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...."

Nelson Mandela -- 1918-2013

Bill Keller of the New York Times: "Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country’s first black president, becoming an international emblem of dignity and forbearance, died Thursday. He was 95."

Sudarsan Raghaven & Lynne Duke of the Washington Post: Nelson Mandela, the former political prisoner who became the first president of a post-apartheid South Africa and whose heroic life and towering moral stature made him one of history’s most influential statesmen, died Thursday, the government announced. He was 95.

The Guardian's story, by David Smith is here. The Guardian's obituary of President Mandela, by David Beresford, is here.

The Johannesburg Mail & Guardian front page is here.

The New York Times has a slideshow here. The Washington Post slideshow is here.

Mandela's inagural address, May 1994:

     The text is here.

The text of Nelson Mandela's speech from the dock, April 1964, is here and here. Audio of the second part of the speech is here.

The Washington Post has a timeline of Mandela's life.

Full text & video of South African President Jacob Zuma's remarks.

President Obama speaks on the life of Nelson Mandela:

The Washington Post is liveblogging remarks by world leaders & others.

NEW. Lydia Polgren & Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "Across South Africa, people paid tribute to the man they hail as the father of their nation — a secular saint whose commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation gave birth to a nonracial democracy from a country so long riven by segregation. Indeed, people around the world paid homage, including laying flowers at a statue of him in front of the British Parliament in London. After the long months of vigil as Mr. Mandela weakened, far from public view, many ...  rose to mourn and praise him and to ponder his legacy. There were few overtly critical voices."

The Commentariat -- Dec. 5, 2013

Josh Eidelson of Salon: "Thousands of fast food workers plan to walk off the job in 100 U.S. cities today, a major escalation in labor's strongest-ever challenge to an industry that's become ever more central to the present and future of U.S. work." ...

... Mother Jones writers put together charts & graphs to show why fast-food & other low-wage workers need raises. ...

... Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "President Barack Obama prodded Congress to raise wages and secure the social safety net as he issued an overarching appeal Wednesday to correct economic inequalities that he said make it harder for a child to escape poverty. 'That should offend all of us,' he declared. 'We are a better country than this.' Focusing on the pocketbook issues that Americans consistently rank as a top concern, Obama argued that the dream of upward economic mobility is breaking down and that the growing income gap is a 'defining challenge of our time.'" CW: Video of the speech is at the top of yesterday's Commentariat. Elections matter. Think what kind of speeches Mr. Forty-Seven Percent would give about inequality. ...

... New York Times Editors: "The emphasis on cutting taxes and spending that began in the Reagan years is a direct cause of economic insecurity now. It has led, for example, to education cuts that have harmed children in low-income school districts. Reversing those decisions can still have an enormous impact. Mr. Obama did not reveal a sheaf of new ideas in his speech. But he did remind listeners of the many good ideas he has proposed about inequality over the years, most of which have been blocked by Republican opposition." ...

... Greg Sargent: "... experts who see inequality as one of the most urgent moral, political and economic long term challenges facing the country will see it as one of the most important speeches of the Obama presidency -- more ambitious than his similar 2011 speech in Kansas." ...

... Ed Kilgore: "It's a symptom of all sorts of political and media dysfunction that a major presidential speech on one of the overriding topics of the day is being treated as a 'distraction' or an effort to 'change the subject' from obsession over the president's polling numbers or the likely-to-be-forgotten travails of HealthCare.gov." CW: Thanks, Ed. This lazy journalistic practice has been bugging me, too. ...

You owe it to the American people to tell us what you are for, not just what you're against. -- President Obama, to Republicans ...

... Washington Post conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is no fan of President Obama's -- she compares him to Baghdad Bob who reported all was well as bombs exploded in the background -- but she opines that Obama's positive messages about healthcare reform sure beat Republican never-ending, solution-free negativity. ...

... Luke Johnson of the Huffington Post: "A Monday op-ed by the centrist think tank Third Way railing against economic populism has sparked a liberal counterattack, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) calling on big banks to disclose their financial contributions to think tanks and progressive groups calling on Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Penn.), who is running for governor, to drop her affiliation with the group." CW: See yesterday's Commentariat for just how "centrist" the Third Way is.

Steve Holland of Reuters: "More people signed up on the government's new health insurance website on the first two days of December than in the entire first month of the launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform, sources familiar with the numbers said on Wednesday. The sources said about 29,000 people enrolled on Sunday and Monday, surpassing nearly 27,000 for all of October when the opening of the HealthCare.gov website was beset by glitches that led to a public apology by the president and a retooling of the portal." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "... the comparison [of Healthcare.gov] to commercial websites should come with two very important caveats. One is an acknowledgment of the huge, fundamental difference between what the two types of systems must do.... [Commercial sites are] engaging consumers, producers and retailers in a series of relatively straightforward transactions ... using technology that, for the most part, has been around for a long time. Healthcare.gov, by contrast, must perform a whole series of complex transactions.... The second caveat: ... we should also compare [Healthcare.gov] to the process of buying health insurance before Obamacare came along.... If healthcare.gov's consumer interface isn't yet living up to the standards of Amazon, it's already surpassed the standards of buying insurance before the Obamacare came along. That's progress."

... Jeffrey Jones of Gallup: "Most Americans who currently lack insurance say they are likely to get it for next year, as required by the 2010 Affordable Care Act.... But a substantial minority, currently 28%, say they are more likely to pay the government fine imposed for not having insurance. The percentage planning to pay the fine has changed little in the last month.... The biggest differences appear by party identification -- 45% of uninsured Republicans plan to pay the fine, compared with 31% of independents and 15% of Democrats."CW: There's your evidence that the GOP sabotage program is working, & a certain number of vulnerable yahoos will get sick & die because of it. ...

White House photo.... CW: Kevin Drum has my back (see December 3 Comments in which I appear as "a dickhead, female version"): "Anyone who's worked in or around government for more than a few years knows that big IT projects are black holes. They're always late. They never work. And surprisingly often, they're epic catastrophes, projects so screwed up they literally have to be completely abandoned after years of work.... Like it or not, this means that everyone should have known that the website was a ... highly likely point of failure. You don't need to have a background in IT to know that, just a background in watching projects like these over the years. And since the website was obviously so central to the overall success of Obamacare, that means it should have gotten lots of presidential mindshare.... So yeah, this is a huge black mark on Obama." ...

... AND this somber note from Ed Kilgore: "... if the GOP wins back the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016, the ACA will almost certainly be repealed (as it would have been, in large part, had Republicans won the Senate and the White House last year)." ...

... Your Illness, Your Fault. Jim Galloway & Daniel Malloy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: In a speech before a Republican women's group, Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens (RTP) said that people with pre-existing health conditions were "the exact same thing" as drivers who caused auto accidents.... Hudgens already earned national attention for his pledge to do 'everything in our power to be an obstructionist' against the law known as Obamacare." CW: Evidently Hudgens' pre-existing condition is OCDS -- ObamaCare Derangement Syndrome. ...

... Sy Mukherjee of Think Progress: "Consumer Watchdog singled [Hudgens] out in a 2011 report on insurance commissioners' relationships with the industry they regulate. It found that private insurers were Hudgens' top supporters for his 2010 race, donating just under $150,000 to his campaign."

** "Contempt for Congress." Jeff Shesol in the New Yorker: “'It is not our job,' [Chief Justice John] Roberts wrote in his haughtiest passage, 'to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.' But in the name of restraining Congress, his court is doing exactly that: second-guessing regulation of the health-insurance market (the A.C.A. opinion, which crippled Medicaid expansion), overriding ninety-eight senators' judgment that federal protection of the right to vote is still required (Shelby County), and perceiving, despite every expression of congressional intent, only naked self-interest behind campaign-finance reform (Citizens United and its progeny, McCutcheon v. F.E.C., argued in October)."

We Know Where You Are & Who's with You. Barton Gellman & Ashkan Soltani of the Washington Post: "The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals -- and map their relationships -- in ways that would have been previously unimaginable. The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials and the documents, which were provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. New projects created to analyze that data have provided the intelligence community with what amounts to a mass surveillance tool. The NSA does not target Americans' location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones 'incidentally,' a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result." A graph of "how the NSA is tracking people right now" is here. An overview video is here. Soltani discusses how the NSA collects cellphone locational info in this video. ...

... Nicole Perlroth & Vindu Goel of the New York Times: "In the era of Edward J. Snowden..., [Internet] companies are competing to show users how well their data is protected from prying eyes, with billions of dollars in revenue hanging in the balance. On Thursday, Microsoft will be the latest technology company to announce plans to shield its services from outside surveillance. It is in the process of adding state-of-the-art encryption features to various consumer services and internally at its data centers."

Peter Eavis of the New York Times: "Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew will assert on Thursday that the Obama administration's vast overhaul of the financial system is close to accomplishing its goal of shielding society from the dangers posed by giant banks. In a broad policy speech intended to signal the administration's views on financial regulations, Mr. Lew will also make it clear that more measures may be needed to strengthen the global system. In comments that will most likely upset foreign governments, he will call on overseas regulators to make their rules tougher."

Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "Despite ... violations and poor performance, Navy contracting officials kept giving the contractor [Glenn Defense Marine Asia] more lucrative business to resupply ships and submarines in the [Southeast Asia] region.... Today, Glenn Defense Marine and its president, Leonard Glenn Francis, are principal characters in one of the biggest contracting fraud investigations in the Navy's 238-year history.... In addition to salacious evidence of sailors selling secrets for sex, cash and other favors, the investigation has pinpointed systematic weaknesses in the Navy's worldwide contracting bureaucracy."

Dana Milbank gets booted from ALEC "policy summit" meetings in Washington D.C., where corporations tell state legislators what to do. The business-funded, right-wing "research" organization has fallen on hard financial times, partly thanks to public exposure it received for writing stand-your-ground laws. Here's the Guardian article, by Ed Pilkington, which Milbank mentions. ...

... Suzanne Goldenberg & Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: ALEC "is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels -- casting them as 'freeriders' -- in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy.... Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action." CW: This effort really exposes what ruthless, despicable people the Kochs, et al., are. There is absolutely no public policy upside to this & obvious, giant downsides; the purpose is to keep the country in the grips of the fossil fuel barons.

Nuke 'Em! Ben Armbruster of Think Progress: Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) "said on Wednesday that if the United States ends up using military force against Iran's nuclear program, it should do so with nuclear weapons." ...

The preventative, first-use of nuclear weapons against Iran would have a devastating impact on US national security and dismember US power and standing in the world. That a senior Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee is even suggesting such a possible course of action is the height of reckless irresponsibility and so far out of bounds it is astonishing. -- Kingston Reif of the Center for Arms Control ...

... Mark Thompson of Time casts Hunter as Barry Goldwater 2.0.

Style over Substance. John Bresnahan & Anna Palmer of Politico: "The National Republican Congressional Committee wants to make sure there are no Todd Akin-style gaffes next year, so it's meeting with top aides of sitting Republicans to teach them what to say -- or not to say -- on the trail, especially when their boss is running against a woman. Speaker John Boehner's ...top aides met recently with Republican staff to discuss how lawmakers should talk to female constituents. 'Let me put it this way, some of these guys have a lot to learn,' said a Republican staffer who attended the session in Boehner's office."

** Jon Stewart on the War on Christmas -- an excellent piece:

... Gail Collins: Christmas warriors are demanding that retailers make "more mentions of the birth of the Savior while promoting sweaters for the whole family." ...

... CW: If you want to check out that Fox "News" War on Christmas map which Collins highlights, it's here. AND it's high-tech interactive! Click on the icon pointing to Wyoming & you'll learn that Breitbart reports that Jackson has limited its town square holiday displays to a mere 14-day period. Pretty horrifying. I suspect next year's big holiday function will be a bible-burning bonfire on the Jackson town square followed by a marathon reading of Mao's Little Red Book.

Presidential Race 2016

Noah Bierman of the Boston Globe: "Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose political future has been the subject of intense speculation, pledged Wednesday that she would not run for president in 2016, her most ironclad statement yet. 'I pledge to serve out my term,' which ends in January 2019, Warren said, when pressed during a news conference in Boston with Mayor-elect Martin J. Walsh."

News Ledes

New York Times: New York City "Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio on Thursday morning named William J. Bratton to lead the New York Police Department."

New York Times: "Sister Mary Nerney, a Roman Catholic nun who was a nationally known advocate for female convicts, in particular those who were survivors of domestic violence, died on Nov. 27 in Manhattan. She was 75."