Mother Jones:
If You Don’t Click on This Classy Post, You Are a Loser and a Moron
Introducing the Donald Trump insult generator.
Paul Waldman:
Ohio governor John Kasich joins the presidential campaign today — his announcement speech is underway right now — and he’s trying something remarkable. As part of the case he’s making for himself, Kasich is arguing that the 18 years he spent in Congress provides valuable experience that would make him a better president.
This is nothing short of stunning, because even if you’re a member of the nation’s legislature, you’re supposed to say not only that Washington is a sewer of corruption and incompetence, but that you barely know anything about it, because you’re such an outsider.
Indeed, by contrast, Jeb Bush — about as much an insider as anyone who has ever run for president — yesterday offered his plan to transform Washington, premised on the idea that he is untainted by the stench of the nation’s capital, so he’s the man to clean it up.
But don't think because John Kasich was semi-resonable on Medicaid or immmigration he gets a pass.
Valerie Stauss:
What Ohio Gov. John Kasich is doing to public education in his state
Under his watch, funding for traditional public schools — which enroll 90 percent of Ohio’s students — declined by some half a billion dollars, while funding for charter schools has increased at least 27 percent, with charters now receiving more public funds from the state per student than traditional public schools, according to the advocacy group Innovation Ohio. This despite the fact that many charters are rated lower than traditional public schools. Meanwhile, local governments have been forced to pass levies to raise millions of dollars in operating money for traditional public schools because of state budget cuts.
David Catanese:
John Kasich, a former nine-term congressman who helped strike a balanced budget agreement with President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and went on to win two terms as governor of the battleground state of Ohio, entered the presidential race Tuesday playing catch-up to a long field of rivals chasing the Republican nomination.
But he muffed his first impression, delivering a disjointed and meandering speech mostly off the cuff that dwelled too much on the past and lacked an overarching vision for the future.
So with Trump sucking up the oxygen, does Kasich get into the debate?
More politics and policy below the fold.
Paul Waldman:
It provided a perfect moment for the media, which is why this episode has gotten such enormous coverage. On one hand, it's Trump, who's always good for a story. And on the other hand, Trump could have been discovered to have a lab in his penthouse where puppies and kittens are tortured to make cologne from their tears, and it wouldn't have offended journalists as much as an insult to John McCain.
There isn't time to go into the details now, but suffice it to say that no politician in at least half a century has benefited from the kind of media adulation that John McCain has enjoyed, and his suffering as a POW is always presented as the justification for that worship. In striking contrast to the way they treat every other politician, McCain's motives are assumed to be pure, his sins are excused, and his coverage focuses on his best moments rather than his flaws and mistakes. (Even his 2008 presidential campaign was reported with more gentle affection than most losing candidates get.) So even if the presidential candidates were not saying a word, McCain's admirers in the media would be covering this story with all their might.
And declaring Trump finished. Again. But to the gnashing of media teeth, there he is,
as alive as your average undead in a below average B movie:
In the five weeks since Donald Trump became a Republican presidential candidate, he has insulted Mexican immigrants, rival White House contenders and Arizona Senator John McCain, his party's 2008 presidential nominee.
That's just the way his staunchest supporters like it.
Amber Phillips:
What Trump did is basically an old-school form of doxxing, an act made popular by the Internet to blast out to the world people's personal information.
Doxxing is a form of harassment. It's serious, and it's also, apparently, in most cases, legal.
“You can post it as long as there is nothing nefarious about it,” LAPD cybercrimes detective Andrew Kleinick told The Daily Beast in 2013. “They are public figures and that kind of thing happens. It’s not right, [but] I know of no crime.”
Reddit on "all lives matter":
Imagine that you're sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don't get any. So you say "I should get my fair share." And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, "everyone should get their fair share." Now, that's a wonderful sentiment -- indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad's smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn't solve the problem that you still haven't gotten any!
The problem is that the statement "I should get my fair share" had an implicit "too" at the end: "I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else." But your dad's response treated your statement as though you meant "only I should get my fair share", which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that "everyone should get their fair share," while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.
That's the situation of the "black lives matter" movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.
April Reign (back in April 2015) talking about same, with some advice aimed at Hillary but good for everyone:
Is Hillary 'Ready' for Black Voters?
Every voter should wait until all candidates discuss important policy issues before deciding whom to support. One issue that will be on the minds of many Blacks during the 2016 presidential race is the excessive use of often-deadly force by law enforcement officials. Nearly every week there is a new name added to the list of Black people who have committed little or no crime but are victims of police violence. It will be important for the candidates to discuss concrete ways they plan to address the real concerns of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. However, no candidate should stand on the dead bodies of our fallen to boost themselves politically.
What if everyone had read that prior to this weekend?
BuzzFeed:
Democrats in Congress plan to introduce broad legislation this week to protect LGBT people from discrimination — including in housing, workplaces, schools, and public accommodations. In effect, the Equality Act would extend the same raft of rights to LGBT Americans that are currently afforded to other protected groups, including people of color, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The bill marks the first major attempt by Democrats to advance LGBT rights in both chambers of Republican-led Congress since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality in June.
The measure has been long in the works and attempts to get traction where a more narrowly tailored LGBT workplace nondiscrimination bill — known as ENDA — had faltered for years.
Conversely, the measure’s introduction coincides with a committee vote on a Republican-backed bill to protect people and organizations who disagree with same-sex couples marrying.
Polling on Iran from
Pew and
WaPo (opposite findings).
Politico:
President Obama on Iran deal critics: They were wrong on Iraq, too
NY Times on O's visit with Jon Stewart:
Mr. Stewart said the United States had tried many approaches in the Middle East, including sending 100,000 troops and arming militant groups.
“This new thing, you called it earlier, diplomacy,” Mr. Stewart said. “That sounds interesting.”
Mr. Obama took the bait, moving quickly to a lengthy pitch advocating the diplomatic agreement to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. He said that Iran would remain a problem in the region, but that “we have taken off the table what would be a catastrophic problem if they got a weapon.”
And Mr. Obama playfully tweaked the critics of the deal, marveling at how they seemed to believe that “if you had brought Dick Cheney to the negotiations, everything would be fine.”
Peter J. Wooley:
As the forceful governor of New Jersey heads full-force into the presidential campaign, the once-promising presidential prospect is an also-ran in the polls.
At the time of his landslide re-election as governor in 2013, he led a national field of potential Republican presidential candidates, garnering as much as 24 percent. At the same time, his approval rating in his Democratic-leaning state topped 60 percent.
But by the time he formally announced his run for the Presidency in June, Christie's share of the Republican primary in national polls had fallen below 5 percent. His disapproval rating at home topped 55 percent.
It was his own political appointees who knocked the wind out of him, thinking it would be in their patron's best interest to cause massive traffic back-ups on the vital commuting route into New York City over the George Washington Bridge. The hi-jinks discovered, "Bridgegate" robbed the governor of one of his key assets: credibility.
I like toast. Guess that's why I like Christie.