The Commentariat -- Dec. 30, 2013
Juliet Eilperin & Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "More than 1.1 million Americans signed up for an insurance plan through the federal health-care marketplace during its initial enrollment period, with more than 975,000 enrolling in December alone, the Obama administration announced Sunday.... So far, nearly 2 million Americans -- who were either uninsured or had to change coverage after their existing plans were canceled -- have signed up under the new health-care law on state and federal marketplaces. Roughly 850,000 people have enrolled through the state-run exchanges.... The administration is still far short of the enrollment targets it set just before the system was launched Oct. 1." ...
... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic writes kind of a status report on the ACA.
Amy Davidson of the New Yorker has a good response to some of Judge William Pauley's credulous acceptance of the government's position in the NSA case he heard. Davidson contrasts Pauley's views with those of Judge Richard Leon -- on some of the same key evidence.
Heather Linebaugh, a former U.S. drone operator, in a Guardian op-ed: "The UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles, a/k/a drones] in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life -- at home and abroad -- will continue."
Paul Krugman on why the fiscal scolds finally lost control of the conversation. My favorite line (mostly because I had never heard the "old saying," "As the old saying goes, they used Reinhart-Rogoff the way a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support, not illumination." Important reminder: "As the Columbia Journalism Review recently noted, many reporters retain the habit of 'treating deficit-cutting as a non-ideological objective while portraying other points of view as partisan or political.'"
The New York Times' top story, by Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg is about the U.S. federal investigations into JP Morgan & other top U.S. banks' practice of bribing Chinese officials by hiring their children. This is against U.S. law but SOP in China. CW: It would be amusing if this relatively innocuous practice brought down any of the big banks when mismanagement & their abuse of primarily American investors & customers brought them huge gifts from taxpayers. However, since they're too big to fail, none of them will.
David of Crooks & Liars: "Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) lashed out at House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) on Sunday for spending over a year on what he said was a crusade on a 'fairy tale' after a New York Times report showed that Al-Qaeda had no role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks. Issa defended his attacks on the administration. ...
... Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) on Sunday disagreed with some of the conclusions in the New York Times investigation on Benghazi, specifically that the attack was fueled in part by an anti-Islamic American video." ...
... MEANWHILE, Issa's friends in Right Wing World, they're writing stories like, "The New York Times Whitewashes Benghazi," & 'The New York Times' Revisionist Account of Benghazi." CW: If you already got your boxed set of "Leftist Conspiracies 2013," don't worry; I'm sure these new ones will come in a post-holiday bonus package. ...
... Driftglass puts his stamp on right-wing reaction to the Times story. ...
There’s just no chance that this was an al-Qaeda attack if, by al-Qaeda, you mean the organization founded by Osama bin Laden. If you're using the term al-Qaeda to describe even a local group of Islamist militants who may dislike democracy or have a grudge against the United States, if you're going to call anybody like that al-Qaeda, then O.K. -- David Kirkpatrick, defending his New York Times story ...
... Benjamin Bell of ABC News: Sociopath & "Firebrand conservative Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, expressed no regrets over his role in this fall's government shutdown [Sunday] in an exclusive interview with ABC's [conservative lackey] Jonathan Karl for 'This Week,' placing the blame for the 16-day closure squarely on the shoulders of Democratic leaders. 'I think it was absolutely a mistake for President Obama and Harry Reid to force a government shutdown,' the freshman senator said.... When reminded by Karl that even Republican House Speaker John Boehner took conservative groups to task for pushing a faulty strategy, Cruz said 'I can't help what other people say.'" ...
... Born in the U.S.A. Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News: "The junior senator from Texas is still a Canadian. But he's working on it, eh? Born in Alberta 43 years ago last Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz was unaware of his dual nationality until The Dallas Morning News explored the issue in August. Since then, he said in a recent interview, 'I have retained counsel that is preparing the paperwork to renounce the citizenship.'"
Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times: "Justice Sonia Sotomayor will return to her hometown for New Year's Eve to help lead ... the ball drop in Times Square. She will press the crystal button on Tuesday night to lower the ball and lead the 60-second countdown to midnight, organizers of the event said on Sunday. She will be the first United States Supreme Court justice to do so."
Michael Kirkland, a legal analyst for UPI, looks at the prospects for universal gay marriage. It ain't a slam-dunk.
E. J. Dionne thinks 2013 was not such a bad year for President Obama. ...
Philip Rucker & Krissah Thompson of the Washington Post notice Malia & Sasha Obama have gotten older in five years. Huh. ...
... Michael Shear of the New York Times runs down President Obama's favorite TV shows.
Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic whacks Charles Blow & Frank Bruni for trying so hard to beat each other for the title of New York Times' Worst Columnist. CW: There's a reason I seldom link these guys' stuff: Bruni is off-topic & dull when he's not just dull; Blow is remarkably trite. Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the link.
Local News
Michael Barbaro & Kitty Bennett of the New York Times: "When [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg leaves office at midnight Tuesday, he will bequeath a litany of record-shattering statistics on crime reduction, sidewalk safety and skyline-altering construction. But perhaps the most staggering figure is the amount of his own money that he devoted, day in and day out, to being mayor -- much of it unseen by the public. An analysis by The New York Times shows that Mr. Bloomberg has doled out at least $650 million on a wide variety of perks and bonuses, political campaigns and advocacy work, charitable giving and social causes, not to mention travel and lodging, connected to his time and role as mayor.... In the process, he has entirely upended the financial dynamics surrounding New York's top job. In the past, the city paid its mayor; Mr. Bloomberg paid to be the city's mayor." ...
... CW: Normally, I think our practice of electing royalty -- either because of their money or their political family name -- is absolutely anti-Democratic. However, Bloomberg made a good chunk of his money soaking the rich, so the millions he gave back to the city makes him something of a Robin Hood, albeit one who takes a steep commission. Still, making the city's richest person mayor is a less-than-romantic return to feudalism.
News Ledes
AP: "Secretary of State John Kerry will present Israel and the Palestinians the broad outlines of what a final Mideast peace agreement could look like when he travels to the region this week, the State Department said on Monday."
New York Times: "New York's hold on its status as the country's third most populous state is down to fewer than 100,000 people, according to figures released on Monday by the Census Bureau. And the trend is not in the state's favor, as Florida, which is No. 4, gained residents at three times the pace of the Empire State over a year's span."
Philadelphia Inquirer: "Bail was set Monday at $250,000 for Msgr. William J. Lynn, four days after an appeals court ruled he was wrongly convicted of endangering children. Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina also ruled that Lynn must surrender his passport and be subject to electronic monitoring and weekly reporting while on bail."
New York Times: " A deadly suicide bombing at a crowded railroad station in southern Russia on Sunday, followed by a blast in a trolley bus on Monday in the same city, raised the specter of a new wave of terrorism just six weeks before the Winter Olympics in Sochi." ...
... AP: "A suicide bomber killed 14 people aboard an electric bus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd during the Monday morning rush hour, and authorities believe it was the work of the same group that set off a bomb at the railway station a day earlier. Together more than 30 people were killed in the explosions...."
Guardian: "The Australian icebreaker, Aurora Australis, was thwarted on Monday in its initial attempts to reach the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, the scientific research vessel stuck in sea ice off the coast of Antarctica since Christmas Day. It will now wait for better weather before making a further attempt to cut through the thick pack ice around the Shokalskiy."
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Reader Comments (6)
Such a pleasure to read Krugman this morning––makes my day. And here's another article that comes pretty close: Isaac Chotiner excoriates both Charles Blow who is replacing Frank Bruni in the NYT. Read it and weep for joy.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116057/new-york-times-op-ed-page-reaches-new-low-charles-blow-column
The Times says Bloomberg paid to be mayor like it's a GOOD thing.
@Noodge: Not entirely. From the article:
"Mr. Bloomberg’s opponents complained that his free-spending ways purchased political acquiescence, access to ballot lines and a national platform. In moments of candor, his own advisers conceded that without his money, he probably would never have won the office, let alone secured a controversial third term....
"New Yorkers remain divided: In a poll conducted in August by The Times, 30 percent said Mr. Bloomberg’s wealth had made him a better mayor; 27 percent said it had made him a worse mayor; and 35 percent said it had made no difference....
"As the Bloomberg era winds down, placing the future of those fish tanks in doubt, there is a widespread sense that making the city’s richest man its leader was a kind of grand experiment: novel and momentous, sometimes heady, other times unsettling, but unlikely to be repeated."
The reporters don't really delve into the "goodness" or "badness" of spending a staggering amount of money to buy a staggering amount of power. They do indicate that not everybody thinks it's a fabulous way to go.
I'd give the reporters a pass. The point of the article was how much money & on how many types of things the mayor dug into his ultra-deep pockets. I think they covered it. I linked the article because -- other than the dough he spent on his campaigns & on a few high-profile projects -- I didn't know how Bloomberg spent his money on New York matters related & unrelated to his job.
Marie
Among the reasons David Gregory and his fellow Sunday morning tv hosts should go out of business is that they can have Ted Cruz on their shows and accept his retention of Canadian citizenship without any questions or follow up. It is simply not good enough to leave this guy unquestioned as long as he is so spineless and indecisive about immigration reform. Especially since he is considered "a leader".
The persistent lack of follow through questioning on the self-aggrandizing Sunday shows makes the shows and their leaders look as though the only thing on their mind is booking talent for the next show.
With Gregory, you can really only think that he got his job by the unfortunate convergence of factors like Russert dying, David Bloom dying and the complete dullness of Chuck Todd. If Deborah Turness really wanted to get ratings she'd replace DG with Maddow and then let the advertisers figure out what all that means to their bottom lines. Do you think Boeing, GE, ArcherDanielsMidland etc shared their opinions for a replacement host with NBC when Russert died? And how well has the advertisers best interests worked out for the broadcaster since?
At the heart of these Sunday shows is crony-capitalism and how crony-capitalists fail to lead with independent spirit. Corporate titans are the ultimate players in the go along to get along mediocrity that too many American businesses and their spokespeople have become. Likely, the inbred Ivies above Deborah Turness would say that their frat brothers over at GE, Boeing, and ADM are not comfortable with anything negative remotely connected to their businesses if Maddow were hired. So let's do nothing and rock no boats. And now we have DC, in a nutshell.
I've turned off my tv. The cacophony of superfluous information and voices is a little better that way.
@citizen625: One of the major problems is that viewers are largely oblivious to quality of the questions, & they don't usually know when a guest gives even a blatantly false answer, much less a merely "misleading" one. For years, I tuned into these shows thinking I was doing my civic duty without really noticing that the hosts were letting the guests get away with spin. Most likely, I was doing something else while I had the TV on & was paying only "some" attention. I suspect that made me a typical Sunday morning talkshow viewer.
Then, probably during an election cycle when I was paying more attention, I noticed Tim Russert letting some Republican get away a big fat falsity. The guy lied, & Russert just moved on. So I started paying a little more attention, & I saw that this was the formula. I still watched fairly often, but it was more to check the questions, not the fake political answers.
When Tim Russert died, I was up at my lake cottage, where I get few channels. I had some hand-sewing to do, so I thought I'd watch whatever. Whatever turned out to be a memorial service for Russert. I thought the interesting part -- for me -- was going to be getting some examples of how to say something nice about a guy who was pretty piss-poor at his job.
So the first few speakers I thought did pretty well. And, uh, so did the next & the next. They kept saying how Russert established excellence in television journalism & he never let a guest get away with anything. At first I thought this was just sort of inappropriate hyperbole, but oh well, the guy was dead, so what does it matter? Then I realized these speakers -- most of them recognizable teevee journalists -- actually believed that Russert was a fabulously tough interrogator, & they looked to him as a model. That service cemented my view of TV "journalism" as sponsored nonsense. So I pretty much quit watching the Sunday shows from then on except for special occasions when Krugman or Maddow was on a panel &/or an interesting guest was scheduled for some softball questions.
Gregory may appear to us to be doing a lousy job, but he's doing the job his bosses & Beltway buddies expect -- up to a point, anyway; apparently his ratings suck. If your job is to ask stupid questions, accept any answer & then move on -- and that's what you do -- you're doing a damned good job.
Marie
@citizen625 and Marie-
You both said it well, so I do not have to--thanks! The Sunday talk shows suck and have for a very long time. I remember "back in the days" when Paul Wellstone and Gaylord Nelson refused to participate, because they thought talk shows were stupid and silly. And those were "the good old days!" The situation in Tee Vee "journalism" has gotten even more corporate and corrupt, and the corporate networks continue to employ and reward the dopiest and dumbest of the so-called talk show hosts!
What a different story it would be if Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes or Ed Schultz took over hosting. And, my first choice, Bill Maher! Of course, they are waaaay too progressive and would alienate all those good little Republican-lites! Does ANYBODY listen to Bill Moyers? He is not only a first-rate journalist, but a committed truth-teller! And he will blow phony liberals out of the water as much as he does crazy conservatives.