The Commentariat -- Nov. 15, 2014
Cartoon & related text removed.
Emily Clark of ABC (Australia) News: President Obama's "speech at the University of Queensland in Brisbane today, ahead of the official opening of the G20 leaders' summit, roused much applause from the capacity crowd, especially when it came to his comments on climate change and gender equality":
Juliet Eilperin & Steve Mufson of the Washington Post: "Even as the House passed legislation Friday authorizing construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline by a decisive vote of 252 to 161, President Obama is signaling he is increasingly skeptical of the project." ...
... ** Jim Avila, et al., of ABC News: "Asked about pending legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline [at a news conference in Myanmar], the president said his position on the issue has not changed and that the ongoing evaluation should be allowed to continue. In some of his strongest language yet, Obama pushed back against the Republican argument that the pipeline is a 'massive jobs bill for the United States.' 'Understand what this project is: It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. It doesn't have an impact on US gas prices,' he said, growing visibly frustrated. 'If my Republican friends really want to focus on what's good for the American people in terms of job creation and lower energy costs, we should be engaging in a conversation about what are we doing to produce even more homegrown energy? I'm happy to have that conversation,' he continued." ...
... Video of the full press conference is here.
Scott Wong, et al., of the Hill: "Conservative House Republicans say they're willing to shut down the government to prevent President Obama from carrying out what they see as unconstitutional actions on immigration. Tea Party lawmakers emboldened by the GOP's big midterm gains say they will insist on attaching a policy rider to legislation keeping the government open that would block funding for agencies carrying out Obama's promised executive actions limiting deportations. If the Democratic Senate or Obama rejects the rider, the government could shut down. A current measure funding the government expires on Dec. 12.... Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) called the plan to block the executive action through the government-funding bill 'a great idea.'" ...
... CW: YoHo Knows. Some of Yoho's Other Great Ideas: Drinking Yoo-Hoo through a straw in his nose. Licking the cookie off the Oreo frosting. Playing strip Yahtzee. Buying a ghost town in Ohio (or Iowa) & naming it after himself. Serenading the ladies with "Yo Ho Ho & a Bottle of Rum." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "The kooks will not be going quietly." ...
... Jonathan Bernstein explains the utility of "John Boehner's Magic Expanding Lawsuit." Both funny & true. ...
... Brian Beutler: "There are three tools Republicans can use to stop Obama [from reforming immigration], but toxic Republican politics preclude the only one -- a pledge to vote on comprehensive reform -- that would actually work. That leaves the spending and impeachment powers." CW: So why doesn't Boehner have the balls to take the easy way out? (The Senate already passed a satisfactory immigration reform bill & the House apparently has the votes to pass one, too.) ...
... Jim Avila, et al.: "Speaking to reporters alongside famous opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, President Obama was adamant that, [same story linked above] despite mounting GOP objections, he will move forward and take executive action to reform the immigration system by the end of the year because reforms are 'way overdue.' 'I gave the House over a year to go ahead and at least give a vote to the Senate bill. They failed to do so and I indicated to Speaker Boehner several months ago that if, in fact, Congress failed to act, I would use all the lawful authority that I possess to try to make the system work better, and that's going to happen,' he said." ...
... Julia Preston of the New York Times: "When President Obama announces major changes to the nation's immigration enforcement system as early as next week, his decision will partly be a result of a yearslong campaign of pressure by immigrant rights groups, which have grown from a cluster of lobbying organizations into a national force. A vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from some of the nation's wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the past decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally."
Gail Collins: Congress is not going to pass a tax reform package.
Robert Pear, et al., of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Friday unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance bought under the Affordable Care Act could face substantial price increases next year -- in some cases as much as 20 percent -- unless they switch plans. The data became available just hours before the health insurance marketplace was to open to buyers seeking insurance for 2015. An analysis of the data by The New York Times suggests that although consumers will often be able to find new health plans with prices comparable to those they now pay, the situation varies greatly from state to state and even among counties in the same state." ...
... It's Working. Frank Newport of Gallup: "Over seven in 10 Americans who bought new health insurance policies through the government exchanges earlier this year rate the quality of their healthcare and their healthcare coverage as 'excellent' or 'good.' These positive evaluations are generally similar to the reviews that all insured Americans give to their health insurance." ...
... Jeffrey Jones of Gallup: "More than half of uninsured Americans say they plan to sign up for health coverage, a promising sign as the open enrollment period for obtaining health insurance through state and federal exchanges opens. Specifically, 55% of Americans who currently lack insurance say they plan to sign up for coverage while 35% of the uninsured say they will not get insurance and instead pay the fine as required by the Affordable Care Act...." ...
... Neil Irwin of the New York Times explains what Jonathan Gruber's repeated "stupidity" remarks were all about: the Congressional Budget Office has rules which determine what types of private spending constitute a tax -- and thus go into the federal budget -- and what do not. "So the Obama administration officials and congressional Democrats who were writing the [healthcare] law had strong political incentives to ensure that the individual mandate they proposed would fit the C.B.O.'s definition of things that don't have to be counted on the federal government budget. What's slightly curious about Mr. Gruber's comments is that the versions of Obamacare that received public discussion and debate never broke from that goal. The same could not be said of the Clinton administration's failed 1993 health reform effort, which stumbled in part on just this issue. But it's also the case that this wasn't some obscure debate in which no one at the time knew what was going on. There was clear public guidance from the C.B.O. on how the individual mandate had to be devised in order to not move trillions of dollars of health care expenditures onto the federal budget...." ...
... Shorter Irwin: Prof. Gruber has no idea how Congressional staffers work with the CBO. ...
... CW: Irwin's post also explains all the hoo-hah back in 2010 on how the CBO would "score" the various proposed ACA bills. This hoo-hah was hardly secret or obscure, as Gruber claims; all the major news outlets carried stories about it, & bloggers wrote hundreds of posts discussing the scoring. If Republicans in Congress can't even read the news, the hearings the GOP is mulling to bring Gruber's "devious plot" into the light should center on their own inability to pay attention. While GOP MOCs were demagoging phony death panels, Democratic staffers were writing an actual bill, and the details of that actual bill were readily available to members of Congress, & to an unusual extent, to the public.
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The Democrats' widespread losses last week have revived a debate inside the party about its fundamental identity, a long-running feud between center and left that has taken on new urgency in the aftermath of a disastrous election and in a time of deeply felt economic anxiety. The discussion is taking place in postelection meetings, conference calls and dueling memos from liberals and moderates. But it will soon grow louder, shaping the actions of congressional Democrats in President Obama's final two years and, more notably, defining the party's presidential primaries in 2016."
Joe Nocera has never heard of Ted Cruz: "Is there anybody out there who opposes net neutrality?" Nocera asks. He then goes into a discourse on the various laws under which the FCC could regulate ISPs like Comcast.
CW: One of the great things about being a Republican politician is that you don't have to make any sense at all. Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "Defending his fellow Republican governors’ decision to block Medicaid expansion in their states, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Friday suggested that denying health coverage to additional low-income Americans helps more people 'live the American Dream' because they won't be 'dependent on the American government.'" CW: Because you spendthrifts earning $7.25/hour, which Scottie thinks is a fine minimum wage (if one must have a minimum wage at all), should be buying your own insurance in the freeeee market with all the spare cash you're wasting on beer & Cheetos. Congratulations, Cheeseheads. This guy is Your Fault.
Your History Lesson for Today. Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "... this week, Atlanta became the site of a historical marker annotating [Gen. William] Sherman folklore to reflect an expanding body of more forgiving scholarship about the general's behavior. One of the marker's sentences specifically targets some of the harsher imagery about him as 'popular myth.'... To that end, the marker in Atlanta mentions that more than 62,000 soldiers under Sherman's command devastated 'Atlanta's industrial and business (but not residential) districts' and talks of how, 'contrary to popular myth, Sherman's troops primarily destroyed only property used for waging war -- railroads, train depots, factories, cotton gins and warehouses.' Sherman’s aggressiveness, the marker concludes, 'demoralized Confederates, hastening the end of slavery and the reunification of the nation.'"
Your Greek Lesson for Today. Charles Pierce Robert Bateman of Esquire defines "Molon labe." If only the U.S. could be more like Sparta.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Seniors, Sex & Foxy "News." Paul Waldman explains why Fox "News" -- where the median age of viewers is 68.8 -- shows way more shots of mostly-naked girls than do the other "news" channels. For instance, top Fox journalist Sean Hannity did a week-long "exposé" of Fort Lauderdale Spring Break. Pretty funny. ...
... In related video, a "Daily Show" segment of unknown (to me) vintage:
Poor, Poor Pitiful Peggy. Ed Kilgore ruined his afternoon by reading Peggy Noonan's column titled "The Loneliest President Since Nixon." (Hint: the column is not about Ronald Reagan): "Best you can tell from her columns, her impressions of politics come from a rare and uncontextualized glimpse of real life (e.g., briefly seeing a lot of Romney yard signs in Florida in 2012), and talking to people who are almost exactly like her.... Data? History, other than her hoarded treasures from the Golden Age of Ronnie? Nah. Why bother? She provides all the partisan B.S. the market can bear, which turns out to be an awful lot. And so she drifts along in the isolated splendor of a public figure inhabiting a world of her own imagining, which makes her concern trolling about Obama's 'loneliness' particularly ironic."
November Election
Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "The Democrats invested millions of dollars in a vaunted field operation to mobilize the young and nonwhite voters who do not usually participate in midterm elections. Yet it was not enough to save Democrats from a Republican landslide.... The Democratic field effort was probably a success.
Presidential Race
Steve M. "One GruberGate bright spot: Romney's 2016 dreams are toast.
News Ledes
Guardian: "Russia has denied reports president Vladimir Putin is leaving the G20 early, after pressure from Western nations to withdraw troops from Ukraine and forthright hostility from some leaders, including Canada's Stephen Harper. Brisbane's Courier Mail, which two days ago demanded Putin say 'sorry' for the downing of MH17 over Ukraine, reported that Putin would skip a working G20 breakfast and leave Brisbane early for meetings in Moscow."
AP: "World leaders on Sunday prepared to release details of a plan aimed at injecting life into the world's listless economy, with infrastructure investment and the lowering of trade barriers flagged as key components of the initiative."
AP: "The pioneering lander Philae completed its primary mission of explorin the comet's surface and returned plenty of data before deplete batteries forced it to go silent, the European Space Agency said Saturday."
CNN: "A surgeon diagnosed with Ebola in his native Sierra Leone arrived Saturday afternoon in the United States, where he will undergo treatment at The Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha."
AP: "America's top military leader arrived Saturday to Iraq, state television reported, his first visit to the country since a U.S.-led coalition began a campaign of airstrikes targeting the extremist Islamic State group. The visit by Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, was not previously announced. It came just two days after he told Congress that the United States would consider dispatching a modest number of American forces to fight with Iraqi troops in the campaign against the Islamic State group, which controls about a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria."
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Reader Comments (15)
I found this on Daily Kos a short while ago:
"Now that the GOP has their largest majority in 85 years, thanks to the lowest voter turnout in 72 years, they have the obligation to enact the agenda of the angriest man in the smallest county in Iowa." ---Stephen Colbert
Whoa, Marie. Remember you're tarring a lot of cheeseheads with that brush of being at fault for Scott Walker.
I have been particularly disturbed by the harsh judgments of some web commenters over the last week now that I appear, without having moved, to live in a pretty red state. Naturally progressives, here and elsewhere, are bitter and eager to assign blame for the recent republican electoral successes. But I suggest that first, blame is divisive and unproductive; and second, that it isn't always justified. I would like to have required that all commenters spend a month in Wisconsin (not in Madison) during campaign season so they could truly experience the effects of Walker's boldfaced lies, crafty political tax cuts, huge financial advantage, lapdog mainstream media, screeching talk radio, exploitation of loopholes in state law, and skillful use of the carefully stacked courts. Walker may be a sleazebag and a crook, but he's a skilfull politician and it's not fair to blame a whole state because 52% of the electorate were swayed.
I will admit that the state Democratic party seems to lack the skills to stand up to this crap (more obvious in the recall when it took the huge grassroots surge of anger and blew it with a tepid campaign). This seems to be the case in a lot of states right now, though.
I'm not saying let's all get along. I'm less inclined to moderate my positions than ever. It's just that hating my neighbors wasn't one of them, up until 2011. Scott Walker expertly uses animosities between urban/rural, union/non, middle class/poor, etc to raise himself up on a tide of resentment. I don't like it and I don't want to participate in it, and I don't think Wisconsin is going to get out from under this gang of bullies he leads as long as its people let him get away with it.
Climate deal with China?
Nix to the Keystone? (with accompanying forthright analysis)
Immigration reform by executive order?
What have we here? Do I detect two years of Obama Unbound?
It could be epic.
@Ken Winkes - If Obama does go to war with the Republicans then America may actually see reality. Who knows, in two years people may finally put away their I phones for a few minutes and vote.
As evidence of what America really consists of, I found this article about a survey on peoples view of climate change (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-more-skeptical-of-climate-change-than-others-in-global-survey/) which shows that the country with the weakest understanding and 'belief' in climate change is guess who?
The summary statement "When asked if they agreed with the statement, "The climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity," just 54 percent of Americans surveyed said yes. Although this number indicates a majority, the United States still ranked last among 20 countries in the poll.
The U.S. number was ten points lower than the next lowest countries on the list, Britain and Australia, where 64 percent agreed that humans are causing climate change. China topped the list, with 93 percent of its citizens agreeing that human activity is causing climate change. Large majorities also agreed in France (80 percent), Brazil (79 percent), Germany (72 percent) and other countries" says it all.
Now for Professor Inhofe. So lets see virtually every country in the world, every world leader and 99.9% of scientists and a substantial majority of the population of the industrialized world clearly sees the cause and effect of global warming and they all have it wrong. The only person who knows the truth is Inhofe.
This is beyond a classic example of a pathetic moron trying to substantiate an impossible ego (to be fair, this is a common disorder among politicians). So lets see if the President will finally stand up and confront this idiot.
I would expect that the vast majority of USA deniers are the same people in denial about every other reality in life. It's so convenient to have a place to hide. It's called religion.
Morning wisdom (not mine):
"Mythos is usually created to justify the self-indulgence of those who control the lives of others." --James Lee Burke in "Wayfaring Stranger"
Pretty much covers ideologues of all stripes, doesn't it?
Another take on net neutrality:
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/14/porn_stars_explain_net_neutrality_speculate_about_ted_cruzs_weird_taste_in_porn/
Since folks in red states watch the most of this stuff, slow lanes won't be popular.
Just catching up on some RC stuff (right side column), read the review on the new bio of Nelson Rockefeller. Interesting to learn of his encounters with 'young' Rumsfield and Cheney way back when. The process of the nominations—who got it & why— for Republican presidential candidates over the years details were reminders that not much is new. Except probably for the obscene amounts of money now involved. Learning that Reagan was considered a viable contender early on was surprising to me. Not too long ago I watched "The Last Mogul," about Lew Wasserman and MCA , the man who single-handedly was probably the person most responsible for Reagan getting where he did from the governor's mansion to the White House.
P.S. re: 'Charles Pierce defines "Molon labe"
' Ummm, 'twas actually contributor Robert Bateman. Lt. Col., Ret. that is, who is a regular contributor to Esquire.com.
If only the tattoo had a typo—an "R" instead of an "L."
HIGH NOONAN TERRITORY (in her own words)
I see aloneness––pure unadulterated aloneness. I close my eyes and envision this poor President sitting by himself with nary a soul to give him succor. I imagine (something I do fairly often) even his wife and children shun him and are horrified to see power leaking out of him getting all over the newly installed carpet Michelle had just installed.
For those that expected great things from this man they will have to contend with a leaky, lachrymose Commander in Chief who has lost his hold––lost his power. Of course, as I said long ago, being of a prescient nature, that it would come to this. I'm afraid we'll all have to wait for another great leader like the love of my life––my morning in America––a REAL President for this wonderful country and you notice, don't you, I don't even have to whisper his name.
Now if you'll excuse me I I have to shine up my prayer beads and dust off all my statues of the Virgin. One has to pray hard for better times.
Here's something from Wonkblog that may be of interest:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/14/more-guns-more-crime-new-research-debunks-a-central-thesis-of-the-gun-rights-movement/
I'm sure the gun folks are scrambling to find how anyone was able to get relevant data.
@Niskyguy: Read the comments. The pro-gun people are out in force.
Can't be true, bad research, etc. You'll never convince the gun worshipers.
This is your Saturday afternoon medical quiz. Who knows the third
question your doctors' office asks after name, date of birth? Hint:
has nothing to do with insurance.
Right-wingers are assholes no matter what country they are from:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/14/tony_abbott_aboriginal_people_gaffe_nothing_but_bush_video.html?wpsrc=slatest_newsletter&sid=5388d805dd52b8870b00f6bf
THE SCREW YOU STRATEGY : Love this!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/14/1344549/-Cartoon-The-screw-you-strategy?detail=email
Thank you