The Commentariat -- Dec. 5, 2012

Cliff Notes

Meghashyam Mali of The Hill: "President Obama will appeal to business leaders on Wednesday, calling on them to press lawmakers to raise the U.S. debt limit during 'fiscal cliff' negotiations. Obama, who will meet with executives from the Business Roundtable on Wednesday, hopes to avoid another protracted fight over the debt ceiling and has sought to include it in ongoing deficit talks."

David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Obama said Tuesday that there is still a chance that the White House and Congress can reach a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, but he warned that the latest offer from House Republicans' remains 'out of balance.' In his first one-on-one interview since his reelection, Obama told Bloomberg TV that he remains firmly committed to his demand that the GOP agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans." ...

... Here's the Bloomberg story, by Julianna Goldman & Mike Dorning:

Manu Raju & Jake Sherman of Politico: "Speaker John Boehner's pitch of $800 billion in new tax revenues already has tea party-backed conservatives accusing GOP leaders of peddling a plan that would destroy job growth. Conservative outside groups are urging their party's rank-and-file to rebel and reject any new taxes. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his leadership team pointedly declined to endorse the proposal." ...

... "You're Fired." Jonathan Strong of Roll Call: "With a small purge of rebellious Republicans -- mostly conservatives -- from prominent committees Monday, Speaker John A. Boehner is sending a tough message ahead of the looming vote on a fiscal cliff deal. David Schweikert of Arizona and Walter B. Jones of North Carolina were booted from the Financial Services Committee. Justin Amash of Michigan and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas were removed from the Budget Committee; Huelskamp lost his place on the Agriculture Committee as well."

Ezra Klein has a short & sour summary of what-all is in the Simpson-Bowles plan. He adds, "Republicans may want to associate themselves with Erskine Bowles, and they may want to attack Obama for not doing enough to support Simpson-Bowles, but they want nothing to do with Simpson-Bowles itself." And if Wall Street & corporate CEOs had any idea what was in it, they wouldn't like it either, their oft-repeated claims to love it notwithstanding.

Jonathan Chait of New York sees an early January deal as the most likely scenario. And he sez why -- which is mostly that's how Republicans can best save face. They really are pathetic.

Here's the "On Point with Tom Ashbrook" (WBUR) segment which contributor Janice recommends -- libruls, including Paul Krugman, talk about the so-called fiscal cliff:

     ... AND here's Stephanie Kelton's follow-up.

Matt Spetalnick of Reuters: "President Barack Obama is expected to announce his nominees for secretaries of state and defense in the next two weeks, with former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel on the short list of potential choices to head the Pentagon, senior administration officials said on Tuesday. Hagel ... met the Democratic president at the White House this week to discuss a post on his national security team."

Carrie Johnson of NPR: "In a tug of war between President Obama and Congress, a federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., will hear arguments Wednesday on the legality of Obama's controversial recess appointments. The White House says it was forced to install three new members of the National Labor Relations Board in January because of inaction by Senate Republicans. But those lawmakers argue the Senate wasn't really in a recess at the time." With audio.

M. J. Lee & Patrick Reis of Politico: "Senate Democratic leaders have picked [Senator-Elect Elizabeth Warren] to fill one of the [Banking Committee]'s open spots, a Democratic source with knowledge of the situation said Tuesday."

John Bresnehan & Manu Raju of Politico: "Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet will serve as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2014 election cycle."

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) writes an excellent op-ed in USA Today on the need for filibuster reform, & he explains why a simple majority of the Senate can change the rules for the filibustering. Spoiler: it's in the Constitution.

NEW. Kate Masur in the Atlantic on Spielberg's Lincoln film: "The compromises that Lincoln did not make are more significant than the ones he did." CW: in other words, quit listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin; she has a VSP agenda, not an accurate historical perspective. BTW, I saw a photo of her (I think) sitting in the President's box at the Kennedy Center Honors gala. I guess that's one way to make her think you're paying her some attention. It won't shut her up, though.

New York Times Editors: Megabank "UBS has reached a conditional immunity deal [for manipulating interest rates] with the antitrust arm of the Justice Department, though the department's criminal unit could still take action against the bank. Unless civil penalties are paired with high profile criminal prosecutions, they will not add up to meaningful punishment or effective deterrence."

Costas Apologizes for Being Right. Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "Bob Costas said he made a 'mistake,' violating his own rule of not trying to compress a nuanced topic into small bit of air time, with his controversial halftime commentary Sunday night on the murder-suicide committed by Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs the day before." ...

     ... Update: Lawrence O'Donnell interviews Bob Costas. Also read the related post:

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Former President George W. Bush weighed back into the nation's volatile immigration debate on Tuesday by calling on policymakers in Washington to revamp the law 'with a benevolent spirit' that recognizes the contribution of those who move here from other countries."

Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic on Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder. BTW, I hope many of you had a chance to read Jefferson's writings on slavery which I linked earlier this week in the Comments section but not in the Commentariat itself.

E. J. Graff of American Prospect has an excellent response to Douthat's column "More Babies, Please." "We can't all be royals."

Bad News. Maureen Dowd is already obsessing over Hillary 2016.

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: Bradley Manning's civilian attorney David "Coombs addressed an audience of Bradley Manning supporters in a Unitarian church in Washington on Monday night and lashed out at the military hierarchy for allowing the intelligence analyst to be subjected to nine months of harsh suicide prevention regime against the advice of doctors. 'Brad's treatment at Quantico will forever be etched into our nation's history as a disgraceful moment in time,' he said."

Jonathan Ansfield of the New York Times: a fatal car crash cover-up led to the downfall of Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Ah, Democracy!

Our Fantastic Electorate. Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "A new poll from Public Policy Polling found that an impressive 39 percent of Americans have an opinion about the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan.... Before you start celebrating the new, sweeping reach of the 2010 commission's work, consider this: Twenty-five percent of Americans also took a stance on the Panetta-Burns plan." CW: Unfortunately, Leon & I have not actually developed a deficit-reduction plan. Maybe I should call him.

Our Well-Informed Electorate. Paul Krugman: "... by a margin of almost four to one, people think that going over the fiscal cliff will cause the deficit to increase. In a way, I understand this: the VSPs have been pounding the drum over and over again about how deficits are bad, evil; now they are warning about a fiscal something-or-other, so how are people supposed to know that they're suddenly worried that we'll reduce the deficit too much?"

Our Wacko Right Wing Electorate. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.... 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union.... Since the election we've seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%." Read the whole post as there are other interesting/odd results.

Right Wing World

Lawrence Downes of the New York Times: "Former Senator Bob Dole, 89 years old and in a wheelchair, went onto the floor of the Senate today to urge his former colleagues to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities.... One by one ... the senators approached Mr. Dole to pat his shoulder or clasp his hand.... Then he was wheeled away, and all but a handful of the Republicans bailed out on him. The treaty failed.... The vote was a triumph for Glenn Beck, Rick Santorum and others on the hard-right loon fringe, who have been feverishly denouncing the treaty as a United Nations world-government conspiracy to kill disabled children (you can look it up)." ...

... This treaty was supported by every veterans group in America and Bob Dole made an inspiring and courageous personal journey back to the Senate to fight for it. It had bipartisan support, and it had the facts on its side, and yet for one ugly vote, none of that seemed to matter. We won't give up on this..., but today I understand better than ever before why Americans have such disdain for Congress and just how much must happen to fix the Senate so we can act on the real interests of our country. -- Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)

Ken Vogel of Politico: "Dick Armey left [the Tea Party group FreedomWorks] ... over a clash with a top lieutenant who Armey and others in the organization believed was using the group's resources to pad his pockets.... Armey was concerned that [FreedomWorks president Matt] Kibbe structured the deal to personally profit from the book, despite relying on FreedomWorks staff and resources to research, help write and promote it -- an arrangement he and others at the group believed could jeopardize its tax exempt status." CW: it's always such a surprise when you find out these guys are avaricious hacks.

News Ledes

One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It's the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It's the first thing you hear when you're born -- or before you're born -- and it&'s the last thing you hear. -- Dave Brubeck

New York Times: "Dave Brubeck, the pianist and composer who helped make jazz popular again in the 1950s and '60s with recordings like 'Time Out,' the first jazz album to sell a million copies, and 'Take Five,' the still instantly recognizable hit single that was that album's centerpiece, died on Wednesday in Norwalk, Conn. He would have turned 92 on Thursday."

New York Times: "Oscar Niemeyer, the celebrated Brazilian architect whose flowing designs infused Modernism with a new sensuality and captured the imaginations of generations of architects around the world, died on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 104."

New York Times: "Angry mobs of Islamists battled secular protesters with fists, rocks and firebombs in the streets around the presidential palace for hours Wednesday night in the first major outbreak of violence between political factions here since the revolt against then-President Hosni Mubarak began nearly two years ago."

New York Times: "President Obama plans to ask Congress for about $50 billion in emergency spending to help rebuild the states ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, according to administration and Congressional officials briefed on the discussions."

New York Times: "Citigroup announced on Wednesday that it would cut 11,000 jobs, reducing its work force by roughly 4 percent in an effort to cut costs."

New York Times: "Rescue teams were trying to reach isolated villages in the southern Philippines on Wednesday after a powerful out-of-season typhoon tore through the region, leaving more than 270 people dead...."

AP: "Serbia's ambassador to NATO was chatting and joking with colleagues in a parking garage at Brussels Airport when he suddenly strolled to a barrier, climbed over and flung himself to the ground below, a diplomat said. By the time his shocked colleagues reached him, Branislav Milinkovic was dead."

AP: "Negotiators reached an agreement late Tuesday to end an 8-day strike that crippled the nation's largest port complex and prevented shippers from delivering billions of dollars in cargo to warehouses and distribution centers across the country."

Guardian: "The former Syrian foreign ministry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, is on his way to the United States after apparently defecting, the Guardian has learned. Makdissi, the most senior Christian official yet to abandon Bashar al-Assad's regime, was reported on Monday to have variously been sacked or defected and to have arrived back in London, where he used to serve in the Syrian embassy."

Al Jazeera: "NASA plans to send a new rover to Mars in 2020 as it prepares for a manned mission to the Red Planet, the US space agency said on Tuesday. The announcement came a day after NASA released the results of the first soil tested by the Curiosity rover, which found traces of some of the compounds like water and oxygen that are necessary for life."

AP: "Jack Brooks, who spent 42 years in Congress representing his Southeast Texas district and was in the Dallas motorcade in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, has died. He was 89.... Brooks was among the last links to an era when Democrats dominated Texas politics and was the last of 'Mr. Sam's Boys,' protégés of fellow Texan and legendary 21-year Democratic House Speaker Sam Rayburn in the state's congressional delegation." CW: the last of the breed: liberal-ish Southern white Congressmen.

The Commentariat -- Dec. 4, 2012

Cliff Notes

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times (post time Dec. 4, 3:09 am): "Democratic luminaries with ties to the Obama and Clinton administrations, including two former Treasury secretaries and two former White House chiefs of staff, on Tuesday will enter the tax debate with an overhaul plan that would raise an additional $1.8 trillion in the first decade. That is $200 billion more than President Obama has proposed and $1 trillion more than Republicans in Congress support. It would mostly result from a simplification of the tax code that produces higher taxes from the wealthy, but would also involve higher taxes on cigarettes, alcoholic beverages and Internet gambling that would hit people of all incomes." Here's the plan (pdf). CW: Maybe they could have submitted it a tad sooner.

White House Hits the Reject Button. Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times: "Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said in a statement that what congressional Republicans had billed as a 'good-faith effort' to move toward compromise contained 'nothing new' and offered no specifics on how they'd achieve revenue targets included in the plan. Until the Republicans in Congress are willing to get serious about asking the wealthiest to pay slightly higher tax rates, we won't be able to achieve a significant, balanced approach to reduce our deficit,' Pfeiffer said in the statement, released two hours after details of the GOP offer emerged."

Jonathan Karl of ABC News: "Republicans are seriously considering a Doomsday Plan if fiscal cliff talks collapse entirely. It's quite simple: House Republicans would allow a vote on extending the Bush middle class tax cuts (the bill passed in August by the Senate) and offer the President nothing more: no extension of the debt ceiling, nothing on unemployment, nothing on closing loopholes. Congress would recess for the holidays and the president would face a big battle early in the year over the debt ceiling." ...

... Because Doomsday Plan Sounds More Badass than Capitulation Plan. Jonathan Chait of New York: "The evolving Republican position appears to be a response to the recognition that the [Republican] party doesn't have any leverage to fight Obama over the Bush tax cuts and doesn't seem to know what it wants to do on spending."

While I'm flattered the Speaker would call something 'the Bowles plan,' the approach outlined in the letter Speaker Boehner sent to the President does not represent the Simpson-Bowles plan, nor is it the Bowles plan. -- Erskine Bowles ...

... New York Times Editors: "Republicans didn't even bother to assemble their own package of spending cuts and revenue increases; they did a simple copy and paste of a few proposals made extemporaneously at a hearing last year by Erskine Bowles.... Mr. Bowles quickly disavowed" authorship of the GOP proposal. "The offer was a transparent attempt to appear responsive to Mr. Obama's detailed proposal from last week, without doing any actual math or hard work."

Paul Krugman: "... the Republican 'counteroffer' is basically fake. It calls for $800 billion in revenue from closing loopholes, but doesn't specify a single loophole to be closed; it calls for huge spending cuts, but aside from raising the Medicare age and cutting the Social Security inflation adjustment -- moves worth only around $300 billion -- it doesn't specify how these cuts are to be achieved. So it's basically the Paul Ryan method: scribble down some numbers and pretend that you're a budget wonk with a Serious plan.... [See definition of 'Serious' below.] Oh, and for all the seniors or near-seniors who voted Republican because you thought they would protect Medicare from that bad guy Obama: you've been had." ...

... ** Krugman on controlling healthcare costs to rein in the deficit. Bottom line: "... pay no attention when [Republicans] talk about how much they hate deficits. If they were serious about deficits, they'd be willing to consider policies that might actually work; instead, they cling to free-market fantasies that have failed repeatedly in practice."

Josh Barro of Bloomberg News: "House Republicans are out with their response to the President's opening bid on the fiscal cliff, and it's not very impressive. Here are three big problems with the letter they sent to the White House: 1. It's not really a proposal -- it's just a set of headline numbers without specific policies.... 2. The description of tax reform makes little sense.... 3. The proposal does not fully avert the fiscal cliff.

Steve Benen: "Under the GOP plan, Republicans get the more than $1 trillion in spending cuts Obama already gave them; Republicans get the entitlement cuts they want; Republicans get hundreds of billions of dollars in additional cuts to programs they haven't identified; and Republicans get all of the Bush-era tax rates they've prioritized. This isn't a 'counteroffer'; it's a Christmas wish list written by kids without access to calculators."

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones updates his dictionary to define the latest meanings of "serious" and "unserious" proposals:

Serious (ser’ ee uhs) adj. any of a group of proposals that immiserates large numbers of ordinary people, either immediately or in the future, via cuts to broad-based social welfare programs.

Unserious (un ser’ ee uhs) adj. any proposal that slightly inconveniences rich people via modest tax increases or annoys military contractors via small cuts to the Defense Department.

CW: As Congressional Republicans continue their fight to protect the rich (their so-called counter-proposal actually lowers the top marginal tax rate) & undermine the government, keep this Think Progress headline in mind: "Corporate profits hit record high while worker wages hit record low." Pat Garofalo has the story.

** Frank Bruni: "There’s something rotten in the N.F.L., an obviously dysfunctional culture that either brings out sad, destructive behavior in its fearsome gladiators or fails to protect them and those around them from it. And while it's too soon to say whether [Jovan] Belcher himself was a victim of that culture, it's worth noting that the known facts and emerging details of his story echo themes all too familiar in pro football over recent years: domestic violence, substance abuse, erratic behavior, gun possession, bullets fired, suicide." ...

... AP: "Bob Costas'; 'Sunday Night Football' halftime commentary supporting gun control sparked a Fox News Channel debate Monday on whether NBC should fire him and a Twitter storm involving Ted Nugent, Rosie O'Donnell, Herman Cain and many more." CW: Costas' remarks should not be controversial. And the AP should not bother to report what Nugent, O'Donnell & Cain have to say about anything -- especially Nugent. ...

... NEW. Charles Pierce: "That what Costas said is reckoned to be brave -- and it was, especially judging by the hysteria it set off on the gun-happy right -- is a measure of how truncated our national discussion has become."

Louise Story of the New York Times: Pontiac, Michigan, tries to go Hollywood, but there is no happy ending -- just a lot of lost tax revenue. "Hollywood may make movies about the evils of capitalism, but it rarely works without incentives, which are paid for by taxpayers. Nationwide, about $1.5 billion in tax breaks is awarded to the film industry each year...."

Dana Milbank: Obama's "transparent" presidency has become increasingly -- and ominously -- opaque.

Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "... what is not in doubt to me is Ann Romney's strong belief that not only was she going to be first lady but also she deserved to be first lady. The presidency and the role of first lady are earned. They are neither a matter of whose turn it is nor destiny. Like so many others, Ann Romney apparently had to learn this the hard way." ...

... Mitt Gets a Job. Samantha Bomkamp of the AP: "... Mitt Romney is rejoining Marriott International's board of directors."

In our continuing He-Might-Have-Been-President series, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post writes that "in spring 2011, [Fox "News" chief Roger] Ailes asked a Fox News analyst" to tell David Petraeus that Ailes advised Petraeus to "turn down an expected offer from President Obama to become CIA director and accept nothing less than the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military post. If Obama did not offer the Joint Chiefs post, Petraeus should resign from the military and run for president, Ailes suggested." The audio (top of the page) is interesting. Petraeus uses the interview to try to get Fox "News" to be more supportive of the Afghanistan war & complains -- evah so politely -- that as Fox goes after Obama they're also "unduly undermining" the war effort.

Oh, Heartbreak All Around. David Corn & Andy Kroll of Mother Jones: Dick Armey, the former House Majority Leader (RTP-Texas) "has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party." The break-up was definitely not amicable.

Rebecca Schoenkopf of Wonkette writes a terrific retort to the latest outraged reaction to whatever the Obamas are doing. The Horror This Time: the White House has 54 Christmas trees at a time the entire nation is about to go over the fiscal cliff! So sez Andrew Malcolm, who must have got booted from the L.A. Times because he's writing about the outrageous Obamas someplace else now. Here was Alex Pareene's take on Malcolm in 2010.

News Ledes

AP: "The Palestinians will ask the U.N. Security Council to call for an Israeli settlement freeze, President Mahmoud Abbas and his advisers decided Tuesday, as part of an escalating showdown over Israel's new plans to build thousands more homes on war-won land in and around Jerusalem."

AP: "Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher told officers who found him sleeping in his car outside an apartment complex hours before he committed a murder-suicide that he was there to visit a woman he described as his 'girlfriend,' but that she wasn't home. The apartment complex is about 10 miles from the Kansas City home Belcher shared with 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins, the mother of their 3-month-old daughter Zoey."

Washington Post: "The Senate has failed to ratify an international treaty intended to protect the rights of those with disabilities, as a bloc of conservatives opposed the treaty believing it could interfere with U.S. law. The Senate voted 61 to 38 to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, a tally that fell short of the two-thirds needed to sign on to an international treaty."

Washington Post: "Thousands of protesters massed outside the presidential palace and in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Tuesday, as Egyptians voiced their opposition to President Mohamed Morsi for a 12th straight day."

New York Times: "Calling a California law that bans gay 'conversion therapies' for minors an unconstitutional infringement on speech, a federal judge blocked the law's enforcement late Monday."

New York Times: "Fierce fighting on the battlefield and setbacks on the diplomatic front increased pressure on the embattled Syrian government as fresh signs emerged on Tuesday of a sustained battle for control of the capital.... The latest reports followed developments on Monday when a senior Turkish official said that Russia had agreed to a new diplomatic approach to seek ways to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power...."

Star Ledger: In a "meeting with White House officials and Congressional leaders in D.C. today," New Jersey Gov. Chris "Christie asked that the federal government reimburse 100 percent of costs related to Sandy recovery, beyond the usual 75 percent or the 90 percent President Obama can authorize."

AP: "Iran claimed Tuesday it had captured a U.S. drone after it entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf -- even showing an image of a purportedly downed craft on state TV -- but the U.S. Navy said all its unmanned aircraft in the region were 'fully accounted for.'"

AP: "NATO foreign ministers are expected Tuesday to approve Turkey's request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against strikes from neighboring Syria, NATO's top official said." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "NATO agreed Tuesday to send new American-made air defenses to Turkey's volatile southern border with Syria, a boost to an alliance member on the front lines of the civil war and a potential backstop for wider U.S. or NATO air operations if Syria deteriorates further."

The Commentariat -- Dec. 3, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Ross Douthat's latest sermonette, one which I found particularly risible. ...

... Imani Gandy, writing in Balloon Juice: "As for Douthat’s claims that those who choose not to have children are somehow being decadent, it is fairly obvious that he is saying that women who choose to remain childless are selfish or damaged in some way. And for that bit of 1950s thinking, I offer Mr. Douchehat a hearty 'fuck you.'”

Cliff Notes

Jake Sherman & Carrie Brown of Politico: "House Republican leaders on Monday sent President Barack Obama a counteroffer aimed at avoiding the fiscal cliff, but it doesn't hike tax rates on the wealthy or deal explicitly with tricky issues like the debt ceiling and the sequester." ...

... The Washington Post has the GOP "plan," which it derives from this two-page letter from Speaker Boehner, et al. CW: As far as I can tell it doesn't begin to explain how these geniuses plan to garner that $800BB in increased revenues. What loopholes?

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Mr. Obama, scarred by failed negotiations in his first term and emboldened by a clear if close election to a second, has emerged as a different kind of negotiator in the past week or two, sticking to the liberal line and frustrating Republicans on the other side of the bargaining table."

E. J. Dionne: "We became so accustomed to Obama’s earlier habit of making preemptive concessions that the very idea he'd negotiate in a perfectly normal way amazed much of Washington.... House Republicans have, so far, been unwilling to assume any risk to get what they claim to want. They seem to hope a deal will be born by way of immaculate conception, with Obama taking ownership of all the hard stuff while they innocently look on.... The only way to keep the next four years from becoming another long exercise in gridlock and obstruction is for Obama to hang tough now."

Caroline Bankoff of New York magazine: "In the spirit of political theater, John Boehner did an interview with Fox News Sunday during which he said, 'Right now I would say we're nowhere, period. We're nowhere.' He also described himself as 'flabbergasted' by the proposal [Treasury Secretary Tim] Geithner showed him on Thursday.... 'I looked at him and said, "You can't be serious,'" Boehner recounted. 'I've just never seen anything like it. You know we've got seven weeks between Election Day and the end of the year, and three of those weeks have been wasted with this nonsense.'" ...

... OR, as Andy Borowitz reports, "Tensions over the so-called fiscal cliff reached a boiling point today as House Speaker John Boehner accused President Obama of acting like he won the November election." ...

Raising taxes on the so-called top two percent -- half of those taxpayers are small business owners who pay their taxes through their personal income tax filing every year. -- John Boehner

By any measure, Boehner's statement ... was incorrect. Only a relatively small percentage [3%] of small-business owners would be affected by a tax increase.... There is some question, however,whether even that claim is especially relevant. Readers with personal experience have fiercely disputed whether higher taxes would make much difference in whether a small business would hire new employees. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post ...

... In a post titled "Operation Rolling Tantrum," Paul Krugman writes: "John Boehner has just declared that he's going to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage every time we hit the debt limit. Nor will it be a case of holding the nation at gunpoint until it meets GOP demands; Republicans are signaling that they don't intend to make any specific proposals, they're just going to yell and stamp their feet until Obama soothes them somehow." Krugman predicts that if they keep this up, the 2014 election will be a referendum on the rolling tantrum/obstructionism of the GOP. ...

... Krugman elaborates in his column: "... when you put Republicans on the spot and demand specifics about how they're going to make good on their posturing about spending and deficits, they come up empty. There's no there there." ...

... Heather of Crooks & Liars: "Sen. Orrin Hatch continued the whining we've seen from Republicans over the fact that President Obama didn't immediately cave on these so-called 'fiscal cliff' negotiations in this week's Republican weekly address.... Much of what President Obama proposed this week appeared in his 20-page plan, released in October. If there's any party that hasn't negotiated in good faith for years now, it's the Republicans." With video.

Corporate Welfare, Part 2. Louise Story of the New York Times: "Texas offers more incentives to attract business than any other state, but the lines between decision makers and beneficiaries are often blurred, leaving questions about whether Texans or companies gain more.... To help balance its budget last year, Texas cut public education spending by $5.4 billion -- a significant decrease considering that it already ranked 11th from the bottom among all states in per-pupil financing.... Yet highly profitable companies like Dow Chemical and Texas Instruments continue to enjoy hefty discounts on their school tax bills...."

Justin Gillis & John Broder of the New York Times: "Global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011 and are likely to take a similar jump in 2012, scientists reported Sunday -- the latest indication that efforts to limit such emissions are failing." ...

... Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker writes that a carbon tax may be an idea whose time has come. "Not long ago, the Congressional Research Service reported that, over the next decade, a relatively modest carbon tax could cut the projected federal deficit in half. Such a tax would be imposed not just on gasoline but on all fossil fuels ... so it would affect the price of nearly everything, including food and manufactured goods." CW: but here's what I don't get: if the revenue generated is used to reduce the deficit, how does that substantially reduce emissions? I can't see that a "modest tax" would result in more than "a modest reduction" in fuel usage. If it's going to be treated as nothing more than a "sin tax," I can't see much point to it. If you have some insights on this, please share.

News Ledes

New York Times: "A military appeals court on Monday ordered the removal of the judge presiding over the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in a deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, citing the judge's appearance of bias after he ordered Major Hasan forcibly shaved before the start of his trial."

New York Times: "President Obama called on Russia on Monday to renew a two-decade-old nuclear disarmament program that Moscow has threatened to cancel as the two sides try to figure out the future of a rocky relationship now that elections in both countries are behind them. Russia declared this fall that it would not renew the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has helped rid the former Soviet Union of thousands of nuclear weapons since the end of the cold war. But in a speech, Mr. Obama chose to interpret the Russian statements as a negotiating position to change the program rather than halt it altogether." Video of the speech is here.

New York Times: "After showing a measure of unity against President Mohamed Morsi's decision to put his edicts above the law, Egypt's judges splintered on Monday, with one leading judicial official saying many judges would cooperate with plans to hold a public vote on a draft constitution supported by the president."

Guardian: "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have ended months of intense speculation by announcing they are expecting their first child, but were forced to share their news earlier than hoped because of the Duchess's admission to hospital on Monday. News that the duchess is in the 'very early stages' of pregnancy with the third-in-line to the throne was officially released after she was taken to the King Edward VII hospital in central London, suffering from hyperemesis gravidarun, very acute morning sickness."

New York Times: "UBS, the Swiss banking giant..., is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase the bank's profits...."

Guardian: "Britain and France have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to London and Paris in protest at Israel's authorisation of 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem."

AP: "It's not clear how long it will take workers to clear a hazardous gas from a ruptured tank car that derailed from a freight train in southern New Jersey last week. More than 100 Paulsboro residents won't able to return to their homes in the 12-block evacuation zone until at least Saturday."

AP: "Japanese officials ordered the immediate inspection of tunnels across the country Monday after nine people were killed when concrete ceiling slabs fell from the roof of a highway tunnel onto moving vehicles below. Those killed in Sunday's accident were traveling in three vehicles in the 4.7-kilometer (3-mile) long Sasago Tunnel about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Tokyo."

Al Jazeera: "Borut Pahor, Slovenia's centre-left former prime minister, has been elected president in a runoff vote, beating incumbent President Danilo Turk, preliminary official results suggest. Pahor won 67 per cent of the vote against Turk, who received a 33 per cent ... after nearly all votes were counted.... Slovenians voted on Sunday amid growing discontent with cost-cutting measures designed to avoid an international bailout."

New York Times: "The growing evidence of a link between head trauma and long-term, degenerative brain disease was amplified in an extensive study of athletes, military veterans and others who absorbed repeated hits to the head, according to new findings published in the scientific journal Brain."