The Commentariat -- Dec. 2, 2013

Paul Krugman: "Despite the lingering effects of the financial crisis, America is a much richer country than it was 40 years ago. But the inflation-adjusted wages of nonsupervisory workers in retail trade -- who weren't particularly well paid to begin with — have fallen almost 30 percent since 1973.... We can preserve and expand food stamps, not slash the program the way Republicans want. We can make health reform work, despite right-wing efforts to undermine the program. And we can raise the minimum wage." ...

... Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities." CW: Wendy's is the only major fast-food chain that refuses to sign onto a program that ensures it purchases tomatoes only from ethical suppliers & that pays farm workers an extra penny a pound.

Joseph Tanfani of the Los Angeles Times: "... technology failures have become the rule in the federal government, not the exception. Websites crash, attempts to modernize systems founder and military systems costing hundreds of millions are abandoned before ever being used. The Obama administration has tried to confront the problem, appointing top technology officers who scrapped and consolidated some flagging projects and pushed for more agile procedures. But the reforms have been modest.... The government's problems, involving taxpayer money, are pervasive and add up to billions in waste. Washington will spend more than $76 billion this year on information technology. A federal report in January found that 700 projects, accounting for $12.5 billion, were in trouble." ...

... Robert Pear & Reed Abelson of the New York Times: "Weeks of frantic technical work appear to have made the government's health care website easier for consumers to use. But that does not mean everyone who signs up for insurance can enroll in a health plan. The problem is that so-called back end systems, which are supposed to deliver consumer information to insurers, still have not been fixed. And with coverage for many people scheduled to begin in just 30 days, insurers are worried the repairs may not be completed in time." ...

... Washington Post reporters Sandhya Somashekhar & Lena Sun have expanded on the report by Sun I linked yesterday. ...

     ... USA Today Editors counter: " for all the apparent good news, Obama and his signature effort are nowhere near out of the woods." ...

... In a USA Today op-ed, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius writes, "... today's user experience on HealthCare.gov is a dramatic improvement over where it was on Oct. 1. The site is running faster, it's responding quicker and it can handle larger amounts of traffic."

... Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic: "... the Department of Health and Human Services released a report that detailed just how badly the [Healthcare.gov] site was functioning in October and early November. According to the Healthcare.gov Progress and Performance Report, the site was offline more than it was online in at the start of November." ...

... The HHS report on Healthcare.gov is here. ...

... James Surowiecki of the New Yorker looks at how the ACA began lowering healthcare costs -- even before it was enacted -- & is likely to continue to do so. He cites studies that illuminate reasons for cost reductions. ...

... Amie Parnes & Justin Sink of the Hill: "Former administration officials and Democratic operatives say President Obama is ill-served by his current White House staff and must reboot his second term team following the disastrous ObamaCare rollout. First-term insiders argue the White House's weakness was defined by a lack of preparedness, messaging blunders and failure to keep the president informed." Includes quotes from former staffers wearing masks while skewering current officials with long knives. CW: I understand the occasional necessity for anonymity, but this was not one of those occasions. If you're going to diss a public figure by name, have the guts to reveal your own name. I would not have published the anonymous digs.

Joan Walsh of Salon: "... despite the RNC autopsy that kicked off 2013, looking at ways to make sure it wasn't merely the party of 'stuffy old men,' the GOP apparently learned nothing from its 2012 drubbing.... It may turn out that the ACA troubles were a brilliant Democratic plot to distract Republicans from their demographic terminal illness, and convince them that the Kill Obamacare playbook is all they need for 2014. Republicans have made absolutely zero progress in reaching out to any of the demographic groups -- women, young people or Latinos...."

Michael Lind of Salon: The right is united behind a single economic vision based on libertarianism. The left adheres to three distinct economic philosophies. "Universal policies for all Americans as a matter of right should be the progressive agenda of our time. The sooner the center-left abandons well-intentioned but anachronistic strategies and rallies behind contemporary economic-rights progressivism, the sooner the battle for the future of America can be taken successfully to the libertarian right."

Karen DeYoung & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "A bipartisan juggernaut of senior senators is spending the remaining week of the Thanksgiving recess forging agreement on a new sanctions bill [against Iran] that the senators hope to pass before breaking again for Christmas. The administration believes the legislation could scuttle the interim nuclear agreement reached with Iran on Nov. 23 and derail upcoming negotiations on a permanent deal -- scheduled for completion in six months -- to ensure that Iran will never be able to build a nuclear weapon."

Manu Raju & Burgess Everett of Politico: Newly-installed Sen. Cory Booker is eschewing his well-known self-promoting lifestyle to fit into his role as the Junior Senator from New Jersey (D).

Kathleen Geier of the Washington Monthly has a superb takedown of Ross Douthat's effort (linked here yesterday) to bring Pope Francis's critique of capitalism into the conservative fold. Clearly, Douthat has learned from David Brooks how to make unsupported claims by linking to bull in hopes the busy reader will think "link = proof". Geier goes to the linked "proofs." ...

... Kieran Healy of Crooked Timber: "... here is a quiz to see whether you can distinguish statements by Pope Francis from statements by Karl Marx.... I sort of hope it will be picked up, stripped of this introductory paragraph, and circulated as evidence that the Pope and Marx agree on pretty much everything."

Senatorial Races

James Hohmann of Politico: The GOP is targeting blue & purple states in hopes of taking over the Senate.

James Pindell of WMUR Manchester: "Former New Hampshire Republican senator Bob Smith said he has changed his mind and will try to defeat Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen for his old seat next year.... Smith is the third Republican to announce a bid to run against Shaheen. Former state Sen. Jim Rubens, R-Hanover, and conservative activist Karen Testerman, R-Franklin, are already in the race, but Republicans fear they might be weak challengers and have been looking for someone else. For the past month that 'someone else' had been former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who appeared to be making moves to enter the race. He is selling his Bar State home to live in New Hampshire full time. In a smaller move, he even changed his Twitter handle to no longer have 'MA' in it." CW: I think that's "Bay State," not "Bar State." According to this site, North Dakota is the "Bar State," with more bars per capita than any other U.S. state, with Montana a close second. ...

... Uh-oh. Sen. McDreamy is about to make a comeback. Do you know which of these people is Martha Coakley & which is Jeanne Shaheen? Yeah, the people of New Hampshire probably don't know either. But I'll bet they recognize Sen. McDreamy:

News Ledes

New York Times: "The Metro-North Railroad train that derailed on Sunday, killing four people and injuring dozens more,

New York Times: "Even as thousands of protesters occupied Independence Square, blockaded the Cabinet Ministry and continued to demand his resignation, President Viktor F. Yanukovich of Ukraine on Monday defended his refusal to sign accords with the European Union, said he was on the verge of securing lower gas prices from Russia, and urged opposition politicians to wait for presidential elections in 2015 to challenge him."

The Commentariat -- Dec. 1, 2013

The first Obama administration was focused too much on saving the banks and Wall Street. There's going to be a big populist push on whoever's running for office to espouse these kinds of progressive policies. -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)

The Washington Post discovers Elizabeth Warren. AND Bernie Sanders says he'll run for president if no other progressives do. ...

... Steve Coll of the New Yorker: "The grassroots left, which seemed scattered and demoralized after the Occupy movement fizzled, has revived itself this year -- with help from union money and professional canvassers -- by rallying voters around the argument that anyone who works full time ought not to be at risk of poverty.... The movement has momentum because most Americans believe that the federal minimum wage -- seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, the same as it was in 2009 -- is too low. A family of four dependent on a single earner at that level -- making fifteen thousand dollars a year -- is living far below the federal poverty line."

Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "Administration officials announced Sunday that they had met their Saturday deadline for improving HealthCare.gov after completing a series of hardware upgrades and software fixes to the troubled Web site. A progress report released Sunday morning by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said: 'While we strive to innovate and improve our outreach and systems for reaching consumers, we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.'" ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The story of how the administration confronted one of the most perilous moments in Mr. Obama's presidency -- drawn from documents and from interviews with dozens of administration officials, lawmakers, insurance executives and tech experts working inside the HealthCare.gov 'war room' -- reveals an insular White House that did not initially appreciate the magnitude of its self-inflicted wounds, and sought help from trusted insiders as it scrambled to protect Mr. Obama's image." ...

... Kathleen Sebelius, in a Huffington Post column, shares "some consumer friendly tips for individuals looking for quality affordable health insurance." ...

... Tim Egan: "The Republican Party started a failure campaign earlier this year.... With the disastrous rollout of the federal exchange, Republicans now smell blood. A recent memo outlined a far-reaching, multilevel assault on the Affordable Care Act. Horror stories -- people losing their lousy health insurance -- will be highlighted, and computer snafus celebrated.... It's hard to remember a time when a major political party and its media arm were so actively rooting for fellow Americans to lose."

Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: "... the Guardian is being called to account by British authorities for jeopardizing national security [by publishing classified documents which Edward Snowden leaked to the paper]. The Guardian's top editor, Alan Rusbridger, is being forced to appear before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday to explain the news outlet's actions. The move comes after British officials ordered the destruction of hard drives at the paper's London headquarters, even as top ministers have taken to the airwaves to denounce the outlet. Scotland Yard has also suggested it may be investigating the paper for possible breaches of British law."

Henry Blodget, in Slate: No, rich people don't create jobs. Consumers with money to spend create jobs.

CW: This weekend, the Washington Post ran a column by Dana Milbank in which Milbank argues that restoring the draft & forcing all Americans to serve would make for better government because, um, ex-soldiers make better lawmakers. I didn't link the column because I thought it was stupid. Milbank notes that we currently have the lowest percentage of veterans in Congress since World War II & we haven't had a war vet president since Pappy Bush. Steve M. of NMMNB notes a little flaw in Milbank's theory: "Was Milbank nodding off in Philosophy 101 when his professor explained what a post hoc fallacy is? The number of people using rotary telephones is also at the lowest point in living memory -- and the condition of Congress is about as likely to be influenced by that societal change as it is to be influenced by the decline in military service among members of Congress.... What I think is the real reason we have a terrible government: the fact that heartland whites from outer-ring suburbia and exurbia have been encouraged for decades not to believe that other Americans are really their fellow citizens."

Frank Norris of the New York Times: "... the banking industry, which seems to have no desire to stand behind its loans, as well as consumer advocates and the housing industry" are all lobbying to gut the provisions of Dodd-Frank that force mortgage lenders to have "skin in the game"; i.e., to shoulder some of the risk for loans. One of the major causes of the financial meltdown of 2008 was, after all, the fact that mortgage lenders didn't seem to care if the mortgages they sold were ever paid off.

Jack Healy of the New York Times: "Crime has soared [in Montana & North Dakota oil country] as thousands of workers and rivers of cash have flowed into towns, straining police departments and shattering residents' sense of safety.... Amid all of that new money, reports of assault and theft have doubled or even tripled, and the police say they are rushing from call to call, grappling with everything from bar brawls and shoplifting to kidnappings and attempted murders. Traffic stops for drunken or reckless driving have skyrocketed; local jails are spilling over with drug suspects."

Ah, Capitalism. Ross Douthat figures out how to integrate Pope Francis's exhortation into his own conservative framework. CW: Douthat's effort necessarily includes aspects that stretch logic to the breaking point, but Francis does manage to snap Douthat out of any Ayn-Randian fantasies. It will be fun/infuriating to watch Paul Ryan integrate Francis's exhortation into the Ryan Plan for the Poor.

Fresco in the catacomb of Priscilla in Rome. Reuters photo.Philip Pullella of Reuters: "Proponents of a female priesthood say frescoes in the newly restored Catacombs of Priscilla prove there were women priests in early Christianity. The Vatican says such assertions are sensationalist 'fairy tales'. The catacombs, on Rome's Via Salaria, have been fully reopened after a five-year project that included laser technology to clean some of the ancient frescoes and a new museum to house restored marble fragments of sarcophagi." ...

... More News about Ladies & the Spirit of Christmas. Karen Araisa of NBC Philiadelphia: "One woman apparently used a stun gun on another after an all-out brawl inside of the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia." With video of these lovely ladies duking it out.

News Ledes

Karzai Still Crazy. Reuters: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused his U.S. ally on Sunday of withholding military supplies to press him to sign a bilateral security deal that will shape the U.S. military presence after most foreign troops leave in 2014."

Los Angeles Times: "In hopes of ensuring that the next man on the moon is Chinese, Beijing launched a rocket carrying a buggy-like vehicle that is expected to roam and explore the moon's surface for three months."

New York Times: "More than 100,000 people took to the streets of Kiev on Sunday, and thousands more rallied in other cities across Ukraine, to demand the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich, the largest outpouring of fury so far over his refusal to sign far-reaching political and trade accords with the European Union."

New York Times: "At least four people were killed after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx along the Hudson River, officials said. A total of 67 people were injured -- 11 critically...."

The Commentariat -- Nov. 30, 2013

Sharon LaFraniere, et al., of the New York Times: "As the Obama administration's weekend deadline for a smoothly functioning online marketplace for health insurance arrives, more than a month of frantic repair work is paying off with fewer crashes and error messages and speedier loading of pages, according to government officials, groups that help people enroll and experts involved in the project. But specialists said weeks of additional work lie ahead, including a major reconfiguration of the computer hardware, if the $630 million site, Healthcare.gov, is to accommodate the expected flood of people seeking to buy health insurance." ...

... Juliet Eilperin & Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "Administration officials are preparing to announce Sunday that they have met their Saturday deadline for improving HealthCare.gov, according to government officials, in part by expanding the site's capacity so that it can handle 50,000 users at once. But they have yet to meet all their internal goals for repairing the federal health-care site, and it will not become clear how many consumers it can accommodate until more people try to use it."

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: A November 1 ruling by the D.C. circuit, comparing "contraception to 'a grave moral wrong' and sid[ing] with businesses that refused to provide it in health care coverage" was the straw that broke the donkey's back & caused Senate Democrats to revise the filibuster. "All the more glaring, Democrats believed, was that they had allowed confirmation of the conservative judges now ruling in the abortion cases. Republicans were blocking any more appointments to the court of appeals in Washington, which issued the contraception decision."

The final tipping point was this month, when the minority launched a campaign to block President Obama from appointing anyone, regardless of experience and character, to three vacancies on the D.C. circuit court, This constituted an attack on the balance and integrity of our courts. -- Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon)

Herein lies the reason you vote for Democrats, even when they aren't the best candidates. -- Constant Weader

CW: AND some Democrats do have a heart. Lucy McCalmont of Politico: "On Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days on the year, a group of seven Democratic lawmakers came out in support of Wal-Mart employees who are protesting the company to improve labor standards. 'Across the country, there are countless Wal-Mart workers who are paid poverty wages, cannot get enough hours, and have erratic work schedules that make it difficult to survive,' said the statement, issued by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ed Markey (D-Mass) and Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.)." ...

... Allison Kilkenny of the Nation: "Walmart employees and supporters protested in cities all across the country on Black Friday in opposition to Walmart's low wages and poor treatment of workers. In some cases, protesters volunteered to engage in acts of civil disobedience and were arrested by police." ...

... Walton Abbey. Sadhbh Walshe in the Guardian: "Whatever it is that we find so charming about ["Downton Abbey"]..., we should try to keep in mind that the rampant inequality it celebrates is not something we should be hankering after. America has its own real-life upstairs/downstairs thing going on at the moment, best embodied by the Walton clan, who own the lion's share of Walmart Stores, Inc." CW: Actually, I think the series makes pretty clear that no matter how stuffy Lord Grantham & Lady Mary are, the "rampant inequality" is coming to an end & a number of the characters, even among the swells, celebrate that. More on WalMart below.

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Key senior administration officials have advocated splitting the leadership of the nation's largest spy agency from that of the military's cyberwarfare command.... At a White House meeting of senior national security officials last week, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said he was in favor of ending the current policy of having one official in charge of both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.... Also, officials appear inclined to install a civilian as director of the NSA for the first time in the agency's 61-year history."

Unfriendly Skies. Peter Baker & Jane Perlez of the New York Times: "On the same day that China scrambled fighter jets to enforce its newly declared air defense zone, the Obama administration decided to advise American commercial airlines to comply with China's demands to be notified in advance of flights through the area."

Christopher Drew & Danielle Ivory of the New York Times: "A scandal involving the Navy's ship supply network, until now focused on the Pacific Fleet, has spread to another contractor working for Navy ships in the waters off the Middle East, Africa and South America. The Justice Department is looking into allegations that the company, Inchcape Shipping Services, with the help of subcontractors, overcharged the Navy by millions of dollars.... Inchcape, which is owned by the government of Dubai, was suspended this week from winning new federal contracts...."

Kevin Liptak of CNN: "President Obama paid a visit Friday to a group of activists who have been fasting for weeks in the hopes of pressuring Congress to pass new immigration laws. The President and his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, visited the group on the National Mall to lend support for the cause." With video.

MEANWHILE, Josh Romney, a son of the First Runner-up in the 2012 Presidential Beauty Content makes sure everybody knows he's a hero. There could be a President Romney yet, people. Lucy McCalmont reports.

Abby Phillip of ABC News: "The first family might choose to stay in Washington, D.C., after President Obama leaves office in 2016, the president and first lady Michelle Obama told ABC News' Barbara Walters in an interview. By then, their eldest daughter Malia will be in college, and their youngest daughter Sasha will still be in high school as a sophomore. 'So we've gotta -- you know we gotta make sure that she's doing well ... until she goes off to college,' the president said. 'Sasha will have a big say in where we are.'"

Jonathan Zimmerman argues in the Washington Post against the presidential term limit.

Michelle, Malia & Sasha Obama accept the White House Christimas tree:

... Americans Go to WalMart to Honor the Baby Jesus

Jay Hart of Yahoo! News: "By midnight [Friday morning], #WalmartFights was trending on Twitter. Attached were pictures and videos and Vines of all sorts of violence and chaos and other nonsense. None of this is a surprise. It was expected, which is why police were at the ready at your local Walmart." ...

... Lacy Donohue of Gawker: "According to a Walmart press release, Thanksgiving was a day of record-breaking sales, sales that were 'bigger, better, faster, cheaper and safer than ever.'." Safer, huh? Let's examine the video evidence":

     ... A WalMart Theologian. CW: No doubt the woman who calls fellow-shoppers "motherfuckers" was thinking of the Virgin Mary & the Trinity. The Gawker piece has more videos of Thanksgiving Day fights. ...

... Sometimes deadly weapons are involved. In a Virginia WalMart parking lot, one man brandishes a rifle & his adversary cuts him to the bone with a knife. The men were fighting over a parking space. Police arrested them both, who of course also missed their chance to battle it out inside the store over big-ass teevees. This is why Christians believe in heaven, where there are no WalMarts & no parking lots so no assholes threatening to kill you over a parking space. Because Jesus gives everybody a big-ass teevee. Or so I hear. ...

     ... The gun-knife incident reminded contributor James S. of this:

Right Wing World *

Jeb Bush Joins the VaticanGate Truthers. Lucy McCalmont (apparently the only Politico reporter working this weekend): Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush claims President Obama closed the U.S.'s embassy to the Vatican. Bush is "hopeful" the move -- which didn't occur -- isn't "retaliation for Catholic organizations opposing Obamacare." The embassy didn't close; it just moved to another site for security & cost-savings reasons. CW: Even rumors of Obama administration actions are evidence of sinister motives. Besides, I'm pretty sure the reason Obama shut down the U.S. embassy to the Vatican is that he's a Muslim. ...

... Daily Caller: Leading Roman Catholic wingnuts are furious:

It's not just those who bomb churches and kill Catholics in the Middle East who are our antagonists, but it's also those who restrict our religious freedoms and want to close down our embassy to the Holy See. -- former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, Bill Clinton's ambassador to the Vatican & an alleged Democrat (Flynn endorsed George W. Bush for president in 2000 & Republican Scott Brown for Senator in 2010)

"Revisionaries." Mariah Blake of the Washington Monthly: Crusading right-wing Christian fundamentalists continue to exert undue influence over the nation's textbooks. Besides the usual creationist, anti-climate change nonsense, their agenda includes aggrandizing Ronald Reagan, "rehabilitat[ing] Joseph McCarthy, bring[ing] global-warming denial into science class, and downplay[ing] the contributions of the civil rights movement," airbrushing out George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, the New Deal, & of course Martin Luther King, Jr., & Thurgood Marshall.

Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "A birther preacher is pushing the conspiracy theory that Miriam Carey, who was shot to death Oct. 3 after police said she tried to ram her car into a barrier outside the White House, was the mother of President Barack Obama's illegitimate child. Rev. James David Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church who believes the president was born in Kenya, claims that Carey's family has called for a paternity test to determine whether the woman's 15-month-old daughter was fathered by the president." CW: As I have said before, there is a rational explanation for even events that on their face seem irrational. Thanks to the Rev. Manning for making sense of Carey's seemingly bizarre actions. I predict Donald Trump will launch an all-out effort to prove Manning's thesis, an effort that will end only when President Obama says, "I did not have sex with that woman."

* Where even the "moderates" are crazy, Reagan was a deity & Obama is responsible for everything bad.

News Ledes

Guardian: "The United States has moved to end the tense standoff with Afghan president Hamid Karzai over his refusal to sign a security pact between the two countries by formally apologising for a US drone strike in Helmand province that killed a toddler and injured two women. The apology was delivered in a phone call to Karzai late on Thursday by marine General Joseph Dunford, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "After its longest war in history, the United States is suddenly contemplating having to dismantle the bulk of its counterterrorism infrastructure in the region [of Afghanistan] and abandon Afghanistan's fledgling security forces. A wholesale withdrawal would also shut down the foreign-aid pipeline that keeps the Afghan state afloat and sharply limit any enduring U.S. diplomatic presence."

New York Times: "North Korea accused an elderly American veteran of war crimes, and released a video Saturday of him confessing to 'hostile acts' during the Korean War and while he was a tourist there last month. The veteran, Merrill Newman, 85, of Palo Alto, Calif., who has been held since Oct. 26, appeared on the video dressed in a blue American-style shirt and wearing rimless spectacles as he read excerpts from the apology from several sheets of white paper."

AFP: "EU leaders slammed Russia on Friday for meddling in its affairs after Ukraine rejected a landmark accord with the European Union designed to draw the ex-Soviet state into the Western fold. The snub by Ukraine highlighted a worsening EU-Russia tug-of-war over former Soviet satellites in eastern Europe."

Reuters: "Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said on Friday he would call a new confidence vote in parliament to confirm his government's majority after the withdrawal of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party from the ruling coalition."

AFP: "China and India are among countries that have dodged US sanctions by cutting back on Iranian crude, Washington said Friday as it pledged to 'aggressively' enforce such punitive measures despite a recent nuclear deal with Tehran."