The Commentariat -- Feb. 23, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... Here's the transcript.

Since everyone, including the White House, was dissing David Brooks today, I thought I might as well pile on. My New York Times eXaminer column is here. ...

... MEANWHILE, Ed Kilgore takes on Peggy Noonan, which he admits is as easy as "shooting magic dolphins in a barrel." His whole post is funny. Here's the heart of it:

Allow yourself a few minutes of chuckling over the spectacle of Peggy Noonan wandering around a Walmart -- something she apparently does every few years to get in touch with the peasantry -- and focus on what she's saying here. Fiscal uncertainty has made the scene at Walmart 'tired' and 'frayed.'

Now there's a much less ethereal explanation for Walmart's troubles: the payroll tax increase that Republicans accepted without a peep on January 1 took a bite out of purchasing power, aside from the fact that Walmart shoppers tend to be folk struggling to get along. The overall phenomenon is called 'sluggish consumer demand,' which means low-to-moderate income families don't have enough money. That's a slightly more tangible and immediate problem than any emotional or spiritual crisis Walmart customers might experience from reflections on the failure of Barack Obama to reach out to Republicans for long-term federal spending cuts, which is what Noonan talks about in the remainder of her column.

Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with George Packer & James Surowiecki about income inequality, wage stagnation & the sequester:

Jonathan Weisman & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Mr. Obama privately told Democratic governors that his public campaign against Republicans was not producing results.... In a session at the White House complex, the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. tried to enlist the Democratic governors to reach out to their Republican counterparts at a National Governors Association meeting this weekend to push Congressional leaders to the table.... On Friday, Republicans remained adamant that they would accept no tax increases to head off the cuts." ...

... Michael Cooper of the New York Times: "States are increasingly alarmed that they could become collateral damage in Washington's latest fiscal battle, fearing that the impasse could saddle them with across-the-board spending cuts that threaten to slow their fragile recoveries or thrust them back into recession." CW: here's a place where "uncertainty" actually is a factor; there's a certain irony, of course, that some of the states that will be hardest hit by the sequester cuts are those that vote Tea Party & hate President Socialist. ...

... Keith Laing of The Hill: "Airline passengers will face major delays if Congress allows across-the-board cuts to the budgets of agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warned Friday. LaHood, speaking to reporters at Friday's White House press briefing, predicted chaos at the nation's busiest airports because thousands of FAA employees -- including air traffic controllers -- will be furloughed to save money. 'This is very painful for us because it involves our employees, but it's going to be very painful for the flying public,' LaHood said." ...

... Matthew Wald of the New York Times: "Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has told Congress that most of the Federal Aviation Administration's 47,000 employees would face a day of furlough per two-week pay period, meaning on average about 10 percent fewer workers on any given day.... To handle such a major staff shortage but still maintain safety, federal aviation officials said they would accept fewer airplanes into the system.... As a result, passengers may sit on tarmacs and endure delays as they wait for planes to push back from the gate.As a result, passengers may sit on tarmacs and endure delays as they wait for planes to push back from the gate." ...

... Stan Collender of Capital Gains & Games: "The Obama White House ... clearly is not reluctant in the slightest about making it clear that flights will be canceled or seriously delayed ... or both if the sequester happens.... This is why I keep saying that the politics of the sequester will change almost immediately after it starts. Slowdowns at U.S... airports, national parks closed one day a week, slower-than-usual tax refunds -- all of which are likely to happen starting on March 1 -- almost change how voters view the situation and the pressure on members of Congress to deal with it."

... Tracie Cone of the AP: "As America's financial clock ticks toward forced spending cuts to countless government agencies, The Associated Press has obtained a National Park Service memo that compiles a list of potential effects at the nation's most beautiful and historic places just as spring vacation season begins.... In Yosemite National Park in California, for example, park administrators fear that less frequent trash pickup would potentially attract bears into campgrounds." ...

... Gail Collins explains the sequester to dummies. Actually, her dummy sounds pretty smart. It's the answers that are dumb, dumb because the Congressional decisions she is describing are dumb. ...

... Wherein Bob Woodward Tries to Cover His Ass by Covering up an Inconvenient Fact. In today's Washington Post, Woodward writes a longish piece "proving" that the sequester was Obama's idea. Key points:

My extensive reporting for my book 'The Price of Politics' shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of [Jack] Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors.... Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011.... Key Republican staffers said they didn't even initially know what a sequester was....

     ... Well, maybe you're right, Bob. But then how is it that just 4 days later -- July 31 -- Boehner distributed a PowerPoint presentation, developed with the Republican Policy Committee, in which "it's clear as day in the presentation that 'sequestration' was considered a cudgel to guarantee a reduction in federal spending"? According to Lew's account, the sequestration idea was based on a 1984 Graham-Rudman plan, but Boehner's Power Point presentation says sequestration is the "same mechanism used in 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement." Moreover, Lew says he wasn't "pushing" it. It seems that both Boehner's & Obama's teams were trying to come up with a way to kick the can down the road -- on account of Boehner's inability to get his Tea Party members behind anything -- & they both hit on sequestration. Since the Tea Party caucus was Boehner's problem, Boehner "pushed" sequestration. (Boehner's office has since told Newsweek that his Power Point slide "was simply Boehner's attempt to explain the president's plan to the Republican caucus.") Woodward never mentions the Power Point presentation. Get over it, Bob.

Lawrence Hurley of Reuters: "The Obama administration outlined its argument on Friday why the U.S. Supreme Court should strike down a federal law that defines marriage as between a man and woman. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli filed a brief with the court saying that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional, expanding on the administration's approach to the controversial 1996 law, which it has formally opposed since February 2011."

Friday Afternoon News Dump -- Drones R Us. Eric Schmitt & Mark Sayare of the New York Times: "Opening a new front in the drone wars against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, President Obama announced on Friday that about 100 American troops had been sent to Niger in West Africa to help set up a new base from which unarmed Predator aircraft would conduct surveillance in the region."

Tara Bernard of the New York Times: "... when it comes to paid parental leave, the United States is among the least generous in the world, ranking down with the handful of countries that don't offer any paid leave at all, among them Liberia, Suriname and Papua New Guinea. The American situation hasn't materially improved since the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act was signed into law 20 years ago this month by President Clinton.... While the United States takes great pride in its family values, it is the only high-income country that does not offer a paid leave program.... The National Partnership for Women and Families..., together with the Center for American Progress, has been working with lawmakers to draft legislation that would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave for the arrival of a new child or for a parent's serious illness or that of a family member. The costs would be split between workers and their employers...."

"I Have Here in My Pocket...." Jane Mayer of the New Yorker: "Two and a half years ago, [Ted] Cruz gave a stem-winder of a speech at a Fourth of July weekend political rally in Austin, Texas, in which he accused the Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when he studied there.... Cruz made the accusation ... at a conference ... sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Cruz ... soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he described as 'the most radical' President 'ever to occupy the Oval Office.' Charles Fried, who taught Cruz at Harvard Law & "who served as Ronald Reagan's Solicitor General from 1985 to 1989," disputes all of Cruz's claims about the school." ...

... Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches: "Cruz's communist conspiracy theories pre-date his Tea Party associations; in 2009..., Cruz made the same accusation about Obama and Harvard" to Christian conservative professor & publisher Marvin Olansky. "In the WORLD interview, Cruz took care to point out that he 'was raised a Christian and came to Christ at Clay Road Baptist Church in Houston.'"

John Hooper of the Guardian: "A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom -- the report said -- were being blackmailed by outsiders. The pope's spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica." CW: Thanks to contributor Patrick Barbarossa for the link. (Oops Update: thanks to Patrick for "being there.") La Repubblica is probably the major Italian daily. I'm not saying La Repubblica is right, but I am saying it is not a sensationalist newspaper. In any event, it looks as if maybe Pope Noble the Resigner is not so Noble. ...

... Barbie Latza Nadeau of Newsweek : "The existence of a gay-priest network outside the fortified walls of Vatican City is hardly news, and many are wondering if it is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of sex scandals." Sounds like something Ted Cruz would say. ...

... Nicole Winfield of the AP: "The Vatican lashed out Saturday at the media for what it said has been a run of defamatory and false reports before the conclave to elect Pope Benedict XVI's successor, saying they were an attempt to influence the election. Italian newspapers have been rife with unsourced reports in recent days about the contents of a secret dossier prepared for the pope by three cardinals who investigated the origins of the 2012 scandal over leaked Vatican documents. The reports have suggested the revelations in the dossier, given to Benedict in December, were a factor in his decision to resign. The pope himself has said merely that he doesn't have the 'strength of mind and body' to carry on."

News Ledes

Reuters: "New England braced for its third snowstorm in three weekends on Saturday, putting crews to work sanding roads and trimming trees ahead of the snow, sleet and freezing rain moving in from the Midwest. The storm blanketed states from Minnesota to Ohio earlier this week, dumping more than a foot of snow in Kansas on Thursday, forcing airports to cancel hundreds of flights and leaving motorists stranded on highways." ...

... BUT meteorologist David Epstein writes in the Boston Globe: "The bottom line is that the big storm isn't going to happen. What we will have is a period of rain and snow that could accumulate up to a few inches, especially across the Worcester hills between tonight and Sunday night."

Reuters: "Days before resuming talks over its disputed atomic program, Iran said on Saturday it had found significant new deposits of raw uranium and identified sites for 16 more nuclear power stations. State news agency IRNA quoted a report by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) which said the reserves were discovered in northern and southern coastal areas and had trebled the amount outlined in previous estimates."

AP: Nobel laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, "a key opposition leader, called Saturday for a boycott of [Egypt's] upcoming parliamentary elections, saying he will not take part in a 'sham democracy.' President Mohammed Morsi's Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, shot back that the opposition was running away from the challenge and wants power without contesting elections."

Spams a Lot, Etc.

I don't know what's going on with Reality Chex hosting. I complained to my host this morning about the fact that commenters are getting spammed all the time; more than a third of the comments today went to the spam file. So maybe the host is working on it -- which so far means readers are apparently getting scary messages like "This site will destroy your computer, or something." I just notifed my host about this, so we'll see what happens next. ...

... UPDATE. ONE PROBLEM SOLVED (I think). Two readers wrote to me yesterday indicating they had got a message something like the one below -- I think that is probably the one they got. My guess, based on what my host wrote, is that they tried to open Reality Chex in hypertext-secure = https, instead of in plain ole http. So if you get a message like the one below in opening this or any other site, check your URL:

In Internet Explorer, the message would look like this:

AND in Google Chrome, like this:

Those are the only browsers I have loaded; I would assume if you're using another browser, it would produce a similar message. I suspect you might get a similar message if you had your security set at the highest level, either internally or in a virus protection add-on program.

The spam problem continues. I've suggested to my host that I at least get a notification when the spam filter snags a comment, so I'll see if they'll do that.

In the meantime, if you submit a comment that doesn't go up immediately, you can e-mail me at this link & write "spammed" either in the title or text. If I'm around I'll de-spamify the comment right away. I'm checking the spam file much more often now that it's such a problem, but still.

Sorry for the glitches.

The Commentariat -- Feb. 22, 2013

GOP's Latest "Blame Obama" Sequester Con. Brian Beutler of TPM: "Senate Republicans along with influential conservative commentators [Karl Rove] are proposing to provide federal agency heads the flexibility they currently lack to allocate the sequester's cuts at their discretion.... The GOP proposal would give the executive branch more discretion over where to make those cuts for the remainder of the current fiscal year, which ends in September.... In effect, it's a sequester replacement bill minus the political cost of proposing specific alternative cuts to federal programs." ...

... Ed Kilgore explains the history of the "less stupidity" option which Rove, et al., & Senate Republicans are proposing. In the end, "... the 'less stupidity' option is facing a bipartisan veto, and worse yet, the knowledge that it would not actually happen is probably why Senate Republicans are proposing it in the first place. If that puzzles you, welcome to the wonderful world of budget politics, where reality is never close to the surface." ...

... Ernesto Londoño & Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "After staying largely on the sidelines of the debate over deficit reduction, the U.S. military's service leaders have begun painting a stark picture of the toll a congressionally mandated budget cut could take on the readiness of the world's largest armed forces. The $46 billion dent to the Pentagon's fiscal 2013 budget ... [is] forcing commanders across the military to plan for painful reductions and argue that American lives and livelihoods are hanging in the balance.... The military's service chiefs are amplifying the months-long warnings of Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and others and providing what they have described as the specific and serious consequences of the across-the-board cuts." CW Note: this is the Post's top story. Kinda nice of them to do Obama's work for him, isn't it? ...

... Paul Krugman: "... the legacy of that year of living foolishly [-- 2011 --] lives on, in the form of the 'sequester,' one of the worst policy ideas in our nation's history.... The right policy would be to forget about the whole thing.... Unfortunately, neither party is proposing that we just call the whole thing off. But the proposal from Senate Democrats at least moves in the right direction, replacing the most destructive spending cuts -- those that fall on the most vulnerable members of our society -- with tax increases on the wealthy, and delaying austerity in a way that would protect the economy. House Republicans, on the other hand, want to take everything that's bad about the sequester and make it worse...."

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "Sequester is happening because Republicans in the supercommittee balked at raising adequate revenue.... No matter whose brainchild it was, Republicans voted for a deal that included the sequester as the enforcement mechanism. They can't now disown their vote by insisting it was the other guy's idea." ...

... Dear John (Boehner): We're Just Not All That into You." Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "A new survey from the Pew Research Center and USA Today [see link to USA Today story below] ... shows a failure to reach a deal [on the sequester] would lead 49 percent of Americans to blame congressional Republicans and 31 percent to blame President Obama. This isn't all that surprising.... Obama is much more popular than both Congress and the Republican Party, which means he's likely to come out on top in the blame game."

Donna Cassata of the AP: "Barring any new, damaging information, Chuck Hagel has secured the necessary votes for the Senate to confirm him to be the nation's next defense secretary. A vote ending the bitter fight over President Barack Obama's choice for his revamped second-term, national security team is expected next week. Hagel cleared the threshold when five-term Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama said he would vote for the former GOP senator from Nebraska...." ...

... MEANWHILE ... Morgan Whitaker of NBC News: "Led by Texas Senator John Cornyn, 15 Republican Senators are calling on President Obama to withdraw his nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, questioning his ability to handle the job along with how effective he could be without bipartisan support."

Zack Coleman of The Hill: "The front-runner to fill the vacancy atop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pledged to push ahead with actions to confront climate change during a wide-ranging speech Thursday. 'As President Obama said, climate change is a priority -- and we are going to take action,' Gina McCarthy, the EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, told attendees at the Georgetown Climate Center Workshop in Washington, D.C."

Susan Page of USA Today: "President Obama starts his second term with a clear upper hand over GOP leaders on issues from guns to immigration that are likely to dominate the year, a USA Today/Pew Research Center Poll finds. On the legislation rated most urgent -- cutting the budget deficit -- even a majority of Republican voters endorse Obama's approach of seeking tax hikes as well as spending cuts." ...

... Ron Brownstein of the National Journal: "One conclusion that jumps from the Pew Research Center/USA Today national survey released Thursday is that the coalition that reelected President Obama last fall remains in step behind him -- and is largely unified behind the key elements of his increasingly aggressive second-term agenda. But the poll also suggests that failure to generate more-rapid economic recovery could nonetheless strain the powerful coalition Obama has assembled."

Dubya speechwriter Michael Gerson, now a columnist for the Washington Post, takes a swipe at his not-ready-for-primetime party: "... last year's Republican primary process was entirely disconnected from the actual needs of the party. One candidate pledged to build a 20-foot-high electrical fence at the border crowned with the sign, in English and Spanish, 'It will kill you -- Warning.' Another promised, as president, to speak out against the damage done to American society by contraception. Another warned that vaccinations may cause 'mental retardation.' In the course of 20 debates and in tens of millions of dollars of ads, issues such as upward mobility, education, poverty, safer communities and the environment were rarely mentioned.... Candidates will need to do more than rebrand existing policy approaches or translate them into Spanish." CW: yes, Marco, he's talking to you.

Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: "Vice President Biden told an audience Thursday in Connecticut that things have changed in the gun violence debate -- the politician who has to worry now is the one who votes against new regulations on firearms purchases, rather than the one who votes for them.... Democrats are gearing up to make support for gun control a key plank in their 2014 platform.... It's worth noting that polling backs up Biden.... Guns are now a liability for the GOP rather than for Democrats." McMorris-Santoro has a clip of the speech. You can watch the whole speech here. ...

... McCain to Grieving Mother: "Tough." David Taintor of TPM: "At Wednesday's town hall, [Caren] Teves told [Sen. John] McCain that her son, Alex, was killed in the massacre, and she urged the senator to support a ban on assault weapons. McCain responded: 'I can tell you right now you need some straight talk. That assault weapons ban will not pass the Congress of the United States.' The crowd, many of whom appeared to be pro-gun, burst into cheers and applause at McCain's comments":

David Firestone of the New York Times: "The 13 Republican governors who have refused the expansion [of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act] know full well that they are giving away billions of dollars, hurting their own low-income residents, and forcing taxpayers to subsidize Medicaid programs in other states but not their own. Yet they are trapped by their years of furious opposition, issuing alarmist statements like this one, from Rick Perry of Texas: 'To expand this program is not unlike adding a thousand people to the Titanic.'"

Jon Huntsman in the American Conservative: "... conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry.... There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love. All Americans should be treated equally by the law, whether they marry in a church, another religious institution, or a town hall." ...

... Zack Ford of Think Progress: "Laura Bush Objects To Being Quoted Accurately Supporting Marriage Equality. This week, the Respect for Marriage Coalition launched a new $1 million print and television ad campaign highlighting bipartisan support for marriage equality. Unfortunately, it seems Former First Lady Laura Bush is not happy about being included in the ads.... The campaign has agreed to remove Bush from the ads."

Andrew Leonard of Salon on how right-wing governors are undermining higher education in the name of "fiscal responsibility" -- especially in the humanities, which wingers see as bastions of Marxism.

David Montgomery of the Washington Post: activist and heiress Naomi Pitcairn & Code Pink throw a posh going-to-prison party at the Hay-Adams hotel for convicted whistleblower John Kiriakou. CW: and I say to him, "Thank you for your service to our country."

Dashiel Bennett of the Atlantic: "Approximately 150 federal and state law enforcement agents launched a massive raid on one of the biggest perpetrators of government fraud in America: The Scooter Store. Yes, that's right. The nation's largest provider of single-person electric vehicles and power chairs is the target of a federal investigation, probably because many of the people who ride around their 'personal mobility devices' don't actually need them. In January, CBS This Morning ran a cutting exposé on the company, detailing how it 'railroads' doctors into prescribing the chair for their patients, most of whom are on Medicare or Medicaid. That way they can bill the government for their highly dubious medical device, while the patient gets a cool new scooter without paying for it, and The Scooter Store makes a nice profit." CW: This doesn't surprise me on bit. Their ads are really attractive come-ons. I'm delighted to see the feds cracking down on the perps behind the Scooter Store.

"A Carter Won Obama the Election":

     ... CW: I happen to agree with President Carter. There's a perfect irony in this of course, since both Mitt Romney & his running mate Paul Ryan accused Obama of being "worse than Carter."

Local News

Before & After. Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post: "The Indiana state Senate on Wednesday advanced a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound procedure both before and after having a medication-induced abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy." CW: Every one of the SOBs who voted for this entirely unnecessary procedural hoop-jumping exercise should be required to have a brain MRI both before and after they vote for this crap. At their own expense. Meddling assholes.

News Ledes

AP: "The U.S. and its NATO allies revealed Friday they may keep as many as 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends next year, largely American forces tasked with hunting down remnants of al-Qaida and helping Afghan forces with their own security."

AP: "The Pentagon on Friday grounded its fleet of F-35 fighter jets after discovering a cracked engine blade in one plane. The problem was discovered during what the Pentagon called a routine inspection at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., of an F-35A, the Air Force version of the sleek new plane. The Navy and the Marine Corps are buying other versions of the F-35, which is intended to replace older fighters like the Air Force F-16 and the Navy F/A-18."

Reuters: "Los Angeles County health officials have asked for federal assistance to analyze and contain an outbreak of tuberculosis within the city's homeless population, a spokeswoman for the county agency said on Friday."

Reuters: "Six tanks at Washington state's Hanford Nuclear Reservation are leaking radioactive waste, but the leak has not posed an immediate public health risk, Governor Jay Inslee's office said on Friday."

Reuters: "Boeing Co on Friday gave U.S. aviation regulators its plan to fix the volatile battery aboard its new 787 Dreamliner, even though investigators have not yet determined what caused the batteries to overheat on two planes last month."

Reuters: "Britain suffered its first ever sovereign ratings downgrade from a major agency on Friday, after Moody's stripped the country of its coveted top-notch triple-A rating, dealing a major blow to finance minister George Osborne<. Moody's cut Britain's rating by one notch to Aa1 from Aaa, with a stable outlook, blaming weak prospects for Britain's economy over the coming years which have thrown the government's deficit reduction strategy off course."

New York Times: "The Department of Justice has decided to join a lawsuit against Lance Armstrong and several associates that accuses them of using taxpayer money to finance doping on the United States Postal Service cycling team, according to a lawyer for Armstrong." CW: that is, the Department of Justice has decided to take another easy case while allowing the big banks to continue cheating. Thanks for looking out for me, Eric Holder.

Guardian: Oscar Pistorius will be freed on bail pending his murder trial. This is a liveblog. No stories are up yet. ...

     ... Update: Al Jazeera has the story here.

New York Times: "The European Commission delivered a bleak assessment Friday of Europe's economic prospects, saying that growth would be just 0.1 percent in the 27-nation European Union in 2013 and that the 17-nation euro zone would shrink 0.3 percent over the same period. The downbeat forecast, coming a day after data showed a slump in business activity in the euro area worsened unexpectedly this month, added to perceptions that Europe is continuing to struggle with the dual burdens of trying to stimulate growth while cutting spending to pare deficits and balance budgets."

Reuters: "A major winter storm headed northeast into the U.S. Great Lakes on Friday and threatened New England after blanketing states from Minnesota to Ohio with blinding snow, sleet and freezing rain. The storm dumped more than a foot of snow in Kansas on Thursday, forcing airports to cancel hundreds of flights and stranding motorists on highways."

ABC News: "Rapper Kenny Clutch has been identified by Las Vegas police as the man killed in a drive-by shooting on the Vegas strip, which set off a multi-state manhunt for the black Range Rover from which the shots were fired. Clutch, whose real name is Kenneth Cherry Jr., was the victim of the Thursday morning shooting in the valet area of the Aria Resort and Casino. Three people were left dead and three injured in the attack, including two who died when their taxi was struck by the careening sports car and exploded into flames."