Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow
Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns
I have a Bluesky account now. The URL is https://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.
As we approach the high holy days of the Christian faith, some turn to thoughts of the Baby Jesus & the fanciful nativity narratives. There are two, one by the author of the Gospel of Matthew & one by the author of Luke. There is little correspondence between the two stories.
Others think of buying gifts for the kids:
Still others reckon it's a bright idea to remind Reality Chex readers of what a wise fellow the Baby Jesus grew up to be.
I'm sure there are sites where such comments are well-appreciated. This isn't one of them. So I urge you to save yourselves the trouble of passing along ideas or sayings you attribute to Jesus. (Almost all of the sayings the Gospels ascribe to Jesus came from other sources, many from Pharisaic rabbis, others from Roman & Greek philosophers, etc.)
Whether or not your comment is germane to current events, I almost certainly will zap the whole comment if a portion of it smacks of proselytizing, particularly Christian proselytizing. I have neither time nor the inclination to edit your work. If you decide to push it, I will probably err on the side of caution & remove the comment. Most commenters know how to incorporate religious beliefs into their comments without advocating for those beliefs, & most do so in appropriate contexts. If you're not sure, your comment probably crosses the line.
Perhaps this doesn't seem fair to you. Perhaps it isn't fair. But it is what is.
Pax vobiscum.
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "House and Senate negotiators on Thursday closed in on a budget deal that, while modest in scope, could break the cycle of fiscal crises and brinkmanship that has hampered the economic recovery and driven public opinion of Congress to an all-time low. But the leaders of the House and Senate budget committees -- Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington -- encountered last-minute resistance from House Democratic leaders who said any deal should be accompanied by an extension of expiring unemployment benefits for 1.3 million workers. 'This isn't interparty bickering,' said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader. 'This is a major policy disagreement.'" ...
... Brad Plumer of the Washington Post explains why the federal unemployment extension must be reinstituted even as the unemployment rate is coming down (see today's News Ledes): "... even with steady improvement of late, the number of people who have been out of work for longer than 27 weeks is still historically high." These, of course, are the people whom the extension helps.
President Obama appeared on Chris Matthew's MSNBC show yesterday:
Paul Krugman on President Obama's December 4 speech on the economy: "Now ... we have the president of the United States breaking ranks [with conventional pundit wisdom], finally sounding like the progressive many of his supporters thought they were backing in 2008. This is going to change the discourse -- and, eventually, I believe, actual policy. So don't believe the cynics. This was an important speech by a president who can still make a very big difference." ...
... MEANWHILE, the Washington Post's fake liberal columnist Ruth Marcus laments, "... in an omission both disappointing and predictable, the president spurned the chance to challenge his own party on government debt and spiraling entitlement spending and to address the degree to which those entwined phenomena conspire to frustrate progressive solutions." Blah blah. ...
... CW: Now look at what else progressives are up against (and, yes, I'm proud to have ended a sentence with two prepositions) ...
... Ed Pilkington & Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian: "Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as 'free-market thinktanks', includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.... The proposals were co-ordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at state level.... The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83m drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline." ...
... Nick Surgey in TruthDig: "Google ... has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers. Organizations that received 'substantial' funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference), and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action. In 2013, Google also funded the corporate lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], although that group is not listed as receiving 'substantial' funding.... Google has a distinctively progressive image, but in March 2012 it hired former Republican member of the House of Representatives, Susan Molinari as its Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations. According to the New York Times, Molinari is being 'paid handsomely to broaden the tech giant's support beyond Silicon Valley Democrats and to lavish money and attention on selected Republicans.'" Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "In a sign of the left's new aggressiveness, a coalition of liberals is trying to marginalize a centrist Democratic policy group [-- Third Way --] that was responsible for a Wall Street Journal op-ed article this week that said economic populism was 'disastrous' for the party.... By directly going after [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren [D-Mass.], who has an avid following among progressives, Third Way all but ensured that it would get the fight it seemed to want to pick." ...
... Jonathan Chait has a funny, but ultimately informative, take on the Third Way-Warren contretemps, "pitting unruly McGovernite hippies against smarmy Corporate Shill-o-crats."
Peter Schweizer in Politico Magazine: "A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) analysis finds that from July 12, 2010, to Nov. 30, 2013, the president’s public schedule records zero one-on-one meetings between Obama and Sebelius. Equally shocking, over the same period, the president's calendar lists 277 private meetings with his other Cabinet secretaries (excluding full Cabinet meetings)." CW: Schweizer is a winger & so of course GAI is a right-wing tank. But assuming Politico verified his results (which may be a foolish assumption), this is a pretty stunning revelation. ...
... Michael Hiltzig of the Los Angeles Times: "... the [California] GOP website, coveringhealthcareca.com, looks like an effort to steer citizens away from coveredca.com, which is the legitimate enrollment site for California's individual insurance exchange.... There's only one course for the Assembly Republicans to take, if they're not going to have a reputation for lying and misrepresentation hung around their necks. They need to take their website down and disavow it. The right time for them to do so is now." ...
... CW: I linked to a story on this hoax a few days ago, & I noticed Al Sharpton ran a segment on it. Still, following Hiltzig & Sharpton are probably not high priorities to busy families who need health insurance. As Hiltzig noted in an earlier post, "Just a couple of weeks ago California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris shut down 10 bogus insurance sites, some of them with names very similar to the real thing. She must have overlooked the GOP's entry." Shutting down this scam was my recommendation, too. ...
... ** Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times: "Quinetta Rascoe is working to sign people up for coverage under Obamacare in rural North Carolina, where lawmakers are hostile and many of the neediest people are skeptical and uninformed." ...
... CW: Former Bushie & therefore WashPo columnist Michael Gerson writes a column on how surgery & treatment saved him from dying of kidney cancer. Funny thing, he never mentions how lucky he was to have health insurance to cover his extensive & expensive treatment. Or how he sure is glad that the less fortunate will now have that chance, too. Putz.
Mark Landler & David Sanger of the New York Times: "China appears ready to force nearly two dozen journalists from American news organizations to leave the country by the end of the year, a significant increase in pressure on foreign news media that has prompted the American government's first public warning about repercussions. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised the issue here in meetings with President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders, and then publicly chastised the Chinese on Thursday for refusing to say if they will renew the visas of correspondents and for blocking the websites of American-based news media."
Aaron Blake & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Obama lived with his uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while he was a student at Harvard Law School -- despite previously saying there was no record of the two having met.... Obama's relationship with his uncle is also news to scholars of the president, who also found no evidence that the two had met.... Onyango 'Omar' Obama faced a deportation hearing earlier this week following a drunk-driving arrest. During the hearing, he said that the president had lived with him while he was a student at Harvard."
Tim Egan Goes to San Francisco: "... the city named for a 13th century pauper from Assisi serves more as an allegory of how the rich have changed America for the worse."
Local News
Dayna Morales, Scam Artiste. John Batten of Bridgewater Patch: Dayna Morales, the New Jersey waitperson who claimed customers stiffed her because they didn't approve of her "gay lifestyle," received thousands of dollars in donations to make up for the lost tip before the customers came forward with strong evidence that they had tipped Morales generously tip & never wrote the supposed derogatory note. Morales "told NJ.com on Nov. 18 that she wouldn't be keeping any of the money, saying she planned to send it to the Wounded Warrior Project. But as of Wednesday, the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit that supports veterans returning from overseas duty, could not confirm Morales had made any donations.... Morales could not be reached for comment." ...
... Via Andy Martin of New York: "If we still wanted to give Morales the benefit of the doubt, we'd point out she could have donated anonymously from elsewhere. But we don't." ...
... CW: In my own effort to give Morales the benefit of the doubt, I once speculated that perhaps she was suffering from PTSD. Apparently not. Morales, though she has claimed to have endured harrowing combat experiences, never served in a combat zone. Of all her lies, & evidence of them keeps piling up, I find the false claims about combat service the most egregious.
News Ledes
New York Times: North Korea has released Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old American veteran of the Korean War, whom they had been holding since October 26 for "indelible" offenses against North Korea. "In early 1953, [Newman] served on the island of Chodo, advising North Korean anti-Communist guerrillas in raids on the mainland."
Reuters: "Storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear plant like one that spilled almost 80,000 gallons of radioactive water this year were built in part by workers illegally hired in one of the poorest corners of Japan, say labor regulators and some of those involved in the work."
Guardian: "Thousands of fast food and retail workers went on strike across the US on Thursday in a signal of the growing clamour for action on income equality."
AP: "Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned. The bride[, Elizabeth Lev,] is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, one of Pope Francis' top advisers." CW P.S. Of course this wouldn't be a "disgrace" at all if priests were permitted to have normal sexual relationships.
AP: "The Russian pilot who sent a Boeing 737 into a near-vertical dive, killing all 50 people on board, might have had a fake license, Russian investigators said Friday. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said his team believes that some pilots working for small regional airlines in Russia have not been properly trained but managed to get fake licenses in centers certified by the country's aviation agency."
Washington Post: "The U.S. economy added 203,000 jobs in November, according to government data released Friday morning, continuing several months of solid gains and raising hopes that the recovery is finally ready for takeoff. In addition, the national unemployment rate fell to 7 percent. This time, the decline reflected a pickup in hiring rather than a shrinking labor force."
New York Times: " The Pentagon announced Thursday that it had repatriated two longtime Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainees to Algeria, where, fearing persecution, neither man wanted to be sent."
New York Times: "In his first concrete step to address the clerical sexual-abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis will establish a commission to advise him on protecting children from pedophile priests and on how to counsel victims...."
Bill Keller of the New York Times: "Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country’s first black president, becoming an international emblem of dignity and forbearance, died Thursday. He was 95."
Sudarsan Raghaven & Lynne Duke of the Washington Post: Nelson Mandela, the former political prisoner who became the first president of a post-apartheid South Africa and whose heroic life and towering moral stature made him one of history’s most influential statesmen, died Thursday, the government announced. He was 95.
The Guardian's story, by David Smith is here. The Guardian's obituary of President Mandela, by David Beresford, is here.
The Johannesburg Mail & Guardian front page is here.
The New York Times has a slideshow here. The Washington Post slideshow is here.
Mandela's inagural address, May 1994:
The text is here.
The text of Nelson Mandela's speech from the dock, April 1964, is here and here. Audio of the second part of the speech is here.
The Washington Post has a timeline of Mandela's life.
Full text & video of South African President Jacob Zuma's remarks.
President Obama speaks on the life of Nelson Mandela:
The Washington Post is liveblogging remarks by world leaders & others.
NEW. Lydia Polgren & Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "Across South Africa, people paid tribute to the man they hail as the father of their nation — a secular saint whose commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation gave birth to a nonracial democracy from a country so long riven by segregation. Indeed, people around the world paid homage, including laying flowers at a statue of him in front of the British Parliament in London. After the long months of vigil as Mr. Mandela weakened, far from public view, many ... rose to mourn and praise him and to ponder his legacy. There were few overtly critical voices."
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