Ruth Marcus Says It's Okay to Stop Talking about Hillary's emails. Alrighty Then.

DC pundit policewoman Ruth Marcus: We're bored with all this email stuff, okay?

The Great and Powerful Ruth Marcus has spoken: We can ditch the email story and talk about policy:

A good deal of this is the candidate’s own fault — her decision to wipe the server, her prolonged insistence that she did nothing wrong — and could have been mitigated had she adopted a different tone and strategy at the start.

But much of it is the product of a 24/7 political and media culture that, once it gets itself spun up over something, has a hard time distinguishing degrees of culpability.

The irony here — the hypocrisy, if you’re feeling less charitable — is that throughout the Summer of E-mail, Clinton has been churning out the kind of serious policy proposals, on everything from college affordability to substance abuse to renewable energy, that we in the media purport to want from candidates.

Yes, Ruth, Hillary has been churning out serious policy proposals, and so has Bernie Sanders. What's missing from the policy discussion is the input of any consequence from the Republican side. Most GOP candidates offer thin gruel on their websites. Okay, Jeb Bush this week actually presented his tax-cut proposal. But that's not an actual policy position. One, it's an offer of tax cuts from a Republican in order to spur gobs of economic growth. Two, it also has those "unspecified loopholes" that he'll plug, once he gets around to saying what they are, something Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan never did, but, hey, that's what Republican candidates do, offer tax cuts and never really getting around to what they really mean except, as Atrios would say:

1. Tax cuts!
2. ???
3. Everyone is rich!

 The truth is that the national debt would balloon by $3.4 trillion or we'd need to cut, oh I don't know, Social Security? Medicaid and Medicare? Obamacare? You know it's not going to be defense spending.

So, to sum up:

1. Ruth says stop with the emails and pay attention to Hillary's policy proposals because she's put out a boatload of them.
2. We're still supposed to remember Hillary was so wrong about the email, even if it's seems that maybe she didn't do anything wrong at all and this is a faux scandal. Ruth says faux scandals and how you handle them is a character issue, and Hillary has a flawed character because she didn't do anything wrong except the way she didn't do anything wrong was wrong. Wow, that's sort of it, isn't it?
3. Okay, I did sort of go on a rant about Jeb!'s tax cut proposal because we all know it's a payoff to his rich buddies (and himself) and was TOTALLY EXPECTED and then he did it. And this makes him special, uh, how?

Remember the rule with Bushes is: Don't do what Poppy did -- raise taxes -- or you'll lose a presidential election, maybe even to a Clinton.

Yes, Poppy, we did read your lips.

 Bonus comment from Ruth Marcus article:

eddiehaskall1

8:11 AM PST

Ruth, Hillary is a liar and under criminal investigation by the FBI recommended from 2 impartial inspector generals. Why would you want someone with that cloud for president. Ruth I believe you and many of your Demorat idiots will vote for Hillary while she is serving 3 to 5 in San Quentin

Sheesh, Dude can't even spell his own handle.

Final thought: Ruth has spoken, but do you think the email (non-)scandal will end now?

The Jeb! Tax Cuts: Same as the Old Tax Cuts. $3.4 Trillion Added to the Debt.

Whaddya mean my tax cuts didn't work? They worked for my people.

Finally some real policy ideas out of Jeb Bush, and what do we get? Tax cuts, mostly for business and the wealthy -- with just enough tax credits for the poor to bamboozle the plebeians -- that will explode the debt. Of course, there's the voodoo magical reasoning that tax cuts will grow the economy by letting loose the power of the job creators, which, er, never happens, but whatever.

That's a giant whatever. Read about it at Daily Kos, and read about it at Paul Krugman's joint. Hell, even the Washington Post couldn't find much to like:

The plan would add $1.2 trillion to the deficit, even when using a system favored by Republicans that takes into account any potential growth the tax changes could encourage, according to Republican economists who reviewed the plan on Bush's behalf. The plan would lose closer to $3.4 trillion using traditional methods.

Given the high price tag and some of the details, Bush's tax plan is fraught with political peril. His brother, former president George W. Bush, focused much of his 2000 presidential campaign on plans to slash taxes and jump-start economic growth. Those tax cuts contributed to the record deficit spending that even Jeb Bush criticized Tuesday night on Stephen Colbert's new late-night talk show. In 2012, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney had similar ideas on tax reform that were widely dismissed by voters, who believed he was pushing policies that would mostly help wealthy people.

New bullshit, same as the old bullshit. We get that. But what's Jeb's point, that he can walk and talk like Mitt Romney and then lose like Mitt Romney?

Don't Republicans EVER have an original thought?

I'm a Bush son. Whaddya expect? Look what happened when Dad raised taxes.

Trump, the Champion of the Angry White, Should Court the Black Vote?

The African-American voter: Trump's ace in the hole?

Okay, um, no. But Bruce Bartlett -- a rational Republican voice -- believes otherwise:

Sooner or later, Republicans will recognize that the party’s negative image among Hispanics will keep it out of the White House indefinitely unless a new source of non-white votes can be found to replace the declining share of whites in the population. The original idea of Republican leaders was to enact immigration reform to neutralize Hispanic hostility, but Trump’s success, as well as the endorsement of his immigration views by other GOP candidates such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, makes that impossible for now. So if Republicans are stuck with an anti-immigrant message, they may as well use it to their advantage by reaching out to the black community, where it could resonate in an election in which the nominees of both parties will almost certainly be white.

I get it, I really do, that blacks might think that Latinos steal their jobs. Could a GOP candidate, presumably Donald Trump, successfully court the black vote by using a harsh immigration stand as proof that he's on the side of the blacks as far as jobs go?

Sure, in one of those alternate universes I've been hearing about.

Maybe it's feasible, but it would take a few election cycles of trashing Latino immigrants while actively working to convince a very dubious African-American community that the GOP -- not the Democrats -- are their true friends. Good luck with that.

Especially after what Steve Schmidt -- another relatively sane Republican -- said to NPR last Friday:

How is Trump getting so far in GOP? Steve Schmidt tells @MaraLiasson it's not about the issues. @MorningEdition @NPR pic.twitter.com/FEBFhmmEXc

— Steve Inskeep (@NPRinskeep) September 4, 2015

That contempt and anger is primarily white. It's what greases the grooves of Trump's appeal. Openly court blacks and keep the angry white vote on your side? That's a coalition too far, if you ask me. But, hey, go for it.

Yes, Donald Trump's Poll Numbers Show the GOP Is the Party of Frightened, Angry Whites.

Donald Trump, Great White Hope.

Oh, what to make of this Trump insurgency. Donald Trump is larger than life, even if only in a cartoonish, bloviating kind of way. And you can't say that he owes his success to his inheritance because a lot of kids inherit money and implode. If my dad gave me millions of dollars instead of decades of contempt -- that's another story -- would I have done as well? I don't know, but Donald Trump isn't an asshole because he took dad's money and turned it into billions.

But the fact is Trump's an asshole, but as is commonly said, he's our asshole. And that's why he's leading in the polls. He went and said it: Mexicans came here, they're brown-skinned, stealing our jobs, and, yes, raping our women. Trump will put a stop to that.

And women! For God's sake, Trump will deal with the women. As he might put it, he's been "hugely successful with women, women love me!" But he drips with that special venom of putting the women in their place. If you don't read him that way, you're either deluded or not a fan. His fans think he'll put women back in their place. You know it and I know it.

Some women like him. Sure. White women -- just like the Duggar women -- believe they're supposed to be put in their place. It's God's will. Single, college-educated women, not so much.

So there it is. There's a constituency of frightened, pissed-off whites who blame blacks, Mexicans, women and, hell, Muslims, of course, for the ills of the U.S. of A. And, for now, Trump's their man. Their angry, white man. For now.

And that's your 2015 Republican Party base. If you think I'm wrong, you're in denial. Then again, maybe I'm engaging in wishful thinking, hoping this means the GOP is going to blow up, and then they won't, and I'm screwed. But my money's on the GOP blowing up in 2016, with me watching the expected "autopsy." Won't that be fun?

Autopsy this, Priebus.

Rick Perry's Candidacy Over? Uh, When Did It Start?

There's only going to be one Republican candidate for president. So, a bunch of people are going to be disappointed. Rick Perry was a real candidate? Nah. So his being "out" isn't a shocker.

It's funny. For those of us who didn't like him, his demise is somehow heartening. Why? I really don't know, any more than I knew how he ever became governor of such a large state. Doesn't say much for Texas, does it?

Bu-bye, Rickums. Don't let the Department of Energy hit you in the ass on your way out.

Huckabee, Cruz, Walker, Paul and the Neanderthal Caucus

From left to right: Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz.
Not pictured: Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul.

Update. More hedging than I thought. Most GOP candidates say "she should follow the law, but it should be possible to not follow the law, maybe." Gutsy!

For all I know, there are other GOP candidates for president that are also in the newly assembled Neanderthal Caucus on religious rights. It's hard to say what any of them believe, or purport to believe, at any one time.

Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and Scott Walker all took up recalcitrant Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis' cause against gay marriage. And there's Bobby Jindal, who's running for the Most Christian Indian Ever as well as for president. I'd quote him, but you'd bust too much of a gut. Okay, he said God created America or something. That's pretty Neanderthal.

The rest of the GOP field says nothing or jumbles up a sort of what-the-fuck-did-he-say response. Lindsey Graham and Carly Fiorina seemed to straight-ahead say follow the law, dammit. Even Antonin Scalia is on the record saying, "I don't care if it's your religion, peyote is illegal, so knock it off!"

I shouldn't have to explain it, but here's the deal: the First Amendment doesn't guarantee religious freedom per se. It says in order to guarantee freedom to follow your religion, the State chooses not to choose a religion. Get it? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof." Therefore, in the context of the State, there is no religion.

So Kim Davis, private citizen, can do her religion, as long as it harms no one, supposedly even herself. (She can't say, "My religion says I can shoot myself in the head, so I'm free to do it."). But Kim Davis, as representative of the State, is not free to let her religion, which is not established by the State, trump laws enacted by the State.

This has been established law for a long time -- hell, it was made clear back in the time of the founding fathers -- and shouldn't be a mystery to any American, except willfully ignorant or manipulative ones.

Thus those who believe otherwise are definitely Neanderthals. So, stay the hell out of government.

I might as well add that religion is superstition and, from my perspective, totally blows hard. So it's no wonder I have little sympathy for those who live in the past, like the way, way past.

How much longer is this obsession with Moses and Issac and Abraham and all the other people that actually like totally knew God back in the day, I'm mean how much longer, huh, is this going to go on? I guess here in modern-day 21st-century America we're just getting warmed up. Sheesh...

Is UK Poverty Mirroring Our Own?

Child poverty in Glasgow, Scotland, reaches 43% in some depressed areas.

Note. While reading all this below, keep in mind the "special relationship" long touted between the UK and the US.

Caught a link in an Atrios post that highlighted the crush of poverty -- and low wages -- in David Cameron's austere UK. Here's what it looks like across the pond:

Commenting on the actions and choices of those in poverty seems to have become a national sport. It’s rare to ever have a discussion about economic hardship in Britain without a bystander or internet commenter leaning forward and opining “But they’ve all got flatscreen TVs and smoke cigarettes.” The economic choices of the very poorest are seen as ripe for public dissection.

But the psychological consequences of poverty are discussed far less. Oxford University and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have released a study that goes some way to silencing those who would argue poverty is simply a moral failing. The newly released Household Below Average Income figures for 2013/14 show no progress whatsoever on poverty rates, and a slim increase in child poverty and working families earning less than they need: so poverty is here to stay.

When facing poverty, the researchers found, individuals enter a “scarcity mindset”. When focused on short-term survival, your decision-making ability is scrambled and your attention span narrowed. The attendant worry means long–term planning and the completion of peripheral, routine tasks is downgraded as the immediate future becomes the only focus. Debt counsellors have found this for years, with people in debt struggling to understand how they ended up like that, only knowing that many short-term financial crises snowballed.

The "internet commenters" citing the poor having flatscreen TVs and cigarettes reminds me of Fox News commentators decrying the American poor who have refrigerators and cell phones. Oh, the temerity of the loser class to have items the middle class possess. Clearly the poor of Glasgow pictured above have their nerve wearing what appears to be decent shoes. And they call themselves poor?

It's no wonder, then, that we find articles in the British press condemning "dysfunctional families" for costing the taxpayers so many billions of pounds a year. Conservative UK reaction? Cut benefits! Oh, the inhumanity of the poor who won't fix themselves and get off the dole.

Britain’s problem families are costing taxpayers a whopping £30billion a year, it was claimed today.

The dysfunctional behaviour of half a million households in the country is resulting in a major drain on public resources, with the size of our ‘underclass’ four times larger than first thought.

Ministers have demanded an end to the ‘it’s not my fault’ culture which has allowed up to 120,000 problem families to avoid taking responsibility for their own lives.

It's good to see the Brits despise their poor just the way we hate our own losers. It's heartwarming to see that the Tories are hell-bent -- as our loving and compassionate Republicans -- on cutting the societal cost of our irresponsible "it's not my fault" culture. Yet we've known, just as the Brits have known, that poverty begets poverty as young brains wither on the vine before they get a chance to graduate from dysfunctional families:

Children raised in poverty or in orphanages experience chronic stress early in life that can have long-lasting effects on the brain, setting them up for future mental and physical ailments as adults, two studies found.

The stress of poverty may affect regions in a child’s brain that control emotion, according to research published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A second study found that children who had lived in an orphanage were more anxious than those who hadn’t.

In childhood, the brain is still immature and developing rapidly so it is more sensitive to high-stress situations than an adult brain, said Pilyoung Kim, lead study author of the childhood poverty study. The findings from both papers suggest that early intervention programs to address chronic stress may benefit these children, the authors said.

“Long-term exposure to chronic stress is likely to cause wear and tear in children’s physical and psychological systems for coping with stress over time,” said Kim, an assistant professor and director of the Family and Child Neuroscience Lab at the University of Denver, in an Oct. 20 e-mail. “Living in poverty at a young age can cause long-lasting changes in brain development, which contribute to difficulties in regulating of emotions and future devastating health outcomes, including mental illness and high mortality and morbidity in adulthood.”

Science can study these effects and we can have evidence and yet more evidence that we, both here and across the Atlantic, actually grow our impoverished classes with no hope of escape. But of course it's their own fault. Just as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan condemn the "47 percent," so do David Cameron and George Osborne do the same from their Tory perches.

Some British pundits pause long enough to see that the beloved British austerity is destructive:

The world falls in. For some unlucky people, the ceiling cracks, mould appears and there is some kind of warning that something might be happening. For others, the roof comes crashing down. It’s sudden and unexpected until one is rooting through the rubble of an old life trying to find a new one.

Accounts of what it is like to be poor mount up around us like unopened bills. Sometimes people spiral down because of benefit sanctions, a sudden rent increase, an illness. Things like a faulty boiler can tip someone from “managing” to “really not managing”. Once you have been poor, you always fear it. When people talk about their high-powered, high-stress jobs, I often wonder if they even know what stress is. To not have when others have is not just a material lack; it is to live with your children in constant anxiety.

So, for the festive season, we hear a lot about food banks. They are necessary, but they also function as the most tangible symbol of the cognitive dissonance that passes for political discourse. We live in the sixth-richest country in the world, yet the poorest among us have to live on handouts from charities. The choice that this represents is seen as a fact of life – like all inequality these days. Some choose to be rich and some choose to be poor. The poor often make themselves worse off by poor choices, apparently. Then their worlds can fall in and things no longer work at all, just like the cheap fairy lights these kind of people buy.

Once you have been poor, you always fear it. But for conservatives in America or the UK, when budget time comes, they look for yet another program to trim, another service to "defund," another social safety net that someone somewhere must be gaming with their TVs, refrigerators, and cell phones, and shoes too decent for their "class." It's galling. If they're not barefoot, they must be welfare cheats who need a benefits cut or they'll never understand how to do for themselves. Still, the UK keeps growing its poor:

One in five British children live below the poverty line with the number rising to nearly half in the most deprived areas of Manchester, according to research released today.

The Campaign to End Child Poverty published figures today showing that 20.2 per cent of British children are classified as below the poverty line, before housing costs.

In eight areas of large cities, more than four out of every 10 children lived in poverty in 2012, the research showed.

Remind you of anywhere in the U.S.?

A Baltimore neighborhood. Today. Let's cut benefits to help them, like the Brits.

 And, yes, we've already cut benefits. We also got rid of those pesky unemployment benefits extensions. And why not? The poor, it turns out don't suffer nearly enough.

Fox News, such a poor-friendly station. I looked for the British equivalent and couldn't find one, so here's a real look at expanding poverty under the Cameron-Osborne government, after which I offer the top comment on the YouTube page:

Here's one viewer's reaction:

After spending their money on cars, boozing, computers, mobile phones, plasma televisions and buying their kids designer clothes etc., it's hardly surprising that benefits dependents have little money left to buy food.I can only praise the food banks for getting these wasters off the backs of hard working tax payers.

For giggles, read more. The Brits are as nasty a bunch as our own "poors are losers" crowd.