The Commentariat -- Dec. 6, 2013
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "House and Senate negotiators on Thursday closed in on a budget deal that, while modest in scope, could break the cycle of fiscal crises and brinkmanship that has hampered the economic recovery and driven public opinion of Congress to an all-time low. But the leaders of the House and Senate budget committees -- Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington -- encountered last-minute resistance from House Democratic leaders who said any deal should be accompanied by an extension of expiring unemployment benefits for 1.3 million workers. 'This isn't interparty bickering,' said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader. 'This is a major policy disagreement.'" ...
... Brad Plumer of the Washington Post explains why the federal unemployment extension must be reinstituted even as the unemployment rate is coming down (see today's News Ledes): "... even with steady improvement of late, the number of people who have been out of work for longer than 27 weeks is still historically high." These, of course, are the people whom the extension helps.
President Obama appeared on Chris Matthew's MSNBC show yesterday:
Paul Krugman on President Obama's December 4 speech on the economy: "Now ... we have the president of the United States breaking ranks [with conventional pundit wisdom], finally sounding like the progressive many of his supporters thought they were backing in 2008. This is going to change the discourse -- and, eventually, I believe, actual policy. So don't believe the cynics. This was an important speech by a president who can still make a very big difference." ...
... MEANWHILE, the Washington Post's fake liberal columnist Ruth Marcus laments, "... in an omission both disappointing and predictable, the president spurned the chance to challenge his own party on government debt and spiraling entitlement spending and to address the degree to which those entwined phenomena conspire to frustrate progressive solutions." Blah blah. ...
... CW: Now look at what else progressives are up against (and, yes, I'm proud to have ended a sentence with two prepositions) ...
... Ed Pilkington & Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian: "Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as 'free-market thinktanks', includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.... The proposals were co-ordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at state level.... The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83m drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline." ...
... Nick Surgey in TruthDig: "Google ... has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers. Organizations that received 'substantial' funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference), and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action. In 2013, Google also funded the corporate lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], although that group is not listed as receiving 'substantial' funding.... Google has a distinctively progressive image, but in March 2012 it hired former Republican member of the House of Representatives, Susan Molinari as its Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations. According to the New York Times, Molinari is being 'paid handsomely to broaden the tech giant's support beyond Silicon Valley Democrats and to lavish money and attention on selected Republicans.'" Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "In a sign of the left's new aggressiveness, a coalition of liberals is trying to marginalize a centrist Democratic policy group [-- Third Way --] that was responsible for a Wall Street Journal op-ed article this week that said economic populism was 'disastrous' for the party.... By directly going after [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren [D-Mass.], who has an avid following among progressives, Third Way all but ensured that it would get the fight it seemed to want to pick." ...
... Jonathan Chait has a funny, but ultimately informative, take on the Third Way-Warren contretemps, "pitting unruly McGovernite hippies against smarmy Corporate Shill-o-crats."
Peter Schweizer in Politico Magazine: "A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) analysis finds that from July 12, 2010, to Nov. 30, 2013, the president’s public schedule records zero one-on-one meetings between Obama and Sebelius. Equally shocking, over the same period, the president's calendar lists 277 private meetings with his other Cabinet secretaries (excluding full Cabinet meetings)." CW: Schweizer is a winger & so of course GAI is a right-wing tank. But assuming Politico verified his results (which may be a foolish assumption), this is a pretty stunning revelation. ...
... Michael Hiltzig of the Los Angeles Times: "... the [California] GOP website, coveringhealthcareca.com, looks like an effort to steer citizens away from coveredca.com, which is the legitimate enrollment site for California's individual insurance exchange.... There's only one course for the Assembly Republicans to take, if they're not going to have a reputation for lying and misrepresentation hung around their necks. They need to take their website down and disavow it. The right time for them to do so is now." ...
... CW: I linked to a story on this hoax a few days ago, & I noticed Al Sharpton ran a segment on it. Still, following Hiltzig & Sharpton are probably not high priorities to busy families who need health insurance. As Hiltzig noted in an earlier post, "Just a couple of weeks ago California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris shut down 10 bogus insurance sites, some of them with names very similar to the real thing. She must have overlooked the GOP's entry." Shutting down this scam was my recommendation, too. ...
... ** Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times: "Quinetta Rascoe is working to sign people up for coverage under Obamacare in rural North Carolina, where lawmakers are hostile and many of the neediest people are skeptical and uninformed." ...
... CW: Former Bushie & therefore WashPo columnist Michael Gerson writes a column on how surgery & treatment saved him from dying of kidney cancer. Funny thing, he never mentions how lucky he was to have health insurance to cover his extensive & expensive treatment. Or how he sure is glad that the less fortunate will now have that chance, too. Putz.
Mark Landler & David Sanger of the New York Times: "China appears ready to force nearly two dozen journalists from American news organizations to leave the country by the end of the year, a significant increase in pressure on foreign news media that has prompted the American government's first public warning about repercussions. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised the issue here in meetings with President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders, and then publicly chastised the Chinese on Thursday for refusing to say if they will renew the visas of correspondents and for blocking the websites of American-based news media."
Aaron Blake & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Obama lived with his uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while he was a student at Harvard Law School -- despite previously saying there was no record of the two having met.... Obama's relationship with his uncle is also news to scholars of the president, who also found no evidence that the two had met.... Onyango 'Omar' Obama faced a deportation hearing earlier this week following a drunk-driving arrest. During the hearing, he said that the president had lived with him while he was a student at Harvard."
Tim Egan Goes to San Francisco: "... the city named for a 13th century pauper from Assisi serves more as an allegory of how the rich have changed America for the worse."
Local News
Dayna Morales, Scam Artiste. John Batten of Bridgewater Patch: Dayna Morales, the New Jersey waitperson who claimed customers stiffed her because they didn't approve of her "gay lifestyle," received thousands of dollars in donations to make up for the lost tip before the customers came forward with strong evidence that they had tipped Morales generously tip & never wrote the supposed derogatory note. Morales "told NJ.com on Nov. 18 that she wouldn't be keeping any of the money, saying she planned to send it to the Wounded Warrior Project. But as of Wednesday, the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit that supports veterans returning from overseas duty, could not confirm Morales had made any donations.... Morales could not be reached for comment." ...
... Via Andy Martin of New York: "If we still wanted to give Morales the benefit of the doubt, we'd point out she could have donated anonymously from elsewhere. But we don't." ...
... CW: In my own effort to give Morales the benefit of the doubt, I once speculated that perhaps she was suffering from PTSD. Apparently not. Morales, though she has claimed to have endured harrowing combat experiences, never served in a combat zone. Of all her lies, & evidence of them keeps piling up, I find the false claims about combat service the most egregious.
News Ledes
New York Times: North Korea has released Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old American veteran of the Korean War, whom they had been holding since October 26 for "indelible" offenses against North Korea. "In early 1953, [Newman] served on the island of Chodo, advising North Korean anti-Communist guerrillas in raids on the mainland."
Reuters: "Storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear plant like one that spilled almost 80,000 gallons of radioactive water this year were built in part by workers illegally hired in one of the poorest corners of Japan, say labor regulators and some of those involved in the work."
Guardian: "Thousands of fast food and retail workers went on strike across the US on Thursday in a signal of the growing clamour for action on income equality."
AP: "Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned. The bride[, Elizabeth Lev,] is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, one of Pope Francis' top advisers." CW P.S. Of course this wouldn't be a "disgrace" at all if priests were permitted to have normal sexual relationships.
AP: "The Russian pilot who sent a Boeing 737 into a near-vertical dive, killing all 50 people on board, might have had a fake license, Russian investigators said Friday. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said his team believes that some pilots working for small regional airlines in Russia have not been properly trained but managed to get fake licenses in centers certified by the country's aviation agency."
Washington Post: "The U.S. economy added 203,000 jobs in November, according to government data released Friday morning, continuing several months of solid gains and raising hopes that the recovery is finally ready for takeoff. In addition, the national unemployment rate fell to 7 percent. This time, the decline reflected a pickup in hiring rather than a shrinking labor force."
New York Times: " The Pentagon announced Thursday that it had repatriated two longtime Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainees to Algeria, where, fearing persecution, neither man wanted to be sent."
New York Times: "In his first concrete step to address the clerical sexual-abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis will establish a commission to advise him on protecting children from pedophile priests and on how to counsel victims...."
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Reader Comments (20)
"The average American is an ignoramus." With a government backed by nuclear bombs. With over half a judiciary appointed by Republicans. CW: keep the faith. Yes, I know it is a struggle.
This past week I've been taking a class learning how big businesses like Kraft (see the citation above about the State Policy Network) will deny small businesses access to the marketplace. Anyone who believes all this phony totalitarian-Republican talk about "free markets" an ignoramus (see above). Totalitarian loving Republicans all want captive consumers and oligarchy where they are on top. Competitive markets to them means work and competition and uncertainty and division of profits. What do you really think the MEN discuss while walking (excuse me, taking a golf cart) around the links of Augusta?
The marketplace (i.e. the fake-capitalists from Wall Street HATE competition) is in a constant struggle with authoritarian/totalitarian douche bags who lead from behind as they drive their flock again a cliff and while some fall off, those remaining are cowed by the fate of the fallen. The Republican leaders from behind are skinny, Mediterranean diet eating folks who lead a flock of Diet Coke swilling, partially hydrogenated fat eating folks who think sports is an activity you do once a week on teevee coached by a guy named Mandela.
Re; Making a list and checking it twice; "The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83m drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline." ...
The new four horsemen of the Apocalypse; oil, tobacco, processed cheese and meds.
Suggested slogan for SPN, "Greed is all you need."
This morning, thinking about the enormity of Nelson Mandela's legacy, not just to South Africans, but to the larger world, my thoughts wandered to the Great Blasket Island, off the coast of the Dingle peninsula in western Ireland. The island is no longer inhabited, but for centuries a tiny fishing village survived on the hillsides there in primitive conditions. In the early 50's the government evacuated the island because most of the remaining residents were old and infirm and their safety could not be guaranteed. One of the residents, the writer Tomás Ó Criomhthain, had written a memoir," Islandman". The single quote I recall from the book is the reason I thought of this place in connection with Mandela:
"Ní bheidh mo leithéid arís ann."
"When I'm gone, you'll not see my like again."
The sentiment, unfortunately, is valid in both applications. But at least we were alive to see the power, the influence for good, and the moral force of Nelson Mandela. I never met him, of course, but then again I never met Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Paine or Susan B. Anthony, but they've all affected my life--all our lives--for the better.
Tomás Ó Criomhthain and his island folk have disappeared as cleanly as the monks who once inhabited stone huts in medieval Ireland. But luckily for us Nelson Mandela's vision can never be erased by those who cultivate hatred and enmity and racism, who seek to demean and debase. One guy pushed them all into the corner and replaced hatred with wisdom, cruelty with forgiveness, apartheid with inclusion. It gives me hope. I suppose, like hundred year storms, we only get people like Mandela once in a great while. Still, and all, I can't get it out of my head:
Ní bheidh mo leithéid arís ann
If there's a version of this in Afrikaans, I'm betting you'd be hearing a lot of it today.
@Akhilleus: There are few Nelson Mandelas because not many brave people get the chance to follow through on worthy dreams. Mandela made his chance & he lived up to it in a most extraordinary way -- unlike most outsiders who turn into hacks at best & despots at worst if they become insiders.
But I would venture that there are millions of people who exhibit Mandela's potential. Read the story about Quinetta Rascoe, linked above, & it will hearten you to realize that there are ordinary people doing extraordinarily good things all of the time.
Unfortunately, it is the rats who dominate our conversation. Ferreting out the ferrets is our job here, & despite what Obama & Schumer think, such exercise is a necessary element of democracy.
Marie
What are those crazy wingnuts on about today?
As I've mentioned a few times previously, I am, inexplicably, on some winger e-mail list and every now and then am treated to communications from behind enemy lines, as it were, a drawing back of the curtain that separates Right Wing World from The Real World. And man, it ain't even close.
So who are the cuckoo birds yapping about now? Who do they yap about every day? The president, of course. If he drops a pencil on the floor it becomes the subject of the kind of scrutiny paranoid maniacs reserve for their most bizarre hallucinations.
So the president has an uncle. His uncle has lived here for decades, but illegally. And the president stayed at his apartment in Cambridge for a few weeks 33 years ago. But a few years ago someone asked some White House types if Obama had ever met this uncle. The answer was, apparently not. Only now it seems they did meet.
Well, holy fucking shit, put me in a rocket sled and ship me all to hell. This is an OUTRAGE!!!! You should just read some of the comments about this. It would curl your hair.
Lying sum'bitch.
You should just read some of the comments about this uncle thing. It would curl your hair.
So why didn't he correct the record over the last three years????
Why? Because, ummm, it's not that big a deal, he hasn't seen the uncle in 20 years, and he's been a tad busy dealing with all the other bullshit flung at him from Planet Wingnut. But never mind all that. Another OUTRAGE for sure. Holy shit. Look! He dropped a pencil. IMPEACH!
These people don't have anything better to be pissed about? C'mon.
Everyone has relatives they'd either rather avoid or have lost touch with and see no reason for necessarily changing that situation. Nixon was so concerned about his brother he had his phone bugged. LBJ kept his brother practically under lock and key trying to stem his drunken tirades, and Jimmy Carter's brother stopped a car full of visiting dignitaries so he could get out and take a whiz. Let's not even talk about Bill Clinton's brother. George Bush's kids have been known to do the Girls Gone Wild thing. It happens. We don't get to pick our relatives. But the wingnuts will have none of it.
I'd say "Grow up" but that would just whip them into another frenzy.
These fucking people. What next?
Marie,
Took your advice and read that story about Ms. Rascoe. A great story, really. And you're right. There are plenty of minor miracles happening all around us, wonderful people operating at the limits of grace and goodness. We should not lose sight of that fact and let the stones in our passway put us out of true.
We do concentrate on the rats, because they're the ones on the inside trying to gnaw their way through the body politic, but if those assholes are the disease, maybe people like Ms. Rascoe are the cure.
To go along with Google joining Koch funded groups cited above: I went to News google and the LAST most popular entry is "National unemployment rate hits five-year low". Google definately needs competition. And also look at how much of their "Editor's picks" are Murdoch owned publications.
Molinari is Google's Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations? Eww.
AK: But here's a little sidebar on the uncle issue: No one asked him? Like the (putative) non-meetings with Sibelius, reflects a deficit in managements skills, especially choice and supervision of WH staffers. Same problem that sank Carter, but he did not have the burden of being POTUS while black.
Whyte,
I thought about that.
And I don't know how the Obama White House works, but maybe a few years ago when the subject first arose, someone should have asked the president directly. Probably it didn't seem like such a big deal. Still, the lack of attention to details has caused the president a lot of problems. But how this thing is yet another reason for impeachment? I'm lost there.
Charlie Pierce over on Esquire is providing yeoman's service in reminding us all that the Powers that Pee in the GOP, the beacons of the conservative movement, were, to a person, staunchly opposed to Nelson Mandela when it mattered most. And the worst offender?
Why, the Gipper, natch.
Not a week goes by that some heinous policy or hateful vision isn't found to have its origin in the Reagan Administration, proud holder of the national record for Most Administration Officials Indicted and/or Convicted.
Yeah, we should never forget that these assholes who worship Bedtime for Bonzo, have pledged their undying fealty to the memory of a grade A racist scumbag who undermined the cause of freedom in South Africa and who energetically supported the vicious apartheid rule that imprisoned Nelson Mandela for 27 years. Even after congress, with the help of thoroughly embarrassed Republicans, passed a bill to sanction South Africa, Bonzo vetoed it. An outraged congress told him to shove his racist bullshit up his ass and overturned that veto (the first, and I believe, only time one of Bonzo's foreign policy vetoes were kicked in his face).
But who would've thought he'd behave any differently? He opposed the Civil Rights movement every step of the way. I'm surprised he didn't own an attack dog named Bull. He kicked off his presidential run by metaphorically donning a white hood in Philadelphia, Mississippi, fer chrissakes, where civil rights workers were hunted down and murdered.
And now we see Rick (I hates me them blah people) Santorum trying to glom onto Nelson Mandela's legacy by comparing the ACA to apartheid. A system, which, by the way, this pig supported.
Christ, I want to punch somebody! But digging up Reagan and beating on his remains would be too messy. Maybe Santorum will come to town some day.
Conservatives. Always on the wrong side of history.
Evil.Rat.Bastards. Every single one of 'em.
Re: Obama's not meeting with Sebelius. Jay Carney pushed back against this in his presser just now; I didn't hear all of what he said because I got a phone call mid-discussion, & I couldn't find a story on it yet. But the gist of Carney's claim -- as far as I could tell -- was that Obama & Sebelius met one-on-one numerous times that were not recorded in the public schedule. I think I heard Carney say flat-out that Schweizer's claim was false. I'll get something up on it when I find out more.
Also, I agree with Whyte Owen. Under normal circumstances, whether or not Obama knew this uncle would be immaterial, but given the frothing at the mouth in Right Wing World, the White House has to be extra-careful about even hints of misinformation. In fact, what the White House said was that there was "no record" of Obama's having known the uncle. This was true as far as it went, but the press people should have known they'd have to get the answer from the President, not from searching the written record. For Pete's sake, I've never put in writing that I've spent time with some of my distant cousins, but I have. As with Obama & the uncle, there's just no paper trail nailing down the time I spent playing with Chuck & Bobby when I was a kid. So impeach me.
Marie
While I agree with a vast majority of AK’s writings, a personal experience tempers the “Always” portion of “Always on the wrong side of history.”
Several years ago, a dinner guest at our house turned out to be a Reagan appointee to South Africa during the mid ‘80s. He indicated that his work there was to provide quiet but regular pressure to end apartheid. Whether this amounted to translating the writing on the wall or whether it was a more forward-looking nudge, I can’t say, but I do believe that the effort existed.
I don’t think this diplomacy can make up for all of the documented wrongs of the Reagan administration but I am encouraged that, at least once, diplomacy doing the opposite of one’s overt actions actually was trying to make life better somewhere.
CW Update: I'll post this in tomorrow's Commentariat, too:
Dylan Byers of Politico: "The White House on Friday criticized as inaccurate a report in POLITICO Magazine claiming that President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius met just once since the signing of the Affordable Care Act more than three years ago."
Marie
NiskyGuy,
Thanks for the update.
Reagan must have slept through those briefings. Another reason (at least a stated one) for his intransigence in supporting the goals of Mandela and the ANC was his stated appreciation of the South African regime for their help in battling those nasty commies.
Even if this Reagan appointee was working toward some kind of better solution, there's no getting around the fact that, when Reagan had the chance to follow through--if ending apartheid was a tacit goal--he decided to veto any effort at sanctions. Actions, not words.
But, I would agree that "always" is a pretty broad brush. In fact, in my first run through, I typed "nearly always" but decided to toss out the nearly. There may be individuals here and there who don't toe the line, but movement conservatism is an leaking anal cyst on the historical landscape.
Anyway, thanks again for the corrective.
CW - suspected as much; why I qualified with (putative) - seemed too juicy to be true. As usual. And AK: has there been anything not impeachmentworthy?
FYI with tongue playfully in cheek--among the more welcome things in life is to be not a Cheney.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/wrong-side-of-history-is-on-right-side-of-it.html
The piece then goes on to sample that most burgerized of palliatives; namely that Jesus, as usual, will have the last word. I am worthy of contempt for being unable to resist. Have mercy.
Very late last night I caught a bit of a BBC conversation (they do this a lot on this show) wherein they said that Raygun said that one of the reasons he supported the white guys running the place (my words) was because they were our friends and supported us during WWII. The BBC guys said Raygun, of course, was wrong. Those white guys had been collaborators. I'm gonna try to find something on this so Marie doesn't get mad at me...
Vorster and Botha are cited in wiki as being pro-Nazi.
Here's the link to the Vorster page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._J._Vorster
Botha switched teams when he saw the allies winning. Go to wiki and search on P W Botha. (Sorry. I don't know how to add a second link)
I'm willing to bet that those two were exactly the "friends" to which Raygun referred.
Something to discuss over Saturday morning breakfast about the shape of our future: (Better breakfast than dinner, when the discussion might carry over into and ruin your dreams.)
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2022401328_boeing777xrfp
Boeing's list of its preferences (demands) for siting their proposed 777x plant(s), pretty much asks for taxpayers to foot the bill for everything, from the site to the infrastructure (the necessary roads and just a teensy airfield, big enough to land a humungous plane), to help with their power bill. In return, they promise to provide about six thousand jobs. Of course, since Boeing will (and now does) pay little or nothing in state (and federal) taxes, the company will keep most of its profits. Add to that the lower wages they are seeking by the threatened move and you have a clear picture of times to come.
So far, it seems the states falling all over themselves to make a deal with the Big B are having trouble doing the math, and it's pretty basic. If you're going to pay more on something than you will get out of it, maybe you should think again.
If you happen to be a worker, like that 99% we keep hearing about, that picture ain't pretty. It's dismal.
The BBC also had a guy on who spoke about why Mandela was a great admirer of Castro. Seems Mandela thought that he owed a great deal (including his eventual release from prison) to Castro and the Cubans who fought in Angola because SA armies participated in those little wars (apparently there were more than just Angola) and those losses weakened the Aparthied government.
Just more stuff that I never knew then but am glad to know now...