A place were I can write...

My simple blog of pictures of travel, friends, activities and the Universe we live in as we go slowly around the Sun.



July 29, 2016

Comanche Crushes

Comanche Crushes Atlantic Record

July 29, 2016 – Lizard Point, UK

Just a week after Rio100 broke Mari Cha IV's Hawaii race record in the Pacific Cup race, another record formerly held by the famous 139-foot yacht has also fallen — this time in the Atlantic Ocean. Jim and Kristy Clarke's 100-foot VPLP-designed super-maxi Comanche has knocked more than 1 day and 3 hours off of Mari Cha IV's west-to-east transatlantic record for monohulls, dropping the reference time to an astounding 5 days, 14 hours, 21 minutes 25 seconds. As has become the norm for the all-conquering American-owned and American-built racing yacht, Bay Area native Stan Honey was calling the shots as navigator. He put the boat in the right place at the right time to benefit from the best possible conditions on the leading edge of a low-pressure system.

Having been on standby for much of the summer, and nearly leaving on three separate occasions, the team decided to pull the trigger and depart New York in the late afternoon on July 22 to make the most of the promising weather window. Once they got out to sea, conditions did prove ideal, with strong breeze from a good angle and flat seas: perfect record breaking conditions. The world-class crew of 17 sailors had several fill-ins, as key crew members, including skipper Ken Read and helmsman Jimmy Spithill, were in England for an America's Cup obligation. Even without them, the crew sailed the boat flawlessly and reportedly encountered no equipment failures and very little drama along the way. At 12:19:41 UTC on July 28, Comanche passed Lizard Point (UK) to complete the 2,880-nautical-mile route and claim the record. (To become official, the new benchmark must be ratified by World Sailing Speed Record Council.)

Navigator Stan Honey explains the magic of the weather window that allowed them to smash the record by not just hours, but more than a day, "There are only about two weather windows a year where a monohull can make it all the way across the Atlantic in one system, and we found one of them. Beating this record by more than a day is above my expectations and I am delighted."

The power-reaching conditions and transatlantic record-setting scenario are almost exactly what Comanche was built for. With this record, she has now taken line honors in every race entered but one: her first Sydney Hobart. But she now holds a Sydney Hobart line-honors victory (2015), the 24-hour monohull speed record and four ocean records.

- ronnie simpson

78 times

All 78 times Clinton ripped Trump in her DNC address

The GOP nominee actually understated the number of times she invoked his name.

By Nolan D. McCaskill

Donald Trump is known for many things. Understatement is not one of them.

Nevertheless, while bashing Hillary Clinton's speech to the Democratic National Convention and accusing her of making it all about him, he dramatically undershot the number of times he was mentioned. Ripping a Clinton speech in which she declared him unfit for the presidency, Trump offered a count of the number of times the Democratic nominee invoked his name.

“Crooked Hillary Clinton mentioned me 22 times in her very long and very boring speech,” Trump tweeted. “Many of her statements were lies and fabrications!”

While POLITICO had already fact-checked Clinton’s speech, a POLITICO analysis of Trump’s claim Friday found that the actual count is far higher: Clinton either mentioned Trump — directly by name or with references of “he” and “him” — or alluded to him, his controversial polices or his disposition, at least 78 times, including a line that was still making waves the morning after: “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

Here are all 78 references to Trump, direct or otherwise:

Direct mentions of Donald, Trump, he and him

1. Well, we heard Donald Trump's answer last week at his convention.

2. He wants to divide us — from the rest of the world, and from each other.

3. He’s betting that the perils of today's world will blind us to its unlimited promise.

4. He's taken the Republican Party a long way... from “Morning in America” to “Midnight in America.”

5. He wants us to fear the future and fear each other.

6. Well, a great Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than eighty years ago, during a much more perilous time.

7. Those were actually Donald Trump's words in Cleveland.

8. Isn’t he forgetting?

9. He’s forgetting every last one of us.

10. Now, you didn’t hear any of this from Donald Trump at his convention.

11. He spoke for 70-odd minutes — and I do mean odd.

12. And he offered zero solutions. 

13. But we already know he doesn’t believe these things.

14. No wonder he doesn’t like talking about his plans.

15. It’s just not right that Donald Trump can ignore his debts, but students and families can't refinance theirs.

16. But Trump…

17. he's a businessman. 

18. He must know something about the economy.

19. In Atlantic City, 60 miles from here, you’ll find contractors and small businesses who lost everything because Donald Trump refused to pay his bills.

20. People who did the work and needed the money, and didn't get it — not because he couldn't pay them… 

21. but because he wouldn't pay them.

22. That sales pitch he’s making to be your president? 

23. Put your faith in him – and you'll win big? 

24. That’s the same sales pitch he made to all those small businesses. 

25. Then Trump walked away, and left working people holding the bag.

26. He also talks a big game about putting America First. 

27. Please explain to me what part of America First leads him… 

28. to make Trump ties in China, not Colorado.

29. Trump suits in Mexico, not Michigan.

30. Trump furniture in Turkey, not Ohio. 

31. Trump picture frames in India, not Wisconsin.

32. Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again…

33. well, he could start by actually making things in America again.

34. Now Donald Trump says, and this is a quote, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do….”

35. No, Donald, you don't.

36. He thinks… 

37. that he knows more than our military…

38. because he claimed our armed forces are “a disaster.”

39. I know how wrong he is. 

40. Ask yourself: Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief?

41. Donald Trump can't even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign.

42. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. 

43. When he’s gotten a tough question from a reporter. 

44. When he's challenged in a debate. 

45. When he sees a protestor at a rally.

46. Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. 

47. For the past year, many people made the mistake of laughing off Donald Trump's comments… 

48. excusing him as an entertainer just putting on a show.

49. They think he couldn't possibly mean…

50. all the horrible things he says… 

51. like when he called women “pigs.” 

52. Or when he mocks and mimics a reporter with a disability.

53. At first, I admit, I couldn't believe he meant it either.

54. But here's the sad truth: There is no other Donald Trump...This is it.

55. And in the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump doesn't get: that America is great – because America is good.

56. Donald Trump's not offering real change.

57. He's offering empty promises. 

Indirect jabs at Trump, his controversial proposals and rhetoric

58. We will not build a wall.

59. We will not ban a religion.

60. So don't let anyone tell you that our country is weak.

61. Don't let anyone tell you we don't have what it takes.

62. And most of all, don't believe anyone who says: “I alone can fix it.”

63. Americans don't say: “I alone can fix it.”

64. And yes, love trumps hate.

65. It's true... I sweat the details of policy…Because it's not just a detail if it's your kid — if it's your family.

66. It's a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president.

67. It's wrong to take tax breaks with one hand and give out pink slips with the other.

68. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

69. America's strength doesn't come from lashing out.

70. And if we're serious about keeping our country safe, we also can't afford to have a President who's in the pocket of the gun lobby.

71. And we will stand up against mean and divisive rhetoric wherever it comes from.

72. Or said that an American judge couldn't be fair because of his Mexican heritage.

73. Or insults prisoners of war like John McCain — a true hero and patriot who deserves our respect.

74. It was just too hard to fathom – that someone who wants to lead our nation could say those things. Could be like that.

75. None of us can do it alone.

76. So enough with the bigotry and bombast.

77. You have to stand up to bullies.

78. When we do, America will be greater than ever.

A theme day...














Still registered to vote?

Are you still registered to vote? A court fight might decide

By Dan Horn

Ohio voters who haven’t cast a ballot in the past six years could be out of luck if they go back to the polls in November.

The state is preparing to purge voter registration rolls of everyone who hasn’t voted since 2010, unless they’ve updated their registration or responded to queries seeking to confirm their address.

Opponents of the annual purge went to court Wednesday in Cincinnati to stop it, arguing it could violate the rights of tens of thousands of Ohioans who should be eligible to vote.

As always in an election year, the stakes are especially high in Ohio. The swing state could be crucial in a close presidential election this fall, and partisans on both sides are closely watching the case.

Adding to the drama is uncertainty over the fate of voters who already have been purged from the rolls, including those who last voted in 2008, the year Barack Obama first won the presidency.

Because huge voter registration drives occurred that year, some Democrats worry their party will be hurt if those voters return to the polls this year only to find they can’t cast a ballot.

A Reuters analysis found that as many as 144,000 names were struck from Ohio’s voter rolls in last year's purge.

“This is a major issue,” said Mike Brickner, a senior policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Ohio. “The mere fact that a person has not voted should not be the trigger for removing them from the rolls.”

The ACLU and the advocacy group Demos sued Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted over the purge, and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief supporting their arguments.

A federal judge ruled against them earlier this year, but they took their case to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Wednesday.

Husted, who oversees Ohio's elections, says he’s just doing his job and is enforcing the same law that previous secretaries of state have enforced for more than two decades.

Maintaining accurate registration records, his lawyers say, is necessary to protect the integrity of the system and to prevent voter fraud.

“Not having a process like this at all would be a violation of federal law,” said Josh Eck, Husted’s spokesman.

While both sides agree the state needs some process for keeping its voter rolls accurate, the ACLU and others argue Ohio’s method is more aggressive than most.

Only a few states have used a failure to vote as the trigger to knock someone off the voter rolls, said Stuart Naifeh, an attorney with Demos. Most states, he said, rely on the postal change-of-address system to identify registered voters who may have moved and, therefore, have become ineligible to vote under the addresses listed on their registration.

In court Wednesday, Naifeh told a panel of three 6th Circuit judges that Ohio relies on a failure to vote in six years as a trigger to start the process of removal. He said that violates federal law barring removal solely because of a failure to vote.

He said that’s what happened to the ACLU’s client in the case, a Portage County resident who attempted to vote in 2015 after years of inactivity. His address hadn’t changed, but he was not considered an eligible voter.

Under the law, Naifeh said, the state can use a failure to vote to help confirm a voter’s ineligibility, but it cannot use it to begin the process of removal.

“You have to have evidence of a move,” Naifeh said. “A failure to vote can’t be the first step.”

Husted’s lawyer, however, told the judges that the failure to vote is only part of the process. He said voters also are sent a postcard alerting them to the possibility they will be purged from the rolls if they do not confirm their address is correct.

Voters also have the opportunity to update their registration when they renew their driver’s licenses, Eck said, and they periodically receive other notices in the mail from the secretary of state, including absentee ballot applications.

“What all of this is driven by … is maintaining accurate voting records,” said Mike Hendershot, Husted’s lawyer.

The big question in the case is how to interpret two federal laws, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. The laws require states to expand and simplify the voter registration process, but also to ensure voter rolls include only eligible voters.

Like many election year legal fights, this one is partisan. Democrats say a more aggressive purge process hurts poor and minority voters, while Republicans say the integrity of the system is at stake.

“I agree wholeheartedly with Secretary Husted,” said Alex Triantafilou, Hamilton County’s GOP chairman and a member of the board of elections. “It’s completely normal to purge the voter rolls to avoid all the problems that go with it.”

Democrats, though, say those problems often are exaggerated. They say in-person voter fraud is rare and efforts to purge registrations and to require voter ID cards do more harm than good.

Husted doesn’t dispute fraud is rare, but has said it’s important to stay vigilant.

In the last presidential election, during which 5.6 million Ohioans voted, Husted’s post-election voter fraud report found 135 cases of potential fraud had been referred to law enforcement for investigation.

“More people are being purged than probably should be,” said Tim Burke, the county’s Democratic Party chairman, who also is a member of the board of elections.

He and other opponents of Ohio’s process want the judges to stop the state from purging the rolls under the current system and to allow eligible voters who have been purged under that system to cast ballots in November.

The three 6th Circuit judges quizzed both sides about the case Wednesday, but they could take weeks to make a decision.

Judges Eugene Siler Jr. and Julia Smith Gibbons were appointed by presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, respectively. Judge Eric Clay was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

Most Progressive

“Most Progressive Dem Platform in History” Disturbingly Hawkish on Foreign Policy

The Party's official worldview does not line up with that of voters.

By Stephen Zunes

The Democratic Party platform may indeed be, as some have proclaimed, the “most progressive” in the history of the party — at least on various important domestic issues. But some of its foreign policy planks reflect a disturbingly hawkish worldview consistent with those of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Declaring that “we must defeat ISIS, al-Qaeda and their affiliates,” the platform calls for the United States and its allies to “destroy ISIS” strongholds in Iraq and Syria. There is no acknowledgement that these strongholds are in heavily populated urban areas, thereby risking large-scale civilian casualties, and no mention that the rise of these extremist organizations are a direct consequence of previous US military interventions in the region.

Regarding Iran, while there are many legitimate criticisms of that country’s reactionary regime, the platform appears to go overboard with its accusations, such as the claim that “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism.” Many analysts would give that designation to Saudi Arabia, with whom the platform says the US should “strengthen its security cooperation.”

It also says the party will “push back” against Iran’s “support for terrorist groups like Hamas.” While there was a brief period of some limited past Iranian support of that Palestinian Islamist organization, there is no apparent evidence that it continues. Indeed, there are major tensions between Hamas and Iran, including support for opposite sides in the Syrian civil war. (By contrast, there is fair amount of evidence that Qatar — a US ally — does provide support for Hamas, but there is no mention of that.)

It also portrays some of the bizarre statements of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — such as his denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jews — as current government policy. (Interestingly, there is nothing in the platform regarding the ongoing denial by Turkey of the Ottomans’ genocide of the Armenians.)

The platform insists that Iran “has its fingerprints on almost every conflict in the Middle East,” ignoring the fact that in regard to the important conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is on the same side as the United States.

Most disturbingly, while endorsing the United Nations-backed seven-party nuclear agreement, the platform claims that the party “will not hesitate to take military action if Iran violates the agreement.” Such a unilateral attack would constitute a direct violation of the UN Charter.

The Democrats are taking the position that the United States and its allies (Israel, Pakistan and India) somehow have the right to maintain their nuclear monopoly in the region, but that any non-allied country that seeks to develop the technological infrastructure to potentially challenge this monopoly should be attacked.

Perhaps the most disappointing plank in the platform is in regard to Israel and Palestine.

Clinton and her representatives in the platform committee defeated a measure calling for an end of Israel’s occupation and illegal settlements. Indeed, the platform pegs challenges to the occupation and settlements by the United Nations and others as efforts to “delegitimize Israel.” This is particularly problematic language since, under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department formally listed efforts to “delegitimize” Israel as part of its definition of anti-Semitism.

And rather than saying Israel should have a strong enough military to defend itself from potential adversaries, it instead insists that Israel be provided a “qualitatively military edge.”

And even though the Obama administration — like all previous administrations — refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, the platform states that Jerusalem “should remain the capital of Israel.” It says nothing about Palestinian aspirations that it serve as the capital of their country as well.

In addition, stating that Jerusalem remain “accessible to people of all faiths” ignores the fact that Israeli occupation authorities have made it is extremely difficult for Muslim and Christian Palestinians in the West Bank to have access to the holy sites in the Old City and impossible for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The platform praises Israel’s supposed “democracy, equality, tolerance, and pluralism” — which would be news for the country’s Palestinian minority and those Palestinians living under direct military occupation or in forced exile. It calls on the Palestinians to negotiate an agreement that “guarantees Israel’s future” as a “Jewish state,” making it the world’s first peace treaty in which one party is obliged to recognize another country’s ethnic or religious identity over that of others.

Whatever the problems with the Democrat’s foreign policy planks, the Republican platform is far worse. To give but a few examples: the Republicans call for dramatic increases in the already-bloated military budget; insist on abrogating the Iran nuclear deal; make no mention of Palestinian rights; and declare “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier.”

It is still disappointing, however, that — despite polls showing the Democrats and independents are more progressive on foreign policy issues than at any time in recent history — the Democratic Party platform skews so far to the right.

Trump's website taken down

Melania Trump's website taken down amid controversy

By Lucy Price and Karen Yuan

Melania Trump announced Thursday that she took down her website, acknowledging that it contained inaccuracies.

"The website in question was created in 2012 and has been removed because it does not accurately reflect my current business and professional interests," she tweeted. She did not provide further comment or address specific inaccuracies.

Now, visitors to www.melaniatrump.com are redirected to www.trump.com, replete with pictures of the Republican presidential nominee's sprawling golf courses and five-star hotels.

The Huffington Post was the first to report this story.

The former model's website had claimed that she received an undergraduate degree in Slovenia. But a biography of the potential first lady's life, "Melania Trump: The Inside Story," asserted that Trump gave up schooling after just one year in order to focus on her burgeoning modeling career.

Internet archives from 2012 show that Trump's website, which featured her name in large and gleaming gold script against a black background, included the text: "After obtaining a degree in design and architecture at University in Slovenia, Melania was jetting between photo shoots in Paris and Milan, finally settling in New York in 1996."

It was unclear what prompted the website's removal. But the revelation comes after her speech at the Republican National Convention last week plagiarized parts of Michelle Obama's 2008 address at the Democratic National Convention.

Disparaged him...

Trump says he would like to 'hit' DNC speakers who disparaged him

By Ashley Killough

Donald Trump, after hearing speeches at the Democratic convention this week, said Thursday he wanted to "hit a number of those speakers so hard, their heads would spin."

"They'd never recover," he said.

Trump often uses the term "hit" to mean verbally attack, rather than physical contact.

The Republican nominee zoomed in on one speaker especially, though he didn't mention his name.

"I was going to hit one guy in particular, a very little guy," Trump said to laughs at a campaign rally in Davenport, Iowa. "I was going to hit this guy so hard his head would spin, he wouldn't know what the hell happened."

Trump said this individual "came out of nowhere" and had done work with Trump in the past. "He made deals with me. 'Will you help me with this? Would you make this deal and solve the problem?' I solved the problem," Trump said.

His campaign did not respond to a request asking to clarify who Trump was talking about.

Several speakers this week have gone after Trump in Philadelphia, including Michael Bloomberg. The former New York City mayor made a surprise endorsement over the weekend for Hillary Clinton, and described Trump in his DNC speech Wednesday night as a "dangerous demagogue."

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine also targeted Trump, mocking the businessman's tendency to accentuate his promises with a plea of "believe me."

"He said a lot of things about me, I never met the guy," Trump said. "I mean the things that were said about me. I mean, should I go through some of the names?"

Trump recalled telling a friend this week that he wanted to retaliate against the people who slammed him at the convention, mentioning current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio by name.

"I was going to say that de Blasio is the worst mayor in the history of the city, but I didn't say it," Trump said to laughs. "He's a terrible mayor. I was going to say that, but now I won't say it."

Trump said his friend, who he labeled a "very great governor," urged him to stay focused on attacking Clinton, not other Democrats.

"He said, 'Don't hit there. Don't hit down. You have one person to beat. It's Hillary Rodham Clinton,'" Trump recalled, adding that he initially objected to the advice. "I said, 'But I really want to. I don't like what they're saying because a lot of it is lies. Not all of it but a lot of it is.' I said, 'I just really ... it makes me feel good.' "

Ultimately, he said, he conceded and decided not to launch into verbal assaults against the Democrats.

"But every once in a while I still wake up, I say 'boy, I wanna,'" Trump said, growling as he stopped himself from saying more. "Someday!"

U.S. military's troop deployment

How to rethink the U.S. military's troop deployment policy

Rotating soldiers every few months is a recipe for failure. Here's a better way.

By John Spencer

Baghdad Iraq 2008. I could see the resentment in the police chief’s eyes. He greeted me with subtle contempt. Don’t blame him. I was the eighth American commander he had met in the past five years.

Over the past 15 years, Iraqi and Afghan police, army, tribal and government leaders have had to build relationships with new military leaders every three, six, nine, or 12 months. Each new soldier comes in, introduces himself and says “I’m here to help.” The words are genuine but the frequent rotation of U.S. military personnel means the trust, rapport and progress are short-lived.

With his recent announcement that 8,400 soldiers will remain in Afghanistan in 2017 and further troop increases in Iraq, President Barack Obama is certain to leave a significant on-the-ground military presence in the Middle East. As a new president enters office and assesses the U.S.’s military strategy, it’s time to reevaluate our deployment schedule for U.S. soldiers. How is a military built around 12-month rotations able to retain knowledge about the local area and build relationships overseas?

Memory is the most essential requirement of learning. It is how we both store and recall information for later use. Research shows without a memory there is no learning. This applies to people as much as organizations. Memory, as the military expert Richard Downie notes, is “what old members of an organization know and what new members learn through a process of socialization.”

As a new company commander in Baghdad I was given responsibility of three neighborhoods. I quickly went around and met all of the key players in each area. These included an Iraqi Army commander, local government council and two police chiefs. I also had to learn the physical terrain of the area—what roads lead to a dead end, where were the neighborhood hangouts. Oh, and also where the bad guys were.

By now most Americans are familiar with the mantra that information and relationships in counterinsurgencies are as, if not more, important then finding bad guys to kill or capture. But despite that, U.S. military forces have never changed the method or technique of organizing and manning units to maintain continuity of information and relationships.

For example, when U.S. combat forces rotate in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan they do so mainly as groups of approximately 4,000 soldiers. Each time this rotation happens, the outgoing soldiers take about two weeks to show the new guys around. This includes going around and meeting all the key leaders in their area. When the old crew leaves they not only take everything they brought—weapons, computers and luggage—but also everything they learned. It is literally like hitting the reset button every nine to 12 months. For Iraqis or Afghans, it must seem like being stuck in a real-world version of the movies "Groundhog Day" and "Memento."

The military also keeps no record of the individual knowledge or relationships built by soldiers. A soldier’s records will include only the city and country they were deployed to—such as Baghdad, Iraq. There is no record of who they worked with or the specific areas with which they become intimately familiar. Since each area has its own key players and intricacies, maintaining records of only city and state is like only knowing someone worked in New York City.

There are multiple alternatives to switching hundreds to thousands of soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan at a time. Think of the difference between changing out individual players in a basketball game compared to line changes in a hockey game.

While a member of the 2006 Iraqi Study Group, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended that military battalion commanders and above not rotate out of the combat zone during critical periods of a campaign. Commanders at multiple levels could be switched out on different rotations rather than the larger groups of soldiers with the goal of minimizing the disruption to the units.

An alternative to switching everyone out as a large group is switching soldiers out individually. Opponents say such a change would hurt unit cohesion and small group performance, as happened during the Vietnam War.

But the intimate bonding between soldiers that leads to increased combat performance happens at the small group level of nine to 40 soldiers. It does not happen in groups of thousands. Depending on the mission, the same can be said for collective training and readiness certifications.

The level of cohesion, training and readiness of small groups shouldn’t be the sole guide to rotational policies. But the question of how to maintain information, relationships and progress must be included in the calculation.

There is precedence for maintaining units in critical areas for long periods. In South Korea, for example, where tens of thousands of U.S. forces are deployed, a single command and unit was stationed for almost 50 years with soldiers rotating in and out of the base on an individual basis. This rotation policy allowed the unit to retain and transfer important collective knowledge between rotating soldiers and arguably made it more effective.

To be sure, the length of combat deployments comes at a high cost to soldiers and their families. Dragging out individual soldiers’ tours of duty longer is not the solution. But the structure and methods by which we deploy soldiers into combat should be reassessed.

There must be a middle ground of individual replacements to complete unit replacements that allows for the maximum continuity of information and relationships. If we keep hitting the reset button, we will make little progress in these wars.

This September marks 15 years since the attacks of 9/11. There is a popular saying that “we haven’t fought the wars overseas for the past 15 years. We’ve fought them one year at a time for the past 15 years.” Learning without retaining memories is a recipe for failure. If we do not change the way we deploy our forces, the next 15 years will look much the same as the past 15.

Federal Reserve

The economic issue they aren't talking about at the DNC

Democrats have been pushing their ideas for jobs and growth. So why are they ignoring the Federal Reserve?

 By Danny Vinik

The Democratic National Convention hasn’t been policy-heavy, but it has definitely showcased economics. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took the stage to talk about policies to help women and was followed by seven female lawmakers arguing for a wide range of economic policies, from raising the minimum wage to increasing infrastructure spending to investing in clean energy. Each speech lasted just a few minutes, but taken together they represented a detailed economic agenda for the country.

But one major economic issue was missing: The Federal Reserve.

The Fed is the most important economic institution in America, if not the world, but has been conspicuously absent from the entire convention. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) did not mention it in her speech Monday night. Neither did Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In fact, a review of transcripts from prime time speakers during the first three nights reveals that not a single speaker mentioned the central bank.

Dry as it might sound, monetary policy is far more important to the economy than any of the politically catchy topics that tend to fill airtime. It seemed, from the campaign, that the Democrats might actually address it: both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders endorsed reforms to how the Fed is structured, and the idea was actually included in the platform this year—a first.

Clearly, the party is starting to understand how important the issue is. Yet its absence from the DNC indicates that it still isn't a priority, or at least it’s still not seen as important as crowd-pleasing topics like the minimum wage. To an extent, that's a signal of what a Clinton administration and (possibly) Democratic Congress would prioritize in the years ahead.

“When Democratic policymakers, particular Sen. Warren or Bernie Sanders or the candidate herself, are ticking through the agenda, that should be on there,” said Jared Bernstein, the former top economist to vice president Joe Biden.

If the Democrats actually took on the Fed, what would they do? Policymakers still are expected to preserve the independence of the central bank, so they wouldn’t put significant political pressure on it to adjust interest rates to boost wages. But who’s actually on the Fed, and whose interests it represents, is something that politicians can influence.

A coalition of groups in recent years have begun putting more pressure on Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen and Democratic officials to make sure that the central bank is implementing policies that benefit all Americans, not just Wall Street. One issue that has risen to the fore is the structure and diversity of the Federal Reserve itself. The Fed is made up of a Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., which includes a chair and vice chair, and 12 regional Fed banks across the country. Each regional bank has its own president and board of directors. Banks have a say in nominating many of those directors.

A report released in February found that 83 percent of Fed board members are white; nearly three-quarters are male. Nearly 40 percent come from financial institutions. Given the Fed’s role regulating the largest banks, that last statistic has proven particularly troubling for many liberal economists and progressive activists.

In their campaigns, both Clinton and Sanders endorsed policies to make the Fed more representative of the public. And the Democratic platform, for the first time, included a specific policy statement on Fed reform: “We will also reform the Federal Reserve to make it more representative of America as a whole, and we will fight to enhance its independence by ensuring that executives of financial institutions are not allowed to serve on the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks or to select members of those boards.” That statement represented a major success for progressive groups.

“I don’t think that anybody imagined that three months ago, 12 months ago or two years ago that the Democratic Party would ratify a platform this week that does what it says,” said Ady Barkan, a lawyer at the Center for a Popular Democracy who has been a leading advocate for the reforms. “No one was even talking about the notion that bankers should not select the people who serve on the Fed until this year.”

It’s not hard to see how a new and more populist Fed policy could actually fit into the rah-rah atmosphere at a convention; a “Fed that looks like America” has a certain ring to it. And regardless of one’s views of how the Fed should work, it feels like a missed opportunity: a chance for at least one party to focus voters’ attention on the kind of big-picture policy that really does help drive the economy.

Funny??? Or True...



Trump tax returns

Trump on tax returns: Look what happened to Romney

'His is a peanut compared to mine.'

By Louis Nelson

Donald Trump has rarely had anything nice to say about Mitt Romney, but when it comes to tax returns, the Republican nominee treats his predecessor as a cautionary tale.

Trump has long refused to release his tax returns, saying that he is currently under audit. But asked Thursday night by Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren if he would release older tax returns that are not under audit, Trump said the beating Romney took in 2012 over his own tax returns should serve as a warning.

“I remember with Mitt Romney four years ago, everybody wanted his, and his is a peanut compared to mine. It's like a peanut. It’s very small. Not nearly as big a document. I mean, mine, you saw the picture where it's two or three feet high,” Trump said.

“Now, they finally got it in September. He decided to give it. And they found a couple of little minor things. Little things that didn't mean anything,” Trump continued. “He did nothing wrong. By the way, Mitt Romney did nothing wrong. But when they gave them, they found a couple of little sentences. If you remember Harry Reid lied about it. He told a dirty lie. And Mitt gave that and after he gave it, they found a little sentence and they made such a big deal. He might have lost the election over that.”

In 2012, Reid said on the floor of the Senate that Romney had not paid any taxes for 10 years, a claim that was widely debunked by the media and by the tax returns that the former Massachusetts governor released. The Nevada senator has long refused to apologize for making the claim, which he attributed to an unnamed source.

Trump himself has pledged to release his tax returns once the audit ends, which he has said he hopes happens before the election. The Manhattan billionaire has steadfastly refused to release his tax returns while under audit, even though the IRS said in February that “nothing prevents people from sharing their own tax information,” even an audit.

Clinton’s DNC address

Clinton’s DNC address: Fact or fiction?

In her acceptance speech, Hillary Clinton didn’t sweat all of the details.

By Timothy Noah, Jennifer Haberkorn, Ben White, Doug Palmer and Michael Crowley

Hillary Clinton ran much of her campaign on being a pragmatist, the candidate with the knowledge, experience and, above all, the detailed plans needed to usher in the progressive change her fellow Democrats pine for.

But while accepting the Democratic party’s nomination Thursday night, Clinton’s address long on aspiration and imagery, but was short on the facts, figures and nuance she has put at the center of her candidacy.

For many in the seemingly endless string of pundits offering Clinton public advice, it was the speech they’d been waiting for, one with touches of President Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric about change rather than a data-driven roadmap for getting there. But it also made for an odd contrast with one of her persistent critiques of Donald Trump, that he has big promises for what he’ll do but zero detail about how he’ll do it.

Still, even as she eschewed the data and details, Clinton’s address included several references to her love of both. “It’s true. I sweat the details of policy – whether we're talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs,” she told the crowd in Philadelphia . “Because it's not just a detail if it's your kid — if it's your family.”

Here’s POLITICO’s fact-check of Clinton’s Democratic National Convention address.

“More than 90 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent. That's where the money is.”

That’s no longer true, though it was true as recently as 2013. Clinton almost certainly based her calculation on a 2015 paper by the University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, who reported that during the first three years of the economic recovery from the Great Recession — that is, from 2009 to 2012 — the top 1 percent captured 91 percent of the income gains.

But since 2012 economic growth has been more widely shared. Saez’s latest calculation is that the top 1 percent captured 52 percent of income gains during six years of economic recovery from the Great Recession. That covers the years 2009 through 2015.

Since Obama took office, there are “20 million more Americans with health insurance.”

Since the ACA was passed in 2010, 20 million people got health care coverage through the insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansion and other provisions, according to the Obama administration's statistics.

In that time, more than 6 million young adults got coverage by joining their parents' health insurance plans, one of the most popular pieces of the health care law. In 2014, the insurance exchanges opened and the Medicaid program expanded in many states. Since then, more than 14 million people enrolled in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program and more than 12 million enrolled in the insurance exchanges. Those figures account for people who may have moved into and out of different kinds of health coverage.

The 20 million figure accounts for people who got coverage under Obamacare. It doesn't include those who lost insurance that was cancelled as the health law was rolled out and some insurance plans were eliminated -- a huge criticism lobbed by Republicans who question the coverage gains of the health law. And many more are still uninsured: The Gallup-Healthways poll shows that 11.5 percent of American remained uninsured as of the first quarter of 2016.

Since Obama took office, there are "nearly 15 million new private-sector jobs.”

That’s true only if you start counting in 2010; if you start counting in 2009, when President Obama took office, net job growth is closer to 10 million, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s because the country was still losing jobs through much of 2010 as the country struggled to recover from the 2007-9 Great Recession.

In Clinton’s defense, though, political scientists and economists often argue that it’s foolish to hold presidents accountable for economic performance during their first year in office, because their policies have yet to take effect.

"If you believe that we should say “no” to unfair trade deals... that we should stand up to China... that we should support our steelworkers and autoworkers and homegrown manufacturers…join us." 

Clinton here appears to be referring here to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal with twelve Pacific Rim nations that has become a flash-point for progressive Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders's candidacy. But Clinton as Secretary of State once called TPP "the gold standard" for trade deals. And some progressive Democrats worry that if she wins, Clinton won't work hard to try and stop Congress from passing TPP in a post-election lame duck session.

Clinton has criticized the deal for failing to include enforceable rules against currency manipulation and complains the automotive rules threatens jobs in the United States. However, neither of those are likely to be renegotiated by the Obama administration and would be hard for her to achieve, because of resistance from Japan and other TPP countries. Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to push hard for TPP passage this year.

"I'm proud that we put a lid on Iran's nuclear program without firing a single shot – now we have to enforce it, and keep supporting Israel's security."

This is basically true, though she doesn’t mention that the lid comes off after a decade. Critics of the deal say that’s much too soon, and that the lid will blow off and Iran will very quickly develop a nuclear weapon. And as Clinton notes, the deal is only as strong as it is enforceable.

"Sacrificed nothing"

Father of fallen Muslim-American war hero to Trump: 'You have sacrificed nothing'

By Nolan D. McCaskill

The father of a deceased Muslim American Army captain hailed his son Thursday as a true military hero who gave up his dream to save the lives of his comrades but rebuked Donald Trump as no worthy commander in chief.

He cast the Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly called the American military “a disaster,” as a selfish, divisive, immigrant-bashing man who doesn’t even know the law of the land in the country he tries to keep people out of.

Khizr Khan’s son, Humayun Khan, a University of Virginia graduate who was deployed to Iraq, died in 2004 but was posthumously awarded with a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his heroism. In his address to the Democratic National Convention, Khan contrasted two vastly different presidential candidates — one who shares characteristics of his late son and one who is nothing like him.

His son, he said, dreamed of becoming a military lawyer, “but he put those dreams aside the day he sacrificed his life to save the lives of his fellow soldiers.”

As for Trump, he said, “You have sacrificed nothing.”

“Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son the best of America,” he added. “If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America. Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership.”

Khan condemned the Republican presidential nominee’s controversial calls to build a wall on the southern border that Mexico will pay for and ban certain immigrants — be it Muslims or people from so-called “terror states” — from entering the country.

“Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the United States Constitution?” he asked, pulling a copy from his coat pocket as the crowd roared. “I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words — look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’”

Khan implored the real estate mogul to visit Arlington Cemetery, to “look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending” this country. “You’ll see all faiths, genders and ethnicities,” he said.

Khan insisted that America can’t solve its problems by “building walls” and “sowing division.”

“We are stronger together,” he said, echoing Clinton’s campaign slogan. “And we will keep getting stronger when Hillary Clinton becomes our president. In conclusion, I ask every patriotic American, all Muslim immigrants and all immigrants, to not take this election lightly. This is a historic election and I request [you] to honor the sacrifice of my son and on Election Day take the time to get out and vote. And vote for the healer, vote for the strongest, most qualified candidate, Hillary Clinton, not the divider.”

Clinton’s biggest speech

5 takeaways from Clinton’s biggest speech yet

She exits the convention on a high with a good speech and strong support. Now the hard part begins.

By Glenn Thrush

Hillary Clinton wants you to vote for her.

Or, go ahead, vote against Donald Trump.

She’s not picky.

Wearing white to differentiate herself from her black-hat opponent, indifferent to the stray protest shouts rattling around the eaves of the Wells Fargo Center, Hillary Clinton defined the 2016 campaign against Donald Trump as a light-and-darkness fight between good and evil.

Here was history — Clinton was the first woman to accept the nomination of her party in the country’s history — but history buffeted in the maelstrom of the most bitter, negative and unpredictable election in modern history. And that history took second place to Clinton’s electoral imperative of making Americans like her — or at least like her enough to cast a vote for her.

Yet the defining characteristic of Clinton’s big night was just how much of it was devoted to someone who wasn’t her, and wasn’t even in the hall: Donald Trump, whom she defined as a clownish, bullying existential threat to democracy who needed to be beaten as badly as she needed to be elected.

“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons,” she announced, in the punchiest laugh-cry-shiver line of the night.

Here are five takeaways from the most important speech of Hillary Clinton’s life, and maybe Trump’s.

It was a pretty good speech. But was it good enough? Trump’s acceptance speech in Cleveland last week was a post-modern mashup that culminated with his claim that Trump, and only Trump, could save an angry, hell-bound country. Clinton’s address was, by contrast, a standard 20th century speech, an optimistic Bill Clinton-style State of the Union address with a pointed and effective attack against Trump tacked on like a warhead.

Clinton is an erratic, often awkward political performer who has given a few fantastic speeches — typically at pivotal moments in her career (Beijing in 1995, the “Glass Ceiling” address at the end of the epic 2008 primary season, to name two]. But she’s given her share of lousy ones, too, and the trend before the biggest speech of her life on Thursday wasn’t especially encouraging. As she’s gotten older, and more practiced at the campaign game, Clinton has become more confident in her own abilities to determine what energizes her audience. That’s not always a good thing. More often than not, however, she indulges her own preference for exhaustive specificity at the expense of inspiration.

This was one of her better efforts — a long amalgam of principle and policy, yes — but one leavened with a bit of self-deprecating humor that conceded her shortcomings as an electoral leading lady. “The truth is, through all these years of public service, the ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” she said.

And, as usual, she benefited from having an effective and disciplined organization behind her: When Bernie-or-Bust haters began heckling her from several delegations, including California, her supporters had been drilled to drown them out with chants of “Hillary!”

Clinton is a hard-to-sell candidate, with baked-in negatives north of 50 percent (5 to 10 percentage points lower than Trump’s unprecedented disapproval ratings) and a personal story that is almost universally known by anyone old enough to vote for her. Yet for all the impediments, there were flashes of emotion and sincerity that have often eluded her in other settings, and flashes of I-didn’t-know-that-about-her novelty.

Most importantly, her speechwriters cleverly diverted the audience gaze from the candidate herself, defining her best attributes through the moving narratives of regular people more relatable than she, a dozen small anecdotal mirrors to catch Clinton’s reflected virtue.

Yet even in striking classic fight-for-the-little-guy Democratic themes, she had an eye on drawing the contrast with Trump, whom she portrayed as the most divisive public figure of her lifetime. “I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. ... For those who vote for me and those who don’t. For all Americans,” she said.

All about the bounce. Clinton’s team accomplished many intermediate goals during their four days in Philly: The Obamas delivered a husband-and-wife tandem of historic speeches; Bernie Sanders went from being a renegade to a team player, helping to stamp out the last glowing embers of the revolution he sparked in New Hampshire; Clinton was applauded by several dozen speakers (led by her husband) who sought to reverse her negative image.

And none of that matters, not one bit, if Clinton can’t reverse Trump’s recent surge in the polls with a discernible convention bounce. She won’t get the 14-point boost her husband got in 1992, but she’ll take anything that moves the dial, that is, to say roughly the recent average uptick of 3 or 4 percentage points.

The GOP’s Cleveland convention was, by any conventional measure, a big gooey muddle-message fondue of negativity; but Trump seems to have gotten a lift of between three and seven points. Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, told me that Trump’s recent rise — to parity or a few points ahead, depending on the survey — was the result of a ho-hum convention bounce, but analysts like FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver see the trend line as an extension of a swoon that began with the FBI’s controversial decision not to press charges against Clinton over her use of a home email server while secretary of state.

Either way, Clinton needs a boost as the campaign enters the serious season.

Don’t worry — but don’t be quite so happy. The Obama-Clinton alliance is wedded, by definition, to a message of tempered contentment, measured success and a domesticated definition of “change” as liberalism on a leash.

History shows most presidencies are won on hope-and-change optimism, not Trumpian hopelessness­ and change. But history is in a particularly perverse mood this year. In vanquishing the Sanders challenge, the Clinton campaign drove the anger from the convention, but they also purged Sanders’ angry energy, his sense of urgency and discontent that reflects the country beyond a relatively satisfied party base. Obama can tout his legacy, and his approval ratings are at a second-term high — but seven in 10 Americans think the country is on the wrong track. “People are still pissed off,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told me a few hours before Clinton’s big speech.

Clinton is doubling down on hope, and when I asked one of her advisers why the speech wouldn’t contain an extended recitation of the country’s ills, the person looked at me like I’d torn a Clinton/Kaine yard sign in half. When Sanders suggested that Obama hadn’t sufficiently attacked income inequality, Clinton pivoted to accuse the Vermont senator of attacking an impeccably progressive Democratic icon. Senior Clinton strategist Joel Benenson (Obama’s longtime pollster) told me in a podcast this spring that 2016 is a base — not a swing-voter — election and most Democrats feel pretty good about the country, compared to those unhappy Republicans.

Clinton recognized the frustrations of the working class in her speech, but anger was seasoning, not the staple. “Some of you are frustrated — even furious,” Clinton intoned. “And you know what? You're right … Democrats are the party of working people. But we haven't done a good enough job showing that we get what you're going through, and that we're going to do something about it.”

“Hillary” the movie was as good as Hillary Live. Making Clinton likeable, restoring the trust she’s squandered in the email scandal and Wall Street speech controversy, is every bit as important a task as knee-capping Trump. Clinton (who famously demanded a “zone of privacy” around her family during her husband’s 1992 campaign) has a hard time doing that — because of her own natural reticence or the aggregated apprehension of being attacked for two decades. Her best moments are her most candid, but they have been few and far between — and seldom in the glare of a press conference or TV interview.

Introductory videos have been a staple of conventions since Ronald Reagan, but the 15-minute “Hillary,” directed by Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers, was especially important, because it featured an extended, relaxed and emotional interview with Clinton about her mother’s struggles, her work for children and families, and her efforts on behalf of 9/11 first responders.

An emotional highlight: The story (aimed implicitly at Trump, and repeated from the podium) of her being bullied as an elementary school student — only to have her mother tell she was a “coward” to back down.

She’s on her own now. Conventions are cossetting events, about summoning the armies and surrounding the nominee in a protective circle. That’s never been truer than for Clinton, who exits her convention with some of the highest negatives in the history of presidential elections.

For four days, she was lauded by surrogates who were, in many cases, better at making a case for her election than she was. They’ll still have her back — and Sanders is set to use his magic with youth voters on her behalf over the summer — but winning the election is now almost entirely in her hands.

General election begins...

Be afraid: The Clinton-Trump general election begins

This will be one of the ugliest, most divisive elections in American history.

By Shane Goldmacher

For four days here in this city of brotherly love and the nation’s founding, Democrats wrapped themselves in the language of patriotism and positivity, declaring the country would be “stronger together” as they nominated Hillary Clinton to serve as the first woman president.

“Love trumps hate,” came the cheers from the crowd, only days after Donald Trump’s Republican convention echoed with chants of “Lock her up!”

But as the 102-day general election starts, the reality is that both parties, saddled with two of the most unpopular presidential nominees ever, are bracing for one of the ugliest and most divisive races in modern history. And with Trump’s penchant for the unpredictable, a contest that has already stretched the boundaries of traditional American political discourse is unlikely to become more civil.

For all the talk of hope and optimism in Philadelphia, fear remains the most potent emotion stirring the base — of both parties. President Barack Obama warned pointedly of “homegrown demagogues” this week in the same breath as “fascists” and “jihadists.”

Clinton and the Democrats are selling the fear of what America would look like under a President Donald Trump to gin up turnout, just as Trump is selling fear of a dangerous, diminished and diversifying America under Obama, and himself as the lone man who can “make America great again.”

In her acceptance speech Thursday, Clinton urged the public to “imagine, imagine” the idea of a Trump presidency, calling him temperamentally unfit. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons,” she said

“I alone can fix it,” Trump said a week ago.

But the back-to-back conventions portrayed two parties that seemed at times as though they were speaking to and about entirely different countries. The Republicans featured families of people killed by illegal immigrants; the Democrats featured the children of the undocumented who live in fear in the shadows. The Republicans complained of a rising tide of crime; Democrats bragged about a rising tide of health care coverage. Democrats embraced “black lives matter”; Republicans celebrated “blue lives matter.”

Trump, whose latest book was called “Crippled America,” said in a statement Thursday that, “Democrats have been speaking about a world that doesn’t exist.”

“A world where America has full employment, where there’s no such thing as radical Islamic terrorism, where the border is totally secured, and where thousands of innocent Americans have not suffered from rising crime in cities like Baltimore and Chicago,” he said.

Democrats are thrilled to be occupying sunnier high ground.

“When I look at our American history, hope has always trumped fear,” Tom Perez, the secretary of labor who was considered by the Clinton campaign as a potential running mate, said in an interview. “His campaign is to prey on people’s fears and that doesn’t work.”

The strategy is not without risk.

While Obama’s approval rating hovers above 50 percent — far higher than Trump’s or Clinton’s — many Democrats are burdened with the nagging concern that 2016 could ultimately be about upending the status quo, and that Trump, for all his flaws, is a vessel better suited to that aggrieved cause than Clinton, no matter how many “change maker” signs delegates waved this week.

Still, the nation’s shifting demographics give the Democrats a head start on the path to 270 Electoral College votes this year. If Clinton wins Florida, she can take the White House simply by carrying all the states that Democrats have won in every election since 1992, plus the District of Columbia and New Mexico, which they’ve carried in five of the past six races.

“I sleep really well at night in this campaign unless I’ve had coffee in the afternoon,” Chris Lehane, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, said of the 2016 landscape. “He has a math problem. I don’t think you can be where he is with millennials, women, married women, people of color, particularly Hispanics, and have it work out.”

Trump, in contrast, is trying to create an entirely new political map and coalition anchored by disaffected blue-collar white voters, flipping back Pennsylvania after nearly three decades in the Democratic column and states across the industrial Midwest.

Marlon Marshall, director of state campaigns for Clinton, told POLITICO, that the 2012 reelection map for Obama “begins to set the tone for what a map could look like” in 2016.

In Obama’s valedictory address on Wednesday, he gave what amounted to a plea for his coalition of minorities, young voters and women to come out again for Clinton, praising her as his rightful successor. “You can’t afford to stay home,” he urged them. And when Clinton emerged to hug her ex-rival afterward, it was the starkest representation yet that she has embraced the notion that she is campaigning for Obama’s third term.

And with that comes the weight of owning the current state of affairs.

“America is already great,” as Obama himself said. “America is already strong.”

But Democrats are nervous that even while Trump has failed to build a modern political organization, squandered most the past two months, been accused of racism by his own party, neither aired TV ads nor reserved time for the fall, has praised foreign strongmen including Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin, the race is essentially tied.

Trump has taken the lead in some surveys after the GOP convention, despite the disunity and disorganization on display in Cleveland. He has inflamed controversy almost daily, the latest this week with his public call for Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” of Clinton’s from her private server, essentially inviting a foreign nation to hack correspondence from her time as as the country’s top diplomat.

Inside the Clinton campaign, campaign sources say there are ongoing conversations about just how much to focus on Trump’s clear vulnerabilities versus trying to sell Clinton’s strengths to a skeptical public.

“People don’t know how much she’s accomplished and how big an effect it’s had on people’s lives,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said to Politico’s On Message podcast this week. “But here’s what I will say. I don’t think people will fully appreciate who she is until, knock on wood, she’s elected president.”

Of course, that would be too late for the campaign. So far, she and her super PAC have had the airwaves in the battleground states virtually to themselves as they’ve run in heavy rotation ads featuring Trump mocking a disabled reporter that strategists said has tested off the charts with voters.

But the concern is that a relentlessly negative fall campaign could depress turnout this fall. Obama himself summed up the challenge as he hammered Trump in his speech amid boos from the audience.

“Don’t boo,” he chided them. “Vote.”

Audacious prediction

Chuck Schumer's audacious prediction

Forget 2016: Democrats are on the cusp of a golden era, the incoming Democratic Senate leader says in a POLITICO interview.

By Burgess Everett and Edward-Isaac Dovere

Chuck Schumer is feeling good enough about the battle for Senate control to essentially predict he’ll be majority leader next year. Not only that, the veteran New York Democrat believes his party is on the cusp of something much bigger: An era of electoral dominance.

“We’re going to have a Democratic generation. [President Barack Obama] helped create it. But it’s just where America’s moving demographically, ideologically and in every way,” Schumer told POLITICO in a lengthy interview this week at the Democratic National Convention. “We’ll have a mandate to get something done.”

Schumer’s rosy outlook may be at odds with the many headaches confronting him if Democrats manage to pick up the four seats they need to flip the Senate.

The day after the election, Senate Democrats will be on defense. The party will face an awful map in the 2018 midterm and long odds to hang on to the Senate if they manage to win it this year, compounded by the potential for an electoral backlash if Hillary Clinton becomes president.

And Schumer, if he is in fact majority leader, will be under fire from every direction: Liberals pushing for a more progressive agenda, endangered moderate Democrats looking to keep their jobs, a new president with a presumably ambitious Year One to-do list, and activist groups demanding that Congress pass immigration and gun reform.

Still, the 65-year-old senator appeared calm and confident, if not entirely willing to divulge his game plan in detail. In broad strokes it comes down to this: Convincing voters the Senate is capable of functioning by passing important legislation, and capitalizing on the nation’s changing demographics, including a new generation of young voters he believes Democrats are poised to capture.

But to pursue the mandate he believes voters will give him, Democrats will need far more than a slim majority. In 2018, Democrats will be on defense in five conservative states and a handful of swing states.

How many seats must Democrats win in November to give the party more than a fleeting two years in the majority? Schumer dodged any attempt to pin him down.

“You are the hammer and the nail. And I am the jello,” Schumer said.

Schumer will have to move quickly to execute his plan, and the first task is underway now as he and Democratic officials try — in vain for now — to find someone to lead the Democrats’ campaign arm. While GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Cory Gardner of Colorado are actively seeking out the National Republican Senatorial Committee jobs, no one is raising their hand to lead the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It's a daunting assignment: Democrats will have to defend 25 seats in 2018 vs. just eight for Republicans, a reversal from this year's left-leaning map.

Prominent Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota doesn’t want the post. Neither does rising liberal star Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware is being actively recruited by Schumer but is resisting: “I have three teenagers,” Coons said when asked if he wants the position.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it," Schumer said. "One of the problems is we have half our class up in 2018. Let’s win the majority first.”

The job of caucus leader is all-consuming, far more perilous than Schumer’s prominent current role as chief messenger and electoral tactician. In addition to managing the politics of his caucus and red-state Democrats up for reelection in 2018, he’ll have to plot a course for 2017 that will satisfy his increasingly liberal party and give him a chance to build that “Democratic generation” he insists is possible.

To do that, Schumer may need a new partner atop the leadership rungs. Democratic whip Dick Durbin and Schumer have had a frosty relationship at times, and the No. 4 Senate Democrat Patty Murray is seen as a potential future Democratic leader and may not want to play second fiddle to anyone.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid brought Schumer into the fold a decade ago. In an interview, Reid said the secret for Schumer is to find a confidant who complements him, like the New Yorker did for Reid.

“I’ve given him some names. And he’s going to have to make that decision himself. We have some people in our caucus he’s going to have to get really close with,” Reid said.

Picking a No. 2 might turn out to be the least of his issues. The Democratic Caucus will be fraught with tension: Senators such as Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are set to compete with endangered moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota to influence Schumer’s priority list in the all-important first year of a new administration.

Disparate factions of the Democratic coalition are already pressing for commitments from Schumer. Gun control advocates want a commitment to push legislation early in 2017, while immigration reformers and even some Republicans want him to dust off the 2013 immigration bill and move it as quickly as possible.

“In the first six months of 2017, we are really going to deliver on some key issues that are going to show what governing is all about,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, slated to be the powerful Finance Committee chairman if Democrats win. “It would be legislative malpractice to not have a major roads and bridges and ports and infrastructure effort early in 2017.”

Another task at hand is Schumer’s working relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. As minority leader, McConnell expertly stumped the Democratic agenda, wielding delay tactics and leveraging the 60-vote filibuster threshold to frustrate Reid for years.

Some Democrats say they've had enough and want Schumer to alter Senate rules to finally break the logjam.

“We need to change the rules of the Senate to keep one person from dragging things out and to keep having every vote require 60,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who saw a signature energy bill die at the hands of a filibuster just weeks before her narrow 2014 reelection.

Schumer doesn’t want to get into his agenda now, whether it’s guns, immigration, filling a still-vacant Supreme Court seat or the chamber’s rules. But he is talking to his caucus and to Clinton about how to govern.

“The American people are yearning for action and I do believe that our Republican colleagues, if they lose this election by quite a bit and I think they will … our mainstream Republicans are going to say they cannot let the tea party run the show,” Schumer said.

Republicans say the New York senator is getting ahead of himself.

“Sen. Schumer might want to get out of Washington, D.C. and New York City a bit more to see what is actually going on in these campaigns,” said Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the NRSC. “They are facing an electorate that doesn’t want another eight years of failed [Democratic] policies.”

The key Senate races this year are tighter than Democrats would like. A potential canary in the coal mine is in Ohio, where Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has been racking up union endorsements and raising eye-popping sums of money against former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland.

“Rob Portman is acting, if you read his ads, like he’s against free trade. That is hypocrisy, and it shows you the pickle he’s in. I mean, it’s amazing, this man was the [U.S. trade representative],” Schumer said, among his most personal criticisms to date of a sitting senator. “At least some of their candidates have the courage to defend what they believe in.”

Michawn Rich, a spokeswoman for Portman, responded: "I can't blame Chuck Schumer for being frustrated with this race.”

But Schumer seems anything but frustrated these days.

“Happy, colorful, sweet,” he said of himself. “I’m always in a good mood.”

Supermassive black holes

Supermassive black holes in the universe are like a raucous choir singing in the language of X-rays. When black holes pull in surrounding matter, they let out powerful X-ray bursts. This song of X-rays, coming from a chorus of millions of black holes, fills the entire sky -- a phenomenon astronomers call the cosmic X-ray background.

NASA's Chandra mission has managed to pinpoint many of the so-called active black holes contributing to this X-ray background, but the ones that let out high-energy X-rays -- those with the highest-pitched "voices" -- have remained elusive.

New data from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, have, for the first time, begun to pinpoint large numbers of the black holes belting out the high-energy X-rays. Or, in astronomer-speak, NuSTAR has made significant progress in resolving the high-energy X-ray background.

"We've gone from resolving just two percent of the high-energy X-ray background to 35 percent," said Fiona Harrison, the principal investigator of NuSTAR at Caltech in Pasadena and lead author of a new study describing the findings in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.  "We can see the most obscured black holes, hidden in thick gas and dust."

The results will ultimately help astronomers understand how the feeding patterns of supermassive black holes change over time. This is a key factor in the growth of not only black holes, but also the galaxies that host them. The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is dormant now, but at some point in the past, it too would have siphoned gas and bulked up in size.

As black holes grow, their intense gravity pulls matter toward them. The matter heats up to scorching temperatures, and particles get boosted to close to the speed of light. Together, these processes make the black hole surroundings glow with X-rays. A supermassive black hole with a copious supply of fuel, or gas, will give off more high-energy X-rays.

NuSTAR is the first telescope capable of focusing these high-energy X-rays into sharp pictures.

"Before NuSTAR, the X-ray background in high energies was just one blur with no resolved sources," said Harrison. "To untangle what's going on, you have to pinpoint and count up the individual sources of the X-rays."

"We knew this cosmic choir had a strong high-pitched component, but we still don't know if it comes from a lot of smaller, quiet singers, or a few with loud voices," said co-author Daniel Stern, the project scientist for NuSTAR at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Now, thanks to NuSTAR, we're gaining a better understanding of the black holes and starting to address these questions."

High-energy X-rays can reveal what lies around the most buried supermassive black holes, which are otherwise hard to see. In the same way that medical X-rays can travel through your skin to reveal pictures of bones, NuSTAR can see through the gas and dust around black holes, to get a deeper view of what's going on inside.

With NuSTAR's more complete picture of the supermassive black hole populations, astronomers can begin to puzzle together how they evolve and change over time. When did they start and stop feeding? What is the distribution of the gas and dust that both feed and hide the black holes?

The team expects to resolve more of the high-energy X-ray background over time with NuSTAR -- and better decipher the X-ray voices of our universe's rowdiest choir.

DEM L316A

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the remnants of a long-dead star. These rippling wisps of ionized gas, named DEM L316A, are located some 160,000 light-years away within one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors — the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

The explosion that formed DEM L316A was an example of an especially energetic and bright variety of supernova, known as a Type Ia. Such supernova events are thought to occur when a white dwarf star steals more material than it can handle from a nearby companion, and becomes unbalanced. The result is a spectacular release of energy in the form of a bright, violent explosion, which ejects the star’s outer layers into the surrounding space at immense speeds. As this expelled gas travels through the interstellar material, it heats up and ionizes it, producing the faint glow that Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 has captured here.

The LMC orbits the Milky Way as a satellite galaxy and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. DEM L316A is not the only supernova remnant in the LMC; Hubble came across another one in 2010 with SNR 0509, and in 2013 it snapped SNR 0519.

July 28, 2016

Trump-Hating Republicans

Obama Brought Down the House at the DNC. These Trump-Hating Republicans Couldn't Agree More

"The status quo is better than a dumpster fire in the name of conservatism by a sociopathic fraud."

By Inae Oh

On Wednesday night, President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned address at the Democratic National Convention, where he burnished his legacy of hope, praised Hillary Clinton, and eviscerated Donald Trump as a "homegrown demagogue" and threat to American values. The speech sparked thunderous applause from the crowd and has already been called one of the president's finest.

Both sides of the aisle have lauded the speech, but admiration from one corner of the political spectrum is especially noteworthy: The #NeverTrump Republicans who also watched the president's speech and declared it the final nail in the coffin of their own party's presidential nominee.

"The GOP offered a vision of doom, despair, and division. Tonight the President I think divides us offered optimism. I hate this year."

"The status quo is better than a dumpster fire in the name of conservatism by a sociopathic fraud."

Some also voiced their irritation after noticing Obama named Ronald Reagan in one line, suggesting that the president appropriated themes traditionally championed by conservatives:

"Will a Trump apologist explain to me why an 18 yo watching the conventions would want to be a Republican? We're giving away a generation"

"American exceptionalism and greatness, shining city on hill, founding documents, etc--they're trying to take all our stuff"

"Text just now from a senior House Republican who gave me permission to tweet this: “We were supposed to make that sort of speech.""

Prominent conservative writer Rick Wilson also watched the speech and took the opportunity to slam Trump supporters for their less-than-presidential outreach tactics:

"It's an integrated, smart campaign. But by all means, let's just do more dank memes, dumb Trump tweets and MAGAstrubation."

Meanwhile, Trump was trying to figure out how to work a laptop...

Worst Response

Bill O'Reilly Had the Worst Response to Michelle Obama's Convention Speech

The Fox News host attempts to "fact-check" the first lady's address.

By Inae OhJul

On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama delivered a stirring speech that was widely praised on both sides of the aisle. Even Donald Trump commended the first lady's performance, despite being the unnamed target of her forceful rebuke.

But there was one line in her remarks that Fox News historian Bill O'Reilly felt needed more explanation. The line below:

"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves," Obama said. "And I watch my daughters—two beautiful, intelligent, black young women—playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. Because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all of our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States."

On his show Tuesday, O'Reilly lauded Obama for "referring to the evolution of America in a positive way." But he then proceeded to fact-check her statement in a way that appeared to excuse the US government's use of slave labor.

"Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802," he said. "However, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor. So Michelle Obama is essentially correct in citing slaves as builders of the White House, but there were others working as well. Got it?"

And there you have it—the worst response to Michelle Obama's 2016 Democratic National Convention address.

Deficit Chart

Chart of the Day: Donald Trump's Deficit Busting Budget Plan

By Kevin Drum

I know no one cares about this because it's boring policy stuff and no one takes any of Donald Trump's policy suggestions seriously in the first place, but I'm trying to fill the time while the B-listers natter on at the Democratic convention. I was disappointed that Jerry Brown didn't do a better job, but California already has all the great weather, so I suppose I can't complain that we don't have all the great convention speakers too.

Anyway, here's the Committee for a Responsible Budget on what the national debt would look like under President Trump vs. President Clinton:


According to the CFRB, Hillary Clinton has proposed $1.4 trillion in new spending and $1.2 trillion in revenue increases to pay for it. Pretty close! Donald Trump's proposed budget, by contrast, is about $10 trillion out of whack.

On the bright side, the top 1% get their taxes reduced by about 12 percentage points. So it's all good.