;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 24, 2013
Michael Shear & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "A record-setting crush of last-minute shoppers descended on HealthCare.gov on Monday, creating long wait times for users and putting new stress on the government's much-maligned health portal as they raced against a midnight deadline to sign up for coverage that will go into effect on Jan. 1.... The high volume of visitors also prompted White House officials to abruptly establish a 24-hour grace period that will effectively extend the deadline, allowing those who sign up on Tuesday to still receive coverage from Jan. 1." ...
... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama has enrolled in the federal health-care insurance exchanges, selecting a bronze-tiered insurance plan on the D.C. marketplace.... In advance of Monday's key enrollment deadline, Obama signed up for coverage over the weekend during the start of his holiday vacation here in Hawaii in what a White House official described as a 'symbolic' act to promote the Affordable Care Act.... The president's health care will continue to be provided by the military.... Although Obama was involved in selecting a plan, he didn't sign up himself. The president's staff did that for him, going in person to the D.C. exchange over the weekend...." ...
... OR, as Josh Lederman of the AP put it: "He won't use it, and he didn't actually sign up for it himself, but President Barack Obama has enrolled for health coverage through the new insurance exchanges." ...
... Paul Steinhauser of CNN: "Support for the country's new health care law has dropped to a record low, according to a new national poll. And a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday also indicates that most Americans predict that the Affordable Care Act will actually result in higher prices for their own medical care."
For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. -- Edward Snowden ...
... Bart Gellman of the Washington Post interviews Ed Snowden. ...
... The Snowden ABR Project -- Anywhere But Russia. RT: "Edward Snowden is offering Germany his help with investigating NSA spying activities on its soil, if Berlin grants him political asylum, Stern reports, citing correspondence with the whistleblower. 'I have a great respect for Germany,' Snowden wrote to the German Stern publication." CW: Last week, Brazil; this week, Germany. Guess we'll have to start playing the Whither Ed? game: Where in the world will Ed Snowden seek asylum next week?
Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "Civil rights leaders and members of the Georgia congressional delegation on Monday called on President Obama to withdraw his nominees for federal courts in the state over concerns about their views and lack of diversity.... According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Obama administration reached a deal with Georgia's Republican senators in September to appoint three nominees to the district court whom they had cleared, in exchange for allowing through the nomination of Jill Pryor, whom the senators had been blocking, to the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Julie Carnes, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, is also in line for promotion to the circuit court." CW: Note that, filibuster or not, Southern states can still get the winger judges they want, simply by "blue-slipping" moderate to liberal nominees.
The Shriveling of Bush's Brain. Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "At least a dozen 'super PACs' are setting up to back individual Republican candidates for the United States Senate, challenging the strategic and financial dominance that Karl Rove and the group he co-founded, American Crossroads, have enjoyed ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 cleared the way for unlimited independent spending." ...
... CW: Right on cue, Molly Ball of the Atlantic, usually a credible analyst, writes a Battle of the Democrats handwringing piece to make sure we all know Both Sides Do It. Also, I wish liberalish pundits like Ball would quit writing this: "... McAuliffe succeeded in painting his opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, as an extreme Tea Party ideologue." McAuliffe didn't "paint" Cuccinelli as an extremist; Kenny is an extremist. Using the verb "paint" implicitly accuses McAuliffe of playing dirty; it suggests he smeared Cooch with untrue or half-true epithets. Better: McAuliffe identified Cuccinelli as an extremist.
CW: I missed this piece by Jonathan Chait, published a few weeks ago, but it has & will have a distressingly long shelf-life: "Conservatives can transport themselves for two hours into the hellish antebellum world of 12 Years a Slave and experience the same horror and grief that liberals feel. What they cannot do, almost uniformly, is walk out of the theater and detect the still-extant residue of that world all around them." Chait perfectly captures what "respectable racism" looks like today. I expect it will be harder to eradicate than the kind that caused the Civil War.
Dean Baker in TruthOut: "In his speech on inequality earlier this month President Obama proclaimed that the government could not be a bystander in the effort to reduce inequality.... The problem is that President Obama wants the public to believe that inequality is something that just happened.... This story is 180 degrees at odds with the reality. Inequality did not just happen, it was deliberately engineered through a whole range of policies intended to redistribute income upward."
Alex Pareene of Salon on the President's favorite horrible columnists. CW: Pareene's assessments of the columnists are spot on, but I'm with Barbarossa -- I wish Pareene had documented his source for his assertion that the President just loves to read Friedman & Brooks. With the possible exceptions of Chait & Klein, I doubt Obama reads these pissants because he actually likes them; rather, I suspect he glances at their stuff to get a feel for what leading opinionators are feeding the public.
Congressional Race
Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: The death of Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), who represented the Sarasota region for 43 years, "has set off a contest in the first race of the 2014 battle for control of Congress, with both parties hoping for a victory and watching carefully how President Obama's health care law may affect the outcome. Determined to snatch the long-awaited open seat in the March 11 special election, Democrats effectively cleared the field for Alex Sink, a former chief financial officer of Florida, who ran for governor and lost in 2010. Ms. Sink did not even live in the district, Pinellas County, in October; she packed up and moved one county over last month." CW: Sink has already asked me for cash.
Dan Amira of New York: Fox "News" convicts, kills George Zimmerman. Later, they very, very quietly resuscitated & exonerated him. Also, a painting by Zimmerman sold for more than $100K on e-bay.
Weasly Republican Trick. Josh Israel of Think Progress: "In the aftermath of the contested 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the bipartisan Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) to provide federal money to make it easier for Americans to exercise their right to vote and for local governments to ensure smooth elections. But according to the office of Iowa State Auditor Mary Mosiman (R), a $140,000 voter fraud investigation launched by Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz (R) may be improperly using those federal funds on his probe to ferret out largely non-existent voter fraud."
Weasly Trick. Kevin Opsahl of the Logan, Utah, Herald Journal: "Cache County Attorney James Swink announced Monday that the Cache County Clerk's Office will remain closed pending a decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on a request for an emergency stay on same-sex marriages by the state." ...
... Scott Lemieux in Lawyers, Guns & Money: "Once again, states' 'rights' are being used to trump actual human rights, a development that can fairly be called unsurprising."
... Amanda Myers of the AP: "A federal judge Monday ordered Ohio authorities to recognize gay marriages on death certificates, saying the state's ban on such unions is unconstitutional and that states cannot discriminate against same-sex couples simply because some voters don't like homosexuality. Although Judge Timothy Black's ruling applies only to death certificates, his statements about Ohio's gay-marriage ban are sweeping, unequivocal, and are expected to incite further litigation challenging the law. Ohio's attorney general said the state will appeal."
Fish's Swan Song. Stanley Fish writes his New York Times his last column for the New York Times. CW: Ironically, Fish, who has spent a good deal of his career undermining the value of authorial intent, finally divulges the intent of his past columns.
Heartwarming Story Alert. Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "The Obama administration has set a goal of ending homelessness among veterans by 2015, but one city reached that mark a year early. Phoenix[, Arizona,] announced last week that it has eradicated chronic veteran homelessness -- making it the first city in the country to do so -- after it housed an additional 56 veterans on Wednesday."
UPI: "Three-quarters of U.S. adults say they believe in God, down from 82 percent in 2005, 2007 and 2009, a Harris Poll indicates.... Forty-seven percent say they believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, compared to 42 percent in 2005.... No margin of error was provided." CW: If I had to guess, I'd guess that beliefs haven't changed much but a willingness to express nonbelief has ticked up slightly. That is, some nontheists are coming out of the closet. I'd also guess that the stridency of politically-motivated super-Christians is encouraging nonbelievers to push back against the nonsense.
"Christmas in America." Charles Pierce notes how grateful unemployed Americans will be that in their infinite wisdom, the representatives of the people have decided "that people -- other people, naturally, and their children -- will be strengthened in their moral character by completely avoidable deprivation."
CW: If you don't feel like reading the kiddies "T'was the Night Before Christmas/"A Visit from St. Nicholas," Michelle Obama & muppet Abby fill in for you:
... If you'd rather read it yourself, the poem by Clement Clarke Moore is here. ...
... AND let us not forget what St. Nicholas really looked like (at least by early tradition & forensic reconstruction based on a skull reputed to be his):
Miracle on 34th Street -- Finding Secret Santa. Amy Nelson finds Black Santa at Macy's 34th Street -- after a rigorous search. Nelson blogs here. Via Dan Amira:
... Brian Handwerk for the National Geographic on the origins & evolution of Santa Claus -- still not a universally beloved, fat, jolly white North Pole resident. Thanks to Dave S. for the link to this excellent summary. CW: If you tell the kids the "real" story of Santa Claus, you might want to leave out those bits about prostitution & pickled children.
News Ledes
Politico: "People who can’t finish the online signup for Obamacare health insurance by midnight Tuesday because of problems with HealthCare.gov and a surge of last-minute shoppers can seek extra time to finalize their application and still get covered by Jan. 1, the Obama administration said...."
NBC News: "Same-sex marriages can go on in Utah after a federal appeals court Tuesday denied the state's request to stop them pending an appeal of a judge's ruling legalizing them. In a two-page order (.pdf) entered in 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Judges Robert E. Bacharach and Jerome A. Holmes declined to grant Gov. Gary Herbert's request for an emergency stay."
New York Times: "On Tuesday, Brian Krebs, the security blogger who first broke the news that Target had been breached, said he believed he had identified a Ukranian man who he said was behind one of the primary black market sites now selling Target customers' credit and debit card information for as much as $100 a piece. Mr. Krebs lays out evidence that the man, Andrew Hodirevski, may be in touch with the criminals supplying Target's credit card data."
Bloomberg News: "Robert W. Wilson, a retired New York hedge-fund founder who committed his life to giving the fortune he made from investing to charities, has died. He was 87. He died Dec. 23 after leaping from his 16th-floor residence at the San Remo apartment building on Manhattan's Central Park West...."
Guardian: "Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life after undergoing chemical castration following a conviction for homosexual activity, has been granted a posthumous royal pardon 59 years after his death."
AP: "Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and his wife announced late Tuesday that their two-decade-plus marriage is over." ...
... New York Daily News: "The announcement came two days after revelations that Spitzer was in a relationship with former aide Lis Smith, who is the spokeswoman for New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio."
AP: "One of the Greenpeace activists detained in Russia's Arctic has been granted amnesty, the environmental group said Tuesday.... The crew members were originally accused of piracy, a charge that was later changed to hooliganism.... The 26 non-Russian crew members have not been allowed to leave Russia because of the pending case. An amnesty law passed last week is expected to clear them of the charges. Several more of the Greenpeace activists are expected to receive similar amnesty notifications." Greenpeace did not name the released activist.
Reuters: "Russia will host international talks on Friday on the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. The meeting in Moscow will draw together experts from Russia, the United States, Syria, the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)...."
AP: "Two space station astronauts ventured out on a rare Christmas Eve spacewalk Tuesday, hoping to wrap up urgent repairs to a cooling system."
AFP: "Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas urged Christian pilgrims from around the world to visit the Holy Land to mark the visit of Pope Francis, set for 2014, in a Christmas message on Monday.... 'As we begin preparations for the visit of His Holiness Pope Francis next year, we call upon pilgrims from all over the world to come and experience Palestine and our Holy Sites,' Abbas said."
AP: "Israel's state archives has published a 50-year-old letter from the Mossad spy agency claiming it unknowingly offered paramilitary training to a young Nelson Mandela, along with documents illustrating the Jewish state's sympathy for the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1960s. The release of the documents on the archives' website in the wake of Mandela's death appear to be aimed at blunting criticism of the close alliance Israel later developed with South Africa's apartheid rulers.... The [current] South African government is a fervent supporter of the Palestinian cause, and the Palestinians frequently compare their campaign for independence to the black struggle that ended apartheid."
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Reader Comments (17)
Expect this to appear momentarily in Commentariat. Charles Koch buys Florida State U. Or at least the only department he cares about, economics. For $1.5 million Koch gets the rights to pick professors and dictate what they teach. I'm surprised he didn't do a twofer and pick up the history department as well and eliminate a possible source of conflicting stories.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/05/10/koch-u-florida-state-university-hands-over-economics-department-to-billionaire-libertarians/
..."CW: If I had to guess, I'd guess that beliefs haven't changed much but a willingness to express nonbelief has ticked up slightly. That is, some nontheists are coming out of the closet. I'd also guess that the stridency of politically-motivated super-Christians is encouraging nonbelievers to push back against the nonsense."
I am right here with you, CW! And I want to commend you on using the term "nontheist" instead of atheist--even though my godly iMac rejected nontheist as a one-word term when I wrote it. I guess even the latest computers are slaves to the majority--when it comes to believing in God.
It is only in the last few years that I have felt comfortable being public about my nontheistic beliefs. I think that is because even good friends have, in the past, accused me of being cynical and nihilistic when I have confessed to being an atheist. There is something about THAT WORD! It seems to signify "being against," which in my mind, it certainly is not. However, people think what they think--even educated people, who should know bettah!
I get it: "Life is a shipwreck," as Voltaire so wisely said, but he also claimed that "we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." A longtime ruling principle in my life. I still cannot understand why people think this is cynical. In reading the cheerful, upbeat Christmas letters coming to me daily, one would think that nobody truly suffers, and that illness and death are mere "interruptions" in the happy life of those who next year plan a Baltic cruise--and whose grandchildren are brilliant and beyond successful.
The older I get, the more the sadness of the world becomes evident to me. This does not preclude joy or having good times--much the opposite. But it does lead me to avoid people who think that they are "saved" by believing in Jesus or who want only to be associated with "positive" people and talk about life on the surface.
I feel a kinship to my Reality Chex commenting friends, because I see you as people who are smart, savvy, compassionate, acknowledge losses--and who love to laugh in spite of it all. Merry Life! As much as fate and circumstances allow!
@cowichan: Actually, a link to this story did appear on Reality Chex -- two-&-a-half years ago when the Tampa Bay Times first carried it.
The Koch endowment is interesting for a couple of reasons. The story says the endowment is for "positions" in the econ department. A $1.5 million endowment won't cover the costs of employing a single econ professor, much less more than one. (This is assuming that the principal is untouched, as is customary, & only the interest goes into the salary pot.) That means that in addition to Koch's getting to pick/veto an untold number of econ professors, the state is picking up most of the costs of employing these Koch-endorsed teachers. So Koch, via FSU, is literally forcing me -- a Florida taxpayer -- to pay for the promulgation of economic theories that benefit him.
My husband & I endowed a single professorship at another university for considerably more than $1.5MM. The endowment is for a professor of literature -- a field that typically pays less than econ -- so we are likely covering all of the costs of employing the professor who gets that chair. But we have absolutely no say in whom the university awards the chair; in fact, the university has already used some of our donations to support scholars with whom my husband vehemently disagreed. He didn't like it, of course, but he didn't tell the university. Academic freedom is something of a chimera in that universities decide who will be "free" to teach their theories. Adding another layer to the approval process is tantamount to evaporating even the chimera.
Marie
For anyone curious about the real St. Nicholas I recommend this primer over at National Geographic.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131219-santa-claus-origin-history-christmas-facts-st-nicholas/
Happy Holidays all.
Dear Kate: you have expressed my thoughts exactly and I want to second and third your feelings about our crew here. We are lucky to be among these kinds of people–––it sustains us in a way especially when the world seems to be so off kilter. So again we salute our CW who makes it all possible.
P.S. I was having a conversation with a young woman who was taking my blood pressure during a doctor's visit and for some reason we were discussing religion. When she asked me whether I, too, was religious I told her no, I was an atheist. She looked at me blankly, hesitated and then asked, "What exactly does that mean? I always think of it as such a scary word."
Mr. Snowden, I hear Sudan is breathtaking in the Spring.
For your entertainment, a funny essay on culture and Santas from other countries:
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/sedaris/
"...The words silly and unrealistic were redefined when I learned that Saint Nicholas travels with what was consistently described as "six to eight black men." I asked several Dutch people to narrow it down, but none of them could give me an exact number. It was always "six to eight," which seems strange, seeing as they've had hundreds of years to get a decent count.
The six to eight black men were characterized as personal slaves until the mid-fifties, when the political climate changed and it was decided that instead.. "
mae finch
Diane,
Don't you mean South Sudan?
Whenever people ask me whether or not I believe in god, I say "Of course. I AM god."
(Well, not really, I didn't get the best grades in Deity 101. I took it pass-fail, now some other schmo is getting all the adulation.)
Great history of Santa Claus.
I especially enjoyed the various proto-Santas, Rough Nicolas, Furry Nicolas (part dog?) and, of course, Ashy Nicolas. I won't speculate what he was doing that got him covered in ashes. Presumably it wasn't sliding down chimneys, at least not in the middle ages. Probably hung out at witch burnings. You know how fun those Middle Ages were!
But just think of how different things would be today had some of those manqué Kris Kringles caught on. "Here comes Aschenklas, here comes Aschenklas, right down Aschenklas lane..." "Pelznickel is coming to town, gather round..." speaking of which, what's with that peeking in on kids when they're sleeping? Pretty creepy stuff. Voyeur Santa?
And just imagine the pictures of all those cute kids sitting on the lap of scary-devil ass-kicking Krampus Santa! You've seen pictures of kids crying in their Santa pictures. Maybe they know more than we give them credit for.
But pickled children?
Ewwwww.....how unsanitary.
It's not political, but it is in line with some of today's comments that glance off the Season's customary preoccupations: religion, the Meaning of it All, and the treacly, often noisome Christmas letters we too often receive from folks we wish thought about something, anything, a little more deeply.
So herewith part of a Christmas note responding to mine I received from an aunt who is now in her nineties. I don't know what Voltaire would have thought, and it's not particularly cheerful or deep, but sounds to me like she's still humming in her lifeboat.
"I can't get very enthused about Christmas it has gotten so commercial and it seems everyone has forgotten what it's really about.....
I did make a garden last summer but it gets smaller every year. The other day when the ground was frozen I decided I wanted some carrots. So got the shovel and went out to dig some. The ground was so hard I had to jump on the shovel to get into the ground. Then the dirt stuck on the carrots. Had to put them in a bucket of water to melt the dirt off. The top of the root was frozen but the bottoms were still nice and crisp. They taste so much better than store bought.... I had a pretty good onion crop but they sure are not keeping good. I've had to throw about half of them out. They rot from the inside out. And I never had them do that before. We use lots of onions in cooking.
I have two humming birds here yet. Have never had any stay the winter before. I forgot to bring the feeder in and it froze up. Before I got it thawed and back out the birds were looking for it. It got down to 8 degrees one night and I was sure they wouldn't survive but they showed up every day.
Hey! Isn't this a great Christmas letter?"
Don't know about you, but my wife and I thought it was.
We're still smiling.
My Christmas wish for the world: Would that we all could exhibit the same quiet, uncomplaining indomitability year-round, regardless of our age.
@Ken Winkes: a good Christmas letter indeed. The birds stayed, of course, precisely because your aunt forgot to bring the feeder in. They'll hang around as long as there's vittles. Better not tell your aunt, but there's a good chance they won't make it thru the winter.
Marie
I just noticed that computer pioneer, the man who broke the Nazi Enigma code, saving perhaps tens of thousands of lives, the great Alan Turing, has received a royal pardon for the "crime" of being sleeping with another man. Polite applause all around please. Not too much though, we must respect the Ducks amongst us, mustn't we?
So I'm pleased, on one hand, to hear that Alan Turing who was arrested, tried, and convicted of gross indecency (homosexuality) and subjected to the barbaric punishment of forced chemical castration leading, very likely, to his suicide, has been officially forgiven. On the other hand, I want to ask WHY he needed to be pardoned or forgiven in the first place?
And I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only guy treated so ruthlessly for the "crimes" against decency.
And while all this might sound like something out of the past, I need not remind anyone out here that we're not very far removed from the mindset that treated Alan Turing as if he were a despicable criminal and a danger to public mores on the level of serial rapists or murderers.
Just ask any of the holy Christian supporters of the quacking bigots on A&E, in WalMart, and grocery stores all over the South (several local stores in my very red state have erected gigantic end displays of Duck crap in a show of Christian and regional support, no doubt, for these racist homophobic churls). Most of them would probably be appalled by Turing's pardon (if they knew who he was). For their money he probably got what he deserved and was lucky he didn't have Rick Santorum to deal with.
So hurray for Mr. Turing. He really didn't need any royal highness types to declare, posthumously, that he was an okay guy after all, and not an evil pervert who was a half step above someone who has sex with animals, but it's important to remember that the types of people who did him in so barbarically are still abroad in the world, and still rubbing their hands together in satanic glee thinking of all the evil shit they can get away with.
Quite a few hold elected office in this country.
But no matter. I'll take even the smallest victories over the forces of bigotry, hatred, and asshole-ocity.
Merry merry to us all. And down the begrudgers! May the holiday fairies fill their yule bowls with gallons of fiery fracking water.
Ken,
Great letter. I can only hope I can be as spry in my nineties. Rather be pulling up carrots than pushing up daisies.
Hmmm. Sometimes I'm stoopid and sometimes I'm even stoopider!!
The Financial Times: economic schools & Christmas.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2013/12/23/1730602/an-economists-christmas/?
Not very Christian but good for a giggle.
If you question the success of Obama's drone war in reducing the effectiveness if not eliminating al Quaeda I recommend this near 30 page study. 'Beheading the Hydra? Does Killing Terrorist or Insurgent Leaders Work'
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.10/14702436.2013.845383 The author concludes not.