all you did was excuse your continuation of the swift boating by implying I have Pom poms, which demonstrates a serious lack of awareness of where I’m
Coming from
These issues aren’t issues to be manipulated to me. They are thubgs that affect my family and friends. Sandetrs, Clinton and the rest of the pols are only as useful as they are more likely to adopted good policies
To the extent I see these issues being manipulated , I’m going to say so
you both say you don’t mind being criticized and then react with comments like Pom poms
Nope. Here are your words:
Go on. Walk me through that.
When we were discussing race and class the other day, you indicated you had know strong awareness of it. I linked to an article discussing one example : health care where the combo harms lie income blacks. Another is Education where even if ine has excellent schooling, race and class together impacts outcomes.
Thank you! A Swiftboating. That is, indeed, what it looks like.
Who are the funders? With Swiftboating the whole apparatus was open. It was all right there, including a fake organization and the horribly ugly website.
(Incidentally, there’s really no point clutching one’s pearls about swiftboating. The issue isn’t that it was going to happen; the issue is how to handle it.)
Viral does not require funding
Just the repetition of an idea based on people”‘s existing belief systems so that everyone generally think they know what is happened
Black voters are generally concerned about racism from whites, including rightly, progressives. White Liberals have predictable responses to racism. It does not take much to push rascal buttons
I’m thinking of travel to the various venues: Netroots Nation, Seattle, New Hampshire, wherever the Bush private meeting was. That does take funding. And viral campaigns do take money. Messaging is expensive if you want professionals to do it.
I’m thinking of informal channels and relationships
And that’s fine but now it isn’t ratf*cking per se, but something a lot more dangerous, IMNSHO.
The problem is those arguments, such as they are, have no useful specificity, no policy specifics as methods or goals either are offered or can be gleaned from them. Because of this there is no answer to or refutation–or even defense–possible of them, they are just cleverly squishy word arrangements meant to elicit feelings without risking any engagement or bilateral communication. Getting heard is a wasted opportunity if you can’t enunciate a concrete set of policy specifics and goals. I can see why Hillary and the corporate Democrats would appeal to such a mindset, that’s their wheelhouse, squishy rhetoric lacking specific policy commitments meant to make the target listener feel their concerns are being addressed but at the same time assiduously avoiding any hard commitments to or specifying how exactly they intend to actually address those concerns. It’s the language of marketing, of corporatespeak, of political boilerplate, of ad copy, of saying much without really saying anything at all, but leaving in its wake the false warm glow of an impression something real has been said, that those concerns have somehow been addressed.
Good point. If the BLM protesters (not part of an organized anything it seems) had actual demands, then any candidate:
1) could take a position on them AND take the political fallout for doing so or not doing so (with police brutality I suspect the majority in this country may still sympathize with the cops, so there probably would be fallout)
2) have their position remembered when they got into office. Now this might not matter much “so it turns out Hillary betrayed all her campaign promises to BLM …. Hey, remember when Obama said he would close Gitmo?”. But it is at least something concrete to know even if you can’t change it.
That’s what you target if you want to push candidates to take a position. If you want to target actual policy now you target those who have power now, not those who may never have much power. But if you want publicity you do exactly what they did. You find a weak link, whose security is weak, it’s not going to be Hillary or Obama because of that, and you use it to get the spotlight. Publicity could be a step in changing policy, but it’s really not policy change by itself.
BLM needs a common set of specific policy demands, and that’s hard to do because it’s never easy to form a consensus and inevitably consensus involves organization and it then becomes political. Trying to keep BLM “non-political” is just putting off making a whole slew of necessary but difficult decisions.
I agree on the targeting of Sanders, it’s probably at least in part because he’s the softest, highest profile target logistically. More or less a random target of opportunity. That he is unambiguously the most closely aligned with the goals of BLM–exponentially, conspicuously so, even compared to Hillary–only adds an absurd sideshow pallor over the whole thing. Which will all be very quickly forgotten, as it should, as the spotlight is directed elsewhere.
#2 Tries harder
Carson wants to be our first Black Neo-Templar.
Job market crapification or cheap employer?
Got a full time job offer and the agency sent me paper work electronically (email) but requested hard copy response. For those w/o access to an office that can be time consuming and expensive: public library only charges $.15 per copy but faxing is $1.75 first page $1.00 any page after and Staples is much more expensive with first page something like $2 plus change and about $2 any page after. Agency also insists on originals mailed to them with tracking – all at my expense. Since you can not “track” first class letters you have to use more expensive priority mail.
It can really add up and I’m out of expensive ink for my printer (but I can scan & email). This struck me as the agency pushing their costs onto me.
Last time I did this in 2013 the agency sent me hard copies in the mail and provided return envelope paid for by them. Not so this agency. They just assumed I’d pay for it. This experience stands out. Don’t know it’s a trend and the new normal or just one agency.
When I insisted docs sent electronically should be returnable with electronic signatures and if not, than those needing hard copies be sent in the form of hard copies, the rep became quite flustered and annoyed.
During the face to face interview with the employer, the hiring manager mentioned they were involved with the payment of the Argentinian debt that has been block by the U.S. judge. I immediately know what he was referring to and showed him I did. Told him the judge’s ruling was an error and the President may set aside the ruling based on his authority of conducting foreign policy as described in the Constitution. He appeared impressed.
Thanks, Naked Capitalism. It really does pay to read your blog.
Re “Well-meant data journalism optimizing for swiping, the new stupid”. . .have to agree–that Tampa Bay visualization was a slide show.
Adjustable screen-sizes is about as far as I’ve ever gone into “responsive design” that takes into account touch devices (and my suspicion is that some interface problems are insurmountable, like mouse+keyboard vs controllers for games), but there’s a nice collection of mobile-friendly dataviz examples here, of which those created by ProPublica might be especially relevant to readers of this site. (NB. Don’t own a smartphone, so haven’t tried any of them.)
Looks like Sanders is already on it. “Bernie Sanders takes Black Lives Matter activist up on offer to talk racial justice”
And, honestly, putting that story under “Clown Car,” a term used across the board (as far as I can find) to refer to the Republican primary race, whiffs more than a bit, to me.
YMMV
Sanders talking to them (again, in case anyone hadn’t noticed) is fine, I guess.
But until they start breaking down Obama’s door, they’re nothing more than political hit-people sent to whack someone who won’t kiss Wall Street’s keister. They’re helping Hillary and Obama keep their hands clean.
I am completely sick of both the sitting president and the putative front runner getting pass after pass after pass, while the candidate who clearly laps the field in terms of his civil rights record gets taken behind the woodshed AGAIN.
Oh, I agree. The whole thing smells of giant ratfucking, to me.
Personally, I think throwing a staffer under the bus on national TV is clown car material. Your Mileage may vary, and apparently does.
In every job I ever had, any staffer who exceeded their authority and mis-spoke and embarrassed the boss or the company was always firmly, publicly and quickly escorted to the door. And I never worked on anything close to a presidential campaign.
A public execution was meant to be a warning to those that remained, “Don’t go rogue!’
“Metropolitan Museum Initiative Provides Free Access to 400,000 Digital Images”
This is fantastic. It used to be that access to the world’s art required you to live in big cities, or travel to them, something out of the reach of most people. This is all changing. I notice that on their timeline of history they have names for the different eras, right up through the Vietnam era, but no official name for our more recent period of time. I could make one up.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=11®ion=na
Re: the Iran nuclear arms deal. I find it almost impossible to believe that those who are in opposition are unaware of the close ties between Iran and the BRICS coalition. This ongoing, mindless belligerence is going to cost us the petrodollar, and even they cannot imagine that the implications of such an event would in any way benefit them.
So much of the underlying problems that we are seeing in our world affairs today are tied to this undying macho American Exceptionalist mythos, and I just cannot believe that they are willing to take it to the lengths that they routinely do. While I am sure the treaty will ultimately pass, I wonder what the Republican base would do if they fully understood the damage that they are doing to the country. We may soon find out, but I doubt it will be pretty.
The BRICs are a loose affiliation, not a coalition, and certainly not an alliance. And Brazil, Russia, and China are all facing serious economic downturns right now (although China is doing its damnedest to hide it). They cannot take down the dollar, and India distrusts China more than it does America. America continues to dominate by default.
Maybe not for long: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pepe-escobar/the-eurasian-big-bang_b_7856614.html
There is also the Cuba/OAS angle and even the TPP. The BRICS are affecting American foreign policy in ways that are not being reported here. Their economic worries will be short term problems for them, but it is the long term ramifications of their alliance that should be worrying anyone who does not wish for the US to be sidelined.
Why should I care if the US is sidelined? What exactly would I lose if the US is sidelined? If we got well and truly sidelined, we might be set free to become a “second Canada”. So why should I mind us being sidelined?
Aside from having to live through the Weimar aspect of it, from an international perspective I pity the people that our neocon leadership would take it out on. I don’t think that they would allow us to fade quietly into the night.
India has no official allies. Never has.
The operative word being official.
“So far, however, Clinton is avoiding any leftward pull whatever.”
Well, duh. She knows where her money comes from – no one said she’s a fool.
There’s a big precedent for her policy: the 2000 election. Democrats uniformly blamed Nader and the Greens for Gore’s loss (I just wish we were that powerful). They could very easily get rid of the Green Party, just by moving in their direction. Even somewhat would do the job; right-wing Democrats, in power, are the best thing that can happen to the Greens – or any alternative party. So what did they do? They moved FARTHER to the right, and the money. The strategy is bald defiance, plus scare-mongering.
And Hillary’s sticking to it, as is the party as a whole.
Fortunately the Green Party has been able to capitalize on the Democrats’ rightward drift by increasing their 2000 showing from 2,883,000 votes to less than a fifth of that (470,000 votes) in 2012.
No wonder Jill Stein is running for the Green Party nomination again!
Apparently scare mongering works.
Hillary arrives at her new gov’t-furnished residence (exclusive photo):
http://tinyurl.com/p62y4pz
I wonder if it’s got a golf course?
That is a really big crane in the background. Perhaps it’s a dragline, the kind used for strip mining for coal. That would put Hillaries new ‘digs’ in West Virginia?
I know from hearing first hand about the experiences of a friend who did some time for Interstate Transport, that some of the ‘Club Fed’ facilities have ‘privileges’ at adjacent golf courses. He was transferred from The Big House to Club Fed when the authorities discovered that he had a degree in agriculture. He was made the head groundskeeper for that Club Fed.
The signage indicates the location is Terminal Island CA
You just wish you were that powerful? That shows the basic social and political depravity at the heart and root of Green Party politics. You just wish you could have been the people who got Bush elected? Well all righty then. “Well Gore would have been no different than Bush”. Oh? That belief reveals the basic frivolity of Green Party politics.
But I still hope you can destroy Wyden in Oregon. If I see the Oregon Greens pursuing actions designed to exterminate Wyden’s career and public image, I may even send you some money. But it won’t be out of support for Greenism. It will be out of hatred for Wyden and a desire to lift a finger towards getting revenge on that Free Trade supporting piece of shit.
““Mike Huckabee: 10-year-old rape victim ”
That’s fanaticism for you. It reminds me a great deal of some comments from Catholic spokemen (and they are all men): utter incomprehension that everyone else sees them as deeply evil. Not only bad PR; no PR at all. (Until they elevated Pope Francis.) In fact, it indicates that Huckabee is sincere – and has no chance whatsoever for the nomination, let alone the presidency. He’s just out there preaching to the converted.
Oh, he’s a skincrawler, ain’t he? I saw this in real time on TV and I applauded the line of questioning, as it seemed designed to draw out the weirdness. This is what he actually said:
“When I think about one horror, I also think about the possibilities that exist and I just don’t want to think that somehow we discounted a human life … Let’s not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life.”
And if I had been the interviewer, I would have said, “But, Governer, isn’t that exactly what you are doing by compelling a child to have a child? Discounting a human life? And, essentially, taking a human life by denying this child a childhood, an adulthood without trauma or pain, and full self-actualization? And over a fetus that was sired by a child molester?” She did’t go there, but I would.
Just glad he’s ten light years away from real power.
“Housing Market Index, August 2015: ‘The new home sector is increasingly a central source of strength for the economy and builders are increasingly optimistic’ [Bloomberg]. ‘Strength in the labor market is the driving force behind strength for new homes where lack of supply continues to motivate builders.'”
Lee Adler on survivorship bias and homebuilders’ optimism: http://wallstreetexaminer.com/2015/08/homebuilders-survey-housing-market-index/
Zero Hedge on strength in the labor market: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-07/holy-grail-americas-new-economy-waiter-bartender-jobs-have-increased-64-past-65-mont (Spoiler: 1.4M bartenders/waitresses added, 1.4M manufacturing jobs lost since 2007)
I absolutely agree cops should be forced to walk the beat. But what about also permanently integrating them into a community?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dban
They’re essentially outposts that have shifts on permanent rotation. The officers are a fixture of the neighborhood, always either out on foot patrol or waiting in the police box for someone to come to them to request aid. The officers are active members of the community they’re assigned to, doing things like teaching neighborhood kids martial arts. Apparently there are a number of problems with the system in practice, like cops being too nosy in peoples personal household affairs, but I’m intrigued by the basic concept. We could also add in things like the officers being elected by a community, and that community having direct avenues to hold officers accountable.