Fahrveg-Nuked, Con't

It's hard to overstate just how much trouble Volkwagen is in right now over their diesel emissions cheating scandal, and Germany has now put the automaker on the clock in a big, big way.

Germany is coming down hard on its biggest carmaker over the diesel-emissions crisis, giving Volkswagen just over a week to come up with a fix to a problem eight years in the making. 

Yesterday, VW received a letter from Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority, signed by transport minister Alexander Dobrindt, demanding that it deliver a binding plan and schedule to fix the 11 million “cheat code” diesel cars by October 7. 

If Volkswagen can’t present a viable solution by then, according to Dobrindt, the German government would have no choice but to ban the 2.8 million affected cars from driving on that country’s roads. Switzerland has already banned affected cars from being sold, new or used, and other countries continue to investigate their options; the U.S. arm of VW issued a stop-sale order on new diesel VWs last week. 

Volkswagen plans to present its solution within days to repair the affected cars, a spokesman said, and will notify customers and regulatory authorities around the world in writing. That’s not the only issue for VW, though, with German prosecutors opening up a criminal investigation of former Volkswagen Group CEO Martin Winterkorn over his role in what it is calling a “fraud scandal” that has shattered public confidence in the world’s biggest carmaker. The U.S. Department of Justice also has opened a criminal investigation.

So Volkswagen has a week to present a plan to come clean on millions of diesel cars, or they're sunk. They still might be sunk, frankly.  It will take a long time for the world's largest automaker to recover from this, and they won't be number one for much longer.

We'll see where this goes.  I only wish the US was as serious as Germany when it came to punishing bad corporate actors like this.  And again, who knows which other diesel engine manufacturers are guilty?  I don't think Volkswagen is alone in this, do you?

Last Call For Turtle, Shelled?

First Orange Julius got squeezed, now will Mitch the Turtle get shell shocked?  Probably not, but it should be fun to watch him squirm.

Now that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has announced that he will step down, some conservatives in the Republican party are turning their attention to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Roger Villere, the chairman of the Louisiana GOP, urged McConnell to resign in a Saturday Facebook post.

In an interview with the Washington Times published on Sunday, Villere said that McConnell is hurting the Republican party.

"Mitch is a good and honorable guy, but the base is leaving our party," Villere said. "I’m out in the field all the time and we have all our elections this year for state offices, and it’s hurting us tremendously with our elections."

He said that the majority leader should have pushed harder against President Obama's agenda while leading the Senate.

"Mr. McConnell could have suspended consideration of confirmations for all presidential appointees, except for those who are essential to national security, until the president rescinded his unconstitutional executive action on amnesty," he said.

Villere suggested that McConnell did not fight hard enough to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood. He said that McConnell's support for a temporary funding bill that provides funding for Planned Parenthood will hurt the Republican party.

"If we lose the battle, we will never win the presidency again in my lifetime," he said. "I've worked for 12 years as chairman to build this party, and I just don’t want to see it all go down the drain because they aren’t willing to fight for what we believe in. Our base is demanding we do something or they’re going to leave us."

Well, here's hoping you're right, Roger.  I certainly don't want to see another Republican president in my lifetime. Amusing then that the Senate easily passed a funding bill on Monday to avoid a government shutdown Wednesday night, and the presumed new Speaker following Boehner also wants to surrender (and is sadly trying to pretend that the Democrats are the ones shutting the government down when the Republicans control both chambers of Congress.)

Nope.  Tea Party Republicans are about to lose again.  You got Boehner's head for your wall, but once again you've accomplished nothing.

Bevin Blowing It?

WVXU political reporter Howard Wilkinson sees the 2015 Kentucky Governor's race as very close if not favoring Republican Matt Bevin.

It’s rather amazing, really, since over the past 44 years only one Republican, Ernie Fletcher, has held the governor’s office in Kentucky; and Fletcher, whose administration was plagued with scandal, was knocked off by the incumbent Democrat Steve Beshear, who is term-limited out this year.

And Bevin, who ran for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination against Sen. Mitch McConnell and was squashed like a bug, barely squeaked out of this year’s four-candidate GOP gubernatorial primary with an 83-vote win over James Comer, out of about 214,000 votes cast.

But, in fact, it’s the only really competitive gubernatorial race in the country, in a year when most of the political junkies around the country are deeply fixated on the 2016 presidential election.

There really hasn’t been much polling in the race lately. At the end of July, the Bluegrass Poll, conducted for Kentucky’s two largest newspapers and two prominent TV stations, showed Conway up by a slim three percentage points. On June 23, Public Policy Polling, a North Carolina firm, had Bevin up by two percentage points.

But some time ago, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a weekly politics newsletter published by Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, moved the Kentucky governor’s race from the “toss-up” category to “leans Republican.”

“Both national party committees see Kentucky as a winnable race,’’ said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst who is managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Bevin, Kondik said, “is not really a great candidate; and it may be a question of how much of his own money he is willing to spend on this.

“But President Obama is extremely unpopular in Kentucky; and you have the Trump phenomenon going on in the Republican presidential race,’’ Kondik said “It’s a sign of how nationalized politics has gotten even in state races.

So this move by the Republican Governor's Association makes no sense whatsoever.

The Republican Governor's Association has stopped running TV ads for Matt Bevin with a little more than a month to go in Kentucky's competitive governor's race.

The association has spent $3 million on six ads for Bevin, mostly attacking his Democratic opponent, Jack Conway, for supporting the policies of Democratic President Barack Obama. But with two other governor's races this fall RGA spokesman Jon Thompson said the group is "re-evaluating what is best for us to do."

"We continually re-evaluate what role the RGA plays of how helpful we can be," Thompson said, adding the decision does not mean the group has lost faith in Bevin's chances of winning. He said the group could go back on the air before November.

The move is a big blow for Bevin, who has aired just one TV ad of his own after spending more than $1 million of his personal fortune to win a four-way Republican primary in May. And it comes one week after Conway began airing a series of TV ads titled "In his own words" that splice together clips of Bevin contradicting himself on issues including education, agriculture, taxes and health care.

Whenever Conway aired a new ad over the summer, the RGA would usually respond. But not this time. Thompson said the move is normal given "multiple governor's races" the group has to plan for. But the only other races on the calendar this year are in Mississippi and Louisiana. The association has not spent money in those states yet, although Thompson said the group is likely to begin airing ads in the Louisiana governor's race.

If Bevin's winning, or this race is close, why not put Conway away?  There's only 2 other governor's races on the ballot this year, Mississippi and Louisiana.  Bobby Jindal is term limited and the real race for Louisiana won't be until late November as there's a runoff expected, and Phil Bryant isn't in any danger of losing in Mississippi.  The RGA hasn't spent a dime in those states, and after the GOP picked up governor's seats in states like Maryland (Larry Hogan) and Illinois (Bruce Rauner) in 2014, the RGA is pretty powerful. Plus, getting a win in Kentucky would be a massive boost, all but assuring that the GOP could shut down the most successful state insurance exchange and Medicaid expansion in the country.

So it makes no sense to stop now unless Bevin is leading massively, or he's losing.  If he's winning, why not release your numbers showing him winning handily?

No, something's badly wrong in Bevintown.  Maybe Conway can pull this out after all.

So why leave Bevin high and dry now, six weeks before the election?

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/09/28/4061032_rga-stops-running-tv-ads-in-kentucky.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Snap Judgment In North Carolina

Since GOP Gov. Pat McCrory took over North Carolina in January 2013 and Republicans gained complete control of the government, the NC GOP has cut jobless benefits back so far that the state no longer qualifies for federal unemployment dollars, they have eliminated the state's earned income tax credit for the poor, they have purged the state's regulatory commissions and filled them with McCrory cronies, they have ended medical school programs that taught abortion procedures, they have wrecked the state's public education budget, and implemented a regressive tax on repair and maintenance services.

At every turn, NC Republicans are continuing their crusade to smash the state's poor population and give as much money as possible to the wealthiest. And now, their hatred of the poor in the state is so all-consuming, that they are kicking people off SNAP benefits after three months even though the program is 100% funded by federal dollars and the state won't save a dime by doing it.

North Carolina Republican state Senator Norman Sanderson argued last week that reducing food assistance would force people to get a job or pursue higher education. 

A bill to ban so-called sanctuary cities offered by state House Republicans last week also aimed to cap food stamp benefits at three months for most unemployed adults without children. Even though the Supplemental Assistance Program (SNAP) is paid for with federal dollars, state Republicans argued that people in counties with double-digit unemployment should no longer be eligible to receive assistance after the initial three month period. 

Democratic state Sen. Angela Bryant offered an amendment on Thursday to overturn the food stamp cuts, saying that there are not enough jobs to go around in rural counties.
“Over several sessions here were have reduced funding for job training and education,” Bryant pointed out during floor debate. “So we are basically relegating them, I guess, to steal for food.” 

Bryant asserted that there were better ways to police the abuse of SNAP benefits, but her amendment was dead in the GOP-controlled Senate. 

“I think that everybody in this chamber would agree that one of the best things we can do for anyone who has found themselves caught up in the — whether it’s the SNAP program or unemployment or any other of the program that we offer to people who are in emergency situations — one of the best things that we can do is to help them find a job,” Sanderson said. 

The senator added: “And I think that we will be amazed that when this goes into effect, and I don’t know the exact number of people that this can ultimately effect, but I think you are going to see a lot of them either go and get that 20-hour a week job or they’re going to enroll in some kind of higher education to improve their job skills. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to get here.”

Quick math here: 20 hours a week times 50 weeks times $7.25 an hour is $7,250, for one person that's well below the 2015 poverty level of $11,770.  For a family of four, the poverty level is $24,250.  Even a full time job at $10 an hour is well under this level.  People at this point in their lives would easily qualify for SNAP benefits federally, but NC Republicans are literally turning down federal tax dollars just to hurt the poor.

And they're going to go to college?  With what money, exactly?  They're still going to be poor, and these clowns know it.

No, this is just outright punishment of the poor,  It's what Republicans do.

StupidiNews!

• US airstrikes are assisting Afghan forces as they try to retake the city of Kunduz from Taliban fighters and reverse the Taliban's largest military victory in Afghanistan in over a decade. 
• Both President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro called for the end of US sanctions against Cuba at the UN General Assembly's annual meeting of world leaders.
• The Senate has easily advanced a spending bill that will avoid a shutdown through December 11, the plan is to pass the bill on Wednesday and send it to the House for a quick passage.  
• The global investigation into Volkswagen's diesel emissions cheating has expanded to Sweden, where prosecutors are considering a separate anti-corruption case against the automaker.
• Apple is reporting that initial sales of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus have broken records as the new models have gone on sale in China at the same time as the rest of the world.

Last Call For Glencore's Core Meltdown

You're probably not familiar with Swiss mining conglomerate Glencore, but China's economic slowdown is a disaster for the commodity giant, and it's tanking big time.

Anglo–Swiss commodity and mining behemoth Glencore saw its shares slip another 26 percent on Monday with analysts stressing that the weakness is likely to be felt across the entire sector.

London-listed shares of Glencore briefly hit 69 pence in morning trade Monday. It was on course for its worst intraday move on record with shares tumbling 75 percent year-to-date and 85 percent since its flotation in 2011. The U.K. FTSE 350 mining index hit its lowest level since 2008 on the back of Glencore's fall.

Weaker commodity prices and softening Chinese demand have put the brakes on the formerly formidable rise the sector enjoyed over the last decade, but analysts have highlighted that Glencore's main problem is actually its debt load.

"Mining companies gorged themselves on cheap debt in a race to grow production following the Chinese stimulus that occurred in the wake of the (global financial crash)," a team of Investec analysts, led by Hunter Hillcoat, said in a note on Monday morning.

"The consequences are only now coming home to roost, as mines take a long time to build."

Investec said that Glencore had a "higher debt base" than its peers and a "lower-margin asset base," adding that its debt levels would still be above its rivals despite an intense period of restructuring over the next five years.

In other words, Glencore bet the company on commodity prices going up.  The opposite happened in oil and then in metals and everything else and went deep into debt doing so, playing the Too Big To Fail Casino.  But in the end, the house always wins, and now the question is what happens to the commodities market should Glencore go belly up.

A lot of banks gave Glencore a lot of money to invest in mining.  If these banks don't get paid back, well, we're looking at the kind of counter-party mess the banks got into in 2007.

Keep an eye on this one, folks.  It has the potential to really get ugly.

Elizabeth Warren Understands BLM

The junior senator from Massachussetts is one of the few high profile Democrat who actually seems to understand the Black Lives Matter movement, as Wesley Lowrey points out.

In a Sunday speech on racial inequality, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for broad policing reform — including de-escalation training and body cameras for all police officers — and likened the current Black Lives Matter movement to the civil rights movement that won black Americans the right to vote in the 1960s. 

"None of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets." Warren said. "This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter." 

In the address, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post prior to her delivery, Warren draws direct parallels between the civil rights movement and the current anti-police-brutality movement, and it sought to link issues on economic inequality with systemic racism. She traces racial economic inequality, citing inequities in the housing system, as well as decrying restrictions to voting rights. 

"Economic justice is not — and has never been — sufficient to ensure racial justice. Owning a home won’t stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to a school won’t prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside," Warren declared. "The tools of oppression were woven together, and the civil rights struggle was fought against that oppression wherever it was found — against violence, against the denial of voting rights and against economic injustice." 

Warren's address, delivered at the Edward Kennedy Institute in Boston, was perhaps the most full-throated endorsement to date by a federal lawmaker for the ongoing protest movement, and it drew immediate praise from some of the most visible activists. 

"Senator Warren's speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America's commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism has played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights," said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent activist who said he hopes to meet with Warren to further discuss racial injustice. "And Warren, better than any political leader I've yet heard, understands the protests as a matter of life or death — that the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence and that the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma."

Born out of the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., after the police shooting of Michael Brown last summer, the current protest movement has upended the efforts of Democratic presidential candidates to reach out to black voters. The three candidates have faced protests and interruptions at some of their campaign events. Both former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have met with some of the most visible activists, and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mckesson have agreed to meet soon.

The activists have called for a host of police reform measures, including body cameras, de-escalation training, special prosecutors in cases of police killings and a review of police union contracts. 

"It is a tragedy when any American cannot trust those who have sworn to protect and serve," Warren said. "This pervasive and persistent distrust isn’t based on myths. It is grounded in the reality of unjustified violence."

This is exactly what we needed to hear from Hillary, Bernie and O'Malley, and haven't so far: somebody in the Democratic Party finally admitting full stop that police violence against black lives is part and parcel of America's continuing structural racism, racism designed to denigrate those lives as something less than American, less than human, somebody finally saying police are the problem, and not blaming the victims of this deadly brutality.

The most important part of Warren's speech was separating economic justice from racial justice. Hillary Clinton and especially Bernie Sanders still refuse to separate the two, still buying into the proven fallacies of black respectability politics, that black people have to "act a certain way" in order to somehow avoid structural racism that exists all around us, that we have to be "one of the good ones" or we somehow deserve getting shot and killed by police, and that if we "behave" that we'll somehow not be singled out for summary execution.

If Senator Warren finally forces the Democratic candidates to confront this fantasy head on and put the blame on the nation's police departments, to start national police reform, that will be a start. She at least understands this and more importantly isn't afraid to say it.  There need to be more white voices saying this.

If she announced her candidacy, of the Democrats running I'd be very inclined to support her.

Bush, Whacked?

A brutal story this morning in the Washington Post about Jeb Bush indicates that his donors are threatening to jump ship unless he turns things around in October.

Jeb Bush is entering a critical phase of his Republican presidential campaign, with top donors warning that the former Florida governor needs to demonstrate growth in the polls over the next month or face serious defections among supporters.

The warnings, expressed by numerous senior GOP fund­raisers in recent days, come as Bush and an allied super PAC are in the early stages of an aggressive television ad campaign they say will help erase doubts about his viability.

But Bush continues to battle against a steady decline in the polls, sinking to fifth place at just 7 percent in a national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday and similarly languishing in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

The warnings from top donors come as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s exit from the race re­focused the battle within the GOP’s establishment wing as one between Bush and his former protege, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Right now, the momentum appears to be behind Rubio, who has jumped ahead of Bush in most polls. At least a third of the bundlers who signed up to raise money for Walker have switched their allegiance to Rubio, while a smaller number have gone with Bush, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Bush also is facing fresh scrutiny for comments that critics say bear echoes of remarks Mitt Romney made during his 2012 GOP presidential bid, part of a pattern of awkward statements that Bush or his campaign have had to clarify.

The real problem is that last part.  Republicans clearly are backing political outsiders, and there's just no way that Jebby here can portray himself as anything other than the establishment's top candidate, a living reminder of the failures of the last two Bushes in Iraq and with the economy.  The Tea Party views him with nothing but contempt.  The smarter money is shifting to Rubio on the establishment side, and while Rubio is trailing Trump, Carson, and Fiorina, at least he's not, you know, Jeb Bush.

And let's face it, Jeb's political instincts are even worse than Romney's.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) says Americans will miss outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

“I admire John Boehner greatly, he’s a great public servant,” the GOP presidential candidate said on “Fox News Sunday.” 

“He left at the apex of his time in service to the country with the pope speaking in Congress. I think people are going to miss him in the long run because he’s a person that is focused on solving problems.”

That may be true, but backing Orange Julius, the least popular Speaker of the House in my lifetime, probably isn't a good idea.

Even among Republicans, Boehner's image tilted negative. While 37 percent reported favorable impressions of him, 42 percent were unfavorable. Those mixed reviews reflect the divisions within the Republican Party he led in Congress, as strident conservative factions regularly voiced distrust of party leadership. In late 2013, Pew Research surveys found Boehner with far more negative ratings among Republicans identifying with the tea party movement than non-tea party Republicans.

Still, Jeb has more money than anyone else so you can't count him finished (John McCain after all came back from the dead.)  The problem is that money isn't helping him.

We'll see how long that money sticks around.

StupidiNews!

• NASA is expected to announce today that it has confirmed water flowed on the surface of Mars at some point, opening up new questions about the Red Planet.
• Russia and Iran will back Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's regime ahead of UN General Assembly talks between President Obama and Russian President Putin on Monday.
• Royal Dutch Shell is pulling out of Arctic exploration off the coast of Alaska, citing disappointing results in an effort that could cost the energy giant more than $4 billion. 
• Qatar's sovereign wealth fund is expected to invest up to $35 billion in US assets over five years as the country diversifies investments away from Asia and Europe.
• Two years after opening anti-trust investigations into Google's search business, the FTC is reportedly looking at Google's 82% worldwide dominance of the Android mobile OS.

Last Call For Podcast Versus The Stupid

With all that went on this week with Orange Julius and Pope Francis, we had to do a show.  Give a listen to this week's episode, Orange Julius And The Miracles.

Check Out Blogs Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on BlogTalkRadio

Sunday Long Read: Climate Of Change

Jeff Goodell's piece on President Obama's trip to Alaska and his climate change legacy heading into his final years as President is an excellent read.

Obama's trip to Alaska marked the beginning of what may be the last big push of his presidency — to build momentum for a meaningful deal at the international climate talks in Paris later this year. "The president is entirely focused on this goal," one of his aides told me in Alaska. For Obama, who has secured his legacy on his two top priorities, health care and the economy, as well as on important issues like gay marriage and immigration, a breakthrough in Paris would be a sweet final victory before his presidency drowns in the noise of the 2016 election. "If you think about who has been in the forefront of pushing global climate action forward, nobody is in Obama's league," says John Podesta, a former special adviser to Obama who is now chairing Hil-lary Clinton's presidential campaign. (One recent visitor to the Oval Office recalled Obama saying, "I'm dragging the world behind me to Paris.")

Policywise, the president didn't have much to offer in Alaska. He restored the original Alaska Native name to the highest mountain in North America (Denali), accelerated the construction of a new U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker, doled out a few million bucks to help Alaska Native villages move to higher ground — largely symbolic gestures that didn't do much to help Alaskans deal with the fact that their state is melting like a popsicle on a summer sidewalk. In the end, the trip was mostly a calculated and well-crafted presidential publicity stunt. And it raised the question: If the American people see the president of the United States standing atop a melting glacier and telling them the world is in trouble, will they care?

"Part of the reason why I wanted to take this trip was to start making it a little more visceral and to highlight for people that this is not a distant problem that we can keep putting off," the president told me. "This is something that we have to tackle right now."

Obama could not have picked a better place to make his point than Alaska. Climatewise, it is the dark heart of the fossil-fuel beast. On one hand, temperatures in the state are rising twice as fast as the national average, and glaciers are retreating so quickly that even the pilot of my Delta flight into Anchorage told passengers to "look out the window at the glaciers on the left side of the aircraft — they won't be there for long!" The very week of Obama's visit, 35,000 walruses huddled on the beach in northern Alaska because the sea ice they used as resting spots while hunting had melted away; in the Gulf of Alaska, scientists were tracking the effects of a zone of anomalously warm water that stretches down to Baja California and which has been named, appropriately enough, "the blob." On the other hand, the state is almost entirely dependent on revenues from fossil-fuel production, which, thanks to the low price of oil and exhausted oil and gas wells on the North Slope, are in free fall — the state is grappling with a $3.7 billion budget shortage this year. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker had flown from Washington, D.C., to Anchorage with the president at the beginning of his trip; according to one of the president's aides, Walker asked the president to open more federal lands to oil and gas drilling to boost state revenues. "Alaska is a banana republic," says Bob Shavelson, executive director of Cook Inletkeeper, an environmental group in Alaska. "The state has to pump oil or die."

Truly winning the battle for climate change in the US, in order for the country to get past the obfuscation and the lies from the corporate right, absolutely has to start in Alaska. President Obama knows it.

Whether or not the rest of the 49 states care, the answer will remain no.  That's not Obama's fault, and he's trying to fix it.  His reasons for allowing arctic drilling for gas, that we can't completely prevent exploration, is not exactly the best reason, but it's something that is a start.

Last Call For The Ref Works Back

Washington Post political "journalist" Chris Cillizza sure as hell doesn't like getting called out by those grubby plebes at Media Matters, and tries to defend the four dozen plus articles he's written attacking Hillary Clinton for her e-mail "scandal".  Instead, all he does is peel back the curtain on the Village's long knives out for her, 2015 Edition.

I didn't check Media Matters's math, but I'm sure it's either right or close to right. I have written lots and lots of blog posts about Hillary Clinton's e-mail issues since the story came to light in March. And I stand by every one.

Here's why:

1. Hillary Clinton began this race as the biggest non-incumbent front-runner for a party's presidential nomination in the post-World War II era. The job she held just prior to running for president was as secretary of state. The best way to understand how she handles everything from the mundane day-to-day activities of governance to the crises that present themselves from time to time is by studying not just her public actions at the State Department but the thinking behind those decisions. Her e-mails provide a written record of how she thinks, who she relies on and how she navigates sticky situations. Her e-mails are essential to who she is. And, therefore, very much worth looking into -- and writing about.

So Cillizza is saying that her emails themselves are newsworthy, no matter what she actually said in them.  I don't recall Cillizza applying the same logic to Mitt Romney's emails from his time as Governor of Massachusetts, or to Barack Obama's emails as Senator from Illinois or John McCain's emails as Senator from Arizona.  What about the emails of Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham? Aren't those "essential to who they are" as candidates too?  What about Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, or Donald Trump?

Or does that only apply to Clinton in Cilizza's world?

2. No secretary of state has ever used a private e-mail server exclusively. For all of Clinton's insistence that this was standard operating procedure for government officials, it wasn't. Yes, lots and lots of government officials have used both a government e-mail address and a private e-mail address. None before Clinton had used only a private server. That makes what she did anomalous -- and worth paying attention to.

Again, the issue is "how much attention is that anomaly actually worth", especially since there are multiple candidates running with no government service whatsoever and who have used private email servers too.  That's anomalous but not illegal in any way. Singling out Clinton for this treatment is ridiculous, especially when you consistently imply wrongdoing.

3. The story about the e-mail server has changed. Repeatedly. When Clinton acknowledged the existence of the server back in March -- following a New York Times report revealing it -- she insisted that the private server need not be examined by a third party. She (finally) turned it over last month. She said that the handing over of the e-mails was a procedure that all former and current secretaries of state were undergoing at the same time. But, as reporting from The Post this week showed, the State Department specifically requested Clinton's e-mails after they realized she had used private e-mail exclusively. It wasn't until months later that requests for documents was made of other former secretaries of state. A story that keeps changing like that bears further analysis and investigation.

Again, the response to that is the same for point #2:  That's anomalous but not illegal in any way. Singling out Clinton for this treatment is ridiculous, especially when you consistently imply wrongdoing.  Enforcement of that is on the Obama administration and not Clinton.  It's not worth 50 articles attacking her for it.

4. I write a blog. I write a lot of posts. On Friday, for example, I wrote three blog posts and did a live online chat. This is not to brag (quantity doesn't always mean quality). It is to say that 50 posts that mention "Hillary Clinton" and "e-mails" between March and mid-September sound like a ton, but they're really not. I guarantee you that I have written more than 50 posts about Donald Trump in that time.

I understand that organizations like Media Matters exist to work the referees. And, I also understand that plenty of people who are sympathetic to Clinton -- and maybe even some who are not -- think the e-mail server is a non-issue. But, I would ask you to think of this: If this controversy -- with the exact same circumstances -- was centered on a former Republican secretary of state who was the frontrunner for the GOP's nod, would you still think it was unfair?

And here's the heart of the issue.  Cillizza complains that Media Matters is "working the refs" and that he is an impartial journalist, while admitting that he's a pundit that analyzes the news and gives his opinions on what is important enough to report.

You cannot have it both ways, Chris.  And you especially cannot claim impartiality after your years in your position at the Washington Post.

And The Last One Could Fall

Things are looking very grim for Greater Cincinnati as a million women are going to be without abortion services thanks to John Kasich.

State officials today moved to close down two more abortion clinics, including the last one in the Cincinnati area.

The Ohio Department of Health rejected variance requests for the Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio clinic in the Mount Auburn neighborhood of Cincinnati and the Women’s Med Center of Dayton. The variances were denied by health Director Richard Hodges because they do not have “written transfer agreements” for patients in case of emergency.

The clinics have 30 days to appeal or face closure.

Closure of both clinics would reduce the number of abortion providers in Ohio to seven; eight have closed in the past five years.

The health department said in a statement that state law requires abortion providers to have a written transfer agreement with a hospital “to assist when emergencies arise. ODH is denying the variances to protect the health of patients in the facilities. The proposed variances would not provide for adequate clinical coverage to protect patients during an emergency situation.”

The agency determined that variances requested by the clinics “did not meet or exceed the level of patient protection that is essential.”

The facilities will be allowed to continue operating during the appeal process.

As I've said before, Cincinnati would be the largest metropolitan area in the the country without a single abortion provider if these closures are finalized.  So unless the federal courts step in here, by the end of the year you may not be able to get an abortion in a metro area of 2.1 million people.

And you can thank the "moderate" John Kasich and his War on Women for that.

The NC GOP Car-Go Cult

North Carolina Republicans have gotten their budget passed into law by GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, and the big news is a new massive tax increase on auto and home repairs and maintenance on those who can afford it the least, tax money that will go to NC's mostly Republican rural counties and won't raise a dime for urban counties like where I grew up in Catawba County.

Next spring when a single mother in Newton takes her old car in for an oil change, she will be in for quite a surprise. It is going to cost her 6.75 percent more thanks to the budget passed by the House and Senate and endorsed by Gov. Pat McCrory that for the first time imposes a sales tax on car repairs and services. 

If she returns home to find that her washing machine isn’t working, it’s going to cost her more to have it fixed. The budget applies the sales tax to appliance repairs, too. 

If she somehow scrapes the money together to buy a new washer instead, she better pick it up herself as it will cost her more to have it delivered. The budget adds the sales tax to deliveries. 

And she may also be surprised to learn that none of the extra money she will have to pay to fix her car or washing machine will stay in her county to help her daughter’s school or improve the local roads. 

Instead, it will go to another county as part of a scheme inserted into the final budget agreement that expands the sales tax to a host of commonly used services with the proceeds directed to a special fund that benefits 79 counties, while 21 mostly urban and tourist counties receive nothing. 

So not only will folks in Newton in Catawba County pay higher taxes and see none of the benefits, so will folks in places like Brunswick County and Cabarrus County as well as Durham and Winston-Salem and Charlotte. 

Everyone in the state will pay more the next time they have their shoes resoled or their flat tire fixed. And the majority of the people who pay the extra tax will not see it go to improve their local communities.

And guess what these 21 counties having their tax money taken all have in common?  If you said "A significantly higher percentage of black and Hispanic residents and college students" then you win!

So yes, it's literally tax money taken from the poorest people in my home state's largest Democratic stronghold cities to give to whiter, more Republican counties by state law, all for the purpose of giving the wealthiest one percent in North Carolina a huge income tax cut.

This is what Republicans do, folks.  And the people back home keep voting for them.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article35727654.html#storylink=cpy

The Plan For Planned Parenthood

Hillary Clinton gets a lot of crap over "campaign by focus group politics" and I don't honestly think that fair when that happens, but one issue that nobody can accuse her of wavering on is her unflinching support of Planned Parenthood. Clinton went on offense this week against Republicans trying to shut down the government over funding for the organization in a big way. Greg Sargent:

Clinton has defended Planned Parenthood before, but in the portion of the Des Moines Register interview in which she discussed the group, she telegraphed a more detailed response. Asked about the fetal tissue videos, Clinton immediately brushed off that part of the question, noting that fact-checkers had debunked claims (those made by Carly Fiorina) about the videos’ contents, suggesting that Republicans are “trying to inflame their base” against the group. She added:

“I will continue to defend Planned Parenthood, because services that Planned Parenthood provides are broad, and necessary for millions of American women. Five hundred thousand breast screening exams. A lot of other screening programs that are carried out. Family planning and contraceptive testing for HIV AIDS. 

“The Republicans have made it clear in recent years that they are not only opposed to abortion, which they have been for quite some time. They’re increasingly opposed to family planning and contraception. This is a direct assault on a woman’s right to choose health care. Forget about abortion, which is something that a limited number of Planned Parenthood facilities perform, with not a penny of federal money. 

“The money they want to cut off…is money that goes to health services. That is why it’s important that we continue to try to educate the public and draw a very clear line in defense of Planned Parenthood.” 

The Clinton camp appears to have calculated that an immediate pivot away from the videos and the controversial topic of abortion, and to the group’s role in providing a range of health services to women, is not hard to pull off. And that the politics of this battle are worse for Republicans over the long term, particularly for a general election.

This is absolutely the correct counter-attack Democrats should be making, and Clinton isn't the only one doing it of course, but she's arguably the most visible advocate for women right now for the Democrats, and she's doing the right thing.

Democrats need to make this argument, it's not about abortion or fetal tissue, it's about women, choices in their health care, and their bodies.