Far too much media coverage of politics focuses on the horserace angle--who's ahead, who's behind, who's up or down. It relies on false equivalency: if Politician A says X, then the reporter goes to Politician B, who's sure to say Y. That's lazy journalism, and it doesn't actually inform the public about which position (if any) is actually true, or adheres to the facts as we know them. At TWiA, our mission is to discuss politics through the prism of policy--to look, in other words, at the real-world implications of the things that politicians say and do, to make connections others might miss, and to explain it all in language a lay person can understand. Also to offer suggestions of how you can help somebody in need, to report on what's awesome, and to keep tabs on bears. If you like TWiA, share or repost or tell a friend, and be sure to leave comments, even if they're arguments. Especially if they're arguments.
This Week in the Post-presidency
Last week, after TWiA's early deadline, we saw a remarkable press conference. Former president Jimmy Carter gathered reporters together to describe his cancer, its treatment, and his outlook. He gave a brief, very technical statement, then took questions. At 90, his mind remains sharp and agile, and we don't remember ever seeing anything quite like this event.
At the Washington Spectator, author Rick Perlstein also watched it. He's been working on a book about Ronald Reagan, so thinking about and studying Carter, because the two were so interlinked. He observes that Carter's two sides--he was both an engineer and a Baptist missionary--were on display that day. And he reminds us that in many ways (Carter put solar panels on the White House roof and warned us that we'd better cut our dependence on fossil fuels) Carter was ahead of his time. The specific example he uses is Carter's efforts to protect and expand voting rights--efforts blocked by conservatives, as they remain today.
It's a short piece, and well worth a read. Carter was a much better president than many people give him credit for, and quite possibly the best former president the nation has ever known.
This Week on Wall Street
The stock market has been in turmoil this week, with some big drops that cause some people concern and others outright panic, followed by some big gains. (Market tip--don't sell into a correction. It only makes the correction worse, and you're selling at too low a price. Hang onto your shares, and if you're not crazy about them after the market is on the way up again, then you can sell. When prices are low, it's time to buy. Here's all the financial advice you'll ever need, on one index card.)
Naturally, according to Republican politicians and presidential candidates, it's all President Obama's fault.
Interestingly, during the Obama administration, the market has soared to new heights. Not once during those highs did we hear of any Republican politicians crediting President Obama. But when it takes a tumble, well, that's Obama's fault.
Donald Trump says it's Obama's fault because "our leaders don't have a clue," and Obama has let China "set the agenda." If nothing else, Trump is supposed to understand the world of finance, but apparently he doesn't. Our slump was largely in response to a much bigger drop in China's stock market, amid speculation that China has been misrepresenting its own economic growth for ages. China has also devalued its currency in the past couple of weeks.
What the current situation shows us is that the US economy is much stronger and more stable than China's. Currency devaluation and stock market losses (which we knew were coming), Mr. Trump, do not point to a government that has outmaneuvered ours in any way--they point to an economy in trouble. We have to remember not to panic, that corrections are a necessary evil in our markets, and that while we import a lot of goods from China, we don't export nearly as much to them, so their economic woes shouldn't be disastrous for us (although some sectors, like aircraft, could be seriously hurt).
Scott Walker and Trump want the president to call off an upcoming state visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Which would make sense if, during a time of crisis and uncertainty, not talking to important partners in the world community was a good idea. It isn't.
And Chris Christie says it's because we've been borrowing too much from China, and now the payment's coming due. That's nonsensical, and not supported by the facts.
Obviously, these presidential candidates need to say something. Just as obviously, they don't have anything to say that both 1) makes sense and 2) furthers their political ambitions. So they just spout uninformed craziness, which is likely to make matters worse by scaring anyone foolish enough to believe them.
Side Note: It's important to remember that while the stock market has ties to the real economy, it isn't the real economy. Yes, a downswing can damage your 401(K), but history has shown that it'll recover. Most of the people taking big hits this week are people with lots of money in stocks, and their damages won't affect us one way or another.
Below the fold: Hubris, hypocrisy, bears, and more.
This Week in Gun Safety
This week's horrible murder--as if they weren't all horrible--was the shooting, on live TV, of two journalists from WBDJ in Virginia. Alison Parker, 24, was interviewing the director of the local Chamber of Commerce. Adam Ward, also 24, was handling the camera. All three were shot, Parker and Ward fatally, while the camera rolled. The third victim underwent surgery and is said to be stable, at this writing.
Not only was the interview being broadcast live, but the killer recorded it himself, and uploaded it to his Facebook page before taking his own life. He has a checkered work history, and upon being fired from WBDJ, it was strongly suggested that he seek medical help for his problems. Because he's never been judged insane by a court or involuntarily committed, he was able to easily buy the two Glock handguns he used.
Parker's father appeared on Megyn Kelly's show on Fox "News" later that same night, and said this: "We’ve got to do something about crazy people getting guns. Next week, it isn’t going to be a story anymore, and everybody is going to forget it. But you mark my words, my mission in life, and I talked to the governor today — he called me — and I told him, I said, 'I’m going to do something, whatever it takes, to get gun control legislation to shame legislators into doing something about closing loopholes and background checks and making sure crazy people don’t get guns."
We're not sure there's ever been a more impassioned plea in favor of sensible gun laws on Fox. Sadly, he's right--next week, it won't be a story anymore. Some new horrible murder will take its place, and once again, the necessary steps won't be taken.
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Vox.com has posted 17 maps and charts describing gun violence in the US (which far outpaces gun violence in the rest of the developed world, mostly because we have so many guns). One thing they look at is the issue of mass shootings. Mass murders and mass shootings are different things--mass shootings, according to the definition here, is when four or more people are wounded in a single event. Most data in the past have focused on mass murder, when four or more people are killed. But being shot is a traumatic, life-changing experience for the survivors, and it's a legitimate way to look at the issue.
This year in the US, we're averaging more than one mass shooting a day. Most of those are not public stranger shootings, but take place within homes, among family members. That gun bought for "self defense" turns into the weapon used to exterminate spouses and children. And as a nation, we're simply accepting it as the price of being an American.
Conservative Michael Brendan Dougherty writes, "Firearm-related deaths are one of the only truly 'exceptional' things about America, and that's embarrassing."
He adds, "But overall, the results in this part of the American experiment are not encouraging. If the Virginia killer did not have easy access to guns, if his scheme for murdering his former colleagues had to be accomplished with knives, hammers, or a home-made explosive device, the truth is that those murders would have been much less likely to occur. Conservatives who generally support the idea of an armed citizenry should let that thought sink in."
They might also note that the Founders did not intend for the Second Amendment to cover the "rights" of mass murderers of family annihilators, and they could not have predicted the advent of automatic and semiautomatic weapons or extended magazines. To imagine that they did is a political calculation made by the pro-gun death forces in our country.
This Week in the Iran Deal
This actually happened last week, but after our early deadline. The Associated Press ran a story based on what seems to be a leak of inaccurate information designed to kill the Iran nuclear weapons deal. TWiA's congressional representative, Martha McSally (R/AZ), even referenced the story in an op-ed detailing her motives (many bogus) for opposing the deal. In doing so, she seemed to take the story at face value, or to take the right-wing media's interpretation of it. McSally writes:
"Even if Iran cheats, it would be hard to know. Instead of the “anytime, anywhere” inspections originally sought, the deal gives Iran 24 days to delay access to certain sites, plenty of time to hide nuclear activity. What’s more, a “side deal” recently reported that allows Iran to conduct its own inspections is laughable."
If she thinks 24 days is enough time to remove all traces of radioactivity, she's woefully ignorant. And the "laughable" side deal is not at all what she's saying it is.
In fact, that "side deal" is a draft of an agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and is not part of the P5+1 deal with Iran. It applies to a one-time set of inspections at one site that we know was, at one time, a testing facility. We also know, through satellite monitoring, that it's been more than a decade since it's been used for that. The Iranians would not inspect the place themselves. As is commonly done, they would take soil samples and photographs and give them to IAEA inspectors. Nobody expects to find anything there; having the Iranians do the sample collecting is as much a matter of convenience as anything else.
Vox.com concludes, "This is certainly not the first time that someone has placed a strategic leak in order to achieve a political objective. But it is disturbing that the AP allowed itself to be used in this way, that it exaggerated the story in a way that have likely misled large numbers of people, and that, having now scrubbed many of the details, it has appended no note or correction explaining the changes. It is not a proud moment for journalism."
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It's important to note that Republican resistance to the deal is essentially the only significant resistance. In the other countries that were party to it, even the most hawkish are in favor of it. They know it's a good deal. Our homegrown Republicans don't doubt it on its merits. They claim to, but their arguments make no sense. And their kneejerk opposition has ramifications for American foreign policy on a broader level.
The New York Times reports:
"Europeans regard sanctions as a diplomatic tool, the means to an end. Their concern here is that the Americans will use them as a form of open-ended punishment. 'How this debate develops on Iran could potentially be a test case on sanctions,' said Ms. Geranmayeh, of the European Council on Foreign Relations. 'The U.S. Congress may underestimate how much their debate is going to have repercussions on sanctions unity.'
"Even if the deal survives its congressional roller coaster, the words spoken in the heat of this summer’s debate are a matter of 'serious concern,' said Mr. Grand of the Strategic Research Foundation. 'It is broader than the Iran issue.' he said. 'The problem is that the partisan nature of U.S. foreign policy is making it difficult to manage for its partners. It means you always have doubts that a major foreign policy initiative by a U.S. president will survive.'"
We recognize that Republican politicians stopped caring about governing some time ago, but their radicalism could have serious consequences in the real world. It's time for the Republican base to start demanding genuine effort from those they elect. In the summer of Trump, that might be a hard argument to sell, but it's exactly Trump-style silliness that the party has to get past.
Side Note: McSally's op-ed goes on to say, "Voting down this deal means sanctions stay in place and countries around the world are given a choice: do business with the U.S. or Iran. All tools we currently have to stop a nuclear Iran remain at our disposal."
We had hoped that perhaps McSally would serve our district in the same way her predecessors Jim Kolbe (R), Gabby Giffords (D), and Ron Barber (D) did--taking rational positions on issues instead of automatically siding with the party line. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case, and McSally toes the line even if she has to lie to do so.
Voting down this deal does not mean "sanctions stay in place." The sanctions weren't just imposed by us, but by the world community. The deal was not just with us, but with the P5+1. The sanctions were meant to get Iran to negotiate, and they did that. For us to back away now would ruin our credibility, but the sanctions imposed by those other countries would not stay in place. McSally is dangerously ignorant, dishonest, or both.
Under the deal, it's true to say "all tools we currently have to stop a nuclear Iran remain at our disposal." Without the deal, that's no longer true, because we would have given up the strongest of those tools--diplomacy.
This Week in Truly Legendary Hypocrisy
It wasn't so long ago that Sen. Tom Cotton (R/AR) wrote a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran, warning him that President Obama didn't speak for all Americans and couldn't legitimately make or enforce the Iran nuclear deal. Congress, Cotton said, could kill the deal. He wrote to the man as if he were a child, explaining the American system of governance. The fact that he had it wrong didn't seem to bother him, or the 46 other Republicans who signed onto this blatant attempt to undermine our country's foreign policy. Foreign policy, need we remind anyone, is a responsibility that the Constitution tells us rests with the president.
Which makes it head-snappingly hypocritical that this week, Cotton released a statement saying in part, "The Congress and the president should speak with one voice when it comes to dealing with the Iranians, but it seems that Harry Reid believes that only his and the president’s voices matter."
Really, Senator? You're calling for one voice? You? The man who's done more to thwart the president's premier foreign policy initiative than anybody else? Where was "one voice" when you wrote that letter?
And Sen. Bob Corker (R/TN) is upset because he's afraid Democrats might have the votes to filibuster legislation opposing the deal--to require that the opposition muster enough votes to pass a 60-vote threshold. Corker's been a senator since 2007, so he served during the Obama administration, when Republicans required a 60-vote threshold for virtually every piece of legislation--far exceeding any historical use of the filibuster. Now? As Jonathan Chait writes for New York Magazine, "Amazing. The first time, the very first time, Democrats might use a filibuster of their own [in the current Congress], you have a Republican managing to talk himself into the view that a filibuster is bad for democracy."
The hypocrisy is off the charts. Simply mind-boggling.
This Week in 2016
People are still worked up about Hillary Clinton's e-mails (and if the Republican Party and right-wing media have their way, will continue to be right up until the 2016 election). Given the IRS, OPM, and DOD hacks, we're not sure why anybody thinks State Department e-mails were any less secure on her server than they were on State's. If anything, if all State Department business had been handled on private servers, the hackers probably wouldn't have even known where to look. Big, juicy targets are more fun than little boring ones.
Here, incidentally, is why the e-mail "scandal" is not really the scandal that Republicans and the media--who've known for decades that Clinton "scandals" sell papers and drive clicks--are trying to make it.
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Poor Chris Christie. His presidential campaign is so weak that the biggest super PAC organized against it, "Stop Chris Christie," is voluntarily shuttering itself. What's the point of raising money to fight a campaign that's already doomed? As we've said before, if Christie had a shot at the White House, it was in 2012. He chose to pass. His tough luck.
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Why is reality TV star and celebrity mogul Donald Trump so popular with Republican voters? What makes people support a man whose policy positions usually amount to some variation of "I'll be great on that issue. I'll do things better than anyone else?"
One Trump supporter explains what the rest of us must have missed. "We know his goal is to make America great again. It’s on his hat."
Well, there you go. Can't argue with that piercing insight. Trump does well with low-information and uneducated voters. Finally, America's dimmest bulbs seem to be saying, someone like us is running for president.
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Ten years ago this week, the Gulf Coast was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was ravaged, and its comeback story has been mixed. President Obama and former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited the city this week to commemorate its progress and remember those who were lost. In advance of Obama's visit, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wrote the president a letter begging him not to mention climate change--or, in Jindal's terms, "the divisive political agenda of liberal environmental activism"--while in the Big Easy.
It's literally impossible to overstate the stupidity of the governor of a state threatened by rising sea waters and ever-deadlier extreme weather events choosing, for purely ideological reasons, to ignore climate change.
Side Note: One has to wonder about Bush's visit. It's a little like Napoleon deciding to drop in on Waterloo. Bush's biggest disaster was the Iraq war, which will continue to have negative repercussions for years or decades to come. But the Katrina response was his biggest domestic disaster by far. 1800 people died, largely because, as Obama said in his New Orleans speech, "We came to realize that what started out as a natural disaster became a man-made disaster: a failure of government to look out for its own citizens."
In the speech, he contrasted the efforts of Craig Fugate, his FEMA director, who has turned the once feeble agency into the remarkably effective disaster response agency it's supposed to be, with Michael Brown, who in the midst of Katrina's misery, was more concerned with how he looked on TV, and how much he wished he could escape his responsibilities. "Brownie" claimed the federal government didn't know about the people stranded at the Convention Center with no food or water until a day after they'd been plastered all over TV news. He had no real training in emergency management, and he--like his boss, President Bush--didn't really believe that government could be effective. It has taken Obama, who does believe, to prove that it can be when you make the right people responsible.
A few writers have made the point, this week, that Katrina was really the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. Few, if any, have made it more compellingly than Slate's Jamelle Bouie.
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Back in November 2012, Gov. Mitt Romney (R/MA) thought he was going to win the White House. He was so convinced, he wrote an acceptance speech but no concession speech. Why? Because he was looking at only Republican-leaning polls. We here at TWiA World Headquarters were looking at a much wider variety of polls: right-leaning, left-leaning, and centrist. We knew well before election day that Romney would lose, and we called every state correctly except Florida, which we gave to Romney. He lost it, which skewed our electoral vote total.
Who got every single state right? Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com (though Silver was also off on electoral votes, because of the way he weighted them--he was also uncertain about Florida, so his weighting system gave Romney some of the votes for that state). Of the major polling services, the most accurate was Public Policy Polling (PPP), a left-leaning pollster.
It's worth remembering as we head into the 2016 cycle that not every pollster is as good as every other pollster, and that only following pollsters already likely to lean your way isn't necessarily going to give you the best results.
This Week in Bears
This Yellowstone visitor doesn't understand the word "wild" in "wild animals."
This guy's best friend is a grizzly bear. (Be sure to check out the great slideshow at the bottom of the page: "Why Bears are Awesome.")
The way Carter walks the walk and lives his faith is very inspiring. I wish him the best of luck in his battle.
Posted by: Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell | 08/28/2015 at 08:45 PM
I agree. Hes really had a full and impressive life, and his outlook is so refreshing. Even with that killer bunny incident...
Posted by: Jeff Mariotte | 08/28/2015 at 09:26 PM