Month: November 2015

Poor, poor pitiful Ben

by digby

Yeah, I know. It’s getting ridiculous to even notice this. But it’s just impossible not to:

I have always said that I expect to be vetted, but being vetted and what is going on with me — ‘You said this 30 years ago, you said this 20 years ago, this didn’t exist,’ … I have not seen that with anyone else,” the Republican presidential hopeful said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

With his long record of books and speeches, the retired neurosurgeon argued “we can spend every day from now until the election” going through the specifics of everything he’s said.
“I prefer to talk about important issues,” Carson said. “The American people are speaking volumes by saying they’re tired of this garbage. … But it’s time to really move on. It’s not time to spend every single day talking about something that happened 50 years ago.”

Asked if President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton had experienced similar levels of scrutiny, Carson said no, suggesting he’s the reason he’s under such a microscope is “because I’m a threat.”

He’s a threat “to the progressive, the secular progressive movement in this country,” Carson said, because according to polling data, he’s the candidate who’s most likely to beat Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who’s the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But the American people aren’t falling for it, Carson argued.

“Every place I go, you know, I go to a book signing, there’s a thousand people in line — ‘Please don’t let them get to you. Don’t give up. We got your back. We know what’s going on. We believe you,’ ” he said. “And it actually is very encouraging.

Hugh Hewitt agreed this morning on Meet the Press. and pointed out that Hillary Clinton’s emails haven’t gotten enough attention:

Vid: @HughHewitt scolds media focus on @realBenCarson and @MarcoRubio while ignoring HRC scandals #MTP #TTT16 pic.twitter.com/NrFqDHfGqc

— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) November 8, 2015

This is as hackish as it gets. MTP did have on Maddow, who wasn’t hackish but is considered the counterpoint to this denizen of the right wing fever swamp.

New Democrats are not amused
by Tom Sullivan

It was their party and they’ll cry if they want to. Centrist Democrats threatened by the party’s Warren Wing find themselves out of step with a more populist message. Is it really a “lurch” to the left, or are Democrats beginning to find their voices again? Liberal is no longer the epithet conservatives once made it.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank explained last week how a few remaining Blue Dogs made protest votes during the election for Speaker of the House. “Colin Powell,” declared Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper. “Jim Cooper,” voted Gwen Graham of Florida, another centrist Democrat. Other Democrats voted in unison for Nancy Pelosi. Except for Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. She voted for Rep. John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat.

Third Way, “a vestige of the New Democratic movement,” issued a report that blames the populist wing for the Democrats losing ground and registration since 2008. Democrats should “rigorously question the electoral value of today’s populist agenda,” Third Way argues. Milbank is not so sure:

It was a good effort, but Third Way came up short. First, there really aren’t two wings of the party anymore; the pro-business Democrats have lost. “There’s zero question,” Jonathan Cowan, president of Third Way, acknowledged in an interview Tuesday, “that the party is now a populist party.”

It’s also dubious to say, as Third Way does, that the elections of 2010, 2012 and 2014 were about Democratic populism; that theme has only become prominent recently. Also suspect is the Third Way argument, often heard from corporate interests, that reducing inequality could hurt growth. Plenty of evidence says otherwise.

Greg Sargent at Plum Line cites Ron Brownstein’s analysis:

It’s also worth noting that this would not be the first time that major progressive legislative gains on the national level (such as the Affordable Care Act) have been followed by dramatic losses. After Congress passed major Great Society legislation and Lyndon Johnson signed it in the mid-1960s, Democrats lost dozens of Congressional seats in the 1966 and 1968 elections, which were partly driven by a backlash against Johnson’s expansions of government. Some of the pillars of the Great Society nonetheless endured, and a half century later, programs like Medicare are central to the identity of the Democratic Party and are practically politically sacrosanct.

Ultimately, as Brownstein says, we don’t yet know how much damage the Obama era will have done to the Democratic Party, because the 2016 elections could of course leave the White House in Democratic hands and scale down the Dem losses in Congress. Republicans will probably hold the House into at least the next decade, but much of this has to do with population distribution patterns that have distributed Dem voters inefficiently. (Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman has said that what Dems really need is a “massive resettlement program.”) Meanwhile, on the level of the states, there is the potential for a great deal of turnover of governors’ mansions in the next four years, and we may not know how that will shake out until 2018 and beyond. The long term Dem goal is to be in a better position in the states by 2020, partly in hopes that the next round of redistricting can help break the GOP hammerlock on the House.

That is certainly the mood around here. I don’t have time to spend on the presidential race while Pat McCrory is still living in the governor’s mansion in Raleigh with veto-proof GOP majorities in both houses of the state legislature. Democrat-leaning voters who stayed home in 2010 handed the state to Art Pope, ALEC, and the GOP. Thanks a lot. We are having to work that much harder to dig our way out of the hole.

The Guardian also reports that New Democrats are alarmed by Democratic presidential hopefuls sounding populist themes in the recent debate. Nothing, if not predictable:

“There is no question that the prevailing temper of the Democratic party is populist: strongly sceptical of what we like to call capitalism and angry about the perceived power of the monied elite in politics,” says [Progressive Policy Institute] president and founder Will Marshall.

“But inequality is not the biggest problem we face: it is symptomatic of the biggest problem we face, which is slow growth.”

Translation: It’s not that the 1% is hogging most of the pie; it’s that the pie isn’t expanding fast enough for them.

The Man Who Won’t Leave, Al Frum, advises, “But the question is whether a major political party can sustain itself solely on cultural issues and can have a real shot at governing, if it doesn’t have a growth agenda as part of its programme.” Maybe he should be asking Republicans. Frum tells the Guardian:

“If we are going to be a governing party we have to [focus more on economic growth], but there is not going to be any pressure in the presidential process until we lose an election or two,” concludes From.

“I think we are in for a long period of the Republicans dominating Congress and state legislatures and the Democrats holding the presidency.”

We are if we continue to follow warmed-over DLC remedies and DNC strategies.

Ted vs Marco preview

by digby

The ad, produced by the pro-Cruz Courageous Conservatives PAC, takes aim at Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asking, “What has Rubio ever done?” “After Sandy Hook, Ted Cruz stopped Obama’s push for new gun control laws,” the ad continues.

Remember this?

“It is saddening to see the president today, once again, try to take advantage of this tragic murder to promote an agenda that will do nothing to stop violent crime, but will undermine the constitutional rights of all law-abiding Americans,” Cruz said in a statement. “I am committed to working with Sens. Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, and Jim Inhofe — and I hope many other colleagues — to use any procedural means necessary to protect those fundamental rights.”

Cruz also blamed the Obama administration for contributing to the gun violence it is now attempting to address.

“In any conversation about how to prevent future tragedies such as Sandy Hook, our focus should be on stopping criminals from obtaining guns,” Cruz said.

Never mind the fact that the kid who killed all those tiny children had no criminal record …

It’s gross. But note that the theme of the ad is all about Rubio being “pro-amnesty.” That theme is going to be hammered by more than Cruz. It’s his achilles heel. Talk radio is already gearing up against him.

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“Being quiet is not working. We can read the statistics.”

by digby

This is a fascinating article about director Catherine Hardwicke, who is one of the lucky women directors who managed to make a huge blockbuster which, if Hollywood really is the meritocracy all the big boys claim it is,  should have guaranteed her a spot on the A list. But that isn’t how it works in the film business — or anywhere else for that matter:

Here are some of the points that Hardwicke would address: That, in 2015, it’s still damn hard to get hired as a female director in the industry; that only 16 percent of the 3,900 episodes on television last season were directed by women; that on the big screen, those small numbers shrink even more (only 7 percent of the top 250-grossing films of last year were directed by women). And that the issue isn’t getting better. A free spirit from Texas, who broke out as the indie director of 2003’s “Thirteen,” Hardwicke went on to make one of the most biggest films of the last decade: 2008’s “Twilight,” which grossed $393 million worldwide.

But with success in Hollywood came more setbacks. After “Twilight,” Hardwicke tried to get other projects off the ground, including a retelling of “Hamlet” starring Emile Hirsch, but financiers balked. When she finally directed 2011’s “Red Riding Hood,” Warner Bros. asked her to take a 57% pay cut after they shrunk the budget of the film to $40 million from $75 million, Hardwicke revealed to Variety. “There were possibly other ways the problem could be solved,” says Hardwicke, who has been vocal about sexism in the industry. “They will tell you other people cut their salaries. I don’t know. I don’t have the paychecks of the other guys working for Warner Bros. at the time.”
[…]
You’re very open about the obstacles female directors face. Many other female directors go in the other direction — they don’t want to be defined by their gender.

I used to think I was alone. When no one was speaking about this, after “Thirteen” or “Twilight,” I thought it was all me. “I’m not good enough,” or “I’m not smart enough. I don’t work hard enough.” I’d hear the negative comments — “Oh, she’s difficult or emotional.” And I’d think I’d lead by example. It hasn’t changed the needle, though. Being quiet is not working. We can read the statistics.

Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Jessica Chastain have all talked about the pay gap for actresses recently.

We could see a seismic change this year. There’s a tidal wave. I don’t think people can ignore it. Even women in studio positions are starting to realize, “I’m part of the gender bias too.” They had to work hard, and they join the boys club sometimes. I love Jill Soloway. Did you read the thing about crying on set? She goes, “Listen, we’ve always been told if you want to cry, go to the bathroom or car, because it’s not acceptable.” I’ve been told that crying makes a man think about his wife, mother or sister, and we don’t want to bring the wife, mother or sister into the workplace. Why wouldn’t you? They are part of the buying force. When I had some tears on “Twilight,” during a storm and we couldn’t film, I went behind a tree in the forest, I cried for like 30 seconds and I came back and finished the day.

You felt like you had to hide it?

I had a $150,000-a-day pressure. Most directors scream. We’ve seen videos of it. They yell. They fire people. They don’t come out of their trailer. Some people drink. Some people bring hookers. Everyone reacts to the extra pressure in different ways. Well, I just thought, “I’ll go over there and cry for a second and come back.” Someone saw, and reported it. I’m suddenly labeled “emotional.” And yet, now I’ve learned of two instances of male directors who cried on set and they got a standing ovation, because they were so sensitive. Of course it’s a double standard. Of course it’s gender bias. I’ve never gone over budget, and my movies have made a ton of money. Still, I get labeled whatever code word they want to label me. I’ve had 20 movies since “Thirteen” that I’ve tried to get made. On “Red Riding Hood,” I had to take a 57 percent pay cut right after I created a $400 million movie and a huge franchise.

I realize that this is a 1st world problem for these women. They are well compensated. But what people don’t realize is that this problem exists all the way down the food chain in the business. And there’s that added dollop of ageism on top of it. If you’ve ever worked in the entertainment business, ask yourself how many older women you’ve ever seen working there. Once in a while you might have a woman over 50 working in HR or accounting. But even that’s rare.

You just age out. After you hit your mid-40s, you get laid off through one of the many turnovers in management or corporate mergers (it happens all the time) and you just can’t find another job doing what you’ve been doing for years. Ageism happens to men too, of course. But the combo with sexism is a really lethal blow to women’s financial well-being. They’ve been paid less throughout their careers and have less to fall back on.

Anyway, I know everyone’s tired of hearing about this stuff. But half the population is subject to this in many different ways, a lot of it economic. It’s true that these millionaire movie stars won’t be starving any time soon even if they are being paid substantially less than the men they work alongside. Even the executives who are making less than men doing exactly the same job are doing fine financially. But by dismissing this phenomenon as bourgeois vanity, it also dismisses the very real economic disparity experienced by the many assistants, craftspeople, middle managers and all the rest in the business who really do need the money. It’s all part of the same problem. And it doesn’t just exist in the glamorous film business by any means. It’s an issue across all of American business and industry.

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Running for president of Bizarroworld

by digby

I’ve been saying this for a while, but I think this proves that Ben Carson is so steeped in the wingnut fever swamp that he is in an alternate universe:

“I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama when he was running,” Carson observed. “In fact I remember just the opposite. I remember people saying, ‘Oh we won’t really talk about that. We won’t talk about that relationship. Well, Frank Marshall Davis, well, we don’t want to talk about that. Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, well we don’t really know him. All the things that Jeremiah Wright was saying, oh, not a big problem.”

Carson then called into question Obama’s educational achievements, repeating a widely debunked theory that Obama’s educational records are being kept secret by some sort of court order.

“[Obama] goes to Occidental College, doesn’t do all that well, and somehow ends up at Columbia University,” Carson asserted. “Well… his records are sealed. Why is his record sealed? What are you not interested in why his records are sealed? Why are you not interested in that? Let me ask you that. Can someone tell me why, please?” He then demanded to know “how there is equivalency [sic] there” between “something that happened with the words ‘a scholarship was offered’ was a big deal, but the president of the United States, his academic records being sealed, is not.”

This is primo wingnuttery, the stuff you hear in the most toxic depths of the right wing media.

His affect is downright bizarre in that clip.  But not as bizarre as this.

From “Ben Carson’s house: an homage to himself in pictures”

Update: Sarah Posner has an insightful piece up at Religion Dispatches about what makes Carson tick. Super interesting. An excerpt:

As Paul Waldman writes in an astute piece at the Washington Post, this scrutiny of the accuracy of Carson’s autobiography tells us little about what kind of president he’d be. But Carson’s wild claims, say, about the purpose of the pyramids, the origins of the universe, or his rejection of evolution, Waldman contends, “suggest not only that his beliefs are impervious to evidence but also an alarming lack of what we might call epistemological modesty.”

“Some parts of his personal story are irrelevant to that assessment” of his suitability for the presidency, Waldman concludes, “but some parts aren’t. And it’s those that should really give us pause.”

But there’s a way to see Carson’s apparent dissembling on a variety of issues, from his personal story to his views on science and history, as of a piece. That piece consists of a very simple frame: that Carson, through his faith in God, the grit exemplified in his life story, and the smarts evidenced by his success as a neurosurgeon, sees the truth and, as a presidential candidate, is conveying that truth to the American people. Questioning his claims about history and the universe’s origin are akin to questioning Carson’s own origin story.

Ben Carson believes he has seen the enemy, and casts himself as a prophet warning America of it. Carson’s method of disarming his critics is to portray them as that enemy in a cosmic battle over that truth. The enemy is people Carson facilely refers to as “secular progressives.”

Secular progressives, to Carson, are not mere political adversaries. In Carson’s usage, the term seems to encompass any sort of person or entity that might fall into categories as varied as liberal, secular, religious liberal, religious progressive, communist, socialist, feminist, LGBT rights activist, civil liberties advocate, Someone Who Disagrees With Ben Carson, atheist, agnostic, dormant and dead moderate Republicans, and, oh, I don’t know, CNN? Yesterday, as the Huffington Post’s media editor Gabriel Arana reports, a Carson interview on CNN turned “strangely combative” as anchor Alisyn Camerota “pressed him on a number of his recent controversial comments, including the claim that ‘many’ Americans are stupid and that ‘we’d be Cuba if it weren’t for Fox News.‘”

Camerota reminds Carson she used to work at Fox News and still has many friends there, but this appears to be of no moment to Carson, who lectures her (emphasis mine):

“the general mainstream media all seems to move in the secular progressive direction, and you know, they would like to create a narrative that certain things are good, and certain things are bad, according to the way that they see them. And by being able to be the bully pulpit, so to speak, and to be the only voice that’s out there, you can get a lot of people to start thinking the way that you do. Along comes Fox News and presents an alternative, a different way of thinking.”

As POsner points out, Carson and Trump both received Secret Service protection this week. Carson told people it was because he’s in grave danger from the secular progressives.

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Time for a chill pill, Dems

by digby

The big liberal meme last week, particularly after the election nobody even knew was happening, was that Democrats are fucked pretty much forever because of our weakness in down-ticket and state houses.  This follows up the other meme which says that the Democrats have a bunch decrepit old people leading the party and nobody teed up to take over.  Everyone was in a tizzy.  Maddow mentioned it last night in her forum and everyone once against started wringing their hands in despair.

Michael Tomasky took a look at this story and found that there’s less than meets the eye:

Is it really as bad as all that? No, it’s not. And here are the two main reasons why.

First: The party that controls the presidency for eight years almost always gets killed at the state level over the course of those eight years. And it stands to reason—if people are unhappy with the way things are going, which they typically are about something or other, they’ll vote for the out-of-power party.

So political scientist Larry Sabato has studied this question going back to FDR’s time and found that every two-term presidency (he’s counting things like the Kennedy-Johnson period from 1960-68 as a single two-term presidency) except one has taken a huge beating at the congressional and state levels. You’ve perhaps read recently that during Barack Obama’s term, the Democrats have lost 913 state legislative seats. That’s a hell of a lot, but it’s not that crazily out of line with the average since FDR/Truman, which is 576. Only Ronald Reagan managed to avoid such losses—the GOP actually gained six state legislative seats during his years, which was the time when the Dixiecrats and some Northern white ethnics started becoming Republicans.

Sabato’s piece, which ran last December in Politico, is even headlined “Why Parties Should Hope They Lose the White House.” You win at 1600, you start losing everywhere else. Granted the Obama-era losses are unusual. I’d suppose they’re mostly explained by the lagging economy and stagnant wages. Race has to have something to do with it, too, and Tea Party rage, and of course the fact that Democrats don’t vote in off-year elections. Indeed this last factor may be the biggest one, because the Democratic Party has become more and more reliant in recent years on precisely the groups of voters who have long been known not to participate as much in off-year elections—minorities, young people, single women.

So sure, it blows to look at a map like the one embedded in Yglesias’s piece and see all that red indicating total Republican control in some state capitals where that shouldn’t really be the case: Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio. And it blows harder for the people who live there, although obviously a majority of them don’t think so.

But I would make a couple quick arguments here. First, 2014 and especially 2010 were unique election years, with high unemployment in 2010 and high-octane right-wing fury in both. That flipped some state houses and executive mansions that will return to the blue column eventually, in more normal times.

Second, there are a lot of blue states that still elect Republican governors, whereas there aren’t many red states that will elect a Democrat. Three presidential-level red states have Democratic governors (Missouri, Montana, and West Virginia), and they’re about the only ones you could imagine doing so as you look down the list. Whereas nine blue states have Republican governors. Most of those governors are comparatively moderate, and it doesn’t really change the fundamental nature of Massachusetts that it elects a Republican governor some of the time.

This sounds right to me. The Obama years are unique for the two main reason Tomasky flags. Race — yes, Obama’ being the first black president drove turnout among the wingnuts. I don’t think that’s in dispute.

The second though is much more important: he took office during an epic recession. It was so bad that his entire term has been spent crawling out of it and the recovery happened with zero help from Republicans. In fact, they did everything they could to hinder it, obstructing almost every attempt to enact policies that could have helped and turning the process into a three ring circus. They spent the entire time throwing Obama’s promise to unite the country back in his face, blaming him for failing to magically fix everything. The 2010 gerrymander baked that whole dynamic into the cake for the following decade.

Anyway, I think Tomasky’s also right about this:

But—the party affiliation of the man or woman in the White House does change the fundamental nature of the United States. And that brings us to my second reason why the Democrats aren’t yet finished. They have the presidency. What did Elvis Costello say—“don’t bury me cuz I’m not dead yet”? Well, you’re not doomed yet as long as you’re living in the White House.

Let me ask you this question. Assuming this Sabato correlation between White House control and losses at other levels holds up, how many of you Democrats reading this would take this deal: Democrats lose the White House next year and in 2020 in exchange for, say, 1) retaking control of the House of Representatives in 2022 and 2) picking up 576 state legislative seats over the next eight years?

I guess some Democrats would take that deal, but I think a small minority, and rightly so. Losing the White House means a 7-2 conservative Supreme Court majority for 30 more years. That could well mean, would likely mean, a decision in the next few years overturning same-sex marriage, and a dozen other horrors, from campaign finance to corporate power to religious issues to civil rights matters to a number of Fourteenth Amendment-related issues including Roe v. Wade. It means, combined with GOP majorities in both houses of Congress, God knows what legislatively; the end of the federal minimum wage? A flat tax, or at least a radically reduced top marginal rate? Entitlement “reform”? And don’t forget not just what they’d do, but what they’d undo. It means repeal of Obamacare, legislation that effectively rescinds Dodd-Frank, all of Obama’s work on immigration and carbon ripped to pieces, and on and on and on. And, you know, like, another war.

Democrats must control one branch while the GOP is in the throes of its lunatic phase. The courts are at best a stalemate. The House is probably lost to the Dems for another five years at least and the Senate is unreliably swinging back and forth. The presidency is the only way to keep the lid on something really bad happening. And if you think it won’t just listen to the crazies who are running for president and remember that the GOP once put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s necessarily a trade-off. If Democrats would wake up to the partisan battle that’s happening maybe they would realize that voting for Republican governors in blue states is a fools game that’s only making the right wing stronger. Maybe they would also wake up to the fact that they need to mobilize themselves permanently. There are billions of dollars floating around the political system being used for bullshit Super PAC ad buys that will amount to nothing. Maybe some of our friendly billionaires need to put some of that money toward effective Democratic electoral infrastructure. If politics is now a matter of getting your pet billionaires on board, this would be a very helpful project. It’s pathetic but that’s how our politics roll in a post Citizens United world.

In the meantime everyone should probably try to chill a little bit about this so-called Democratic fatal flaw. It’s the sort of thing that leads the party to start recruiting right wingers and saying we need to “compromise” on guns and abortion. They’re always looking for a reason to go right. I don’t think it’s going to work any better than it ever did, but it will certainly make the Big Money Boyz happy.

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Well hell, those emails weren’t classified after all. #ooops

by digby

This is an amazing story about how a scandal can be stoked out of nothing. Political bureaucrats with an agenda (or just inane incompetence) and the press working together can make a juicy story when they want to:

Source: Key Clinton emails did not contain highly classified secrets

The U.S. intelligence community has retreated from claims that two emails in Hillary Clinton’s private account contained top-secret information, a source familiar with the situation told POLITICO.

After a review, intelligence agencies concluded that the two emails did not include highly classified intelligence secrets, the source said. Concerns about the emails’ classification helped trigger an ongoing FBI inquiry into Clinton’s private email setup.

Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III made the claim that two of the emails contained top-secret information; the State Department publicly stated its disagreement and asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office to referee the dispute. Now, that disagreement has been resolved in State’s favor, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for Clapper said the review of the emails has not been completed. “ODNI has made no such determination and the review is ongoing,” Clapper spokesman Brian Hale said.

However, the source said State Department officials had already received instructions from intelligence officials that they need not use the strictest standards for handling the two emails in dispute – meaning that they aren’t classified.

Hale declined to comment on whether any changes had been made in recent days to the handling requirements for the disputed emails.

Intelligence officials claimed one email in Clinton’s account was classified because it contained information from a top-secret intelligence community “product” or report, but a further review determined that the report was not issued until several days after the email in question was written, the source said.

“The initial determination was based on a flawed process,” the source said. “There was an intelligence product people thought [one of the emails] was based on, but that actually postdated the email in question.”

Smart people like Marcy Wheeler pointed out that the classification of these emails was nonsense but the press slavered over the accusation like a bunch of starving dogs with a slab of meat.

And look what happened:

A top expert in classification procedures called the reported determination about the disputed emails “an astonishing turn of events.”

“It’s not just a mistake,” Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said of the initial “Top Secret” claim. “It was a transformative event in the presidential campaign to this point. It had a potential to derail Clinton’s presidential candidacy.”

Aftergood said Clapper’s office should be credited for seriously reconsidering the earlier conclusions by intelligence agencies.

“Usually, when an agency commits itself to a judgment that is this consequential, the agency will tend to dig in its heels and insist — no matter what — it was right. What’s unusual here is an agency said we reconsidered and we changed our mind. That’s a difficult thing to do, and they’re liable to be attacked for doing it,” Aftergood said.

A spokesman for Clinton’s presidential campaign welcomed the reported development, while allies said the news vindicates her.

“The inspector general’s determination always seemed arbitrary and questionable, and we are grateful that it appears the DNI may be confirming that,” spokesman Brian Fallon said. “This would illustrate the subjective nature of the classification rules that are at the heart of this matter.”

“DNI Clapper’s determination is further evidence that there was no wrongdoing by Secretary Clinton,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “The classification process is complex and subjective, but this confirms Secretary Clinton did not send classified information through her email account. It’s time to put this issue behind us and move on.”

That won’t happen but it’s a nice thought.

I don’t know whether McCullough had an ax to grind to against Clinton personally or if it was one of those ridiculous state vs CIA things, but the ramifications are obvious. This has impacted the electoral process which is very creepy.

In an Aug. 11 memo to 17 lawmakers, McCullough said the two emails “include information classified up to TOP SECRET//SI/TK/NOFORN.” The subject of the emails has never been publicly confirmed, but published reports have said one refers to North Korea’s nuclear program and another to U.S. drone operations. The acronym “SI” in the classification marking refers to “signals intelligence,” and a footnote in McCullough’s memo references the work of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which oversees U.S. spy satellites.

Turns out that was bullshit.Go figure.

This Politico article actually buried the lede in my opinion. I don’t think most people know what happened here:

Concerns about the four emails McCullough’s investigators isolated appear to have set in motion a series of critical events in the email saga. State stepped up its efforts to have Clinton’s private attorney David Kendall return thumb drives.

State decided back in May that one email in the Clinton collection contained “Secret” information about arrests possibly linked to the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi. At that time, Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy asked Kendall to delete all copies of that email and return all paper copies to the department. Kendall declined to delete the electronic copies because of outstanding preservation requests from inspectors general and congressional committees.

However, the classification of that email as secret did not set off the scramble that began in late July when the intelligence inspector general flagged the set of four from the sample of 40. The flagging of those four emails by the ICIG led to a formal referral to the FBI of a potential counterintelligence breach.

Within days, the FBI contacted Kendall asking him to turn over the thumb drive, which he did in early August. On July 31, Kennedy also sent urgent letters to lawyers for two top Clinton aides, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, asking that all the federal records in their possession be immediately returned to the government, along with all copies.

FBI Director James Comey has since confirmed his agency is conducting a review of the matter. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment when asked what impact the classification developments would have on the agency’s ongoing probe.

While disclosures of information classified at the “Secret” level can trigger an investigation, Aftergood said the conclusion that the two emails were not “Top Secret” could have some impact on how the FBI proceeds.

“That would tend to reduce the urgency of the initial referral,” he said.

One would think so. but from the selective leaks coming from the FBI and James Comey’s comments it sounds as though they have some investigators who are looking hard for something to nail her with.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

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Lunatic mainstream revisited
by Tom Sullivan

Because as Charlie Pierce observed yesterday, “America is the greatest country ever invented to be completely out of your mind,” we’re suffering a little insanity overload this morning.

Daily Show host Trevor Noah’s emergency appendectomy gave him a chance to experience America’s “best in the world” health care system this week. Raw Story:

The host said he periodically fainted from the pain of a perforated appendix, but the nurse told him he was not allowed to faint in the waiting area and should instead go to triage to lose consciousness.

“You’re telling me where I can and cannot faint?” he said.

Noah was finally taken, trembling with pain, to another room for treatment — where he was followed by the same nurse, who brought still more forms and asked how he would be paying for treatment of his life-threatening condition.

“With my life, clearly,” he said.

She decided because she recognized Noah from the billboards that he could pay whether or not he had insurance.

The Affordable Care Act, America’s halting first steps from our exceptional, for-profit medicine towards a single-payer model, is headed back to the Supreme Court. It’s Round 4. Because freedom:

This time, the issue is the arrangement the Obama administration worked out to spare faith-based hospitals, colleges and charities from paying for contraceptives for women covered under their health plans, while still ensuring that those women can obtain birth control at no extra cost as the law requires.

The groups complain that the arrangement leaves them complicit in making available the contraceptives in violation of their religious beliefs because their insurers or insurance administrators assume responsibility for providing birth control.

The faith-based groups “can’t help the government with its contraceptive delivery system,” said Mark Rienzi, a lawyer who represents the groups.

But they have no qualms about being complicit in killing off everyone else’s health care delivery system.

Alabama School Board District 2 member, Betty Peters (any relation to Betty Bowers?), fears that “radical, left, homosexualists” and the Southern Poverty Law Center (among others) are “filtering informational texts involving sexuality and sexual orientation” to indoctrinate children “into little social activists for social justice.” She handed out coloring book sheets to the Coffee County Republican Women on Oct. 21. Trouble with a capital “T”, that rhymes with “C”, that stands for Common Core:

“This is part of teaching tolerance for transgenderism to four to eight year olds,” Peters said. “The students are given color crayons and two handouts. They students are supposed to color the photos of the clothes they want to wear.

“You will notice these are called outfits,” Peters said. “I have never asked my son or my husband what ‘outfit’ they are going to wear. This is just crazy. I think all this stuff is mainly written by whacky feminists.

Patton: You want to know why this outfit got the hell kicked out of it?

Uh, whacky feminists, general?

Meanwhile, now that middle-class, white America is turning to painkillers and suicide as its economic prospects dim, claxons are sounding in the media:

In this moment, white people struggling with addiction are to be treated with mercy and empathy. A white Republican presidential primary candidate, Chris Christie, has even been recorded sharing a story about a rich white man, a dear friend from law school, whose addiction to pain killers ruined his life. By comparison, black and brown people who use drugs are locked up without mercy or pity by a carceral society that views their pain as criminality.

Black and brown communities were ruined by the Great Recession. Yet their loss was greeted with crickets in the mainstream news media. Black people are recorded being shot, choked to death, beaten up in schools and otherwise brutalized. And yet too many of those in White America engage in excuse-making, and defend the thuggish behavior of its racist and classist criminal justice system.

White America now increasingly encounters those same broken dreams, because the wages of whiteness do not pay the dividends they once did in the not-so-recent past. And this time the mainstream media inaugurates a crisis.

The Donald will save them, right?

Finally, of course, #BrainManBen Carson of the pyramids got caught having fabricated key incidents from his inspirational biography, especially his acceptance to West Point. “West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission,” according to Politico. Josh Marshall found in Carson’s pyramid tale echoes of another crank, Erich von Daniken.

Carson is leading recent polls for the Republican nomination for president.

Do they make a trigger lock big enough for the Pentagon?

[h/t CP]

Your Friday Night smile

by digby

Yeah, you definitely need this:

For most parents, the challenge of bath time is getting the kids into the tub, but for one mama elephant, the hard part was getting her little one out.

In a video uploaded by Thailand’s Elephant Nature Park on Wednesday, 1-year-old Navaan can be seen having what might be too much fun playing in his tiny tub.

Via The Dodo

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