The Commentariat -- Dec. 8, 2012
The President's Weekly Address:
... Here's the transcript. Same ole, same ole.
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would enter the national debate over same-sex marriage, agreeing to hear a pair of cases challenging state and federal laws that define marriage to include only unions of a man and a woman."
Karen McVeigh of the Guardian: "The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for 'children [link fixed] with potential hostile intent'. In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as 'deeply troubling', army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as 'military-age males', had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces." CW: how is it that I read this first in a non-U.S. source? Looks like Current TV covered it, but that's about it.
Scott Shane & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Private [Bradley] Manning faces a potential life sentence if convicted on charges that he gave WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization, hundreds of thousands of confidential military and diplomatic documents. But for now, he has been effectively putting on trial his former jailers at the Quantico, Va., Marine Corps base. His lawyer, David E. Coombs, has grilled one Quantico official after another, demanding to know why his client was kept in isolation and stripped of his clothing at night as part of suicide-prevention measures."
Cliff Notes
Daniel Newhauser of Roll Call: "Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio did not rule out a compromise agreement to raise taxes as part of a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, but he kept the ball in President Barack Obama's court when it comes to finding a way to get there."
Paul Krugman: "Ezra Klein says that the shape of a fiscal cliff deal is clear: only a 37 percent rate on top incomes, and a rise in the Medicare eligibility age. I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that this is just a case of creeping Broderism, that it's a VSP fantasy.... Because if Obama really does make this deal, there will be hell to pay. First, raising the Medicare age is terrible policy.... Second, why on earth would Obama be selling Medicare away to raise top tax rates when he gets a big rate rise on January 1 just by doing nothing?"
... And yet, and yet. It ain't just Ezra Klein who's getting the vibes from the White House. Here was Lawrence O'Donnell the other day:
The president ... always says, 'I have to have the top rates go up' -- and it's worth noting that he doesn't specifically say I have to have 36 or 39%, he doesn't offer a specific number. But he always says, 'but we're willing to do that by significant spending cuts in entitlements.' ... He brings it up. He doesn't say the word Medicare, but that s what he's talking about.
... Digby thought O'Donnell was blowing smoke then, but she doesn't think so now. ...
... AND if you think O'Donnell isn't connected enough to "read" the President, how about Joe? Zeke Miller of Buzzfeed reports, "Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that the Obama administration is flexible about raising tax rates on the nation's highest earners, as long as they do rise. 'There are two irreducible minimum requirements for us,' Biden said at a lunch with Americans who would be affected by the fiscal cliff. 'The top brackets have to go up -- this is not a negotiable issue; theoretically we can negotiate how far up. But we think it should go -- the top rate should go to 39.6%.'"
** Dan Froomkin of the Huffington Post: "... according to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.... Lies from Republicans generally and standardbearer Mitt Romney in particular weren't limited to the occasional TV ads, either; the party's most central campaign principles -- that federal spending doesn't create jobs, that reducing taxes on the rich could create jobs and lower the deficit -- willfully disregarded the truth.... Mann said he was struck in conversations with journalists by how influenced they were by the heavily funded movement to promote a bipartisan consensus around deficit reduction and austerity.... Mann and Ornstein said that in practice, the fact-checkers may have made things worse rather than better." ...
... Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "The issue isn't that Republicans are 'too' conservative, whatever that might mean. It's that the party, and to a startling degree the conservative movement generally, has failed to develop reality-based policy proposals; has decided in many cases that compromise itself is against its principles; and has (in the case of the Romney/Ryan campaign) repeatedly violated norms about lying in campaigns."
Dana Milbank: Jim DeMint "is, arguably, the perfect candidate to run a post-thought think tank."
CW: don't think Apple is getting all patriotic & shuttling its manufacturing ops back to the U.S.A. Quentin Hardy of the New York Times reports that the few computers it will produce in the U.S. will likely be larger ones which businesses use & they're making the move to save on shipping costs of the heavier product.
Gail Collins is less than impressed that in January, women will comprise a whopping 20 percent of the U.S. Senate.
Charles Pierce: "Of all the unfathomable quirks -- and I am being very kind, it being the holiday season and all -- of the Obama Administration, its unfathomable rigidity on the topic of marijuana makes less sense than any of the others."
Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "... President Obama is dropping his principled objection to some forms of political fundraising to help pay for the post-election party.... The Presidential Inaugural Committee will accept unlimited corporate donations to help fund Obama's inauguration festivities next month, reversing a voluntary ban on the money he imposed on the inaugural four years ago and during the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Obama will also allow individuals to contribute up to the legal maximum for the 2013 inauguration -- $250,000 -- lifting a $50,000 cap he voluntarily imposed in 2008...." ...
... John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation: "The decision prioritizes a lavish celebration over the integrity of the office, and bodes poorly for an administration whose first term can be characterized as slowly turning away from a principled approach to money in politics in favor of political expediency and fundraising." ...
... Dylan Byers of Politico: "Because inauguration day falls on a Sunday in 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts will officially administer the official oath of office [to President Obama] in a private ceremony that day. The public inauguration on the Capitol Building's West Front -- at which Roberts will administer a second, symbolic oath of office -- will take place the next day. In early meetings with the inaugural committee, officials privately indicated to reporters that the Jan. 20 event could be closed to reporters and cameras." The press is not amused.
Sarah Lyall of the New York Times has an expanded story on the suicide of a British nurse whom Australian DJs tricked into divulging information about the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge who was hospitalized at the time.
Local News
Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times: "Charlie Crist is becoming a Democrat. Crist -- Florida's former Republican governor ... on Friday evening signed papers changing his party from independent to Democrat. He did so during a Christmas reception at the White House, where President Barack Obama greeted the news with a fist bump for the man who had a higher profile campaigning for Obama's re-election this year than any Florida Democrat."
Don't Tell Douthat. Emily Ramshaw of the New York Times: "When [Texas] state lawmakers passed a two-year budget in 2011 that moved $73 million from family planning services to other programs, the goal was largely political: halt the flow of taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood clinics. Now they are facing the policy implications and, in some cases, reconsidering. The latest Health and Human Services Commission projections ... indicate that during the 2014-15 biennium, poor women will deliver an estimated 23,760 more babies than they would have, as a result of their reduced access to state-subsidized birth control. The additional cost to taxpayers is expected to be as much as $273 million -- $103 million to $108 million to the state's general revenue budget alone -- and the bulk of it is the cost of caring for those infants under Medicaid." CW: who could have guessed? Take away a woman's birth control, & she'll start having babies.
Chicago Tribune/AP: "Republicans slammed right-to-work legislation through the Michigan House and Senate Thursday, drawing raucous protests from throngs of stunned union supporters, whose outnumbered Democratic allies were powerless to stop it.... Details of the bills weren't made publicly available until they were read aloud on both floors as debate began. The chaos drew raucous protests from hundreds of union supporters, some of whom were pepper-sprayed by police when they tried to storm the Senate chamber.... After repeatedly insisting during his first two years in office that right-to-work was not on his agenda, [Gov. Rick] Snyder [R] reversed course Thursday," & said he would sign the legislation." ...
... Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press: "Health care providers could use a 'moral objection' or 'matter of conscience' standard to refuse service to patients under a bill passed by the [Michigan] state Senate today.... The state already has a conscientious objection clause for abortion services, but the new law also could give the green light to doctors to refuse to write birth control prescriptions and opens the door to a refusal of service for all sorts of ailments, said state Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw. Kahn, a cardiologist ... was the only Republican to join most of the Democrats to vote against the bill." ...
... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama will wade into the midst of the Michigan debate Monday when he visits a Detroit area auto plant in a state he won resoundingly in part because of the support of the UAW. A White House spokesman said the president opposes right-to-work legislation but could not say whether Obama plans to address it directly in his remarks Monday." CW: a comprehensive story about the whys & wherefores of the state GOP's move.
News Ledes
New York Times: Italian "Prime Minister Mario Monti said he intended to resign after losing the backing of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's party, according to a statement issued late Saturday by the president's office."
New York Times: "Facing the most serious crisis of his presidency, Mohamed Morsi is leaning more closely than ever on his Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, betting on their political muscle to push through a decisive victory in the referendum on Egypt's divisive draft constitution." ...
Update: "Struggling to quell protests and violence that have threatened to derail a vote on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, President Mohamed Morsi moved Saturday to appease his opponents with a package of concessions just hours after state media reported that he was moving toward imposing a form of martial law to secure the streets and allow the vote." ...
... Washington Post: "Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi early Sunday annulled most of an extraordinary Nov. 22 decree that gave him near-absolute power.... The decree ... will be replaced by a modified version of the original declaration. But the most controversial article, which placed all of Morsi's actions beyond judicial review, is gone...."
... AP: "Egypt's military warned Saturday of 'disastrous consequences' if the crisis that sent tens of thousands of protesters back into the streets is not resolved, signaling the army's return to an increasingly polarized and violent political scene." Al Jazeera story here.
Al Jazeera: "More than 100,000 Palestinians have gathered in Gaza for a rally marking the 25th anniversary of Hamas to be addressed by the ruling movement's leader in exile. Khaled Meshaal crossed from Egypt on Friday. His speech was set to be the headline event of the rally."
Reuters: "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify on a report expected to be released next week on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, a top Republican lawmaker said on Friday."
Guardian: "Talks on a new climate deal ground on through Friday night in Qatar, as countries failed to agree on key issues including: rescuing the Kyoto protocol, finance and compensation for poor countries suffering the effects of climate change, and how to structure a proposed new global climate change agreement. The negotiations, which have gone on for more than a fortnight, looked set to last for most of Saturday. But the marathon session left many delegates hopeful of rescuing a deal amid the frustration and confusion of the night."
AP: "Americans swiped their credit cards more often in October and borrowed more to attend school and buy cars. The increases drove U.S. consumer debt to an all-time high. The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their borrowing by $14.2 billion in October from September. Total borrowing rose to a record $2.75 trillion."
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Reader Comments (21)
Corporations hate same- sex marriage since it affects the bottom line.
"You mean we have to pay the same benefits to a couple of fags that
we provide for straight marriages?" They can just hide behind the
"bible" and ignore the fact that we put as much into this country as
anyone, and pay, probably, more taxes since we don't have twelve
little republican brats for tax deductions. There, got that off my chest!!
@forrest morris: "Corporations hate same- sex marriage since it affects the bottom line. 'You mean we have to pay the same benefits to a couple of fags that we provide for straight marriages?'"
I'm not sure that's correct. Although a few companies may pay spousal benefits, I think the vast majority of companies make the employee pay for the spouse's benefits -- at least that's my experience. For companies that self-insure, my guess (& this is a pure guess) is that gay people -- on average -- incur slightly lower healthcare costs than straight people.
Generally speaking, gays are probably better employees, too, at least from the employer's POV -- though this difference will probably become negligible as we straight people ever-so-generously "allow" gays to have the same personal problems we do: children's emergencies, divorce, spouse job-hopping to another location, etc.
If corporations/people hire based on sexual-orientation prejudice, the prejudice should be toward hiring gays, not against hiring gays, because gays are more stable employees. Of course there's always Chick-fil-A.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Marie
Ezra Klein is exactly right: there would be hell to pay if the White House even attempted to go along with a rise in the Medicare Age. The AARP may not be good for much: but they are good at lobbying and mobilizing the troops to fight something like this. And I'll give odds the AARP will lobby and mobilize to its utmost against this proposal.
The more I see Ezra Klein, the more he strikes me as a budding "very important person" in the vein of David Brooks. He gets altogether too many atta boys from Rachel Maddow - I'm not convinced of his wisdom and brilliance. Listen carefully, he also doesn't have any sense of humor. I notice that people with no sense of humor aren't in the least bit fun. Belly laughing is good for the soul and it is highly contagious.
@Marie. I have no empirical information to substantiate my view. However, in probation, where I spent my work life, gays were few in number and quite subdued but seemed to use the same leave balances as others for sick, vacation, etc. My husband works in social services, where there are lots of gays and they readily self identify. Most everyone takes as much time off as allowed. Gay workers follow the same pattern as straights. It seems to me that there isn't much difference in work habits based on sexual orientation. I think it has more to do with the culture of the organization. 'Course I live in California.
Hm. Klein strikes me as very unusually bright, though I will admit he missed the Logic Express tonight on Rachel, where he was guest-hosting. To wit, after pointing out (as Krugman does in the linked piece) that upping the eligibility age for Medicare will nationally result in non-savings of about -100%, he nevertheless rationalized that such a move would do minimal harm to the affected seniors (??) while giving the R.'s a victory they deeply desire (and will loudly crow about) but which is mostly symbolic. In short, the old least-harmful-tradeoff defense as a feel-good cover for Obama ceding too much. Any concession at this point from Obama is an announcement to the Boehner Boys that, despite all posturing to the contrary, he's still their doormat. It would serve as prelude to (and enabler of) bolder and more evil mock-bipartisanship to come.
To clarify--less harm to seniors than other deals on the table. Hence, minimal.
TCW: I clicked on your link to McViegh's article on dangerous children only to be sent to The Atlantic and an article on guns. Google "Lt Col Marion Carrington" and you'll find lots of links but only one to a major (tho foreign) paper, The Guardian. Feeling ill served by US press?
A video clip not to be missed is athttp://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/07/15758865-anti-american-rap-wont-keep-psy-from-performing-for-president?lite where you can see Psy perform in Rockefeller Center...among the dancers several Today show regulars...including Sunday morning's MTP host, David Gregory. He's got the moves & the shades!
@cowichan. Oops, sorry. Link fixed. Marie
@TCW: Thx. Feel better about the press. This is a development of an October story, apparently reported in the NYT, in which 12, 10, and 8 year old children were killed in a military rocket strike initiated by US troops. They were logged as Taliban kills.
I am very troubled by the Charlie Crist story. This is a guy who should be part of remaking the Republican Party; instead he and others like him are going to pull the Democrats to the right. It's bad news for both parties and for the country.
Re: efer; They say stupid is beating your head against the wall over and over again after finding out it hurts. The US Antidrug Industrial Complex is proof. People are going to smoke weed, grow weed, make cookies from weed and ignore laws against weed. It's not going to change. So why are the Feds continuing to beat their heads against the wall? Charles Pierce has it nailed; Money!!!
I got a plan.
All the Drug enforcement guys and gals making a good living chasing down the "fabulous furry freak brothers" change the quest of their hunt to environmental law breakers. Same pay, same hours, same great job; different perps.
All the drug pushers, movers,growers, salesmen; start paying taxes on their businesses; whatever the rates, it will still be less costly than the cost of avoid a bust.
We clean up the environment; we increase public revenue. Win, Win.
This plan was not drawn up in some smoky back room mind you; it was conceived watching the sun set into the pink mist of the blue, green Pacific. Nice.
As I said in my comment the day after the election, our greatest challenge will be reminding Obama that he is a Democrat. His personal competitiveness and need to make a deal will undo him. Too bad he never learned to fish, sometimes you have to just wait for the fish to come to you.
Hubris. The stumbling block of every re-elected administration, seems to now be rearing it's ugly head in the Obama camp. Extravagant parties for the elites, when the foot soldiers got him elected, will not help in the 2014 Congressional elections. The sense that anything we do is alright because we won the election has haunted and diffused any success of the second terms of many Presidents. (Don't ask me for documentation, read some history.)
My brother is a Republican union member (police) and he lives in Michigan. He was appalled at Snyder's actions after he was elected. He told me, regretfully, that he voted for the guy but the campaign rhetoric bore no resemblance to his actions in office. So, his latest move seems pretty typical of his MO.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says Fox News divides the country in a way not seen since the Civil War. Many on the left and center appear to regard Fox with amused contempt. But, like the right wing media in Weimar Germany, they are setting the stage for real political evil. Clearly, Fox and its allies in right wing media world have created a whole class of illiterate voters who are even less informed than those that watch no news at all. They have helped create a Republican Party that long went over a way steeper precipice than the phony Fiscal Cliff. To my mind, Roger Ailes and Rubert Murdoch are even bigger villains than creeps like Jim DeMint and Eric Cantor. Fox and the rest of right wing infotainment have poisoned our body politic in a way not seen since Germany between the Wars.
Here's the link to RFK, Jr.s remarks: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/07/robert-f-kennedy-jr-fox-news_n_2261043.html
@Diane. Have to admit Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes are two of my favorite young liberal nerds (not a bad word in my lexicon); though the dynamic of their pundit positions too often forces them to come up with things to say that are either repetitive or not worth saying, I like Ezra's charts and Chris' frequent large and original views of what is really going on.
That said, my wife would like me to add that what Ezra said this week, when presenting his take on Olive Garden's reluctance to embrace the Affordable Health Care provisions was downright funny: roughly, you wouldn't want to eat bread sticks handled by a sick employee. It was quite an image.
And I'd suggest that Ezra still seems a little uncomfortable, even surprised by his role as talking head, and therefore seems more stiff, even humorless, than the smirk that often lurks around edges as he delivers yet one more serious analysis would suggest.
I am afraid that President Obama is about to sell the farm again. I am not certain that he knows it. The thing of it is is that Obama, Summers, Geithner, Rubin and everyone seemed to understand the effect of a stimulus package that at eight hundred billion saved the economy from a terrible bottom.
How is it possible that Obama and Geithner and the American public for that matter do not understand that any one, two, three, trillion dollar spending reductions in a "grand bargain" will depress the economy. Depress is the oppposite of stimulate and this slow growth, high unemployment economy is not in a position to tolerate the depressing effects of austerity.
Some portion of every dollar of spending reduction comes from the paycheck of some American business and some American worker.
An austerity, depressing agreement with the deficit hawks will put us in the same downward path as Europe and the United Kingdom.
@forrestmorris. Not all corpotations think as you stated. The Fortune 500 corporation for which I worked went to great lengths to diversify their workforce. They even had a gay/ lesbian oraganization, and even though same sex marriages aren't legal in our state, the company offered benefits to domestic partners.
And as a 65-year old employee, I never was discriminated against because of my age. Could the company have done better? Of course. Were some top executives greedy? Yes.
It's just that diversity makes for a stronger, more competitive company.
Apropos of our discussion of gun control the other day. Here is the kind of gun violence that in one manifestation or another happens thousands of times a year in America (and to a less extent, Somalia) but not in countries with sensible gun laws.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/08/craig-allen-loughrey-7-sh_n_2264183.html
Gun control will be a political dead end for any aspiring politico. I counted nine magazines directly aimed at gun owners at my local Publix supermarket. There were also nine publications dealing with hunting and fishing that contain gun makers ads. No one wanting to be elected to anything outside of a big city can overcome this power. Do not expect any real politician to fight this losing battle. We may hope this will change by the time our grandchildren are making law.
@carlyle--Agreed, the farm is on the market. The talk about raising the eligibility age for Medicare is all the warning we need. Why yes, maybe if we do this, we can get the House to agree to a tax raise--deal! If life was a reality tv show like Pawn Stars, that is. We got a deal! I have money to gamble with at the casino and the store has another autographed baseball bat once owned by Willie Nelson.
Our election night euphoria is truly over.