The Commentariat -- November 22

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is here. Here's the lede:

Today we have David Brooks at his bipartisan, both-sides-do-it, reasonable, fair-minded best. We are not supposed to notice that his entire column in today’s New York Times is One Big Lie. Well, okay, since Brooks sees 'Two Moons,' he gives us Two Big Lies, with a few subsidiary lies thrown in to bolster the Big Lies.

"Beat Poets, not beat poets." Robert Hass, the former Poet Laureate of the United States, gives a first-hand account of the beatings -- he was a victim -- of Occupy Berkeley protesters:

They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines.NONE of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn’t have dispersed if we’d wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward...

Where's Barack? Karen Garcia: "... when it comes to the United States going whole hog and actually condemning another country's undemocratic actions, I hit the jackpot: more than 9 million Google hits. We've condemned the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador, Sudan's attacks on refugee camps and the violent crackdowns in Bahrain, to name just a few. We have even condemned UNESCO's pro-Palestine vote. But so far, not one federal official has deplored, condemned, expressed chagrin, outrage, regret or shock over the epidemic outbreak of police brutality against Occupy protesters this week."

     ... CW: One reason the White House has nothing to say about police brutality against Occupy protesters is that the White House press corps isn't interested. I read the entire transcript of Jay Carney's press briefing yesterday, and 75 percent of the questions were about the supercommittee and the remainder about the Middle East. ...

... "Occupy the Majority." E. J. Dionne: "... the [Occupy] movement should remind itself of its greatest innovation, its slogan: 'We are the 99 percent.' This is an affirmation that it is trying to speak for nearly everybody. Its tactics should live up to this aspiration by building support among the vast number of Americans who will never show up at the encampments. It should also want to help political figures such as [Elizabeth] Warren, who understood far earlier than most the costs of inequality and of the abuses of financial power. The last thing this movement should want to do is create fodder for the ads and e-mails propagated by Warren’s foes. The occupations have done their work. Now it’s time to occupy the majority." ...

Lt. John Pike, U.C. Davis.... Sam Stanton of the Sacramento Bee: "Lt. John Pike, a UC Davis police officer believed to have pepper-sprayed students on campus Friday, is a former United States Marine who was given an award for valor in 2007 when he saved other officers from a scissor-wielding patient at the school's medical center." CW: I don't usually make comments about someone's personal appearance, but really, could that guy look any more like an oinker?

Charles Pierce of Esquire on the White House's repeatedly blaming "Congress" for the failure to get a deficit deal instead of blaming Republicans: "I'm sure that the Democrats on this prolonged waste of time appreciate how the White House has tossed them into the blame pie with the Republicans. You spend a few months attempting to sell out every bit of progressive government of the past 80 years, and this is the thanks you get from the leader of your party. You get hit in a drive-by swipe about 'Washington' and 'Congress.' I swear to god, sometimes, Barack Obama and the people around him can be the most incredible mixture of insufferable arrogance and obvious political incompetence ever to get elected in this country. Just shut up and at least try to get re-elected. Please."

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine: "There is nothing in [GOP] behavior over the last twenty years that shows the slightest interest in a bipartisan agreement to reduce the deficit. Nor is there any recent evidence. Democrats have continued to offer agreements to reduce spending, including on entitlements, in return for higher tax revenue, which they’re willing to accept in the form of lower tax credits as opposed to higher rates.... The news media is working desperately not to convey this reality."

Right Wing World

Grover Norquist -- the Man Who Really Runs the GOP, a Senate Democratic ad:

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: Despite all their expressed horrors about "the government's taking away your freedoms" by imposing a mandate, "The primary reason Limbaugh and his listeners don't like universal health care is that they reject the basic concept. They simply don't believe in using government to make sure every American has access to affordable health care."

News Ledes

I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am governor. -- Gov. John Kitzhaber (D-Ore.)

New York Times: "Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon on Tuesday said he would halt the execution of a death row inmate scheduled for next month and that he would allow no more executions in the state during his time in office." The Oregonian story is here.

The 14th Republican debate tonight will be aired on CNN live at 8:00 pm ET. Here's the New York Times' liveblog of the debate.

New York Times: "In his most blatant criticism yet of Syria’s political repression, the prime minister of Turkey, [Recep Tayyip Erdogan,] said for the first time on Tuesday that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria should resign, raising the pressure on Mr. Assad from a country that Syria had once counted as its friendliest neighbor and economic partner."

President Obama spoke about the American Jobs Act in Manchester, New Hampshire, early this afternoon. ABC News story here. See also Wednesday's Commentariat:

     ... Update: Washington Post: "With taxes set to rise for nearly every American worker, President Obama sought Tuesday to highlight his tax-cutting bona fides, accusing Republicans of hypocrisy if they do not agree to extend a payroll tax cut that is set to expire in January. Obama’s comments were part of an escalating White House campaign against Republicans that is painting them as defenders of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class."

AP: "Students have again put up tents near the site where University of California, Davis police used pepper spray on seated protesters in a conflict that has sparked outrage and calls for the school chancellor's resignation. The encampment was again erected Monday, hours after the campus police chief was put on administrative leave and the chancellor was shouted down at a demonstration while trying to apologize for the incident that happened at a protest held Friday in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement." Related Sacramento Bee story here.

Al Jazeera: "Activists in Egypt are calling for a mass demonstration in Cairo against the country's ruling military council after three days of clashes between protesters and government forces left at least 33 people dead and hundreds injured." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "Three American college students have been arrested and accused of participating in the violent demonstrations that are sweeping this capital city. The protests, now in their fourth day, are posing the greatest threat to Egypt’s military leaders since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last February, and could jeopardize parliamentary elections scheduled for Monday." ...

     ... Al Jazeera Update 2: "Egyptians angry over the slow transition to civilian rule have remained in the streets of the capital and other cities, continuing their protests despite apparent concessions offered by the country's ruling military council. Tens of thousands of protesters packed central Cairo's Tahrir Square late on Tuesday night, shouting 'Leave! Leave!', hours after Field Marshal Muhammed Hussein Tantawi, the chief of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), finished a short speech broadcast on state media." With video.

The Commentariat -- November 21

Paul Krugman on European "romantics," who are not, as some would say, "technocrats." ...

... My New York Times eXaminer column on Krugman's tour de Times is here. The lede:

Once again, Paul Krugman has used his own New York Times column to try to save the Times op-ed page from its stable of uninformed columnists who insist on sharing their impressions of complicated things they know nothing about. Today, Krugman takes on David Brooks, Tom Friedman and Ross Douthat in his lede paragraph.

A flyer distributed in downtown Dallas in the days prior to the Kennedy assassination. Via New York Magazine.** "What Killed JFK." Frank Rich in New York Magazine: "What defines the Kennedy legacy today is less the fallen president’s short, often admirable life than the particular strain of virulent hatred that helped bring him down. After JFK was killed, that hate went into only temporary hiding. It has been a growth industry ever since and has been flourishing in the Obama years. There are plenty of comparisons to be made between the two men, but the most telling is the vitriol that engulfed both their presidencies." CW: this is the writer the New York Times let go.

     ... Rich refers to this video in his essay. Here's another, which also includes excerpts from the audio tapes of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s 1964 interview of Jaqueline Kennedy:

"Pre-Occupied. The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street." Mattathias Schwartz, in the New Yorker, on the origins of the Occupy movement.

Glenn Greenwald: "Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed ... many become increasingly fearful of participating in this citizen movement, and also become fearful in general of exercising their rights.... That’s ... exactly what the climate of fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve: to coerce citizens to 'decide' on their own to be passive and compliant...." BUT "the most important effect of the Occupy movement: acts of defiance, courage and conscience are contagious.... For the first time in a long time, the use of force and other forms of state intimidation are not achieving their intended outcome of deterring meaningful (i.e., unsanctioned and unwanted) citizen activism, but are, instead, spurring it even more." ...

... Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post: "It looks like he’s spraying weeds in the garden or coating the oven with caustic cleanser. It’s not just the casual, dispassionate manner in which the University of California at Davis police officer pepper sprays a line of passive students sitting on the ground. It’s the way the can becomes merely a tool, an implement that diminishes the humanity of the students and widens a terrifying gulf between the police and the people whom they are entrusted to protect." CW: quite a good essay.

In his sign-off to his PBS series Bill Moyers' Journal in May 2010, Moyers called for a public uprising against plutocrats. In four minutes, Moyers explains, pre-OWS, why Occupy Wall Street would be the one means to reclaiming American democracy:

A Reminder. Matt Yglesias in Slate: "Today’s the day when Washington officially comes to terms with the fact that the 'Supercommittee' — a bipartisan, bicameral group charged with reducing America’s long-term fiscal deficit — won’t agree on anything. This is being termed a 'failure,' and by the standards of D.C.’s fetishization of bipartisanship, it is one. But in terms of deficit reduction, failure is actually better than success."

Greg Colvin in Nation of Change: "Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL) offered the strongest constitutional amendment introduced in either House of Congress so far to rectify the imbalance of power between the corporations and the people in our democracy. Colvin compares Deutch's amendment to several others proposed by Members of Congress and reform advocates. Here's Deutch's press release on the amendment. And here's a pdf of the Deutch/OCCUPIED amendment.

Stan Collender of Capital Gains & Games on the reasons for the "hardly-super committee's" failure to make a deficit-reduction deal. Here's Reason 3: "Grover Norquist was the super committee's Lex Luthor. All the reports that committee Republicans were moving away from the no tax increase pledge turned out to be completely incorrect, utterly misleading, and very likely were more wishful thinking than anything else."

Victoria McGrane of the Wall Street Journal: "In a rare display of bipartisanship, the Senate appears likely to easily confirm" Thomas Hoenig, President Obama's nominee to head the F.D.I.C. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell initially recommended Hoenig to the president, even though "the choice has rattled Wall Street executives.... Mr. Hoenig believes there is only one way to end this phenomenon of 'too big to fail.' 'We must break up the largest banks,' he said in a February speech, arguing that regulators could do so by restricting the activities of government-backed banks 'and significantly narrowing the scope of institutions that are now more powerful and more of a threat to our capitalistic system than prior to the crisis.'" CW: there must be a catch!

Sarah Seltzer in the New York Times eXaminer: "You’d think, [in response to the Herman Cain & Joe Paterno scandals,] our national op-ed pages would rush to publish some feminist-minded pieces ... pushing back against this pervasive culture.... What we got instead, in the New York Times, was a column by professional antifeminist Katie Roiphe, sounding a lot like Don Draper, with the essential message that sexual harassment is just ladies who can’t take a joke.... Sexual harassment is a genuine bar to equality, and the onslaught of denial in both the Herman Cain situation and even worse, the Penn State rape coverup scandal, shows that we need to talk about these dynamics in the places we work and play seriously."

NEW. Prof. Robin Wells on the student walk-out of conservative economics Prof. Greg Mankiw's Ec10 class at Harvard. In an economic environment in which students' parents are struggling, students' futures look bleak, millions are out of work & income inequality has reached Gilded-Age magnitude, "instructors who lecture on the superiority of free markets without acknowledging the dysfunction in the wider economy are at risk of appearing out of touch and exacerbating antipathy towards economics."

CW: Larry Summers posts his Not-My-Fault op-ed in the Washington Post. Summers, whose ideas-turned-into-policies during the Clinton Administration made him one of the architects of rising income inequality in the U.S., spends most of his piece arguing that factors other than government policy are "substantially" to blame for income inequality. Oh, and why it's okay for the super-rich to get super-richer. At the end, Summers, whose piece is titled "Three Ways to Combat Rising Inequality," does get around to tossing out a few bromides about tax reform and access to education which are unobjectionable. If this is the way Larry Summers really thinks, and I suspect it is, this little Not-My-Fault exercise explains a lot about why we're in the mess we're in.

Right Wing World

I Did Not Make This Up. Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Newt Gingrich tonight said at an address at Harvard that child work laws 'entrap' poor children into poverty -- and suggested that a better way to handle failing schools is to fire the janitors, hire the local students and let them get paid for upkeep." Gingrich blames liberals:

Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid. -- Newt Gingrinch

NASCAR Fans Know Their Manners. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden were on hand this afternoon at the Homestead-Miami Speedway to Grand Marshall NASCAR’s Sprint Cup finale, and to support Joining Forces, an initiative to hire and train veterans. When they were introduced to kick off the race, however, loud booing could be heard above the cheers.... However, the Associated Press reports that the First Lady and Dr. Biden did receive a standing ovation at a pre-race driver’s meeting, much more in keeping with the spirit of the occasion." With video.

Local News

Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "In a demonstration reminiscent of those that occurred in February and March, between 25,000 and 30,000 protesters took over Capitol Square [in Madison, Wisconsin] on Saturday to protest Gov. Scott Walker's policies and to promote a signature drive to recall him."

News Ledes

Politico: "President Obama granted five pardons and commuted one individual's sentence for distribution of cocaine, according to a White House press release. Those pardoned were incarcerated for charges ranging from distribution of illegal drugs to running an illegal gambling business."

President Obama speaks about the supercommittee's failure to propose a deficit-reduction plan:

Washington Post: "A special congressional supercommittee acknowledged failure Monday in efforts to cut the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion, and President Obama warned that he would veto any attempt to undo a resulting round of across-the-board spending cuts. The failure promptly triggered finger-pointing between Republicans and Democrats."

Nation of Change: "...the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee and the Partnership for Civil Justice today filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) asking the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and the National Parks Service to release 'all their information on the planning of the coordinated law enforcement crackdown on Occupy protest encampments in multiple cities over the course of recent days and weeks.'"

ABC News: "Former FBI director Louis Freeh was tapped today to head an independent investigation of Penn State University's role in allegations of child sex abuse by former football coach Jerry Sandusky. The investigation announced today by the school's board of trustees is the fifth probe of the school launched since the scandal broke earlier this month. The state attorney general's office, the federal Department of Education, the NCAA, and the university's faculty senate are all also investigating or planning investigations of the abuse and events surrounding it on Penn State's campus."

Guardian: "Bradley Manning, the US soldier who has been held in confinement for the past 18 months on suspicion of having leaked a huge trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, is to go before a military panel on 16 December at the start of the most high-profile prosecution of a whistleblower in a generation."

AP: "Actor Hugh Grant told a London courtroom Monday about the dark side of celebrity life, describing mysterious break-ins, leaked medical details and hacked voice mails — and laying blame on the entire tabloid press, not just the now-shuttered News of the World.... Earlier, the parents of a murdered schoolgirl whose phone was targeted by the tabloid described how the hacking had given them false hope that their daughter was still alive."

The Guardian has a liveblog on the Leveson hearings.

They Said/They Said. New York Times: "As a handful of the lawmakers on the sputtering joint Congressional committee charged with drafting a deficit reduction package met for what seemed like one final time, the White House said Monday that only Congress could have produced a solution, while Republican presidential candidates moved to frame the committee’s failure to meet its deadline as a lack of leadership by President Obama."

President Obama signed legislation to provide tax credits for businesses that hire veterans. AP story here.

ABC News: "In a significant failure for the United States in the Mideast, more than a dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught [by Iran & Hezbollah] and the U.S. government fears they will be or have been executed, according to four current and former U.S. officials with connections to the intelligence community. The spies were paid informants recruited by the CIA for two distinct espionage rings targeting Iran and the Beirut-based Hezbollah organization, considered by the U.S. to be a terror group backed by Iran."

New York Times: "The University of California, Davis, said Sunday that two police officers had been placed on administrative leave after using pepper spray on seated protesters at the campus on Friday during a demonstration aligned with Occupy Wall Street." ...

... Here's a more expansive Sacramento Bee story on reaction to the police attack on Occupy protesters at U.C. Davis. ...

     ... New York Times Update: "The chancellor of the University of California, Davis, said Monday that its police chief had been placed on administrative leave, three days after two campus police officers sprayed seated protesters with pepper spray during a demonstration aligned with Occupy Wall Street."

Al Jazeera: "Protesters calling for Egypt's military to hand over power have beaten back a new raid by security forces to evict them from Cairo's Tahrir Square after more than 48 hours of violence in the heart of the Egyptian capital.... Egypt's health ministry says at least 22 people have been killed and 1,500 wounded in clashes between government forces and protesters in Cairo and other cities since Saturday, raising concerns over the conduct of parliamentary elections due to begin later this month." ...

    ... Update: "Egypt's interim cabinet has offered its resignation to the country's ruling military council as clashes raged for a third day in Cairo's Tahrir Square, pitting police and soldiers against protesters demanding democratic change. 'The government of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has handed its resignation to the [ruling] Supreme Council of the Armed Forces,' Mohammed Hegazy, cabinet spokesperson, said in a statement aired on Monday night by the official MENA news agency."

New York Times: "A Manhattan man who became fascinated by the American-born Muslim militant Anwar al-Awlaki was arrested on charges of plotting to build and detonate bombs in New York, city officials announced on Sunday night." ...

     ... AP Update: "Federal authorities declined to pursue a case against an 'al-Qaida sympathizer' accused of wanting to bomb police stations and post offices in New York City because they believed he was mentally unstable and incapable of pulling off the alleged plot, two law enforcement officials said Monday. New York Police Department investigators sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as their undercover investigation of Jose Pimentel unfolded, the officials said. Both times, the FBI concluded that he wasn't a serious threat, they said."

AP: "Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace as Boston's archbishop in 2002 after the priest sex abuse scandal exploded in the United States, has left his subsequent job as head of a major Roman basilica."

The Commentariat -- November 20

In yesterday's Commentariat, I linked to Nicholas Confessore's New York Times piece about Scott Brown's ties to Wall Street & noted Confessore's misstatements regarding Elizabeth Warren. Then I got mad: My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is titled "The Case against Elizabeth Warren, by Wall Street financiers, Karl Rove and the New York Times." Here's the lede:

When does a myth become a 'fact'? When the myth is reported as fact on the pages of the New York Times. That hardening of myth into fact is even stronger when the supposedly liberal 'paper of record' publishes a negative characterization of a liberal candidate. And if the paper piles on a series of misstatements, innuendo and Republican talking points, the myth becomes an indisputable truism.

... For a decidedly more positive view of Warren, Rebecca Traister see this long profile of the Massachusetts Senate candidate in the New York Times Magazine.

Harvard, Tuition-Free, Episode 2. Prof. Michael Sandel. Part 1: "Putting a Price Tag on Life"; Part 2: "How to Measure Pleasure": 

Power v. People

Sudhin Thanawala of the AP: "Video surfaced online Saturday showing an officer at a California university calmly pepper-spraying a line of several sitting protesters, who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop. The chancellor of the University of California, Davis described the video images as 'chilling' and said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a faculty group called for her resignation because of the incident Friday....

..."At Saturday's news conference, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said the decision to use pepper spray was made at the scene. 'The students had encircled the officers,' she said. 'They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out.'" ...

... CW: Watch the videos. Spiculla's assertion that students cordoned off the police is a bald-faced lie. In the second video an officer smiles & casually chats briefly with a news cameraman whom he appears to tell to move back:

... Prof. Nathan Brown, in a letter to U.C. Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi describes what he observed. At one point, Brown writes, in part,

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

      ... CW: Brown is an assistant professor in the English Department. That means (a) he does not have tenure; (b) he works in a field where there are probably 100 qualified applicants for every university opening (my guestimate -- I could be way off). In other words, Brown really stuck his neck out. ...

      ... Jim Fallows of The Atlantic: "... this is what happens when authority is unaccountable and has lost any sense of human connection to a subject population.... Less than two months ago, it seemed shocking when one NYPD officer cavalierly walked up to a group of female protestors and pepper-sprayed them in the eyes. The UC Davis pepper-sprayer doesn't slink away, as his NYPD counterpart did, but in every other way this is more coldly brutal." ...

      ... Digby: "Of course it's torture. It couldn't be more obvious. The question we have to ask ourselves if our society believes torturing of political dissidents is acceptable." Digby reviews the history of the 1997 Humboldt County, California, case in which police pepper-sprayed environmental activists, then swapped pepper spray on the eyes of protesters whom they had restrained. Comments on her post are quite good, too. ...

      ... Former policeman Peter Moskos in the Washington Monthly: "... trying to make policing too hands-off means people get Tased and maced for non-compliance. It’s not right. But this is the way many police are trained. That’s a shame. (Mind you, I have no problem using such less-lethal weapons on actual physical threats, but peaceful non-compliance is different.) ...

      ... In a column about the U.C. Davis crisis, Joan Walsh of Salon explains non-violent resistance to U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgenau, who says students locking arms is "not non-violent." Asshole. ...

... ** Nicholas Kristof: "I watched in downtown Manhattan last week as the police moved in to drag off protesters — and several credentialed journalists — and the action seemed wildly over the top. Yet in a larger sense, the furor over the eviction of protesters in New York, Oakland, Portland and other cities is a sideshow.... The high ground that the protesters seized is not an archipelago of parks in America, but the national agenda. The movement has planted economic inequality on the nation’s consciousness, and it will be difficult for any mayor or police force to dislodge it. ...

... Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic provides a roundup of video of "some of the other dramatic moments in the ongoing confrontations between Occupy protesters and police. Taken together, they paint a disturbing portrait that should at a bare minimum call into question the standards and practices police officers around the nation have developed for deploying pepper spray, which has only become a universal policing tool within the past 20 years. And they raise real questions about whether disproportionate police responses to the movement's intentional acts of civil disobedience have in some cases increased social disorder rather than restored calm." She does not include the sickening video the Guardian obtained, which is posted below ...

... Adam Gabbatt of the Guardian: "Protester and three-tour American veteran Kayvan Sabehgi was beaten by Oakland police during the Occupy protest's general strike on 2 November. Sabehgi, who was 'completely peaceful', according to witnesses, was left with a lacerated spleen." The incident is horrible to watch:

... Jonathan Larsen & Ken Olshansky of NBC News: "A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program 'Up w/ Chris Hayes.”' A pdf of the memo is here. CW: This is pretty astounding. If you can't watch the video, read the report & memo:

** Kalle Lasn & Micah White, Editor & Senior Editor of Adbusters, in a Washington Post op-ed: ". . . you cannot attack your young and get away with it. [NYC Mayor Michael] Bloomberg’s shock-troop assault has stiffened our resolve and ushered in a new phase of our movement. The people’s assemblies will continue with or without winter encampments. What will be new is the marked escalation of surprise, playful, precision disruptions — rush-hour flash mobs, bank occupations, 'occupy squads' and edgy theatrics. And we will see clearly articulated demands emerging, among them a 'Robin Hood tax' on all financial transactions and currency trades; a ban on high-frequency 'flash' trading; the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act to again separate investment banking from commercial banking; a constitutional amendment to revoke corporate personhood and overrule Citizens United; a move toward a 'true cost' market regime in which the price of every product reflects the ecological cost of its production, distribution and use; and with a bit of luck, perhaps even the birth of a new, left-right hybrid political party that moves America beyond the Coke vs. Pepsi choices of the past." ...

... ** Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times: Portland, Oregon, Mayor "Sam Adams' sympathies are with the protesters, but he still sent police in after complaints about crime in the liberal city's encampment. 'As a mayor, I have responsibilities.' ... The decision to close them has been heart-wrenching for mayors in many cities — particularly in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, Canada, where bicycle-riding, carbon-hating politicians probably feel as much sympathy for the people in the camps as for the downtown business executives upset about threats to the holiday shopping season."

Obama v. Women: Robert Pear of the New York Times: "... after protests by Roman Catholic bishops, charities, schools and universities, the White House is considering a change that would grant a broad exemption to health plans sponsored by employers who object to [birth control] coverage for moral and religious reasons. Churches may already qualify for an exemption. The proposal being weighed by the White House would expand the exemption to many universities, hospitals, clinics and other entities associated with religious organizations. The prospect of such a change has infuriated many Democrats in Congress, who fought hard to secure coverage of birth control under the new health care law." ...

It just doesn’t make sense to take this benefit away from millions of women. Americans of all religious faiths overwhelmingly support broad access to birth control. -- Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)

In the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Tim Noah of The New Republic reviews "Paul Starr’s compact but thorough 'Remedy and Reaction,'” a book about the history of American healthcare policy. 

Welcome, Greece. We're going to be Greece.... At some point, what's happening in Europe will happen here. -- David Brooks, on the PBS "News Hour," lamenting the impending failure of the Congressional deficit reduction supercommittee to make a deal ...

... Economist Dean Baker, in the New York Times eXaminer, explains why, in three easy-to-understand grafs, "the comparison with Greece is utterly baseless. People are making this comparison to advance their agenda for cutting Social Security and Medicare. It absolutely should not be taken seriously."

Peter Nicholas & Christi Parsons of the Los Angeles Times: Touring the Asia Pacific region last week, President Obama appeared before cameras with one national leader after another to praise joint efforts on economic growth, maritime security, copyright protection and other concerns. Conspicuously absent was a buzzword of these kinds of news conferences for the last decade: terrorism. That silence speaks volumes for the Obama administration's efforts to shift the U.S. focus away from a single-minded battle against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups."

Right Wing World

 GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, Jr., likes his chances in New Hampshire:

Newt Gingrich ... is a Nigerian prince e-mail, send-me-your-bank-details guy. He does e-mail spam, fax spam, direct mail, sucker list, bottom-feeding, prey-on-the-gullible financial scams. -- Rachel Maddow ...

Paranoia, Exemplified. Alex Pareene of Salon: Oscar Ramiro "Ortega-Hernandez wanted to kill President Obama because Ortega-Hernandez thought himself the second coming of Jesus Christ and was convinced Barack Obama was the antichrist.... Because of a bad bit of reporting...., ABC initially said that police suspected Ortega-Hernandez had spent time at the Occupy DC encampment.... Police may have suspected that, but there’s been no evidence whatsoever that it’s the case.... But ... that ... has not stopped conservatives from … crying about liberal media bias against conservatives. So here we have a wholly invented right-wing meme based on fantasy and one out-of-context line from a now out-of-date news story, repeated endlessly in an attempt to unfairly smear a political movement they despise, and the fact that responsible media outlets aren’t repeating the smear is an example of the nefarious leftist media conspiracy." [Emphasis added.]

News Ledes

Reuters: "Spain's center-right opposition stormed to a crushing election victory Sunday as voters punished the outgoing Socialist government for the worst economic crisis in generations. The People's Party, led by former Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy, won an absolute majority in parliament and is expected to push through drastic measures to try to prevent Spain being sucked deeper into a debt storm threatening the whole euro zone."

Statement: "University of California President Mark G. Yudof today (Nov. 20) announced the actions he is taking in response to recent campus protest issues."

Oakland Tribune: "Police cleared an Occupy Oakland encampment at 19th Street and Telegraph Avenue Sunday morning. There were no arrests or injuries during the 8 a.m. raid in Oakland's uptown district, said Oakland police spokeswoman Johnna Watson."

Los Angeles Times: "The co-chairs of the congressional 'super committee' seemed doubtful the panel would reach a deficit-reduction accord by Monday's deadline, each blaming the other party's unwillingness to budge on the contentious issues of taxes and entitlement spending. In separate appearances on Sunday talk shows, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said they both held out hope for last-minute progress, but saw little chance of the impasse being broken." ...

... Washington Post: "The congressional committee tasked with reducing the federal deficit is poised to admit defeat as soon as Monday, and its unfinished business will set up a year-end battle over emergency jobless benefits and an expiring payroll tax holiday."

New York Times: "A police action to roust a few hundred protesters out of Tahrir Square on Saturday instead drew thousands of people from across Egyptian society into the streets, where the violence continued on Sunday. The confrontations were the most violent manifestation so far of growing anger at the military-led interim government."

AP: "The Arab League says it has rejected amendments proposed by Syria to a peace plan to end the crisis in the country, saying the changes put forward by Damascus alter the 'essence' of the plan. A statement issued Sunday by the Cairo-based organization says the league told the Syrian government that its proposals were also unacceptable because they introduce 'drastic changes' to the mandate of an observers' mission the league wants to dispatch to Syria to ensure the implementation of the peace plan."

AP: "The revolutionary fighters who captured Moammar Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent said Sunday they want to hold him in their town until a court system is established in Libya, and they demanded he be tried inside the country."