Third Estate Sunday Review

The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."

Monday, March 14, 2016

Truest statement of the week

Clinton began the race for the nomination 40 points up. Yet all these advantages -- money, superdelegates, calendar, shutting down debates and withholding election -- couldn’t save her. She needed yet more help and got it from liberal lobbies that are all that remains of the great grass-roots movements that once drove all our social progress. Most are led not by grass-roots leaders but by technicians who seek money, access and career advancement and rely on the same consultants advising Clinton, Obama and a long list of corporate clients.

-- Bill Curry "Hillary’s inevitability lie: Why the media and party elites are rushing to nominate the weakest candidate" (SALON).

Truest statement of the week II

There’s a name for the bipartisan consensus of party elites: neoliberalism. It is an inconvenient name for many reasons but mostly because it seems odd that the worldview of the Republican elite would be an ideology with the root word ‘liberal’ in its name but it is true, nonetheless. and may even shed a little light on the open, bitter breach between GOP elites and the party base. Democrats stayed loyal longer to their elites for two reasons. One is their love of two very talented politicians, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whose charm and verbal dexterity masked deep differences with the base. The other is their fear of Republicans.
I often talk to Democrats who don’t know Obama chose not to raise the minimum wage as president even though he had the votes for it; that he was willing to cut Medicare and Social Security and chose not to prosecute Wall Street crimes or pursue ethics reforms in government. They don’t know he dropped the public option or the aid he promised homeowners victimized by mortgage lenders. They don’t know and don’t want to know. Their affection for Bill and Barack -- and their fear of Republicans -- run too deep.

-- Bill Curry, "It should be over for Hillary: Party elites and MSNBC can’t prop her up after Bernie’s Michigan miracle" (SALON).

A note to our readers

Hey --

A Monday.

First, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's K itchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with:

Truest statement of the week

Bill Curry gets a truest.

Truest statement of the week II

In fact, he gets two.

Editorial: More troops to Iraq?

Are we going to talk about this or not? It appears we're just going to ignore the efforts to send more US troops into Iraq.

TV: Chris Wallace versus Chuck Todd in the Battle ...

Ava and C.I. take on two of the Sunday chat and chews and, no surprise, find them wanting.

The fire Hillary helped start

Hillary's real good about projecting. It's what she does.

Perspective

Roseanne Barr provides some perspective.

Michigan

Bernie won Michigan to the delight of many.

Barack the befuddled host

Short feature.

Tweet of the week

Ben Jealous nails it.

ATU endorses Bernie Sanders

A major endorsement for Bernie.

Hillary Clinton's 'correction'

A major embarrassment for Hillary.

Isakson Statement on Chairman Miller Retirement An...

US House Rep Jeff Miller is stepping down.

Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk Visits Ira...

Brett visits Iraq.

Highlights

Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.

Peace.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Editorial: More troops to Iraq?

Last week, a US general testified to Congress and floated the idea of more US troops on the ground in Iraq.

Senator Mike Rounds: General Austin with regards to the challenges surrounding the retaking Mosul and Raqqa by December of this year coming up. You've currently got about 4,000 ground forces, if I'm correct. Is that enough? Do you have enough to assist in your plans to retake Mosul and Raqqa?

Gen Lloyd Austin: The, uh, the approach that we have used -- and continue to use, as you know, Senator, to use the indigenous forces in the operations on the ground and enable those forces with out aieral fires and other enablers. As we look towards Raqqa and other and Mosul clearly there will be things that we want to do to, uh, increase the capability a bit to, uh -- to, uh increase the pace of operations and that will require some additional capability and we've gone through and done some analysis to see what types of -- what types of things we need to provide and that's, uh, we've made those recommendations.

Senator Mike Rounds: Could you share those recommendations with this Committee?

Gen Lloyd Austin: Uh, no, sir. I would not care to do so because I have just provided those to my -- to my leadership.

Senator Mike Rounds: But you have -- you have made those recommendations and you're waiting on a response to your recommendations at this time?

Gen Lloyd Austin: Yes, sir, it's -- it'll work its way up the chain here.

Senator Mike Rounds: If you were allowed to have, uh, more ground troops what would be the capabilities that you could accomplish? Or what could you accomplish if you had more individuals on the ground there

Gen Lloyd Austin: We could, uh, develop more, better human intelligence. We could, uh, we could perhaps provide, uh, uh, more advise and assist teams at various levels. We could, uh, we could increase, uh, our assistance in terms of providing help with some logistical issues and, uh, we could increase some elements of the special operations footprint.

And yet, as Ava and C.I. note, two Sunday chat and chews wasted time gas bagging and refusing to deal with issues like this.

Bill Van Auken (WSWS) noted:

The US must escalate its intervention in Iraq and Syria with more troops on the ground, both the outgoing commander of US military forces in the Middle East and his designated replacement told Congress in hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Gen. Joseph Votel, the current head of the US Special Operations Command, who has been tapped by President Barack Obama to lead US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees both the ongoing intervention in Iraq and Syria and the continuing American occupation of Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday that an offensive to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “will take more resources” than the Pentagon currently has deployed in the region.

Who's talking about this publicly?

Where's the national dialogue?

AL MADA is reporting that the liberation of Mosul is being planned and will require US troops -- at least 180 of them.

And where's the national dialogue?

And when is President Barack Obama going to stand before the American people and discuss what is going on?

And when is the media going to devote significant time and attention to this?

TV: Chris Wallace versus Chuck Todd in the Battle To Bore The Viewer

Chris Wallace does a better job than Chuck Todd.

That's one conclusion we can confidently make. Another is that Governor John Kasich is a flip-flopper.

But mainly, we can firmly state that public affairs programming are a waste of time.

We formed these and other conclusions Sunday while watching two of the leading Sunday Chat & chews (leading by ratings) NBC's MEET THE PRESS and FOX's FOX NEWS SUNDAY WITH CHRIS WALLACE.

Donald Trump and Kasich appeared on both programs.

The biggest insight the two offered was just how ugly the Republican side of the race was.

On the Democratic side, you have Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders -- neither of whom will ever make PEOPLE's 50 Most Beautiful.

But they also don't risk scaring small children.

The same cannot be said for the eyebrow less Kasich.

Or for that matter, the Donald.

The Donald looks like a human Cheeto with eyes.

And what about all the concealer he's wearing under his eyes -- the only spot on his face that isn't orange.

Then there's that ridiculous 'hair.'

At the front now, it creates a soft spot, as though someone's working the camera lens like this is an episode of MOONLIGHTING.

We would have put it down to a problem for just FOX but then we saw him on NBC with the same issue.

Who's the better campaigner?

Donald Trump.

Donald Trumps said pretty much word for word on FOX what he said on NBC.

Asked about the same issues on both shows, Kasich tried to vary the wording.

But Trump treated both appearances like a stump speech.

Trump's had some problems at rallies of late.

Protesters (against Trump) have been involved in situations.

Did they provoke those situations?

Donald Trump believes they did and tried to connect them to MoveOn.org and the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.

He may be right.

He may be wrong.

But Wallace showed clips of Trump endorsing violence ("Just knock the hell -- I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you. In the good old days, they'd rip him out of that seat so fast. There's a group out there, just throw them the hell out. That's OK.") and Donald went into a story about how some people had shown up with tomatoes and he didn't want to be hit by a tomato and he had asked his supporters to stop those who would throw tomatoes:

I was told by Secret Service that there were two people in the audience, they couldn't find them, they didn't know where they were, but they had tomatoes and they were going chuck them at me. And maybe they had good arms, OK? And, you know, being hit in the face by a tomato is not exactly so good. So, before I saw them, in my speech, I said, folks, you have two people with tomatoes. If you see ‘em, do whatever you have to do to ‘em, I don't care. And you know what? I think I’m totally within my rights to say that.

We honestly could understand his fear.

Catsup does not go with Cheetos.

It would have ruined the look he was going for.

Wallace was better on the violence issue only because he repeatedly pressed Trump -- even angering Donald in the process -- while Todd was happy to take whatever soundbyte was offered and quickly move on to his next question.

Kasich mainly showed he was a flip-flopper.

He is not "a fortune teller."

He insisted that when, after claiming he would win Ohio, he was asked about an earlier assertion that he would win Michigan and how that did not come true.

He's not a fortune teller but he insisted Donald Trump would not be the GOP presidential nominee.

Sounds like fortune telling to us.

His biggest problem with the Donald?

He's not offering "hope."

He's going around talking about what is wrong.

The more the eyebrow-less freak prattled on, the sorrier we felt for Donald Trump -- who would have thought that was possible?

Donald's big crime, in Kasich's eyes, is talking publicly about what he feels is wrong with the country.

He especially took issue with Trump declaring on MEET THE PRESS:

The reason there's tension at my rallies is that these people are sick and tired of this country being run by incompetent people that don't know what they're doing on trade deals, where our jobs are being ripped out of our country, Chuck. They're being ripped out. On ISIS, where we can't even beat ISIS with our military. Our military's not being taken care of, we can't even beat ISIS. On our vets, who are being treated horribly. Frankly, they're being treated worse than illegal immigrants. The people are angry at that. They're not angry about something I'm saying. I'm just a messenger. The people are angry about the fact that for 12 years, the workers in this country haven't had a pay increase, Chuck. In 12 years, they haven't had an effective pay increase.

Kasich huffed to Chuck Todd, "I mean, I just listen to the last minute of this interview. Everything is negative. Everything is, 'America's losing, and we're terrible'."

Kasich would rather pretend everything is a-okay and give the voter a bedtime story.

You may or may not agree with the issues Trump listed -- agree that they are real concerns -- but he wasn't really saying, "We're terrible."

Except maybe in Kasich's delicate mind.

Kasich whined about how he wasn't asked questions (enough questions) in one debate, "I didn't get any attention. When we had debates, there were people in the hall shouting my name to have me asked a question."

Okay but when he had two programs bringing him on live as a guest, he had nothing to offer.

In Ohio, he . . .

Well good for you and maybe that shows leadership but all fifty states are not Ohio and what works in one may not work in another.

And, this is really sad, that thought never seemed to occur to the governor.

Of all the guests on the two programs, our favorite was Ted Cruz.

Ted's clearly ready for college level arithmetic -- developmental math, not algebra.

The US Senator form Texas, explained the problem keeping him from being the front runner. If Kasich and Senator Marco Rubio would drop out, Ted insisted, "we would be beating Donald Trump right now in both Florida and Ohio."

Yes, he would.

Very good, Ted, one plus one does equal two.

And if Donald Trump would also drop out, the field might be completely cleared for Ted.

That's Ted's apparent campaign strategy, to sit in front of a TV camera and whine how he could win this thing if only everyone else would drop out.

We wondered if, to implement that strategy, he intended to resort to blackmail, prayer or vodoo?

This being Ted Cruz, we decided he'd opt for all three and, somewhere in the mix, toss in a few loaded guns.

Both shows offered panels.

The FOX panel was less offensive.

Somehow, it's just not possible to take Doris Kearns Goodwin talking about ethics -- that would be serial plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin talking about ethics.

She felt Donald Trumps had a shot at looking presidential and he blew it.

That's what she said anyway.

Or what someone said that she went on to repeat -- without attribution.

The two shows focused on little that mattered.

Violence at Trump rallies?

No one's been carried out on a stretcher.

The obsession with this topic at the expense of actual violence in the world . . .

Both shows were worthless.

They offered nothing but empty chatter and faux concern and faux outrage.

Chuck Todd was more interested in coining a phrase ("Separation Tuesday") than in the world around him.

At least, Chris Wallace briefly touched on the real world.

WALLACE: You also said this about the war on ISIS --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have to knock out ISIS. We have to knock the hell out of ‘em. I would listen to the generals, but I would -- I’m hearing numbers of 20,000 to 30,000.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Which generals have told you, sir, that we need 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Syria?

TRUMP: Well, that's where I heard the number. That doesn't mean I do that, by the way. But that's what I heard the number is in order to eradicate. And it could be quick.
You know, maybe we should do something quickly because this cancer is staying with us forever. I mean, we've been fighting in the Middle East now for 15 years and longer --

WALLACE: But all the generals we've talked to say that’s --

TRUMP: -- and we’ve been spending money at a rate -- and, Chris, in the meantime, our infrastructure in our country is going to hell, our country is in trouble. And all we do is spend money in the Middle East. I mean, either eradicate ‘em or get out.
I mean, what we're doing is crazy. We don’t have any capability. It's ridiculous.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: But all the generals that I’ve spoken to say 20,000 to 30,000 -- I mean, yes, we may need more troops, we may need forward observers, we may need people, special forces to help, Iraqi ground troops. But putting 20,000 to 30,000 American troops back in Iraq and Syria, they have grave doubts about that, sir.

TRUMP: I’m not saying do, it I’m saying that's a number I heard you would need. And I never said, do it, I said that's the number you may need.
But, look, let me tell you something, I whether you like it or not, I was against the war in Iraq, OK? I’m one that said, don't go in. You're going to destabilize the Middle East. I was totally right about that. So, I’m not like this big war hawk.

But now, you have people chopping off heads, you have people drowning 40 and 50 people in steel cages at a time, Chris, and now, we have to do something. And the reason we have to do it is because of the power of weaponry. They're looking to get weapons, and they're looking to acquire weapons that are going to be very, very horrible for our country if they ever do it.

That's more reality than Todd and crew were willing to explore.

In fact, they gas was completely out of the bags at one point when they decided to stroll down revisionary lane.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:
Well, then what you learn from that is you learn this is where young people are feeling, this is their sense of rendezvous with destiny. You have to get that younger generation to support what you're doing. You've got to move in that direction. You know what's fun about watching this though, it just reminds you, politics used to be fun.

CHUCK TODD:
I know.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:
You know, when they did dirty tricks on each other, they were fun tricks, dressing up a whole bunch of nuns looking like, they held Nixon signs saying, "He's the one," and they're looking--

CHUCK TODD:
Or inviting. They're basically sending too many pizzas to ta fundraiser.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:

I know.

Oh, yes, back when "politics used to be fun," Doris. During the age of Nixon.

Remember those Watergate hijinks, Doris?

If only we could return to those days.

Again, public affairs programming? An utter waste of time.

The fire Hillary helped start

Last week, Hillary Clinton wanted to chide Donald Trump and declared, "If you play with matches, you can start a fire you can't control. That is not leadership, that is political arson."

If you play with matches, you can start a fire you can't control.

If you play with matches, you can start a fire you can't control.

If you play with matches, you can start a fire you can't control?

Yes, Hillary Clinton you can.

And, yes, Hillary Clinton, you did.

You can start a fire you can't control.

Perspective

Michigan

Last week, Bernie Sanders won a major victory in Michigan, defeating Hillary Clinton.

March 9, 2016

MIAMI – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued the following statement tonight after The Associated Press projected that he won Tuesday’s primary election in Michigan:
“I am grateful to the people of Michigan for defying the pundits and pollsters and giving us their support. This is a critically important night. We came from 30 points down in Michigan and we’re seeing the same kind of come-from-behind momentum all across America.

“Not only is Michigan the gateway to the rest of the industrial Midwest, the results there show that we are a national campaign. We already have won in the Midwest, New England and the Great Plains and as more people get to know more about who we are and what our views are we’re going to do very well.”

His supporters rightly celebrated and exclaimed online.