The Commentariat -- Nov. 29, 2013

Amy Merrick of the New Yorker posts some myths about Black Friday. Hint: the deals aren't that great. ...

... Black Friday Is Not About You. Derek Thompson of the Atlantic: "When you hit the stores this weekend, remember that shopping is a sport, this is its Super Bowl, and retail corporations are better at playing than you." ...

... Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "For retail workers nationwide, who earn a median pay of about $9.60 an hour, or less than $20,000 a year, holiday shopping sprees are most often enjoyed by customers on the opposite side of the counter." ...

... What's Wrong with This Picture? From the front page of the online New York Times:

     ... One of the suggested gifts: a $60,000 traveling desk/trunk. It is quite nice. Maybe some of those McDonald's workers will buy out the trunks to take on their round-the-world cruises.

... Mike DeBonis & Reid Wilson of the Washington Post: "Efforts in Congress to raise the national minimum wage above $7.25 an hour have stalled. But numerous local governments ... driven largely by Democrats ... are forging ahead, in some cases voting to dramatically increase the pay of low-wage workers. The efforts, while supported by many unions, threaten to create a patchwork of wage rates that could mean workers in some areas will be entitled to vastly less than those working similar jobs nearby. The campaigns reach from coast to coast."

Paul Krugman: Is ObamaCare bending the cost curve as the law was intended to do? "The answer, amazingly, is yes. In fact, the slowdown in health costs has been dramatic.... And the biggest savings may be yet to come. The Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel with the power to impose cost-saving measures (subject to Congressional overrides) if Medicare spending grows above target, hasn't yet been established, in part because of the near-certainty that any appointments to the board would be filibustered by Republicans [CW: and pundits like Mark Halperin] yelling about 'death panels.' Now that the filibuster has been reformed, the board can come into being." ...

... David Morgan of Reuters: "The Obama administration says it is on target to make its problematic health insurance website work smoothly for the 'vast majority' of users by this weekend, but some Americans who want coverage by January 1 may not be able to get it - even if they successfully navigate the portal and sign up for a plan. The problem, according to insurance industry officials and other specialists, is that the administration is behind schedule in building a computer program needed to help insurers verify the names, insurance plan choices and other details of those who sign up for health coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act...." ...

... Abby Goodnough of the New York Times: Especially in states which have accepted the Medicaid expansion available under the ACA, but in other states as well, a shortage of doctors -- and of specialists in particular -- is a looming problem, largely because many doctors won't accept Medicaid patients because the program pays them such low reimbursement rates. ...

... Maeve Reston of the Los Angeles Times: "In Oregon, a state envied for its high tech, sign-ups under the new federal healthcare law have been anything but. About 400 newly hired workers in Salem are processing paper applications by the thousands for health insurance under President Obama's law....Meanwhile, at the headquarters of Cover Oregon, the agency set up by the state to run its transition under the Affordable Care Act, dozens of software engineers have fanned out at long tables on the first floor, trying to untangle the technical problems that have made Oregon the only state with a health insurance exchange that has yet to go online." ...

... Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News: Maybe President Obama thinks he's too damned smart to dither with the "details" of ObamaCare. ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM on why the ACA will survive, no matter what. "Nothing will happen on the legislative front that Obama doesn't approve of. This is a cardinal fact.... The [insurance] carriers themselves have huge incentives to make the system work.... By early next year you will have millions of new people enrolled in Medicaid, large numbers of people who have health care covered who couldn't get it at any reasonable price before who now have coverage and you will have large numbers of people who have care that is better or cheaper and often both than it was before.... I do not think anyone will be able to claw that back.... Obamacare is good policy." ...

... Steve M. is not convinced. The right really believes in a country of "makers" and "takers," & the takers are just not full citizens in the view of the right. "... the right's efforts to dehumanize the less well off would make it a lot easier than we think just to strike millions of people from the health care rolls. I think the right-wing worldview is headed more and more in Mitt Romney's direction -- it just won't have Richie Rich as its figurehead in the future."

Greg Weston & Ryan Gallagher of CBC News, with Glenn Greenwald: "Top secret documents retrieved by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden show that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government allowed the [N.S.A.] to conduct widespread surveillance in Canada during the 2010 G8 and G20 summits.... The briefing notes, stamped 'Top Secret,' show the U.S. turned its Ottawa embassy into a security command post during a six-day spying operation by the National Security Agency while U.S. President Barack Obama and 25 other foreign heads of government were on Canadian soil in June of 2010. The covert U.S. operation was no secret to Canadian authorities." ...

... Ian Austen of the New York Times: "Canadian opposition politicians expressed shock and anger on Thursday over a report that the National Security Agency conducted widespread surveillance during a summit meeting of world leaders in Canada in June 2010."

Ben Goad of the Hill: "Guns that cannot be detected by X-ray machines will no longer be banned if Congress does not renew the decades-old prohibition by Dec. 9. The 1998 Undetectable Firearms Act will sunset that day, ending the prohibition at a time when new technology has made it easier than ever before to manufacture plastic guns with 3-D printers. Gun control activists warn that a lapse would allow anyone with a few thousand dollars to build a homemade gun that would be undetectable at airports, government buildings or schools. 'That threat was little more than "science fiction," when Congress overwhelmingly backed the ban 25 years ago,' said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who is pressing legislation to renew the law."

Humor Break. Joshua Keating of Salon Slate writes a "report" on Thanksgiving, employing the "tropes and tone" the American press uses in describing similar events in other countries. Here's the lede paragraph: "Washington, D.C. On Wednesday morning, this normally bustling capital city became a ghost town as most of its residents embarked on the long journey to their home villages for an annual festival of family, food, and questionable historical facts. Experts say the day is vital for understanding American society and economists are increasingly taking note of its impact on the world economy."

News Ledes

TPM: "A 28-year-old alleged 'former Exalted Cyclops' of the Ku Klux Klan and his mother have both been arrested and are facing federal charges relating to a 2009 cross burning in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Ozark, Ala."

AFP: "US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan on Friday vowed to investigate an airstrike that President Hamid Karzai said killed a two-year-old boy, as acrimony deepens over a deal to allow US troops to stay in the country after 2014." ...

... Washington Post: "The [U.S.-led] coalition acknowledged the incident on Friday, saying that a child was apparently killed during an operation targeting 'an insurgent riding a motorbike.'"

AFP: "China's state media called Friday for 'timely countermeasures without hesitation' if Japan violates the country's newly declared air zone, after Beijing sent fighter jets to patrol the area following defiant military overflights by Tokyo. Japan and South Korea both said Thursday they had disregarded the air defence identification zone (ADIZ) that Beijing declared last weekend, showing a united front after US B-52 bombers also entered the area."

AP: "An Italian court has accused ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his lawyers of tampering with evidence by paying off witnesses in a trial related to his notorious 'bunga bunga' parties. Citing testimony and telephone wiretaps, the Milan court said Berlusconi convened about a dozen young women to his Milan mansion on Jan. 15, 2011 to meet with his lawyers after the women's homes were searched as part of the police investigation into the parties. From then on, the judges wrote, the women began receiving 2,500 euros each month from Berlusconi and subsequently they offered unusually identical testimony in court denying that the parties had sexual overtones."

Remember This

Thanks to contributor Kate M. for the link.

The Commentariat -- Nov. 28, 2013

Freedom from Want. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers was one of the recipients of the 2013 Roosevelt Institute's 2013 Four Freedoms Awards. The Coalition received the award for Freedom from Want. "The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a farm worker organization that is spearheading the national movement for Fair Food. With its Fair Food Program, launched in 2010 in over 90 percent of Florida's $600 million tomato industry, the CIW has created a sustainable blueprint for worker-driven corporate social responsibility, winning fairer wages; work with dignity; and freedom from forced labor, sexual harassment, and violence in the workplace for nearly 100,000 workers." -- Roosevelt Institute

The First European Thanksgiving Celebration in America. Kenneth Davis, in a New York Times op-ed, November 2008: "Long before the Pilgrims sailed in 1620, another group of dissident Christians sought a haven in which to worship freely. These French Calvinists, or Huguenots, hoped to escape the sectarian fighting between Catholics and Protestants that had bloodied France since 1560. Landing in balmy Florida in June of 1564, at what a French explorer had earlier named the River of May (now the St. Johns River near Jacksonville), the French émigrés promptly held a service of 'thanksgiving.'" Thanks to contributor P. D. Pepe for the lead.

** "A WalMart Thanksgiving." Labor Prof. John Logan, in the Hill: "The disastrous economic consequences of Walmart's bad jobs and worker intimidation are now well known. Taxpayers pick up the tab for the company's poverty-level wages. The company's employees are often so poor that they and their dependents are among the nation's biggest users of food stamps, health programs for low-income individuals and other forms of public assistance. This public subsidy of the nation's largest corporation, owned by its richest family costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars per year. But those who suffer the most from poverty-level wages are its employees.... Walmart could immediately stop intimidating workers, improve their conditions and pay a minimum wage of $25,000 per year for full-time work. Last week, the think tank Demos reported that if Walmart stopped buying back shares of its own stock -- which adds nothing to its productivity -- it could afford to raise employee wages by almost $6 per hour without increasing retail prices. In 2012, the company spent $7.6 billion to buy backs shares." ...

Dominic Rushe of the Guardian: "Retail workers and union activists are preparing for a record day of action across the US on Friday, protesting wages and conditions on the busiest shopping day of the year. Retailers, including Macy's, are opening their doors on Thanksgiving for the first time this year, joining other store giants including Target, Sears and Kmart. But it is Walmart, the nation's largest private employer, which has attracted the focus of protests. Protests are planned at more than 1,500 of Walmart's 4,000 US stores on Black Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday and traditionally the start of the festive shopping season."

Thanksgiving Eve News Dump. Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Obama administration announced Wednesday a one-year delay in the element of the new health care law that allows small businesses to go online to buy insurance for their employees through the new federal marketplace website.... The announcement of the delay, just before Thanksgiving, is reminiscent of the way the White House announced, just before the Independence Day weekend, a one-year delay in the requirement for larger employers to offer health insurance to employees." ...

... Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "Small businesses will still have the option to purchase SHOP health insurance plans through a broker or agent, who will assist the employer with filing a paper application. The federal government expects to process those filings for eligibility within three to five days...."

The Christology of Sex. Linda Greenhouse: "The religious-based challenges that have flooded the federal courts from coast to coast -- more than 70 of them, of which the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear two -- aren't about the day-in, day-out stuff of jurisprudence under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause: Sabbath observance, employment rights, tax exemptions. They are about sex." ...

... Steve Lemieux in the American Prospect: "... it's not just economic libertarianism -- the challenge to the mandate is rooted in misogyny and puritanism as well. Employers are free to have reactionary views about economics and gender, but these beliefs are not protected.... The idea that a secular, for-profit corporation can 'exercise' religion is a strange concept that would be inconsistent with a substantial body of precedent." ...

... An Online Magazine Is a Blog Is a, a Tabloid! Eden Foods chairman & founder Michael Potter didn't much like it when the Sixth Circuit cited his remarks to Irin Carmon of Salon when it rejected his fake religious objection to providing contraceptive care. Potter didn't claim he had been misquoted, just that it didn't count because he made the remarks to a reporters on a blog or a tabloid.

New York Times Editors: President Obama's claim during his speech Monday that "it would be illegal" for him to halt deportations was "misleading.... While the president cannot throw out whole sections of immigration law to bypass Congressional inaction, he does have discretion in choosing how to enforce it wisely.... He can undoubtedly expand administrative efforts to protect other immigrants left stranded by legislative failure."

Glenn Greenwald, et al., in the Huffington Post: "The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as 'exemplars' of how 'personal vulnerabilities' can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "With the United States sending two B-52s to reinforce its protest over China's attempt to control the airspace over the islands, it served as a timely reminder that President Obama wants to turn America's gaze eastward, away from the preoccupations of the Middle East. Mr. Obama's shift ... has always seemed more rhetorical than real. But when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. travels to China, Japan and South Korea next week, the administration will have another chance to flesh out the policy."

Maria Golovnina & John Chalmers of Reuters: "President Hamid Karzai's stubborn refusal to sign a pact that would keep thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014 is a high-risk gamble that Washington will give in to his demands, one that has left him isolated as the clock runs down on his presidency. Diplomats said he may have over-played his hand, raising the risk of a complete U.S. withdrawal.... It also risks a backlash at home by critics who believe he is playing a dangerous game with the country's future security." ...

... Tim Craig of the Washington Post: "President Hamid Karzai is facing a growing backlash from Afghan political leaders over his reluctance to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States."

What a Difference a Year Makes. Steve Benen: A year ago departing Sen. Joe Lieberman promised he would never become a lobbyist. Uh, he's a lobbyist now. CW: Hard to believe Joe would go back on his word. (Medicare for 55+.)

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee Campbell Soup Chef.David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Fox News host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Wednesday said that Lara Logan's botched reporting on Benghazi made her a 'hero journalist' and he was shocked that CBS News would force her off the air." ...

... Huckleberry himself is losing his radio show, billed as an alternative to Rushbo. Having failed to unseat Rush, Huckleberry is thinking of running for POTUS. CW: The White House is a consolation prize, I guess.

The Pompous v. the Pontiff. ...

     ... Eric Dolan of the Raw Story: Fox Business host Stuart Varney lectures Pope Francis on capitalism & religion. With video. ...

This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope. -- Rush Limbaugh

Local News

Kirk Johnson of the New York Times: Alaskan Democrats like former Half-Gov. Sarah Palin's tax on oil companies. CW: Half-Gov. Palin's tax was totally socialistic Robin Hood stuff, which -- as I recall -- just happened to especially benefit large families. It provided a per capita payout & kids were capita.

CW: I hadn't planned to post much today, but the jerks just don't take a holiday, do they? It's hard to keep up with them.

News Ledes

New York Times: Afghanistan's "President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his American allies again on Thursday after word came that at least one, and possibly two, NATO drone strikes had killed civilians in southern Afghanistan."

New York Times: Despite "brisk winds and an occasional gust," Macy's parade went ahead as scheduled today.

AP: "A wintry blast of heavy rain, wind and snow across the eastern United States disrupted Thanksgiving travel plans on Wednesday for some of the millions of Americans hitting the roads and taking to the skies on the busiest holiday travel day of the year. While the travel delays were not as bad as many had feared, meteorologists warned that falling temperatures could create icy road conditions for those who put off travel until Wednesday night."

AP: "After keeping away inspectors for two years, Iran has invited the U.N. nuclear agency to a facility linked to a still unfinished reactor that could produce enough plutonium for up to two warheads a year, the agency's head said Thursday."

Washington Post: "Both Japan and South Korea said Thursday that they'd flown surveillance aircraft through China's newly claimed air defense identification zone, the latest challenge to an airspace that China has vowed to defend. flights drew no unusual response from Beijing, but they intensify the game of dare being played above Asia's contested maritime territory." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "China sent fighter jets on the first patrols of its new air defense zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea on Thursday, the state news agency, Xinhua, said. The patrols followed announcements by Japan and South Korea that their military planes had flown through the zone unhindered by China."