About that "War Crime" — Hospital Was Raided By Afghan Forces Three Months Before U.S. Bombing

by Gaius Publius

There's new reporting on the U.S. bombing of the Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. As you may know, Doctors Without Borders wants the incident, in which 22 people were killed, including patients who burned to death in their beds, investigated as a war crime. (You'll see their reasons lower in this piece.)

Now, thanks to excellent reporting by Ryan Grim at Huffington Post, we have more information. The bombing was apparently done at the request of the Afghan military, who had also attacked the hospital with Special Forces less than three months before the U.S. bombing. 

The implications of the bombing are horrific. The implications of this new story are worse. Let's say it is a war crime. Did we do it because the Afghans said to? Who's taking orders from whom in that war? And do U.S. commanders even care whom they're bombing, if they're blindly bombing targets chosen by others?

If so, in the game of Genius and Bully, we're just the bully. From Ryan Grim's report:

Kunduz Hospital Was Raided By Afghan Special Forces Just Three Months Before U.S. Bombing

The raid hints at a motive for the strike.

Afghan special forces raided the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz less than three months before a U.S. bombing killed 22 staff members and patients.

The raid took place on the afternoon of July 1, according to a statement from the hospital at the time. U.S. authorities have since said that Afghan forces called in Saturday's bombing, which lasted for more than an hour, and that the U.S. was unaware it was striking a hospital.

The previous raid suggests that Afghan authorities were aware the facility was a hospital and had a hostile relationship with its staff prior to calling in the U.S. bombing.

According to a statement posted online in July, "heavily armed men from Afghan Special Forces entered the [Médecins Sans Frontières] hospital compound, cordoned off the facility and began shooting in the air."

"The armed men physically assaulted three MSF staff members and entered the hospital with weapons," the statement continued. "They then proceeded to arrest three patients. Hospital staff tried their best to ensure continued medical care for the three patients, and in the process, one MSF staff member was threatened at gunpoint by two armed men. After approximately one hour, the armed men released the three patients and left the hospital compound."

While the motive of the raid is unclear, Afghan forces have long protested the practice of providing medical treatment to insurgents. But international law says that as soon as a fighter is in need of treatment, he is no longer a combatant. [...]

Note this: "U.S. authorities have since said that Afghan forces called in Saturday's bombing..." Do Afghan forces direct American bombing? Again, the implications of just that sentence are pretty bad.

Is This a War Crime?

We've come a long way since World War II, when Nazi atrocities were prosecuted as war crimes, while incidents like the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, not to mention the destruction of Hiroshima, were not even brought up. Now we have ways to sometimes bring even the powerful to justice. The request of Doctors Without Borders? An independent international investigation.

Here's a DWB statement (one of several) on the incident that plainly says there's prima facie evidence of a war crime (my emphasis):

MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.

This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as 'collateral damage.'

There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and independent international investigation."

And now from a CREDO petition also calling for an investigation (emphasis and footnotes in the original):

Sign the petition: Justice for Doctors Without Borders

In the middle of the night on Saturday, a U.S. military plane "repeatedly and very precisely" bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital filled with doctors, nurses and wounded patients in Kunduz, Afghanistan.¹

The airstrike killed twelve Doctors Without Borders staff members and ten patients, including three children, and injured scores more. Some patients literally burned alive in their hospital beds.²

So far, the Pentagon has only released incomplete and contradictory accounts of what happened and why.

On Sunday, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) stated that: "Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body. Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient."³

The world needs to know how and why this grave violation of International Humanitarian Law was committed.⁴ Those responsible for what we presume to be an atrocious war crime must then face justice. Please join Doctors Without Borders in calling for an immediate and independent international investigation.

Tell President Obama and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter: We join Doctors Without Borders and demand an investigation by an independent international body into the U.S. airstrike on the Kunduz hospital.

The Pentagon initially claimed that the hospital was hit by accident after U.S. troops nearby came under fire and called in the airstrike, then later changed its story and said that no U.S. troops were in the area and that Afghan troops called in the strike.⁵

But the Pentagon's story simply doesn't add up. According to Doctors Without Borders: "Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike on Saturday morning... We reiterate that the main hospital building, where medical personnel were caring for patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched."⁶

Further, "The bombing took place despite the fact that MSF had provided the GPS coordinates of the trauma hospital to Coalition and Afghan military and civilian officials as recently as Tuesday, September 29, [five days before the airstrike] to avoid that the hospital be hit."⁷

Shockingly, the bombing continued for more than half an hour after Doctors Without Borders staff began making frantic calls to U.S. and Afghan military officials.

The Pentagon's claim that the hospital was bombed by accident is also contradicted by statements by Afghan officials, who have tried to justify the attack by claiming that the hospital was used by the Taliban for military purposes. [...]

You can sign that petition here. If our military is innocent, what do they have to fear, right?

And if you consider that, after 15 years of war in Afghanistan, it's time to get out, you might give these folks a little of your time and attention as well.

GP

The Specials (lyrics here)

Endorsements For Bernie's Campaign Have Finally Started Rolling In From Progressive Political Leaders

This evening Bernie Sanders will be speaking at the DeMeester Performance Center, an outdoor amphitheater that holds 7,000 people, in Tucson's Reid Park. He'll be introduced by the local congressman, Raúl Grijalva, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group that Bernie founded in 1991. Wednesday, Grijalva became the first member of Congress to endorse Bernie's campaign. Friday he plans to make the case for how, in his words, "Bernie is the right leader to fight income inequality, protect our safety net and ensure every American has a stake in the future of our country."

Yesterday Grijalva told us that "This endorsement is a matter of conscience for me. I cannot sit on the sidelines when our country faces so many challenges, and there is one candidate who I believe will fight for the bold changes we need. Bernie Sanders is fighting for a populist economic agenda to reign in economic inequality, ensure the richest among us contribute their fair share, and ensure the government works for every single American. One of the hardest things to do in politics is to stay consistent. Bernie Sanders has been consistently fighting for these issues-- not just for years, but for decades. Priorities like a $15 minimum wage and expanding opportunities are clear examples of the bold changes a President Sanders would bring, and they are examples of exactly what the American people need."

Grijalva is the first incumbent to have endorsed Bernie but several progressive candidates for Congress have already decided to bite the bullet and do the right thing. (Many want to but are too fearful of the well-known bullying tactics of the Clinton Machine. I spoke to one this week who told me the Clinton people call and badger her constantly.) Anyway, as we wrote in the past, the first candidate to endorse Bernie was South Jersey reformer Alex Law, who's running against the corrupt, conservative Machine candidate, Donald Norcross. Back in August he told us that he was the only congressional candidate in New Jersey who had endorsed Bernie, explaining that "Bernie's thoughts on student loan reform, campaign finance reform, income inequality, raising the minimum wage, diplomacy over war, tax reform, and drug reform resonate deeply with me. His influence is apparent in my policy ideas." He reiterated last night, telling us that:

I am the only Democrat in New Jersey running for office that has endorsed Bernie because I share his progressive values. I share his conviction to address income inequality and to fight corruption in politics. Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat truly committed to addressing campaign finance reform not only in words but in action as he has not accepted Super-PAC support. Whether it's LGBTQ rights, student loan reform, Wall Street reform, drug/prison reform or other issues, Bernie has a vision I agree with. Bernie Sanders is the people's candidate, and I am proud to say I endorse him for President of the United States of America.

The second of Hillary's 3 home state-- Arkansas-- was the scene of the next Bernie endorsement and it came from Robbie Wilson, the congressional candidate in the Fayetteville area. "I take great satisfaction in the fact that I align with Senator Sanders on every issue," he told us. "Most importantly, I agree with the Senator on the subject of overturning Citizens United. There is no greater threat to the survival of the middle class, and no darker bruise on our political structure. Furthermore, this issue goes hand-in-hand with the likelihood that we will need to appoint Supreme Court Justices over the next two presidential terms, and the idea that a Republican President and Congress would steer those appointments is almost too much to bear. Senator Sanders and I also share the same stance on the issues of women’s rights, foreign policy and economics, among others. But in a broader sense, we both believe that our government was intended to benefit all Americans, not to hold down the many in order to appease a few. This is a fundamental theme that is woven throughout the fabric of my platform, and I’m proud to say Senator Sanders reflects these same values."

And the 4th candidate to endorse Bernie-- and this was also Wednesday-- was Tom Guild, running for the Oklahoma City seat. "Bernie Sanders and I are in agreement on the vast majority of the major issues facing America," he said. "He has raised millions of dollars from grassroots activists in small amounts. He is drawing huge and sometimes unprecedented crowds wherever he goes. There are other good and able presidential candidates running in 2016. Bernie is the best of the best. He is the best hope to turn around our country and to fix the broken campaign finance system, address income inequality, reduce mounting college student debt, increase Social Security benefits, protect Medicare, repair our nation’s tattered infrastructure, support public education, raise the wages for American workers, and effectively deal with other pressing matters. America feels the Bern! I support and endorse Bernie Sanders for President of the United States."



Blue America is thrilled that the support from progressives has started coming in and we started a special Act Blue page just for Members of Congress and candidates for Congress endorsing Bernie. Most Democrats love Bernie's platform and his ideas for making America a more equitable place to love. Even if he's elected, he's going to need supporters in Congress on the same page. We know Grijalva and the whole Progressive Caucus will be there for him but Bernie is going to have Republicans, Blue Dogs and the Wall Street-owned New Dems to contend with, which is why it is so crucial to elect progressives like Alex Law, Robbie Wilson and Tom Guild. Please contribute what you can to these candidates. And this week, Blue America is going to give away an extremely rare RIAA-certified platinum award for the Friends soundtrack. This was the first-even TV series to win a platinum record (for a million sales) and it included songs by The Rembrandts, REM, Joni Mitchell, the Barenaked Ladies, Lou Reed, kd lang, Paul Westerberg, the Pretenders and the other musicians that contributed songs to the show. As a way of thanking contributors, we'll randomly select on lucky "winner." There is no minimum-- anyone can win this by contributing on this page. In fact if you want the platinum award but find yourself strapped for cash, just send us a post card (pronto)-- Blue America, PO Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027-- and let us know you want to win too and that you'll contribute some other time if you can. Meanwhile, kick back and listen to a very Friends-friendly version of "I'll Be There For You," the show's theme song.




UPDATE: Raúl's Statement Today

"I’m endorsing Bernie Sanders for president today. This is a matter of conscience for me. I cannot sit on the sidelines when our country faces so many challenges, and there is one candidate who I believe will fight for the bold changes we need. Bernie Sanders is fighting for a populist economic agenda to reign in economic inequality, ensure the richest among us contribute their fair share, and ensure the government works for every single American.

"

One of the hardest things to do in politics is to stay consistent. Bernie Sanders has been consistently fighting for these issues-- not just for years, but for decades. Priorities like a $15 minimum wage and expanding opportunities are clear examples of the bold changes a President Sanders would bring, and they are examples of exactly what the American people need."

Drafting The Flim-Flam Man To Be Speaker

Boehner has been begging Paul Ryan to run for the Speakership-- and so are Mitt Romney and Kevin McCarthy, as well as almost every conservative even vaguely "mainstream" in the Republican House caucus. Ryan wants it but he's playing coy and making believe he has to confer with his wife. The unreconstructed Confederate nihilists and die-hards, who are dying to capture what was once the Party of Lincoln, are flipping out. By early evening Politico's Anna Palmer was tweeting that Ryan had cancelled all his fundraisers for the next 48 hours. Lynn Westmoreland-- alas Comedy Central has removed all the easy-to-access videos of him on the Colbert show-- is offering his incompetent self up as the South Will Rise Again candidate. (Let's face it, even for some Confederates, "Taliban Dan" Webster is a bridge too far, although not for Louie Gohmert.) Ryan, though, is wondering how detrimental being Speaker would be for his outsized presidential ambitions.

Long time Ryan-watcher Paul Krugman rushed out a succinct Flim-Flap redux for the Republicans to consider before they rushed into another suicide pact.

Apparently desperate Republicans are pleading with Paul Ryan to become Speaker of the House, because he’s “super, super smart.” More than anyone else in his caucus, he has the reputation of being a brilliant policy wonk.

And that tells you even more about the dire state of the GOP. After all, Ryan is to policy wonkery what Carly Fiorina is to corporate management: brilliant at selling himself, hopeless at actually doing the job. Lest we forget, his much-vaunted budget plan proved, on even superficial examination, to be a ludicrous mess of magic asterisks. His big contribution to discussion of economic policy was his stern warning to Ben Bernanke that quantitative easing would “debase the dollar”, that rising commodity prices in early 2011 presaged a surge in inflation. This guy’s delusions of expertise should be considered funny.

Yet he may indeed be the best they have.

Nonetheless, it would be a huge mistake for him personally to take the job. Where he is, he can cultivate his wonk image, with nobody in the press willing to disturb the illusion. In a direct leadership role, he’d have no place to hide.

The only logical alternative to Ryan for Speaker is Pelosi... and that doesn't seem very likely, despite Charlie Dent (R-PA) thing it would be fine if the Democrats played a role in selecting the next Speaker. Many of them, though, would probably prefer going outside the House and getting Ted Cruz to do it, don't you think? He's obviously given up on a Senate career. Does he still expect to win the GOP nomination, even with Trump making noises that he's "in it to win it?" And if know that Trump is getting out eventually and can hand him the nomination, does he think he could actually beat Bernie or even weak establishment candidates Hillary or Biden? He probably does. He gets delusional and, after all, among these crackpot politicians hope always really does spring eternal. Or maybe Boehner could just forget the whole thing, postpone the golf and lobbyist life and stay around for another year and a few months. That would serve those Liberty Caucus imbeciles right! Besides, this trial balloon got punctured pretty fast:

Before bedtime, in DC, rumors started being laughed at that even former car thief and arsonist-for-pay Darrell Issa (R-CA), always looking for another job, might run too. And then there was his colleague, Mark Takano (D-CA), and his brilliant and helpful Craig's List advertisement. It might not help the Republicans though:

Has the NRA finally admitted it's been lying all this time about its reason for existing?

by Ken

Yesterday ThinkProgress's Judd Legum put together a smashing post called "5 Indefensible Tweets From The NRA Since The Oregon Gun Massacre." Basically here I'm passing on Judd's post with just a few notes of my own added. But afterward, I'll have something to say about one of these tweets from NRA TinyPenisWorld which I find kind of staggering.

First, let's let Judd set his piece up:

After a mass shooting, the NRA traditionally goes silent for a period of time. In the case of the gun massacre in Oregon, the NRA stopped tweeting on Thursday, October 1 at 1:44 p.m., shortly after the news broke. The account resumed tweeting at 12:07 p.m. on Friday, October 2 with an innocuous tweet about gun safety.

By Monday, the NRA twitter account was aggressively tweeting out information intended to head off any efforts to increase gun control in the wake of the massacre at Umpqua Community College. Much of this information, however, was wildly misleading or just plain inaccurate.

With that, we're good to go. "Here," says Judd, "are five of the NRA’s most egregious recent tweets."


"1. There is no gun show loophole."

This is an easy one: Yes, of course there is. And everyone -- except perhaps this tweeter from TinyPenisWorld -- knows it. Judd:

There is a gun show loophole. At gun shows, unlicensed sellers can sell guns without any background check, waiting period, or paperwork. These are referred to as “private sales.” There are thousands of gun shows in the United States each year.

These unregulated “private sales” of guns also take place on the internet or other physical locations. The NRA disingenuously claims that these additional loopholes mean that there isn’t a specific gun show loophole.

"2. The Australian gun buyback didn’t work."

Another easy one: It sure as shootin' did work. Judd:

After a gun massacre in Australia in 1996, the government “instituted a temporary gun buyback program that took some 650,000 assault weapons (about one-sixth of the national stock) out of public circulation.” At the same time, the government banned semi-automatic rifles and tightened licensing requirements.

A 2011 Harvard University study concluded that the buyback program was “incredibly successful in terms of lives saved.” There have been no gun massacres — defined as the killing of four or more people at once — in the 17 years since the buyback took place. There were 13 gun massacres in the 18 years prior to the program.

Additionally, the number of firearm suicides and homicides was reduced dramatically. This reduction was directly tied to the buyback program. The Harvard study found that “the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback” and “firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates.”

The article cited by the NRA does not dispute the reduction in firearm deaths after the buyback program but simply asserts, without much analysis, that the drop was a coincidence. It relies almost exclusively on a deeply flawed study produced by the Australian gun lobby.

"3. Gun-free zones are magnets for murderers."

This sounds to me like something the gun-massacre fans in TinyPenisWorld simply made up in their heads, and assume must be true. The facts say otherwise. Judd:

86 percent of mass shootings occur outside of gun-free zones. Studies have found no evidence that people purposely choose gun-free zones for mass shootings. Rather, there is usually another clear motive for the choice of location. In most school shootings, for example, “the killers had personal ties to the school they struck.”

"4. Over the last 5 years, twice as many people were killed with someone’s bare hands than with a rifle."

What??? Even beyond the bizarreness of the comparison, the tweeter has in fact misread his sources for both of the statistics being "compared." In a larger perspective, though, this is also the claim I want to come back to when we're done with Judd's piece. Meanwhile, here's his response:

This is misleading to the point of parody. The statistic comes from this chart from the FBI that looks at murder victims from 2010 to 2014. The data found no more than 769 homicides each year with a “personal weapon” — a category that includes hands, feet and any other part of the body. Meanwhile, there were over 8000 homicides by firearms each year.

The NRA isolates the category “rifles” to make guns seem relatively safe — there are around 250-350 homicides with rifles each year — but this just reflects the popularity of handguns over rifles. Additionally, there are between 1600-1900 firearm homicides each year where the type of firearm could not be identified by the FBI. So the NRA’s claim, in addition to being highly misleading, also might not be true.

"5. Fewer than 1 percent of criminals get guns at gun shows."

M oh my, the gun-massacre fans do seem concerned about keeping the free flow of guns flowing at loophole-blessed gun shows! Judd:

This statistic vastly understates the nexis between gun shows and criminal activity by focusing only on the proximate source of the gun. The same study found that “sixty-nine percent of criminals surveyed reported acquiring guns from a friend, family member, or street seller.” And where did those people acquire their guns? In many cases, at a gun show. Overall, “3 out of 10 guns that criminals use in crimes changed hands at a gun show somewhere in their chain of custody.”

NOW, ABOUT THAT EYE-POPPER OF A TWEET

As I mentioned, the TinyPenisWorld tweet that blew my mind is (4), "Over the last 5 years, twice as many people were killed with someone’s bare hands than with a rifle."

Does someone connected to the NRA really think this advances their cause? Even setting aside the numerical mumbo-jumbo performed with both numbers being compared, can you believe they're arguing in terms of the (claimed) relative safeness of rifles? While this might seem a point worth making for an organization that calls itself the National Rifle Association, an organization that purports to defend the rights of rifle-bearing hunters, if that was ever the mission of the real-world NRA, it certainly hasn't been in the time since the NRA took over the American gun franchise and took all of our political institutions hostage.

No, the real-world NRA is an organization whose reason for existence is to secure the right of virtually every man, woman, and child to carry a handgun or automatic weapon, whether concealed or openly carried, into church, into fast-food outlets, or into any other damned place in the country he/she wants.

This is the mission that has driven the power grab that culminated in the abduction of the Constitution by a hoodlum of five ideologically crazed Supreme Court justices so brain-impaired or ideologically determined that they (a) showed themselves incapable of performing the simple act of reading the Second Amendment, and (b) lacked even the most minimal knowledge of the actual circumstances the amendment was written to address and adopted to cover.

Do we all get the significance of this tweet? It tells us that every propaganda utterance of the NRA and its supporters having anything to do with any weapon except rifles has been a conscious, calculated lie. What the NRA propagandists have always been out to secure is not the rights of hunters, who at least have some understandable reason for wanting to protect their access to rifles, but the right of TinyPenisWorld thrill-seekers to seek out the thrill -- as spectators if not perpetrators -- of gun violence.


MORE FUN WITH GUNS (ALSO NOT RIFLES)

Check out Jen Hayden's Daily Kos account yesterday of gun fun in Auburn Hils, MI, "Home Depot customer with a concealed handgun opened fire on shoplifting suspect," which began:

Apparently a Michigan woman with a conceal-carry permit and a loaded handgun thought it was her duty to step in and help a Home Depot employee stop a suspected shoplifter. Did she follow their car? Nope. She opened fired on the suspected shoplifter's SUV as they drove out of the parking lot.

Jen's got this one covered, so do check out her post. But I hope everyone understands without further commentary what's crazy wrong with this picture.

#

San Franciscans Formalize Coalition To Reclaim Their City

-by Denise Sullivan

"For those of us who are progressive, who believe the City of San Francisco should work for everyone, it's a difficult time to be at City Hall…it's a difficult time to be in that building," said Supervisor David Campos, last weekend as he helped to launch Vision SF, a grassroots group primed to reclaim San Francisco from the forces of greed, corruption and narcissism that have poisoned municipal waters.

Representing the Mission, the City's Latino cultural district and locus of its housing crisis, Supervisor Campos brought the additional dimension of the broken immigration system to the event conceived as a pre-election housing initiative forum. Referring to Donald Trump scapegoating immigrants following a recent murder committed by an undocumented person here, Campos cleaved to San Francisco's sanctuary city policy and pressed to keep local law enforcement out of the business of immigration. "Our sanctuary policy already says we're not going to tolerate criminal activity," underscores Campos "No human being is illegal and every human being regardless of immigration status has human dignity."

Intended to rally grassroots community organizations and free range citizens and spur them into a cohesive voting block for this election, there wasn't much talk of San Francisco's homeless population, though the ballot's housing initiatives perhaps imply a way toward that solution too. Propositions A, F, I, J and K concern affordable housing, regulating Airbnb, pausing development of market-rate housing, protecting legacy businesses and using city-owned surplus land respectively---and were elaborated on by the Housing Rights Committee's Sara Shortt, former assemblyman and supervisor Tom Ammiano, lifelong human rights advocate Cleve Jones and artist Roberto Hernandez (who learned to organize directly from Cesar Chavez). The activists were joined by committed singer-songwriter Tom Heyman, young filmmakers Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails, and comedian Mike Evans, among others. A clip of Alexandra Pelosi's new film, San Francisco 2.0, was to be screened but Vision-SF co-founder David Talbot announced that venture capitalist Ron Conway succeeded in scaring HBO and the filmmaker's family from showing the film and attending the event (not exactly a good portent for the region that sparked the Free Speech movement).

Talbot and co-host, former supervisor and housing rights activist Christina Olague presided over the program that generally advocated coalition building across racial, age, and economic lines. Addressing the need to include young, exploited tech workers in the movement for economic and housing justice, Cleve Jones invoked the name of his friend Harvey Milk which brought the crowd to a eerie hush. "It's over," Jones remembered, as he recalled the moment of seeing the slain body of Milk being removed from City Hall, "All I could think was, "it's over'," he said. Though as night fell and the streets filled with San Franciscans from all walks of life, candles lit to mourn the fallen at the evening's march and vigil in 1978, Jones found a way to be inspired to push forward. "This is just the beginning," he said, and it was that message he impressed on the crowd who left with house signs and renewed spirit of solidarity.

Meanwhile, across town, thousands of San Franciscans and tourists reveled in Golden Gate Park while musicians, many with counter-culture roots of their own, entertained at the annual three-day music festival sponsored by deceased private equity investor, Warren Hellman. Mega-producer T Bone Burnett used his stage time to speak truth to power: "Who's going to call this darkness, darkness. Somebody's got to locate the bomb, dot com." The founders and members of Vision-SF are trying, man, but they're going to need a lotta help from their friends.

Arctic Sea Ice Has Lost Two-Thirds of Its Volume Since 1979

Animated visualization of the startling decline of Arctic sea ice, showing the minimum volume reached every September since 1979, set on a map of New York with a 10km grid to give an idea of scale. As it plays, note the sudden drops in 1992, 1995, 2006 and 2012. Collapses aren't linear (source).

by Gaius Publius

I've written before about Arctic sea ice and how the area encompassed by ice at the end of summer is shrinking. For example, in this piece, which contained this age-of-ice graphic:

Graphic showing that Arctic ice is getting younger and younger. Today there is much less ice in the Arctic that's older than five years. Note also the difference in total extent (click to enlarge).

Now comes information on Arctic ice volume, with a nice animation (see top) illustrating it. Greg Laden has more at his climate science blog. Fascinating reading (italics mine):

Every year the sea ice that covers the northern part of the Earth expands and contracts though the winter and the summer. The minimum extent of the sea ice is usually reached some time in September, after which it starts to reform.

Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has increased the surface temperatures of the earth, as measured on the land at about heat height with thermometers, and on the sea at the surface, mainly with satellites. Warming of the surface has continued apace for several decades, though with some expected squiggling up and down in how fast that is happening.

Greenhouse gas, mainly CO2, causes warming because of its heat trapping properties, and this warming (and the CO2 itself) set in motion a number of feedback systems that either push against warming or increase warming. Most of these feedback systems, unfortunately, are what we call “positive” feedbacks, though they are not “positive” in a good way. They are effects that increase the amount of warming beyond what would happen from just the CO2. One of the biggest global effects is an increase in the amount of water vapor carried by the atmosphere. Since water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, more CO2 -> more greenhouse effect -> more water vapor -> more greenhouse effect.

One of the bad effects of greenhouse warming is the melting of more ice in the Arctic during the summer. On average, less and less ice is left by the end of the melt season in September. Again, this amount squiggles up and down a bit, but it is a persistent downward trend. Since ice reflects sunlight away from the earth, a decrease in ice cover in the Arctic means more warming. This has both regional effects (such as an increase in melting of land-based Greenland glaciers) and a global effect. The regional effect is very important, because this has resulted in a phenomenon known as Arctic Amplification. This refers to the fact that of all the different regions of the earth, the Arctic is warming more than most other regions. The large scale systems of air movement that make up much of our climate, and thus control much of our weather, are shaped and driven in large part by the redistribution of heat form tropical areas (where the sun has a stronger warming effect) outward towards the poles. This redistribution shapes trade wind patterns and determines the location and strength of the jet streams. The relatively warmer Arctic has changed the basic shape and pattern of these major climatic features in ways that have caused significant changes in weather. The drought in California is caused in part by the persistence of a large jet stream meander caused, almost certainly, by Arctic Amplification and other changes in heat distribution in the northern latitudes. Another change is the increase in large scale precipitation events. Here in the twin cities, for example, the frequency of 3″ plus rainstorm over the year has changed from about one every two years to one every year, on average. Rainfall events of between 1 and 2 inches, and between 2 and 3 inches, have also increased.

There are two major properties of Arctic ice that should be considered. One, just discussed, is extent. Extent matters because of its direct effect on albedo, the reflection of sunlight back into space. Less ice extent, caused by warming, means even more warming. The other property is ice volume. Ice volume builds up over time. Thick ice includes ice from previous years that didn’t melt. The system is complex and dynamic, but a healthy Arctic ice ecosystem has a good amount of thick high-volume ice that persists through the melt season and forms the anchor against which annually re-freezing surface ice forms. The less ice volume, the less stable the Arctic Sea ice is, and the more difficult it becomes to reform. Exactly how this effect works depends on exactly which part of the Arctic one is in.

Over the last several decades, the volume of Arctic Sea ice has reduced by something like 80%. This is not good.

There's more, including charts like the stunner below. I'd like to send you there to read the rest.

Arctic sea ice extent, month by month, for the ten most recent years. September is always the summer low. The dark black line shows the average for the years 1981–2010. The dashed line is 2012. When the September low reaches 1 million square kilometers (left scale), the Arctic is ice-free. (Click to enlarge.)

Notice in the text quoted above the relationship between feedbacks, that they piggyback on each other. For example, this one about water vapor: "Since water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, more CO2 -> more greenhouse effect -> more water vapor -> more greenhouse effect." Reduction in "whiteness" also increases the greenhouse effect.

It's Coming, and It Won't Be Linear

By "it," of course, I mean the chaos caused by climate change, both physical chaos and social chaos. The maker of the video at the top puts complete loss of Arctic summer ice in the next few years:

Based on the rate of change of volume over the last 30 years, I expect the first ice-free summer day in the Arctic Ocean (defined as having less than 1 million km² of sea ice) to happen between 2016 and 2022, and thereafter occur more regularly with the trend of ice-free duration extending into August and October.

Meaning, if you live through the next two elections, you'll see it. So will everyone else.

GP

Grayson On The New McCarthyism: You're Not Supposed To Use Taxpayer Funds For A Political Witch Hunt

Sensibly, the New York Times is now calling for Congress to shut down the Benghazi Committee, as have many Members of Congress, including Rules Committee ranking member Louise Slaughter. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando went one step further and filed an ethics complaint today against Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Benghazi Committee chairman Trey Gowdy. Yesterday's Times editorial demanded that if the GOP refuses to disband the committee, they at least rename it "the Inquisition of Hillary Rodham Clinton" committee, although I think MSNBC's Morning Joe already has that name copywritten.

Lawmakers have long abused their investigative authority for political purposes. But the effort to find Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the Libya attacks, was personally responsible for the deaths has lost any semblance of credibility. It’s become an insult to the memory of four slain Americans.

The deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and his colleagues have been exhaustively investigated by several other congressional committees and an independent panel of experts commissioned by the Department of State. The reviews found systemic failings at the State Department. But they found no evidence that Mrs. Clinton was directly responsible for the security lapses, which, of course, is the goal of the Republicans who want to derail her presidential bid. The possibility that all those investigators have somehow missed a crucial, damning piece of evidence seems negligible.

Led by Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a former federal prosecutor, the Benghazi committee has trudged on, summoning a seemingly endless list of witnesses who have offered little new substantive information about the attacks. Since it was impaneled in May 2014, the committee has spent more than critical congressional committees, including the House Intelligence and Veterans’ Affairs Committees, which have oversight over bureaucracies with multibillion-dollar budgets.

“There’s nothing to justify the committee’s long duration or expense,” said Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California who sits on the committee and has called for it to be disbanded. “We have nothing to tell the families and nothing to tell the American people.

Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to testify before the committee on Oct. 22. The hearing will give Republicans another chance to attack the credibility and trustworthiness of the leading Democratic presidential candidate. It will do nothing to make American embassies abroad safer or help the relatives of the four killed in Libya.

The hearing should be the last salvo for a committee that has accomplished nothing. If the Republicans insist on keeping the process alive, the Democrats should stop participating in this charade.

With the exception of 7 right-wing Democrats who vote with the GOP as their default position-- only three of whom, Patrick Murphy (FL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Collin Peterson (MN), are still in Congress-- all Democrats knew this was a charade from day one. Idiotically, Murphy now claims that he was 100% confident the committee would vindicate Clinton. Yesterday's Washington Post reported that Trey Gowdy is still conspiring with Murphy and the two other creeps:

When people tell the story of Clinton, Benghazi and the Republican Congress, Gowdy will be a central figure-- maybe a protagonist or antagonist, depending on your point of view. The reality, of course, is blurred. But McCarthy’s comment allowed Democrats to say with new authority what they have argued all along: that the panel is a political tool for Republicans to undermine Clinton. Gowdy says he will strive to correct the record, not only on the left but within his own party, when Clinton comes to before his panel on Oct. 22.

“There were seven Democrats that voted to form the Benghazi Committee, and I have talked to some of the ones who are still in the House because what Kevin said put them in an incredibly bad position,” Gowdy said.” I told them, ‘I want you to tell the people who are criticizing you for taking a chance on us to watch on the 22nd. If they think she’s being treated unfairly they can take it out on you. But that’s not what they are going to see.'”

Grayson, you may recall, has been an outspoken opponent of the Benghazi Committee from the day it was proposed. Last year we had even suggested to Pelosi that she appoint him-- and only him-- as the sole Democratic member so that he could make the Republicans rue the day they had ever come up with this routine. "As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I have read every email, every brief, and every classified memo about the tragic events in Benghazi," he said. "There is not one scintilla of evidence that anyone in the State Department, from entry-level employees to Secretary Clinton herself, took any action that put lives at risk, or covered up anything." At one Foreign Affairs hearing, Congressman Grayson referred to Benghazi as "the scandal that never was." Today he reiterated that the Committee "has been a political dog-and-pony show for its entire 17-month history. It has been clear even to casual observers that the purpose of the committee was never to investigate the tragic death of four Americans in a terrorist attack; it was to attack Hillary Clinton. I am asking OCE to investigate how Reps. McCarthy and Gowdy misused $4.5 million of taxpayer money in an unscrupulous attempt to torpedo Secretary Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President."

Today Grayson called McCarthy's Benghazi comments "a callous admission that demands an investigation," and referred to the committee as a "Stalinesque showtrial," part of the Republican Party's "new McCarthyism." Eeveryone but Murphy, Sinema and Peterson already knew the committee’s only real objective was to hurt Hillary Clinton politically, which is certainly what McCarthy (Kevin, not Joe) implied.



This is the full letter Grayson sent to David Skaggs at the Office of Congressional Ethics:

Dear Mr. Skaggs:

Pursuant to Rule 3(a) of the Office of Congressional Ethics Rules for the Conduct of Investigations, this letter constitutes a complaint against Representatives Kevin McCarthy and Harold “Trey” Gowdy for flagrant violations of 31 U.S.C. § 1301(a) and the regulations implementing that statute by the House Committee on Administration, in the Committees' Congressional Handbook.  Specifically, Representatives Kevin McCarthy and Trey Gowdy violated federal law and House rules by using official funds appropriated to the Select Committee on Benghazi to pay political or campaign-related expenses.

Federal law requires that appropriated funds may only be used for the purposes for which they were appropriated.   House Administration Committee regulations implement this law by requiring that: "Committee funds may only be used to support the conduct of official business of the committee.  Committee funds may not be used to defray any personal, political or campaign-related expenses . . . ."  The House Ethics Manual stresses that this general prohibition against the use of official resources for campaign or political purposes "applies not only to any Member campaign for re-election, but rather to any campaign or political undertaking" (emphasis in original).   The prohibition applies to "campaigns for the Presidency" and it applies "whether the Member is a candidate or is merely seeking to support or assist (or oppose) a candidate in such a campaign."

House Resolution No. 567 established the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi (the “Select Committee on Benghazi”) for the purpose of conducting an investigation of the attacks on United States facilities in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.   The resolution specified that the operations of the Select Committee on Benghazi "shall be paid out of applicable accounts of the House of Representatives" (which are appropriated funds), and required that these appropriated funds "be expended in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Committee on House Administration."   Accordingly, no funds appropriated to the Select Committee on Benghazi may be used for political or campaign-related purposes, and specifically (as noted supra) not to “oppose a candidate in . . . a campaign.”

Representative Kevin McCarthy and Trey Gowdy have violated federal law and House rules by using funds appropriated to the Select Committee on Benghazi to oppose the Presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.  On September 29, 2015, Representative McCarthy appeared on The Sean Hannity Show on Fox News, and he stated that the true purpose of the Select Committee on Benghazi was not to investigate the tragic death of four Americans killed during the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya, but rather to drive down the poll numbers of Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.  Specifically, Representative McCarthy stated that: "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?  We put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? ‘Cause she is untrustable. But no one would’ve known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen."   This is a clear and unequivocal misuse of appropriated funds for political purposes, which is prohibited by the regulations of the Committee on House Administration.

Congressman Gowdy is the Chair of the Benghazi Committee.  He has dragged out the work of the Committee for 17 months already, a period longer than Congress investigated Watergate. According to public reports, the Committee hasn’t held a single hearing since January.  Congressman Gowdy evidently has dragged out the work of the Committee so that it would coincide with the Democratic Presidential Primary race.  In the meantime, the Committee under Gowdy’s leadership has subpoenaed State Department employees and others close to former Secretary Clinton, in an apparent effort to generate anti-Clinton information and disinformation.

Accordingly, the Office of Congressional Ethics should conduct a complete investigation regarding the extent to which Representative McCarthy, Representative Gowdy and others unknown illegally used appropriated funds for political or campaign-related purposes.

I understand that 18 U.S.C. § 1001 applies to the information that I am providing.  To the best of my ability, I affirm that the evidence submitted was not obtained in violation of any law, rule or regulation.

UPDATE: No Lessons Learned In Crazytown

Apparently the Republicanos haven't learned their lesson-- even if doofus-Democrat Patrick Murphy has-- to stop wasting taxpayer money on their partisan ideological flights of fantasy. Deranged North Carolina Christmas tree farmer Virginia Foxx proposed starting a special witch hunt committtee against Planned Parenthood yesterday. Yes, another of their idiotic Select Committees! It passed 242 to 184. Two wretched Republicans-disguised-as-Democrats, Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL), crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP, as they almost always do. The only Republican voting with the Democrats was David Jolly, who appears to be more frightened of the general election voters in Florida than of the Republican primary voters. Jolly's aiming for the GOP nomination for the open Marco Rubio Senate seat. His Tea Party opponent, Ron DeSantis, will be trying to use this vote against him in the Republican primary. But Floridians are broadly pro-Choice and pro-Planned Parenthood, so Jolly was willing to take the chance of alienating the extremists, few of whom were going to vote for him anyway.

UPDATE #2: McCarthy Drops Speaker Bid

Right after Grayson filed his ethics complaint against McCarthy, McCarthy withdrew from his quest for the Speakership. Grayson: "When Democrats with guts stand up to corrupt Republicans, we get results. This is a victory against the new McCarthyism and the Republican witch-hunt against Hillary Clinton... Kevin McCarthy and Trey Gowdy broke federal law and violated House rules by using taxpayer money to try to bring down a Democratic presidential candidate and they should be held accountable. I will continue to fight this unethical and illegal Stalinesque show trial."

Or did McCarthy drop out because Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), Freedom Caucus psychopath was threatening to expose his affair with Renee Ellmers (R-NC), which wasn't much of a secret inside the Beltway anyway but hadn't filtered back to the voters in either congressional district.

The affair is something of an open secret in Washington, D.C. Reporters at other publications, lobbyists, congressional staffers of both parties all know about it. One staffer for a congressman describes it as the “biggest open secret” in D.C. A lobbyist describes Ellmers as a “social climber who has ingratiated herself” with McCarthy.

House leadership also knows about the affair. Speaker John Boehner reportedly told McCarthy to stop the affair once McCarthy was elected Majority Leader says a well placed congressional staffer. At least one leadership staffer doesn’t think the affair ended. “They are unusually close,” says the staffer who insists that the affair is going on. “It’s weird if he’s not fucking her.”

The source is Got News, which is run by right-wing extremist Charles Johnson, whose reporting is usually found at Drudge and the Blaze. Yesterday he got a cease and desist order for writing about the Ellmers-McCarthy affair. This is getting really ugly. Is the House GOP officially in turmoil?

The Nuts-- Why We Need Real Gun Control

The 32 year old Florida U.S. Senate candidate who sacrificed the goat to the god of the wilderness are drank the blood was neither Tea Party Republican Ron DeSantis nor corrupt New Dem Patrick Murphy. It was a batshit-crazy Augustus Sol Invictus, a Libertarian. And he's also recruiting neo-Nazis to help him start another civil war. Libertarian Party Florida Chairman, Adrian Wyllie: "He is the absolute exact opposite of a Libertarian. He's a self-proclaimed fascist. He's promoting a second civil war. It's absolute insanity. We must explain to people this is the opposite of Libertarians. This guy has no place in the Libertarian Party." But no one much cares because, after all, Libertarians tend to me crackpots anyway and no one thinks he has any chance of being elected anything. On the other hand, there's a Republican Lt Governor in Tennessee...

As Speaker of the state Senate, Ron Ramsey-- a real estate agent and auctioneer-- was given-- there is no election-- the Lt. Governor job in 2007, the first Republican told hold that position in 140 years and only able to win it with the help of a renegade Democrat. He represents Johnson and Sullivan counties in east Tennessee, two blood red GOP bastions. (Romney won Tennessee with 59%. Johnson County, in the very northeast tip of the state was the #1 county in America for Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Alf Landon. It's 96.40% white and gave Romney 74% of its vote. The closest thing to a city is the town of Mountain City, the county seat with a population of 2,531. Sullivan County, once part of North Carolina and once part of the short-lived state of Franklin, is even stranger. It was one of the only east Tennessee counties to support secession and it's almost as white as Johnson County-- 95.5%. The county seat, Blountville, population 3,074 and Ramsey's hometown, is the only county seat in the state that isn't an incorporated city or town. Sullivan County voted 73% for Romney.

Ramsey ran for governor in 2010 as the radical right extremist and hate candidate and was endorsed by most of the state's Tea Party organizations. The best known plank of his platform was his stance against Sharia law and his claim that "you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult, whatever you want to call it." Even in Tennessee he only finished third-- behind Bill Haslam (47.5%) and Zach Wamp (29.1%) with just 22% of the votes. In 2012 he ran for reelection as a state senator with no primary opposition and no opposition in the general.

And this week he's momentarily famous again for a Facebook posting. An opponent of regulating guns, he's one of the hypocrites with the broken hearts for the dead. But that isn't what's making him famous. He wants Christians to arm themselves.

As I scroll through the news this morning I am saddened to read the details of the horrible tragedy in Oregon. My heart goes out to the citizens of Roseburg-- especially the families and loved ones of those murdered.

The recent spike in mass shootings across the nation is truly troubling. Whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West.

While this is not the time for widespread panic, it is a time to prepare. I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit. I have always believed that it is better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.

Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise.

"There are a number of people who will never forgive [Barack Obama] for being half-black" (the late Stanley Hoffmann)

Plus some thoughts on Zbig Brzezinski, Henry the K,
the brothers Kennedy, and some fellow Frenchies


Harvard Prof. Stanley Hoffmann speaking on European-American relations at the Salzburg Global Seminar in 1984

by Ken

The New York Review of Books is remembering a frequent contributor, the late Stanley Hoffmann, longtime professor of international relations at Harvard. who died on September 13, with online publication of a "conversation" drawn from a never-published December 2011 interview with Michal Matlak ("a PhD student in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a regular contributor to the Polish magazine Liberal Culture").

I've plucked out a few excerpts from those excerpts.


A COUPLE OF HARVARD DEPARTMENTAL COLLEAGUES:
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI AND HENRY KISSINGER

About Brzezinski, and the radical change he underwent, Hoffmann recalled:

He was always fascinated by and worried about the Soviet Union and nothing else. I liked him very much. But then he was a great supporter of the Vietnam War which I thought was a disaster and unwinnable. Now he has completely changed. I don’t think he remembers that he was such a supporter of the war. I was quite surprised at a conference which took place in Berlin about ten years ago to hear Zbig explaining that what the US did in Vietnam was a form of colonialism. He would never have said that earlier. In other words he was wise enough to change his mind. We are exactly the same age.

Zbig is a complicated guy. There was this permanent battle that went on between Zbig, representing the hard line on Russia, and Cyrus Vance, who wanted more accommodation, more flexibility. And the relations between the two of them were just awful. The story of my department was, for years, the battle between Zbigniew and Henry Kissinger. The difference has been that Kissinger never took Zbigniew seriously, and Zbigniew could not tolerate Henry, because Henry was there always before Zbig in occupying the high positions.

As for Henry the K, Hoffmann said: "I could write a book on Henry, which I will not. Everything is very complicated with Mr. Kissinger."

He did comment on something Kissinger "was very good at":

There was very recently, in The New York Times, a long front-page review by him of a new and very long biography of George Kennan. And what I found remarkable about Henry’s article was that it said nothing. I went through all of it and you don’t know at the end what he really thought. And he was very good at that.

ABOUT THE BROTHERS KENNEDY

After some conversation about "politicians who are able to combine moral ends with Realpolitik, Hoffmann was asked about another possible "successful idealist."

You knew John F. Kennedy. Did he belong to the same group of successful idealists?

Although I knew Kennedy a little, I did not like him, for purely personal reasons. He was very much an opportunist, very intelligent. I knew all three of the Kennedys. The youngest one, Teddy, who died about three years ago, was my student. He was not a genius, but he was a good person. He spent much of his time as a member of the Senate helping people get visas to the United States. He saved people. And he never really thought much about himself, because he didn’t think he was quite smart enough to reach the heights. But I liked him. The other two, Bobby and John Kennedy, struck me as hard-nosed, calculating machines.

So you don’t see in their politics a strong connection to human rights?

I think that the one who developed [this connection]—just before he was murdered—was Bobby Kennedy. He started as an aide of [Republican Senator Joe] McCarthy, so he travelled a great deal, so to speak. John F. Kennedy, I couldn’t quite figure him out. In any case his assassination was a disaster, because his successor, LBJ, did some very good things in some areas relating to human rights, but foreign policy was not his domain. But who are we to pass judgment on everybody?

"FOR THE TIME BEING AMERICA IS UNGOVERNABLE"

About President Obama, Hoffmann expressed admiration for his two books, saying, "He writes well and he is a very good speaker."

[Y]ou have lots of people, including Newt Gingrich and some others, who still wonder whether Obama is really an American. It requires a certain amount of chutzpah for somebody like Obama to be president because he knows there are a number of people who will never forgive him for being half-black. And for the time being America is ungovernable. The Constitution—and all the additions that have been grafted on it—make effective government almost impossible. For almost every important measure you need a 60 percent majority in the Senate. It is almost impossible to get this. So nothing works.

AS YOU CAN NO DOUBT GUESS FROM THE NAME --

Stanley Hoffmann was by birth French. (He had vivid memories of the Nazi occupation of his homeland.) And he had interesting things to say about Europe generally, and in particular about several of his countrymen, including --

• Mitterrand, about whom he wrote a book, and whom he described as "not an admirable politician," "highly intelligent, but also a narcissist."

• De Gaulle, of whom he said, "I have learned more about politics by studying de Gaulle than by studying Mitterand." He admired De Gaulle's being "very flexible when it came to the personalities with whom he worked." "[A]fter the liberation, some of the people who were most useful to France were not politicians or ex-politicians; they were business people, technicians, civil servants, who were totally indifferent to the battles between socialists and Christian democrats."

#

Rubio's 19th Century Vision For America Isn't Going Anywhere

New York's Gabriel Sherman, writhing about what Team Clinton has in store for Biden: "The research effort started about a month ago and is being conducted by operatives at Correct the Record, the pro-Hillary superpac founded by David Brock, which is coordinating with the Clinton campaign. According to the source, the research has turned up material on Biden’s ties to Wall Street; his reluctance to support the raid that killed Osma bin Laden; and his role in the Anita Hill saga as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee." But with the Clinton opposition research team putting all its energy into readying the attack against Biden, who's preparing to go after whichever maniac the GOP finally nominates?

Yesterday's silly insider buzz was all about how that Republican would be... Rubio. The Real Clear Politics average GOP primary polling has him in 4th place, almost at double-digits and just behind Fiorina, just ahead of Jeb:

• Trump- 23.2%
• Carson- 17.2%
• Fiorina- 10.4%
• Rubio- 9.9%
• Bush- 8.4%
• Cruz- 6.2%
• Kasich- 3.2%
• Huckabee- 2.9%
• Christie- 2.6%
• Paul- 2.3%

Nate Cohn admits Rubio "hasn’t quite had his moment in the media spotlight, he hasn’t made big gains in the polls, and he hasn’t earned many endorsements. But," he wrote in yesterday's NYTimes, "the political landscape surrounding his candidacy could not have changed much more in his favor over the last six months." That means that after Walker was driven out of the race Rubio's all the mainstream conservative voters have left other than the pretty loathed and floundering Jeb Bush. In yesterday's PPP survey Rubio's favorables/unfavorables were a relatively robust 57/24% while poor Jeb's were a sorry, low-energy 34/49%. Rubio has picked up some Walker operatives, theoretically a good thing, and some Walker donors and bundlers.

The sense that Mr. Rubio’s position has improved is reflected in the betting markets, which show him rising steadily to a 29 percent chance of winning the nomination, more than twice the 13 percent he held before the last Republican debate. Mr. Bush is at 31 percent.

Mr. Rubio, however, will still need to capitalize on the voids created by Mr. Walker’s exit and Mr. Bush’s weakness. With well-received debate performances, he has been praised as the best communicator in his party and has strong favorability ratings. But he has not yet become the top choice of many party elites or voters; in fact, he holds about as much support in the polls as Mr. Bush, and far fewer endorsements.

Mr. Rubio’s biggest shortcoming is that he is not the natural favorite of any wing of the party, which is the easiest way for a candidate to become the first choice of a meaningful block of voters. He’s the opposite of candidates like Mr. Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul and John Kasich, who have messages and political identities that resonate with one of the party’s core constituencies, like the Tea Party, evangelicals, libertarians or moderates.

Mr. Rubio’s challenge could simply be a reflection of his greatest strength-- his wide appeal. The son-of-a-bartender message is so broadly attractive in part because it’s aimed at no one, except, perhaps, bartender households.

...But it’s also possible that Mr. Rubio’s problems run deeper than the factional politics of a severely divided party. Perhaps his vaunted communication skills haven’t turned into big polling gains because his personal traits-- he’s a young, Catholic, Latino lawyer from Miami-- don’t help him resonate among old, evangelical, white, less-educated and rural voters. His youthful appearance may not help assuage concerns about his preparedness for the presidency.

Beyond his limited experience in national politics, he has big vulnerabilities on his failed immigration reform effort and his ties to a billionaire benefactor.

Paul Waldman and Jonathan Chait were both laughing. Waldman: "By any objective measure, Rubio isn’t doing much better than he was a month or a year ago... But that will probably change. Here’s how the prophecy of Rubio’s future success becomes self-fulfilling. Members of the media decide that Rubio has a good chance of winning the nomination. Then they begin writing more stories about him. Those stories tend to be very positive, not because of some personal pro-Rubio bias any reporter has, but because the stories’ basic frame-- Rubio is climbing, Rubio could be the nominee-- leads them to focus on his more appealing characteristics and the things he’s doing right, as a way of explaining what they say is happening (just as a story about Jeb Bush’s drop in the polls will naturally focus on mistakes that he’s made and things he’s doing wrong). Voters see all this positive coverage, and begin thinking, “Gee, that Rubio fellow is pretty appealing.” Donors see it and give him more money. Other Republican politicians see it and start thinking about whether it’s time to make their endorsement. Each tiny movement upward in the polls, no matter how small, reinforces the cycle and keeps propelling him upward."

Chait seems even more skeptical: "Rubio has carved out a valuable niche in the Republican field as the candidate who will carry out the agenda of the party’s donor base, but who has the identity and communication skills to sell that agenda more effectively... [A]sked if he disagrees with Bush or Romney on anything at all, Rubio does not directly offer any examples. Instead, he says he will “spend a tremendous amount of time talking about higher-education reform.” This is an interesting and perhaps accidentally blunt description of his political strategy. (Obviously Rubio wants to spend a lot of time talking about higher-education reform, and less time talking about less popular things he plans to do in office.) But it’s not true that other Republicans never talked about reforming higher education. Romney talked about it a lot... What’s stranger is Rubio’s claim that his issues-- actually, issue, singular, is completely novel to anything considered by Bush or Romney because “they were not part of the 20th century debate.” The gambit here is to wall off any association between Rubio and previous Republican failures by drawing a line at the century mark, after which all intellectual continuities stop." OK, but that's both silly and untrue.

Michael Tomasky seems about as worried as Rubio as I am-- i.e., not at all. Writing for the Daily Beast yesterday, he was also laughing at the expense of the insiders-- "not regular real people, but total political junkies, and, being on the side of the fence I’m on, mostly liberal total political junkies"-- who are calling it for Rubio already. He agrees with everyone else that Rubio-- for all his weaknesses-- may wind up as the "insider" or "mainstreamish" candidate: :"The logic is straightforward enough. It looks like the race will eventually whittle down to one outsider vs. one insider. The outsider could be Donald Trump or who knows maybe Ben Carson, with an outside shot at Carly Fiorina. As for the insider, not so long ago that was either Rubio or Jeb Bush or John Kasich, throw a dart. But Bush just keeps getting worse and worse, and Kasich looks increasingly goofy."

I think my little focus group is over-sweating this. So herewith, four reasons why Rubio might be formidable, and four corresponding reasons why he’s being overrated.

Reason One: This whole youth business. Let’s face it, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the spring chicken. At least she’d be shy of 70 when inaugurated. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden probably couldn’t last two terms. So Rubio can lay it on thick with all that cloying rhetoric about the future and passing torches to a new generation. The media really fall for that. Oh, and speaking of…

Reason Two: It seems the media like him. They sure like him more than they like Hillary. If she’s the nominee, the default narrative in the media will be something like “fresh-faced new figure takes on tired old hag.”

Reason Three: The Latino vote. You’ll be reading a lot if he’s the nominee about how he won 55 percent of the Latino vote in his first Senate run in Florida in 2010. The press will be full of breathless stories about how if he can replicate that, the Democrats are doomed.

Reason Four: He seems reasonable and totally unthreatening, which may make it hard for Democrats to sell people on the idea that he’s a right-wing extremist. There’s an art for these wingers in knowing how to emphasize all the non-extreme stuff and really play down the extreme parts. Rubio is better at that than the others. A case in point is that woman-on-the-$10-bill business from the second debate. Three of them said Rosa Parks, but Rubio said it first. This was after Rand Paul said Susan B. Anthony, which isn’t bad, but Anthony doesn’t cover nearly as many reassure-mainstream-America bases as Parks does. Also keep in mind that he had that crackerjack answer about Black Lives Matter recently, which was likely the best response to the movement by a GOP candidate. If Rubio can keep doing things like that, the “No, you fools, he’s a true right winger!” counter-narrative might be very tough to advance.

All right. Now, here are the reasons why Rubio is eminently beatable in a general election.

Reason One: His youth story line can be very easily countered. Picture a Clinton-Rubio debate. Rubio prattles on about youth, the future, optimism, what have you. Mrs. Clinton? “Well, look, the Senator is undoubtedly younger than I am, that’s an objective fact. But if we’re talking about which one of us has the policies of the past, I’d say voters should look beyond mere age. Which one of us wants to keep fighting the Cold War in Cuba, and which one of us wants to move toward a new future there? Which one of us opposes gay people getting married, a policy of the past that large majorities of Americans no longer support? Which one of us would allow no abortions even in the case of rape and incest, which is literally kind of a 19th-century position? Which one of us not only opposes raising the minimum wage but opposes the existence of a federal minimum wage law, which would us all the way back to 1937, the last time this country had no federal minimum wage? That’s the candidate of the future?” Boom. If she said something like that and made two good commercials and Democrats in general hammered away at it, Rubio would shut up about the future pretty fast.

Reason Two: The women’s vote. Let’s go back to that abortion sentence above. It was at the first debate that Rubio said no rape or incest exceptions on abortion. Now, if he becomes the nominee, he’ll try to walk that back in some way, at least rhetorically, and he’s usually been clever and slippery in the way he’s worded it. No Republican nominee since abortion became a public issue has ever opposed exceptions for rape and incest. It’s an extreme position that should, if the Democrats hit it the right way, cost him a few points among suburban women in all the key swing states.

Reason Three: The Latino vote. He’s not getting close to 55 percent among Latinos. OK, some say, but what if he gets a mere 40, isn’t that enough? Well, maybe, maybe not, depending on other factors. But after being for immigration reform, he’s now basically against it and against a path to citizenship, although here too he is slippery. He says now that we should postpone the citizenship debate for 10 or 12 years, which means that if he serves eight, he won’t be the guy to be doing anything about it.

So that’s a way of being against it without saying the words “I’m against it,” but people aren’t stupid. In one recent poll that looked especially closely at Latino preferences (PDF), Clinton led Rubio among Latinos 61 to 31 percent (statistically, no different from how she fared against Bush or Ted Cruz). I would bet you today that that’s about how it will end up if those two face each other. And that ain’t enough.

Reason Four: The Electoral College. My long-suffering readers know that I bang on about this a lot, but the Democrats have a big advantage here, and I see nothing about Rubio that will shake this up. Rand Paul could have beaten Clinton in Colorado and Nevada, maybe even Ohio. Not Rubio. And fine, let him win Florida. A Democrat can still get 300-plus electoral votes without Florida.