The Ledes

Friday, October 11, 2024

Washington Post: “Floridians began returning to damaged and waterlogged homes on Thursday after Hurricane Milton carved a path of destruction and grief across the state, the second massive storm to strike Florida in as many weeks. At least 14 storm-related deaths were attributed to the hurricane, which made landfall south of Sarasota at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, officials said. Six of them were killed when two tornadoes touched down ahead of the storm in St. Lucie County on Florida’s central Atlantic coast. The deadly tornadoes, rising waters, torrential rain and punishing winds battered the state from coast to coast as Milton churned eastward before heading out to sea early Thursday.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
The Ledes

Thursday, October 10, 2024

CNBC: “The pace of price increases over the past year was higher than forecast in September while jobless claims posted an unexpected jump following Hurricane Helene and the Boeing strike, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The consumer price index, a broad gauge measuring the costs of goods and services across the U.S. economy, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.4%. Both readings were 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus. The annual inflation rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than August and is the lowest since February 2021.”

The New York Times' live updates of Hurrucane Milton consequences Thursday are here: “Milton was still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall to parts of East and Central Florida, forecasters said early Thursday, even as the powerful storm roared away from the Atlantic coast and left deaths and widespread damage across the state. Cities along Florida’s east coast are now facing flash flooding, damaging winds and storm surges. Some had already been battered by powerful tornadoes spun out by the storm before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. In [St. Lucie] county [Fort Pierce], several people in a retirement community were killed by a tornado, the police said.... More than three million customers were without power in Florida as of early Thursday.” ~~~

     ~~~ Here are the Weater Channel's live updates.

CNN: “The 2024 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Han Kang, a South Korean author, for her 'intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.' Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection. She later began writing longer prose works, most notably 'The Vegetarian,' one of her first books to be translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, charts a young woman’s attempt to live a more 'plant-like' existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty. Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and just the 18th woman out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901.” The New York Times story is here.

Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links

Constant Comments

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow

Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Tuesday
Jan282014

The Commentariat -- Jan. 29, 2014

Internal links removed.

Dana Bash, et al., of CNN: "House Speaker John Boehner warned President  Barack Obama that he will 'run into a brick wall' by using his executive power and bypassing Congress, as the White House has signaled the President intends to do. 'We're just not going to sit here and let the President trample all over us,' said Boehner." ...

... Ed Kilgore: "Somebody needs to explain to Boehner that executive orders typically flow from laws authorizing the president to issue them.... As for the 'brick wall,' it should be fairly obvious that the inertia produced by divided control of Congress and exceptional levels of Republican obstruction will not be Boehner's ally when it comes to overturning executive orders. That 'brick wall' has two sides, and at least so long as Democrats control the Senate, they're not going to be participating in any crusade against Obama's agenda." ...

... For an Example of the Boehner Brick Wall. John Bresnahan & Jake Sherman of Politico: "House Republicans are getting ready to surrender: There will be no serious fight over the debt limit. The most senior figures in the House Republican Conference are privately acknowledging that they will almost certainly have to pass what's called a clean debt ceiling increase in the next few months, abandoning the central fight that has defined their three-year majority."

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to impose tighter restrictions on federal payments for abortions, thrusting the issue of a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy into the polarizing politics of an election year. The bill stands no chance of being passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate. But that mattered little to members of both parties, who seemed to relish the chance to accuse their opponents of blatantly twisting the issue to their political advantage."

Zeke Emanuel, in a New York Times op-ed, compares ObamaCare to Sen. Republicans' "replacement" plan. Here's one bit: "In addition, the proposed plan would take us back to the old days when insurance companies could charge women more than men for the same health plan. And older people would also be penalized." Emanuel concludes, "Now that Americans have the chance to examine the alternative, it might help them see the advantages of Obamacare."

That's Not What We Meant! Liz Goodwin of Yahoo! News: "In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, 19 Democratic senators are siding with the Obama administration against evangelical Christian businessmen who argue that paying for their employees' birth control, a requirement under Obamacare, violates their company's religious freedom.... The 19 senators -- all of whom voted for the popular [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] in 1993 -- argue that the law's religious protections were never intended apply to a for-profit company. Hobby Lobby's 'gross misapplication' of the law perverts Congress' intent in passing it, they write in the brief...." CW: Now let's see how the conservative originalists weasel around this undeniable statement of "original intent."

Jon Pareles in the New York Times: "Pete Seeger sang until his voice wore out, and then he kept on singing, decade upon decade. Mr. Seeger, who died on Monday at 94, sang for children, folk-music devotees, union members, civil-rights marchers, antiwar protesters, environmentalists and everyone else drawn to a repertoire that extended from ancient ballads to brand-new songs about every cause that moved him. But it wasn't his own voice he wanted to hear. He wanted everyone to sing along." ...

... John Nichols of the Nation: Seeger "surrounded hate & forced it to surrender." ...

... Adam Weinstein of Gawker: "94 Reasons Pete Seeger Matters."

Richard Esposito, et al., of NBC News with Glenn Greenwald: "The British government can tap into the cables carrying the world's web traffic at will and spy on what people are doing on some of the world's most popular social media sites, including YouTube, all without the knowledge or consent of the companies. Documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and obtained by NBC News detail how British cyber spies demonstrated a pilot program to their U.S. partners in 2012 in which they were able to monitor YouTube in real time and collect addresses from the billions of videos watched daily, as well as some user information, for analysis. At the time the documents were printed, they were also able to spy on Facebook and Twitter." ...

... ** BUT Bob Cesca: But this, & the "Angry Birds" revelations (linked in yesterday's Commentariat) are pretty much bunk: "... just because this information is available via the apps doesn't mean NSA is collecting it. If it is, there's no confirmation of it in the article.... Neither revelation presents any evidence whatsoever that Americans are being illegally and individually targeted. So the question needs to be asked again: why, if there's no evidence of these operations being used unlawfully against the general public, are these articles in the public interest?"

Eugene Kiely & D'Angelo Gore of FactCheck.org: "Sen. Rand Paul was wrong when he said that 60% of law students and 55% of medical students are women. The share of female students at law and medical schools in the United States is 47% each and hasn't varied much in 10 years. The Kentucky Republican also repeated a myth that 'nine out of 10 businesses fail.' Government data show that almost one-half of new businesses last beyond five years and about one-third of them continue operating after 10 years."

Local News

The New York Times Story Chris Christie Does Not Want You to Read. Kate Zernicke & David Chen defy you to believe Christie had no idea that the political operation he was directing to focus on mayors & communities was, you know, intimidating mayors. They literally draw a map to show how close the Whack-a-Mayor office is to Christie's.

Maureen Dowd interviews Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper about pot & other stuff.

Kat Stoeffel of New York: "Wendy Davis's daughters Amber and Dru have published open letters addressing the inconsistencies in their mother's biography, which have led conservative commentators to call Davis a gold-digger Abortion Barbie who abandoned her children with Sugar Daddy Ken. Both women emphasize that -- regardless of the exact details of her divorces and tuition payments -- Davis worked unusually hard to complete law school in a different state without missing a parent-teacher conference. 'No matter what happened within our family, our mother always made it known that we were and remain the most important thing in her life,' Amber wrote. Both letters [are] available at PoliticsUSA...."

Right Wing World

Sylvie Krekow of Gawker: "After experiencing immense backlash for writing a letter comparing the treatment mega-rich in America today to the persecution of Jews during Nazi Germany, Tom Perkins is furiously backpedaling -- or at least, attempting to do so." Reading Perkins' "self-defense" is as sickening as reading his original letter to the WSJ.

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "Less than 3 inches of snow brought [Atlanta, Georgia] to a freezing halt. Children camped out in schools or on buses. Hundreds of motorists were marooned for hours on highways and onramps; some abandoned their cars and walked home through the snow. Workers spent the night in their offices."

Washington Post: The Columbia, Maryland, mall shooter "mentioned killing people in his journal and expressed a 'general hatred of others,' police said Wednesday. The 19-year-old wrote that he was sorry to his family for what he was planning to do, although he did not indicate precisely what that was." ...

... Washington Post: "... the 19-year-old gunman who opened fire in a Maryland shopping mall Saturday, killing two people and himself, was a 'mall rat' who occasionally hung out in the skateboarder shop where the shootings occurred, a store employee said Tuesday."

New York Times: "Islamist rebels and extremist groups have seized control of most of Syria's oil and gas resources, a rare generator of cash in the country's war-battered economy, and are now using the proceeds to underwrite their fights against one another as well as President Bashar al-Assad, American officials say."

Guardian: "The US supreme court granted a stay of execution for the Missouri death row inmate Herbert Smulls, after his lawyers protested that the state had refused to disclose the source of the drug due to be used to kill him. Justice Samuel Alito signed the order that was sent out on Tuesday night after Barack Obama's state of the union speech."

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "A 300-year-old Stradivarius violin on loan to Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond was stolen during an armed robbery after a performance by Almond at Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn saidTuesday. Almond was attacked with a stun gun and robbed of the instrument -- Flynn said it was valued in the 'high seven figures.'..."

Comments Off
Tuesday
Jan282014

S.O.T.U. 2014

Zeke Miller of Time: "While the speech was light on new proposals, [President Obama] is looking to build on whatever momentum the State of the Union provided with a four-state swing that starts Wednesday. "

CW: It is remarkable that the three men on the dais all came up from near-poverty. (The most powerful female politicians, BTW, came from middle- or upper-middle-class homes: Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, etc. Hmmm.)

Charles Pierce describes the speech as "Clintonian" & explains why. Also, "(John Boehner's face seemed to darken as the evening went along, like the side of a mountain that faces the sunset.)" ...

... Nope, Charles. The address wasn't Clintonian. It was Dubyan. Hadas Gold of Politico: "President George W. Bush's former speech writer said that President Barack Obama plagiarized his former boss in Tuesday's State of the Union address. Speaking to Fox News's Megyn Kelly, Marc Thiessen, the lead writer on Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, said he found Obama's speech Tuesday night 'eerily familiar. Barack Obama has gone from blaming George W. Bush to plagiarizing George W. Bush,' Thiessen said." Proof? They both talked about "hope and opportunity." CW: Yeah, because no politician (Bill Clinton, "born in a little place called Hope") ever mentioned stuff like "hope & opportunity" before Mark Thiessen hit upon the novel idea. ...

     ... Update: According to this other Politico headline, "McMorris Rodgers promotes ‘hopeful’ agenda." Just another plagiarist, I guess.

Josh Marshall of TPM: "They say history is written by the winners. What I heard him saying was that he wants and will start writing the history of the future with his presidency, even if his ability to put it into effect may be limited."

Steve M. sees a glaring error in President Obama's effectively turning Cory Remsburg into a metaphor for Congressional gridlock. ...

... John Cassidy liked the Remsburg metaphor a lot better. ...

... CW: I can't help thinking that the only thing that can get all those bastuds on their feet is human carnage incurred in the service of international dominance. Was that the Capitol or was that the Colosseum? Whether or not you read Cassidy, I suspect you instinctively know that Obama was playing to the cheap seats when he introduced Remsburg.

Jose DelReal of Politico: "President Obama might have been the State of the Union's headliner on Tuesday, but Vice President Joe Biden stole the show on twitter." Some amusing stuff from reporters with time on their hands. ...

... Elias Isquith of Salon: "Twitter’s higher-profile conservative pundits, activists, and politicians nevertheless responded as if the president had set a copy of the Constitution on fire while pledging allegiance to General Mao." Isquith posts a few examples. ...

... 11:45 pm Tuesday: Rachel Maddow just wiped the floor with crazy Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas). Heulskamp has spent too much time on Fox "News" (& maybe "Press the Meat"). Chris Hayes later had a big laugh over Huelskamp's claims. ...

     ... Update: You can view the segment here. ...

... AND Rep. Grimm Threatens to Murder Reporter for Asking Question. Adam Edelman & Joseph Straw of the New York Daily News: "Embattled New York Republican Rep. Michael Grimm [Staten Island] threatened to 'break' a NY1 reporter and throw him off a balcony after President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night. The confrontation occurred on Capitol Hill when reporter Michael Scotto followed up questions about the President's speech by pressing the congressman on a federal investigation into his fund-raising." With video. CW: Possibly slightly worse than calling Rachel Maddow a "cheerleader," as Heulskamp did. The House should sanction Grimm for threatening Scotto, which he did inside the U.S. Capitol building, & the DOJ should investigate & charge him with assault. If my dearly departed Rep. Coke had to leave the building, I don't see why that thug Grimm should be welcome. Maybe he could get a job in the Christie administration. There's a bridge between Staten Island & Jersey. ...

     ... Here's the NY1 story, with transcript of the exchange between Grimm & Scotto.

If Barack Obama discovered the cure for cancer, these assholes would complain that it took him too long. Then they'd find a way to claim that Reagan had actually discovered it first. -- Akhilleus

Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post: The SOTU in three GIFs.

Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pitched a libertarian vision for the nation in his rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.... The potential 2016 presidential contender made his case for limited government in a 10-minute Web video that highlighted his proposal to tackle poverty with 'economic freedom zones' and railed against welfare programs, while exhorting listeners to 'choose a new way' of government." Includes video.

CW: If this is "the face of the national tea party," evidently the tea party needs no greasepaint to look like a clown. AP photo.Brady McCombs of the AP: "Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee was the face of the national tea party Tuesday night, delivering the movement's response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech. Lee pinned the widening wealth gap on the president's policies and tout the ideas of a new generation of leaders including himself and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas."

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "After five years of fractious political combat, President Obama declared independence from Congress on Tuesday as he outlined a series of limited initiatives on jobs, wages, retirement and the environment that he will take without legislative approval." ...

     ... Update. New Lede: "After five years of fractious political combat, President Obama declared independence from Congress on Tuesday as he vowed to tackle economic disparity with a series of limited initiatives on jobs, wages and retirement that he will take without legislative approval."

Here's the text of the SOTU as prepared for delivery (via the New York Times).

Paul Krugman is stuck in a CNN green room with no bourbon so he's liveblogging the SOTU.

The New York Times' liveblog of the SOTU is here. ...

     ... Michael Shear: Rep. "Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington offered an upbeat, but critical, rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address, in the process avoiding mistakes of previous responders." CW: Did not take gulps of water, sweat profusely or remind people of a buffoonish teevee character. ...

... Video of Rodgers' response & the text of her remarks is here.

     ... Carl Hulse: "Senator Mitch McConnell is not amused. The Senate Republican leader from Kentucky said he learned only Tuesday afternoon that the Democratic governor of his home state, Steve Beshear, would be sitting with Michelle Obama to watch the president deliver the State of the Union address."

Paul Kane & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: There will be four GOP responses to the SOTU. (1) The official party response by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, (2) the Tea Party response by Sen. Mike Lee, (3) a Spanish-language response by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, "the most senior Hispanic Republican, [who] is expected to hew closely to McMorris Rodgers in the Spanish-language response," & the Acqua Buddha response by Sen. Rand Paul. ...

     ... The only thing missing in this group is the snake charmer. -- Chris Matthews on MSNBC

Jon Favreau, formerly President Obama's chief speechwriter, on what it's like producing the SOTU speech: "The president puts in back-to-back 2 a.m. nights rewriting his speech to make it 'sing' and hopefully sway Congress."

Comments Off
Monday
Jan272014

The Commentariat -- Jan. 28, 2014

Internal links removed.

The Comments section isn't working today. Techs are working on it. So hang onto your thoughts. (Or maybe paste them in a temporary file someplace.) ...

     ... UPDATE: Looks as if the Comments section is working now. Give it a try. And SAVE YOUR WORK.

Ryan Cooper in the Washington Post: "It's State of the Union time tomorrow, and the lack of progress on President Obama's second term legislative agenda has led many pundits to conclude that his presidency is basically over.... These pundits are right about one thing: probably no legislation of significance will pass for the remainder of Obama's presidency. But what Obama can do, and is doing already, is use the executive branch to achieve a great deal." ...

... Digby: "... you can't help but wonder just what the hell took them so long to realize that all their supporters relentlessly flogging the idea that the poor president is little more than a figurehead might just not reflect well on legacy of the man the nation elected to be its national leader. The fact is that he does have power. Let's hope he uses it well." ...

... Oliver Knox of Yahoo! News: "President Barack Obama will announce Tuesday that he is ordering an increase in the federal hourly minimum wage to $10.10 for workers on new federal government contracts for services, like janitors and construction workers, according to the White House. Obama will lay out his executive order in the State of the Union address at 9 p.m. before a joint session of Congress and urge lawmakers to join him in raising the minimum wage for all workers." ...

     ... Mackenzie Weinger of Politico: "Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Tuesday called President Barack Obama's plan to sign an executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers a 'constitutional violation.'" CW: Expect much more along this same line. ...

... Dana Davidsen of CNN: "Gabby Giffords' gun control group will air an ad featuring the former congresswoman around Tuesday's State of the Union address, pushing Congress to take action on legislation expanding background checks on firearms sales":

... Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "Democrats consider President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday a launching point for a year of sustained assault on Republicans over a populist economic agenda, part of an effort to focus more on bread-and-butter issues and less on ­income inequality. Party officials say they hope Obama's speech will set the stage for Senate and House candidates to confront Republicans on issues such as the minimum wage, unemployment benefits and access to college education. Their minimum goal is to preserve Democratic control of the Senate, because not doing so could cripple what remains of the president's legislative agenda."

Original (non-colorized) by Dorothea Lange.Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Negotiators agreed Monday evening on a new five-year Farm Bill that slashes about $23 billion in federal spending by ending direct payments to farmers, consolidating dozens of Agriculture Department programs and by cutting $9 billion from the federal food stamp program. House leaders said they planned to pass the 950-page bill by Wednesday evening -- meaning that for the second time in two weeks lawmakers will vote a bill running hundreds of pages just hours after its formal release.... The changes would reduce, but not eliminate, SNAP payments by about $90 monthly for about 850,000 households." CW: Tighten your tiny belts, children. ...

... "Congress Agrees that People Should Go Hungry." Charles Pierce: "How, precisely, does this particular bill help 'businesses create jobs'? Almost a million people will have less money to spend on luxuries like heat and food. That doesn't help you if you're creating jobs in grocery stores or selling heating oil. Teachers will have to cope with dozing, hungry children while their unemployed parents try very hard not to yawn their way through job interviews. But the Republicans didn't get absolutely everything they wanted, and the Democrats agreed to cut twice what they'd proposed, and the deal was struck among people who never will feel its real effects, and that's the way things are supposed to work in this great Republic of ours." ...

... Molly Ball of the Atlantic has a long, interesting piece on the politics of the farm bill. Among other things, she notes that Republicans are losing farmers' votes because Tea Party libertarians ignore farmers' concerns & held up the farm bill. For instance, there's this:

Joye and Julius Davis, "both in their 60s, farm corn, peanuts, cotton, and wheat in Sumter County[, South Carolina]. She told me she thought putting food stamps into the farm bill had confused the public.... Obama, she said darkly, wants to give handouts to 'his people,' most of whom are not really needy but 'have figured out how to beat the system. I have seen on the street signs that say "Obamaphone,'" she said. 'I pay for mine, but it's a free phone for them.' (The myth that the Obama Administration has created a program to give taxpayer-funded cell phones to poor people is commonly repeated on right-wing talk radio.) Farm payments, on the other hand, were something landowners had earned. 'I work for what I have,' she said. 'So I have a sore spot about that.' Later, I found the Davises ... had received at least $108,000 from the government between 1995 and 2012.

Paul Krugman: "The whole politics of poverty since the 70s has rested on the popular belief that the poor are Those People, not like us hard-working real Americans. This belief has been out of touch with reality for decades -- but only now does reality seem to be breaking in. But what it means now is that conservatives claiming that character defects are the source of poverty, and that poverty programs are bad because they make life too easy, are now talking to an audience with large numbers of Not Those People who realize that they are among those who sometimes need help from the safety net."

Mean Guys Insurance Co-op, Ltd. Sy Mukherjee of Think Progress: "On Monday, a trio Republican senators unveiled an alternative to Obamacare eerily similar to the one that former presidential candidate Mitt Romney proposed in 2012. The plan boils down to a rehash of boilerplate conservative ideas for 'market-oriented' and 'consumer-driven' health care reform -- code words that really mean deregulating the insurance industry and forcing consumers to shoulder a larger burden of their health care costs.... 1. It would kick millions of Americans off of their health plans.... 2. It dismantles many of Obamacare's core consumer protections.... 3. It does almost nothing for Americans with pre-existing conditions.... 4. It would make millions pay more for their employer coverage.... 5. It provides fewer subsidies to help Americans buy health care." ...

... Sam Baker of the National Journal: "A trio of Senate Republicans on Monday introduced their plan to replace Obamacare with a new system that is built largely around making individuals responsible for a higher portion of their health care costs.... That debate notwithstanding, three Republicans with long backgrounds in health care policy -- Sens. Orrin Hatch, Richard Burr, and Tom Coburn -- have put together a framework they say should take the place of Obamacare if a Republican president and Congress were to repeal the law after the 2016 elections. In essence, the plan attempts to lower health care costs by making people shoulder a greater share of those costs -- or 'sensitizing' consumers to the actual cost of health care, as Senate aides put it in a meeting with reporters on Monday." CW: Yes, if people found out health insurance was expensive, they wouldn't get sick so much.

Jonathan Weisman & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "The House Republican leadership's broad framework for overhauling the nation's immigration laws will call this week for a path to legal status -- but not citizenship -- for many of the 11 million adult immigrants who are in the country illegally, according to aides who have seen the party's statement of principles. For immigrants brought to the United States illegally as young children, the Republicans would offer a path to citizenship. But even before the document is unveiled later, some of the party's leading strategists and conservative voices are urging that the immigration push be abandoned, or delayed until next year, to avoid an internal party rupture before the midterm elections."

Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post: "On critical issues, politicians of all stripes are finding common ground not by discarding their differences but rather by overcoming the ideological and political pressure that would typically prevent them from working together, even on areas of agreement."

Mark Apuzzo of the New York Times: "The Obama administration will allow Internet companies to talk more specifically about when they're forced to turn over customer data to government agents, the Justice Department said Monday. The new rules resolve legal fights with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook before the nation's secret surveillance court. But while under the terms of the new arrangement, customers will have a somewhat better idea of how often the government demands information, they still won't know what's being collected, or how much." ...

... Leaky Apps, Angry Birds. James Glanz & Andrew Lehren of the New York Times & Jeff Larson of ProPublica: "... the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have been trying to exploit a basic byproduct of modern telecommunications.... According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified documents, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from users' smartphone identification codes to where they have been that day ... according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden...." The Guardian story, by James Ball, is here.

Greg Sargent: "Pew Research just released some new polling that confirms the GOP is seen as far more uncompromising and ideologically extreme than the Democratic Party, while Dems hold a big edge on which party is concerned with the needs of ordinary people.... Today's Pew poll suggests Americans may broadly grasp the basic imbalances at play in our politics, even if many pundits continue to refuse to reckon with them."

Trouble in Right Wing World. Greta Van Susteren of Fox "News": "What is wrong with this guy? ... I don't care how much you disagree or agree with Texas' Wendy Davis, you have to agree that this guy, Erick Erickson, is a real jerk and is really lousy at being a spokesperson for his views."

Presidential Race 2016

Hillary Clinton speaks at the National Automobile Dealers Association:

Jasmine Sacher & Bob Cusack of the Hill: "Fifty-six Democratic lawmakers say they would endorse Hillary Clinton for president if she launches a 2016 White House bid, according to a survey conducted by The Hill. [SEE COMPLETE LIST] Twenty-two congressional Democrats had already publicly endorsed Clinton. An additional 34 members told The Hill that if Clinton runs, they would back her in the Democratic primary. "

Local News

Mark Caputo of the Miami Herald: "In the fallout from his cocaine bust last year, Fort Myers Congressman Trey Radel submitted his resignation Monday because, he said, he couldn't escape the ;serious consequences' of his actions.... Radel, scheduled to leave office at 6:30 p.m. Monday, announced he was quitting just as a House inquiry into his cocaine use started to get under way. Gov. Rick Scott will call a special election to fill the vacancy. In a sign of a looming and acrimonious intra-party squabble, GOP candidates and potential candidates had already started jockeying to run for the seat. And they and their surrogates are already attacking each other.... The district is solidly Republican. Mitt Romney won it with 61 percent of the vote in 2012, when the GOP presidential candidate lost statewide to President Obama by about a point." ...

... CW: As you all can imagine, I am disconsolate at losing my Cokehead Congressman. Fortunately, I can look forward to shortly being represented by another craven jerk.

Your Vote Counts. Laura Vozella of the Washington Post: "Democrats prepared to seize control of the Virginia Senate on Monday after winning a recount by just 11 votes in a razor-thin special election, giving Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe's first-year agenda a crucial boost.... Going into [the recount], Del. Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. (D-Accomack) was ahead of Republican businessman Wayne Coleman by just nine votes. His lead grew to 11 by the end Monday after officials recounted some votes by hand and teams of lawyers from both sides wrangled over a handful of contested ballots."

AP: "Ben Barlyn says he was fired from his position as a Hunterdon County[, New Jersey,] prosecutor because he refused to drop a case against a Chris Christie ally." ...

... The Star-Ledger editors have more. They want a state and/or federal investigation.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday. He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y." Seeger's Rolling Stone obituary is here. ...

... Here's a transcript of Seeger's testimony before the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

AP: "The prime minister of protest-torn Ukraine submitted his resignation on Tuesday, saying he hoped the move would help bring peaceful resolution to the crisis that has gripped the country for two months. Mykola Azarov's resignation would remove one of the figures most despised by the opposition. It came as the parliament opened a special session that is expected to repeal harsh anti-protest laws that were imposed this month. Those laws set off the police-protester clashes in which at least three protesters died."

New York Times: "Monday, the 69th anniversary of the day Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz, was observed as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yet a third or more of the almost six million Jews killed in the Holocaust perished not in the industrial-scale murder of the camps, but in executions at what historians call killing sites: thousands of villages, quarries, forests, wells, streets and homes that dot the map of Eastern Europe. The vast numbers killed in what some have termed a 'Holocaust by bullets' have slowly garnered greater attention in recent years as historians sift through often sketchy and incomplete records that became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union."

Politico: "Jesse Ryan Loskarn, the former top Senate GOP aide who committed suicide last week, said in a letter released by his family that he was sexually abused as a child, and the horror from that episode eventually led him down a path toward possessing child pornography. In a typed letter just over two pages long and posted online by his mother late Monday night, Loskarn revealed in vivid detail his personal experiences and apologized profusely for possessing child pornography, which led to his arrest by federal agents on Dec. 11."

Comments Off
Page 1 ... 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 ... 1745 Next 3 Entries ยป