Here is the source for Paul Krugman’s assertion that Hillary has been subjected to more media criticism than any other candidate.
Paul Krugman: “Think about where we were a year ago. At the time, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush were widely seen as the front-runners for their parties’ nods. If there was any dissent from the commentariat, it came from those suggesting that Mr. Bush might be supplanted by a fresher, but still establishment, face, like Marco Rubio.
And now here we are. But why did Mrs. Clinton, despite the most negative media coverage of any candidate in this cycle — yes, worse than Donald Trump’s — go the distance, while the G.O.P. establishment went down to humiliating defeat?”
Andrew Ross Sorkin: “Two months ago, across an assembly-room table in a factory in Jacksonville, Fla., President Barack Obama was talking to me about the problem of political capital. His efforts to rebuild the U.S. economy from the 2008 financial crisis were being hit from left, right and center. And yet, by his own assessment, those efforts were vastly underappreciated. “I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform,” he said. “By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.”
It was a notably grand claim, especially given the tenor in which presidential candidates of both parties had taken to criticizing the state of the American economy — “Many are still barely getting by,” Hillary Clinton said, while Donald Trump said that “we’re a third-world nation.” Asked if he was frustrated by all the criticism, Obama insisted that he wasn’t, at least not personally. “It has frustrated me only insofar as it has shaped the political debate,” he said. “We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market.” ”
“Bernie Sanders isn’t losing. Just ask many of his backers or listen to some of his own complaints. He’s being robbed, a victim of antiquated rules, voter suppression, shady arithmetic and a corrupt Democratic establishment. The swindle includes the South’s getting inordinate sway and the poor none at all. If Americans really had a voice, they would shout “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” until too hoarse to shout anymore.
Donald Trump isn’t winning. Just ask Ted Cruz, by whose strange and self-serving logic it is “the will of the people” (his actual words) that he and John Kasich collude to prevent Trump from amassing a majority of delegates so that some runner-up with less demonstrable support can leapfrog past him to become the Republican presidential nominee. Democracy in action!I agree that Trump’s nomination would be frightening. I disagree that Cruz’s would be better. It certainly wouldn’t be more justified, but such rational thinking has gone missing in this year of losing gracelessly.”
Nice writing Mr. Frank Bruni. Bernie Sanders is a sore loser.
Bravo Tom Friedman! Three Stars! He starts: “Dakar, SENEGAL — You can learn everything you need to know about the main challenges facing Africa today by talking to just two people in Senegal: the rapper and the weatherman. They’ve never met, but I could imagine them doing an amazing duet one day — words and weather predictions — on the future of Africa.”
David Lindsay Great comments at the NYT, such as: Bruce Rozenblit, a trusted commenter Kansas City
“Western and central Africa has the highest brith rates in the world. Their birth rates are three and four times greater that those in the US. These nations are under severe environmental and economic stress. Disease takes millions. Political chaos, corruption, war and terror groups run rampant. Talk about a pot boiling over!
Climate change is rapidly spiraling out of control. By some unlucky chance of fate, the world’s people that are the poorest are suffering much more from it than the rich nations that are producing most of the carbon pollution.
Even if CO2 output fell to zero, temperatures will continue to rise, probably for the next 100 years, although slower. Population growth will remain the main driver of their suffering.
Relief cannot occur without slowing the birthrates. That means open and accessible reproductive health services for women. It also means elevating the status of women and empowering them in these impoverished lands. We may not be able to change their repressive cultures, but we can fund and build health centers. That would make a positive difference as their lands either burn up or wash away, and they will.”
Reply 23 Recommended
““I’ve just never seen us so thoroughly screwed up,” says a Republican operative with roots in the Reagan administration. Another party official said, “Maybe we really do need time in the wilderness to figure out what we don’t get about our own voters.”Democrats would be foolish to gloat about this G.O.P. mess. The Democratic Party has also been caught by surprise by the anger of middle-class voters it thought it could rely on, even while failing to move meaningful legislation on college affordability, gun control, the minimum wage and better care for veterans. The Democratic leadership is also too often captive to its own elites. Though they practically invented the ideal of campaign finance reform, Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton, now at times seem tone-deaf to public anger while they take vast amounts of money from industries with business before the federal government. The Democratic Party has long considered itself the institutional champion of the poor, unemployed and indebted. Now, for many young voters who flock to Bernie Sanders, that is a falsehood.”
I like the editorial in general, but the second half of this statement is false. It falls into the buying into a false narrative theme. Are your writers so young that they forget that the Republicans have stopped the Democrats from doing most of these things. I know this has been true for Obama, and I recall it was also true for Bill Clinton.
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD APRIL 26, 2016
Source: Donald Trump’s Success Carries Lessons for Democrats, Too – The New York Times
Apple may have won its battle against the US government, but in its refusal to help crack its own encryption to fight terrorists in California, it probably just lost any future in China, at least in the next five decades.
“For years, there has been a limit to the success of American technology companies in China. Capture too much market share or wield too much influence, and Beijing will push back.Apple has largely been an exception to that trend. Yet the Silicon Valley company is now facing a regulatory push against its services in China that could signal its good relations in the country may be turning.Last week, Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies were shut down in China, just six months after they were started there. Initially, Apple apparently had the government’s approval to introduce the services. But then a regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, asserted its authority and demanded the closings, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Source: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face – The New York Times
“EVEN as the nation is gripped by the populist politics of the presidential primaries, special interests continue to shape the rules of the economy in the shadows. Last year, a market regulator called the Financial Accounting Standards Board released a proposal that could make it easier for corporations to withhold important financial information from shareholders. This could put the economy at greater risk of another huge accounting fraud, like Enron or Lehman Brothers. But the board’s proposal, which could become a final rule any day now, has gotten nowhere near the strong dose of sunlight it deserves.”
Source: The Quiet War on Corporate Accountability – The New York Times
“Politically, crime had become one of the most divisive issues in the country. Republicans called for an ever more punitive “war on drugs,” while many Democrats offered little beyond nebulous calls to eliminate the “root causes” of crime.
President Clinton took a different approach, working with like-minded Democrats, including Mr. Schumer and Joseph Biden, who was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill they devised actually reduced sentences for federal drug crimes by exempting first-time, nonviolent drug offenders from the onerous “mandatory minimum” penalties created under earlier administrations. It funded specialized drug courts, drug treatment programs, “boot camps” and other efforts to rehabilitate offenders without incarceration. It allocated more than $3 billion to keep at-risk young people away from gangs and the drug trade.”
Source: Unlocking the Truth About the Clinton Crime Bill – The New York Times
Nicholas Kristof:
“One of the perils of journalism is the human brain’s penchant for sorting information into narratives. Even false narratives can take on a life of their own because there is always information arriving that can confirm a narrative.
Thus once we in the news media had declared Gerald Ford a klutz (he was actually a graceful athlete), there were always new television clips of him stumbling. Similarly, we unfairly turned Jimmy Carter into a hapless joke, and I fear that the “Crooked Hillary” narrative will drag on much more than the facts warrant.”
“One basic test of a politician’s honesty is whether that person tells the truth when on the campaign trail, and by that standard Clinton does well. PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site, calculates that of the Clinton statements it has examined, 95 percent are either true or mostly true.
That compares to 49 percent for Bernie Sanders’s, 9 percent for Trump’s, 22 percent for Ted Cruz’s and 52 percent for John Kasich’s. Here we have a rare metric of integrity among candidates, and it suggests that contrary to popular impressions, Clinton is relatively honest — by politician standards.”
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