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The Commentariat -- Dec. 3, 2013
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By Brian McFadden, via Daily Kos. CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.
NEW. George Packer of the New Yorker: "... while no big-box executive can risk being seen by shareholders to be openly taking the side of the lowest-paid employees, there is a hardheaded argument to be made for doing so: the company's revenues depend on higher hourly wages. While no one imagines that Republicans would allow the minimum-wage bill to pass the House of Representatives, corporate executives are paid to be ruthlessly practical. America is still waiting for the first retail C.E.O. to see what's in front of his nose."
The Drones Are Coming. And they'll deliver your package in half-an-hour. Matt Yglesias explains. ...
... OR, as Paul Waldman of the American Prospect put it, "... in a 14-minute ad for Amazon that was cleverly staged as a report on 60 Minutes ('If you can do this with all these products, what else can you do?' gushed Charlie Rose on the floor of a[n Amazon] fulfillment center. 'You guys can organize the world!'), the company revealed the future of package delivery: drones.... Rose, showing his keen journalistic skills, saw the drones and said, 'Wow.'" ...
... When science fiction edges up to reality:
... In Politico, Kevin Robillard & Alex Byers (among other reporters & pundits) point out some obstacles to Amazon's plan to bring you Toothpaste-in-a-Drone: "Washington regulators, state lawmakers and privacy activists have a warning for Jeff Bezos's army of flying robots: Not so fast." ...
... James Ball of the Guardian: "Jeff Bezos's 'plan' for drone deliveries is little more than a publicity stunt – timed for the biggest online shopping day of the year." ...
... Fox "News": "A Senate committee is planning to hold a hearing to discuss the potential impact of integrating drones into civilian life.... A spokeswoman for Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., confirmed to Fox News the hearing is scheduled for 2014, and said it was planned before Amazon unveiled its so-called 'Octocopters' Sunday night."
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in state efforts to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect sales tax from customers even in places where the companies do not have a physical presence. The issue -- ending what for many Americans is tax-free online shopping -- is one of the most important in modern retailing. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses say the online retailers receive an unfair advantage by not collecting sales tax in some areas."
Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post explores what the growth of Roman Catholic hospitals means to reproductive health. Kliff highlights a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of Tamesha Means, a pregnant woman who received inadequate care at a Roman Catholic hospital when she presented in painful labor at 18 weeks. "The lawsuit comes in the midst of a wave of high-profile mergers between Catholic hospitals and secular systems. The partnerships have raised questions about how care will be delivered at institutions guided by religious directives, particularly in rural areas ... where patients have little choice of where to be seen."
Reset. Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama will hold an event Tuesday touting the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, as the White House looks to reset public perception of the embattled healthcare law following two months of repairs to the glitchy ObamaCare website." ...
... Amy Goldstein & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: Healthcare.gov "errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1, according to two government and health-care industry officials. The White House disputed the figure but declined to provide its own. The mistakes include failure to notify insurers about new customers, duplicate enrollments or cancellation notices for the same person, incorrect information about family members, and mistakes involving federal subsidies." ...
... Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times: " TheObama administration's overhauled healthcare website got off to a bumpy relaunch Monday as a rush of consumers caused an uptick in errors and forced the administration to put thousands of shoppers on the HealthCare.gov site on hold." ...
... Kate Pickert of Time: "Health-insurance-enrollment counselors in several large states said on Monday that the problem-plagued HealthCare.gov was operating reasonably well for the first time since its Oct. 1 launch, with clients able to use the site with relative ease throughout the day. Despite marked improvement in the website's consumer functions, it is unclear what back-end problems remain and if the millions of Americans expected to purchase plans through the new insurance marketplace will be able to do so in time to have coverage that begins on Jan. 1." ...
... Yves Smith, always a tough critic, makes some valid -- & dismaying -- points in her review of Stolberg-Shear New York Times story, linked here December 1, that got "inside the race to rescue a healthcare site": "... it reveals Obama to have been recklessly indifferent about the execution of what was billed as his signature policy initiative. One can only imagine how inattentive he is to other matters you'd expect him to take seriously." ...
... Dana Milbank: "... the real gauge of HealthCare.gov's improvement was Republicans' response -- or lack thereof. When the House returned from Thanksgiving recess on Monday afternoon, the GOP speakers on the floor essentially ignored the Web site, instead returning to their earlier denunciations of Obamacare overall and President Obama in general." ...
... "Benghazification Begins." Paul Krugman: "... the [Healthcare.gov] crisis is over -- for Obama and the Democrats. It's just beginning for the Republicans, who won't be able to let go of the notion that it's a criminal scandal, and that mobs with pitchforks will march on the White House if only they can find the right words. They'll try everything. They'll hold endless hearings; they'll get the usual suspects to publish many op-eds. Maybe they'll get 60 Minutes to do a report that has to be retracted." ...
Let's See if Krugman Could Be Right
... Nullification, Ctd. Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "... a fresh wave of legal challenges to the [ACA] is playing out in courtrooms as conservative critics -- joined by their Republican allies on Capitol Hill -- make the case that Mr. Obama has overstepped his authority in applying it." ...
... Dylan Scott of TPM: "House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent letters Wednesday to 15 insurance companies demanding copies of their correspondence with the Obama administration in an effort to determine if the administration knew in advance that people could lose access to their doctors or have their existing health insurance policies canceled under Obamacare." ...
... Karoli of Crooks & Liars: "In the past two weeks, [California] GOP Assembly members have sent mailings out on what appears to be the state's dime to their constituents about health insurance. Only, they don't direct those people to CoveredCA.com to sign up. Instead, they send them to their own astroturf version at the URL CoveringHealthCareCA.com. On their version, there are links to negative articles and twisted messages intended to sour people on signing up for health insurance before they ever land at the official health exchange site." CW: Click on the link. The GOP's fake site surely will fool a lot of people. It's really a horrible disservice to Californians. California's Insurance Commissioner should shut it down.
Joe McCarthy, Ted Cruz. Or vice-versa.... Sahil Kapur of TPM: The right's obsession with ObamaCare is a bizarre phenomenon that smacks of McCarthyism, but is worse in that Republicans will decimate any fellow Republicans whom they can accuse of acting in any way that does not lead to the obliteration of the ACA. ...
... Repeal, Don't Fix. Alex Roarty of the National Journal: "Democrats need to salvage what benefit they can from Obamacare. And so far, Republicans are lending them a helping hand." ...
... The Do-Nothing Congress -- It's a Strategy. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Many Republicans believe they are getting such good traction from their attacks on President Obama's stumbling health care law that they feel less compelled to produce results. Any public fight over legislative compromises could take away from the focus Republicans have kept on the health care law." Weisman ticks off some of the things Congress must do to avert various calamities, yet may let slide so as not to distract from demagoguing ObamaCare. ...
... Charles Pierce is dead-right about this: "... it would be a capital mistake to believe that, one day, just because the law is in place and is working for people, that it then would be beyond political peril. Among the people seeking to destroy it, the fact that it was working would be the most serious indictment against it. In fact, the better it works, the more pernicious it is, and the more urgent the task of its destruction becomes. The happier They are, the weaker America becomes. The healthier They are, the less free we are. Forever and ever, amen." Read the whole post ...
... CW: If you think Pierce is just a cockeyed pessimist, bear this in mind: Social Security has been around for three-quarters of a century, & Republicans are still trying to kill it, whether by cutting benefits, by jiggering with the cost-of-living calculation, by raising the eligibility age, by "privatizing" it or by any other means they can think of -- even tho half their base are SS beneficiaries & SS is the most popular government program in the U.S.
... FINALLY, Jon Stewart explains why government can't do anything right and the private sector is fantabulous:
Mark Landler & Martin Fackler of the New York Times: "With Japan locked in a tense standoff with China over disputed airspace, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived [in Tokyo] late Monday for a weeklong visit to Asia intended to reassure a close ally and demand answers from a potential adversary."
The U.S. -- It's Not Lake Wobegon Anymore. Daniel Arkin of NBC News: "Students in the United States made scant headway on recent global achievement exams and slipped deeper in the international rankings amid fast-growing competition abroad, according to test results released Tuesday. American teens scored below the international average in math and roughly average in science and reading, compared against dozens of other countries that participated in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which was administered last fall."
Gubernatorial Race
Gov. Scrooge Walker (RTP-Wisc.). Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Last week, Walker's campaign sent an email encouraging supporters not to buy [Christmas] gifts for their children and to use that money instead to support his reelection effort."
Local News
Nicole Flatow of Think Progress: "... Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association are exploiting [the case of Marissa Alexander (see story)] to advance a Florida bill that would explicitly expand broad Stand Your Ground-like immunity to those who brandish or fire guns in self-defense. Last month, a Florida House committee overwhelming rejected a bill to repeal the state's Stand Your Ground law, and supported passage of the warning shot legislation instead. The bill has now been introduced in the Senate."
A Result of National Gun Obsession. Nicole Flatow: "A 72-year-old who suffered from Alzheimer's was shot dead after wandering onto a [Georgia] man's property early Wednesday morning, ringing the doorbell and turning the door handle. After Joe Hendrix's fiancé called 911 to report a possible intruder, Hendrix went outside to take matters into his own hands, and fired four shots at a silhouette in his yard, killing Ronald Westbrook." CW: I do not understand the workings of a mind that would shoot at a shadow who could have been, say, an elderly Alzheimer's victim, a family member, a drunken neighbor who went to the wrong house, a harmless person in distress, etc. I get being frightened by a stranger in the dark; I don't get being so scared you shoot to kill while the cops are en route.
David Edwards of the Raw Story has the most comprehensive version of the arrest of three teens in Rochester, New York, whose "crime" was waiting for a school bus.
News Ledes
New York Times: "As investigators of the fatal Metro-North Railroad train derailment said they had found no apparent problems with the train's brakes or other equipment, a union official said on Tuesday that the engineer briefly nodded off before the accident."
AP: "Entombed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in an upended tugboat for three days, Harrison Odjegba Okene begged God for a miracle. The Nigerian cook survived by breathing an ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air pocket. A video of Okene's rescue in May ... that was posted on the Internet more than six months later has gone viral this week. The other 11 seaman aboard the Jascon 4 died." The AP video is here.
KSL Salt Lake City: "Homeland Security agents in Salt Lake City helped shut down more than 700 domains that were hawking counterfeit products Monday. The domain names were part of scams to lure customers into buying counterfeit products during the holiday shopping surge."
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Reader Comments (29)
60 Minutes and the Amazon Drone (sounds like a 1940s radio serial). Was a book deal involved or just 30-second spots?
Ok, there’s a lot on the national plate, things that need work and fixing: Afghanistan, terrorism, voter suppression, health care, sequester management, education debt, unemployment extension, veterans’ care, women’s rights, jobs, education standards, electronic surveillance … OH, LOOK, A DELIVERY DRONE!!! We can talk about those for the next few months!
@Patrick. Sorry to offend. I try to cover stuff I think will be of interest to readers. When a "news" show -- one that had to apologize for running a suspiciously political piece last month -- runs a quarter-hour segment promoting one of the nation's largest corporations at a particularly advantageous time for the corporation, it seems newsworthy to me. Add to that Bezos' new role as owner of one of the country's most prestigious news outlets, the Washington Post, & I think you can make a case for "Village People Run Amok."
In addition, should Bezos's "plan" come to fruition, we're talking about a new & different kind of domestic disruption. Are these drones going to be silent or will be often be disturbed by drone noise? Will they be crash-proof or will we have to be constantly on the lookout for incoming missiles? Will there be frequent mid-air collisions between Amazon's & WalMart's drones? Would we be wise to keep the kids & pets undercover during delivery hours? I'm something of a futurist, & maybe I'll want to get my new cellphone battery in half-an-hour. But at some point we may have to look at possible/probable downsides to Amazon's New World Order system.
Marie
After reading Yves Smith's strident piece linked here, I had to take a breather. Her last sentences revealed her obvious distaste for the President which of course colored her analysis of him and the issue at hand. She cites Obama saying: "I'm absolutely sure we're going to make sure this country provides affordable health care for every single American." Smith concludes: "Obamacare was never intended to cover all Americans. but Obama seems incapable of refraining from lying."
Wow! Who is this woman? I looked her up. Yves Smith is a pen name of Susan Webber, a principle of Aurora Advisors. She writes a financial blog. Smart lady apparently, knows her stuff, but that doesn't mean she doesn't make mistakes. When she says that Obama
somehow didn't know, (no one told him?), didn't care (really? his very own signature piece?), or perhaps, she conjectures, worst of all he just kept insisting things would get done on time...(why would that be "worst of all?") she loses me as someone to take seriously here. She'd fit right in with Fox New's obsession with this.
Finally a bit of hyperbole: She claims Obama is a huge admirer of Reagan. Here's what Obama actually said about Reagan:
"“I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."
"He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people just tapped into -- he tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing...
"I think Kennedy, 20 years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times."
This shows huge admiration?
Smith concludes that this ACA debacle reveals Obama's lack of curiosity on how the launch of this massive health care project was implemented. Yep, that's the ticket, something as important as this would not pique his interest. I rest my case.
Marie, I was funnin' the media you channel, and the attention span of the big audience (SQUIRREL!!!), not you for picking up on drones.
BTW, ain't gonna be no delivery drones. Just imagine you are the insurance company for Amazon, or anyone else who wants to fly individual drop-boxes in urban areas. The questions (a few of which you asked, above) answer themselves! And ... the laws of physics are self-enforcing. And, finally -- we were promised jetpacks and flying cars sixty years ago, and I want one of those before they fill the skies with flying robots.
You are so right about the Jet packs Patrick! I was just thinking about the convergence of trends presenting it self here.
Hmmmm, drones buzzing all over the place delivering goodies. Layered over a population with (is it 200or300? ) million guns, It gives the term Sport Aviation a whole new meaning.
Bezos owning WaPo can't do much to it that WaPo hasn't already done to itself.
The real threat to the country is the concentration of ownership of newspapers and AM radio and TV stations. Election year advertising is all that keeps many of these combines alive.
@P.D. Pepe: Yes, Smith is harsh & hyperbolic. But. I'm not sure she bases her claim about Obama's admiration for Reagan on that single statement, one that was subjected to a lot of analysis. If you read this piece by E. J. Dionne (January 2013), you'll see what I mean. It isn't that Obama is a "huge fan" of Reagan's policies, but he is a "huge fan" of Reagan's methods.
One of Reagan's "methods," I'd have to add, was ignoring the small stuff. Even before his Altzheimer's began to manifest (which occurred while he was still in office, BTW), Reagan seldom sweated the details. If you have a competent staff, I think this is pretty good methodology for the Leader of the Free World to follow. Obviously, Obama didn't find out his HHS staff & auxiliaries were massively incompetent. This is somebody's fault. Whether Obama was signalling he didn't want to hear the bad news or whether his staff were afraid to tell him or whatevah -- this is a human failing different from the failing of not getting the code done & tested.
What Smith points out is that way before the President knew it, lots of people inside & outside the government -- like health insurers -- knew Healthcare.gov was a clusterfuck. Yet this information never got to the President & left him with a faceful of egg. Like Smith, I find that extraordinary & inexcusable. Given the reality that plenty of people knew, the Healthcare.gov mess could have been much less of a political disaster if the President & his minions had lowered expectations. Instead, they raised them, right up to crash day, pretending lucky duckies were going to breeze onto the site & get life-saving, low-cost insurance policies in the time it takes to order a toaster. That was monumentally stupid. It's sort of like Jeff Bezos telling you on Sunday that on Monday if you order your toaster from Amazon, a drone will deliver it to your doorstep a half-hour from the time you click "Complete Purchase". But Bezos didn't say he'd do it Monday; he said maybe 5 years. Even if this comes to pass, you can bet he won't promise you that if you order your toaster before your morning ablutions, you can toast your bagel before leaving for work.
Marie
Scott Walker has several well-worn excuses for his embarrassing-to-criminal errors. Expect one of these to be trotted out soon:
"I wasn't directly involved with that."
"It's not on my radar because it's not about giving money to my large corporate backers" (I translated that from Walker speak).
"Union bosses are making us cut down on the Christmas giving."
"Everyone will get lots of gifts once I'm reelected."
@PDPepe. Exactly! That Smith or whatever her name is, article was a less neurotic version of Maureen Dowd's constant caterwauling that Obama's not the perfect daddy that she's devoted her life to finding.
After contending that Obama invented high fructose corn syrup and demanded that it appear in every grocery product you buy, AKA Smith quotes an adviser, "“We created this problem we didn’t need to create,” Mr. Obama said, according to one adviser who, like several interviewed, insisted on anonymity to share details of the private session. “And it’s of our own doing, and it’s our most important initiative.” I guess he was supposed to review the code before it was implemented?
I wish those scribbling idiots whose breakfast cereal contains terminal stupid additives would just say "I hate Obama and really, the worst part is he doesn't really give 2 turds on a pancake about what I think." Oh and just to make matters even worse, he has the audacity to be black-while-President and is respectful (and apparently faithful) to his wife. Jeebus. What a dickhead, female version.
@Diane. Count me in as "a dickhead, female version." This isn't about Obama reading code. It's about his not knowing that the code was full of garbage & about his not moving heaven & earth to see that it was at least mostly corrected before October 1. And about his weaving impossible dreams of health insurance nirvana.
Marie
PD,
I was struck, while reading your comment, by Obama's reference to the "excesses of the 60's and 70's" as reasons for the so-called Reagan Revolution. There's no doubt that right-wingers, tired of attention being given to poor people, minorities, women, et al, and eager to turn back the clock, were attracted to Reagan's promises to do just that, to return us all to an America where the darkies bowed and scraped, where women knew their place, where healthcare was for who could afford it, and poor people just shut the fuck the up already, and where the rich piled up the filthy lucre as a protection against, well, everything.
But I think it's become the received (and very unfortunate) wisdom that the enormous legislative achievements of the sixties were just that: excesses. Perhaps some would describe the following as excessive, but these are the milestones of American history that wingers have been working tooth and nail to repeal for the last 50 years: the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, LBJ's War on Poverty (which has morphed evilly into the GOP War on the Poor), immigration reform, Equal Opportunity Commission, affirmative action, and the 24th amendment which abolished poll taxes.
You won't hear a single MSM pundit (never mind the wingers like Doucheboy, who wasn't even alive in the 60's, and Brooks who sat out the decade whining about not being one of the cool kids) refer to that period without employing some synonym for "excess", universally used as a pejorative.
The real excesses came about from a status quo that for too many generations ignored the plight of anyone who wasn't white and well off, from corporations who routinely defiled the ecosystem, and from political groups who sought to maintain past abuses in perpetuity, excesses that much of the above legislation attempted to address in a way that would begin to correct the abysmal state of much of America and to fulfill the promise of equality embedded in our founding documents.
Other "excesses" came about from sweeping cultural change and from actual grassroots movements that grew up in opposition to the war, most of which are decried on a weekly basis by wingnut pundits (see Brooks, Our Miss, and Will, Little Boy George).
The president's casual reference to these "excesses" is more than a little disturbing. It's a (more than) tacit acknowledgment that the wingnuts have a point.
They don't.
Unless evil is back in style.
I would argue that Obama does not and is not following Reagan's methods, which according to every biography I have read (5) about him, consisted of him being the performer, the leading man who had a few big ideas, but left the nitty gritty implementations to others, the directors and producers of his show of shows. His was the starring role––acting is what he did best. This man was NOT a policymaker. Half the time he didn't know what was going on. Dione says Obama has respect for Reagan's style of leadership and gives us the link to the same piece I did. It seems to me that Obama is saying that Reagan had history on his side: After JFK's death, Johnson's Vietnam, Nixon's Watergate, Ford and finally Carter, the micro manager, Reagan was the zeitgeist at that time just as Obama was in our time. So, yes, style perhaps is the right word, but I even have trouble with that. And Reagan was able to get his bills through because, as Dione points out he had a minority of Democrats who saw the writing on the wall in their own districts unlike what we have now which is perpetual gridlock and a Speaker of the House who has absolutely no purchase or credibility.
Why is it that because this health care business has had such a disastrous launching –––and we really at this date do NOT have all the particulars of how and why––– plus it IS working in quite a few states and will, I'm certain, work once the kinks are worked out–––some have come to the conclusion that many of Reagan's biographers came to re: the Reagan administration's foreign policy calamities: naive, ignorant, undisciplined, internal conflict and the president's ability to avoid responsibility for actions that might have ruined other presidents. Is this what we have in this president? I think not and cannot fathom that this man is not furious, frustrated and sick at heart at what has developed and has, by the way, accepted full responsibility unlike you know who.
A short sidebar on media navel gazing.
Patrick made a reference earlier to all the attention being given to the promise of Ama-Drones. This is, rightly, something that deserves attention ("Honey, there's a drone at the door for you. I think it just nuked the neighbor's car...") but, were you an alien observing the US from afar by monitoring the media (you know, like MoDo), you would think that the death of Paul Walker, and subsequent expressions of condolence from world historical figures like Vin Diesel, was the most important event in America. Evah...
Honestly, I had never even heard of the guy before news of the "fiery crash" that killed him (hyperbole handbooks wide open on every "reporter's" desk), and I have no reason to doubt that he was a good guy and fine at what he was doing (29 Fast and Furious movies and counting), but c'mon guys, four days of PAUL WALKER?
Sheesh.
Well, you'll have to excuse me while I go back to reading the important stuff, like Lady Gaga's fiasco with the Muppets on Thanksgiving and the Kardashian's Christmas card.
That Kim Kardashian! Woo-woo.
@AK: Good point about all those "excesses"–––sounds as though he's using that word as a pejorative, which if true, I'm surprised since his world at that time was certainly enhanced by a few of those excesses. And I agree with your other points as well.
This site is called Reality Chex for two reasons.
The first is that other people had already bought up my first 20 Website name choices. RealityChex.com -- which had a previous incarnation -- became available again two days before I went live, & I managed to get to the top of a list of those who wanted to buy it.
The second reason is that I try to recognize the world as it is, not as I would wish it to be, even as I may try to nudge it toward the direction of my wishes. Being realistic means acknowledging that my team often fucks up, too. And so, of course, do I. Making excuses for Obama or Sebelius or whoever is always tempting, & I do it sometimes. But I try not to make lame excuses. I cannot find even a lame excuse for the mishandling of the Healthcare.gov rollout.
Marie
The "excesses" comment was simply a Freudian slip. As much as we want to ascribe noble motives to Pres. Obamas actions , he still is a common man with dreams of continued wealth and splendor to continue after he leaves office. For that to happen , he must keep supporting his friends like the"savvy" James Dimond.
As a whole, I don't think ACA will come close to accomplishing what SS, Medicare, and Medicade have done for the less fortunate of this country. ACA was written by the health care industry for the health care industry. If it were anyone but Pres. Obama pushing it the Repugs would be on it like flies on a dung heap.
In both of my posts this morning I hope I was not trying to give "lame" excuses for the mishandling of the Healthcare.gov. rollout or not being realistic about Obama's hand in all this. I was just trying to clarify some points Smith was making plus add some Reagan realities. I agree with Marie that there are no good explanations for the debacle, but I maintain we still don't have the whole story which when we do does not excuse the fuck up. I will add that I am so pissed about all this I want to spit nails and am I angry at Obama? You betcha! But I want fair play here and I felt that Smith was not doing that.
Re; Left is left; right is right and wrong is wrong. I'm with Marie on the Smith article. Sounds good on paper doesn't cut it. I thought one of the chief differences between those on the Left as opposed to those on the Right is the ability to see whether or not the Emperor is naked as a jay bird. Right now Obama on the AHC act is wearing a thong from my viewpoint watching the parade.
One more time; Ronald Reagan was an ACTOR; for god's sake. Enough said.
@Akhilleus, re: Reagan. You're right. The reason Reagan won the 1980 election was not because of "excesses" but because of years of decline. A white guy looking at the chaos that was this country -- skyrocketing inflation, gas lines, high unemployment, globalization of manufacturing, high urban crime, social unrest, etc. -- could easily justify a view that "those" people (and "those" people included white feminists) were the cause -- the same way Steve M. pointed out the other day that Congress sucks because so few people use rotary phones today. Reagan built his campaign on that thesis.
Of course, what the white guy didn't realize is that Reagan had made a sap of him, too. Reaganomics was all about taking from the poor & giving to the rich, & it didn't discriminate along color lines. The GOP was able to keep up the fiction for decades -- even to this day among the wingnuts. But somewhere along the line, that left-behind white guy began to notice that he was in fact among the left-behinds. Unfortunately, the Democrats "compensated" for Reaganomics with Clintonomics -- really an extension of the deregulation that Carter, Reagan & Bush I had promoted or permitted. Bush II pushed that further, & Obama was perfectly willing to just tweak the trend, and then only after disaster had struck. I'm totally in sympathy with the ultra-liberals who think this country needs a radical-left president & Congress; where I differ from the lefties is that I don't see that happening -- & I won't stand on a soapbox crying "anarchy!" or "nullification!" till I get what I want. In the meantime, the left-behind guy doesn't get much. What he might get is better health insurance, a slightly better wage, a somewhat less toxic natural environment, slightly better & slightly more affordable schools for his kids. But even these teeny improvements are hard-fought. Reagan is dead, but the Reagan revolution is alive & well & constantly kicking sand in our faces. Our best hope is to show the white guy the sand on his face.
Marie
@Roger Henry. Well-said on all points. Like many of us, Obama believes that his own life trajectory is exemplary. "If you work hard and play by the rules..." you should be able to get ahead. Of course most of us who do work hard & play by the rules know that there's a lot of luck involved in a perceived meritocracy, & we also know that the rules (a) can change & (b) are often rigged. As you suggest, Obama is rigging the rules to inure to his benefit.
We don't know what his post-presidential plans are, but Getting Really Rich is probably right up there at the top of the list. We'll see if his post-presidency is more like Carter's or more like Clinton's. If it's more like Carter's, I'll apologize.
Marie
@AK on RR and x's, from one who remembers those years too well from within a family of, to this day, RR idol worshipers, maybe your best post ever.
Elsewhere, an admittedly anecdotal but well presented case of the ugly, bad and good vis à vis the ACA:
http://theava.com/archives/25071
captures the whole spectrum pretty well.
Glad to see Charlie Pierce weighed in: "(My dream is not Warren in the White House. It's Warren as chair of the Senate Banking Committee, subpoena power and all.) She can do the work there that desperately needs to be done."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/elizabeth-warren-should-stay-senator-120313
Ditto sending same message to Bernie Sanders. Please stay where you are... where both you & Warren are the most effective voices.
Double ditto re: "...Former senator McDreamy, for example, whom she (Warren) beat like a tin drum in 2012, hasn't gotten over it yet, and is still making noises about loading his carpetbag into the bed of his Potemkin pickup truck and going to New Hampshire in order to get beaten like a tin drum by Jeanne Shaheen."
And ditto, ditto no way to former NH Senator Bob Smith. Damn, I thought we'd seen the end of him when he supposedly retired to Florida. I read the Portsmouth Herald every day, and haven't seen any editorials pleading for Bob to come back.
More fuel debating the ACA rollout and Obama's seeming arrogance and fudgey non-apology. This is from Sue Halpern, an editor at NYRB, who refers to ACA as "The Flop." It is only a one-page essay, but devastating!
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/dec/19/healthcare-gov-flop/
P.S. Marie, you have helped to restart the debate at our little house on the edge of the world about whether Obama will seek a huge fortune after he leaves the Big House. Cynical husband says "Of course." Still somewhat hopeful and (admittedly idealistic) I say "Oh sure, he will give expensive speeches, but I do think he will find a worthy project(s) on which to invest what is left of his idealism--NOT located on "The Street." I will be so sad if Obama completely sells out--a la Bill Clinton.
1980: Really long gas lines; inflation; Iran hostages; nomination challenge from Teddy; Carter's willingness to let Volcker kill inflation with ultra-high interest rates; blue collar voters' perceptions of welfare state loafers causing high taxes + Reagan's acting ability and Hollywood PR machine = Bye Bye Carter.
All that, and I bet if Carter had not tied himself to the Iran Hostage situation (444 days of "crisis", every night Ted Koppel making bones off it), he might have squeaked by.
@Georgia man shooting elderly neighbor: As several commenters on the Think Progress story queried Why did the shooter go outside?
As one said "That's not self defense; that's hunting."
I live in Assisted Living, where I've seen several slide into dementia. One of the first signs is not knowing where they live, frequently entering someone else's room. This shooting was unconscionable. No excuse whatsoever. None. He didn't fear for his life. He wanted to shoot someone. And did.
Stupid, cowardly people with guns are a menace. SYG laws need to be repealed. Yes, the ACA rollout was a disaster, but as far as I know, nobody died. I've been around guns most of my life, but I never thought something like this is justified. It just makes me sick to see people get away with murder, like Zimmerman. I hope the DA builds a strong case for murder in this incident. I can see it in the shooter's mind "When this is over, I'm gonna be a hero."
To add insult to injury, Elizabeth Drew's blog in the November 23rd
NYRB.
OBAMA: THE FIRST TERM DID IT
..."Despite all the lamentations about Barack Obama having second-term blues and bad luck, and the talk about how a painful second term is not atypical, it’s what happened during the first term that matters most. With the exception of possible exogenous events, a president’s first term defines his second one. The enormous difficulties that Obama is having with his signature issue, the health care law, are the shining example of how that can work. Almost everything that has gone wrong with the program was set in motion in the early years of his presidency."
www.nybooks.com/b;ogs/nyrblog/2013/nov23/obama-first-term/
Oops--sorry! The first link to Elizabeth Drew's blog did not work. Here it is again:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/nov/23/obama-first-term/
It figures that the week I'm swamped at work would be such a rich week for conversation here at RealityChex. Well, better late than never, as the saying is....
As for Obama(doesn't)care and Yves Smith, I tend to agree with Marie. This was his signature domestic achievement and he should have paid more attention. I've seen Yves Smith on several MSNBC programs, and I think her criticisms are reasonable, not hateful. (But I'm not exactly known for my tact, so there's that.)
As for Obama's post-presidential career, back in 2007, feeling like Cassandra, I was saying that Obama was a narcissistic opportunist who was basically all about Barack Obama. If he suddenly becomes a humanitarian after leaving the presidency, I'll happily share that plate of crow with Marie, but I doubt it will be necessary.
That said, I like the Obamas (especially the dogs!) and I'm happy to have a handsome, intelligent, educated, sophisticated family in the White House for a change. (They also embody the family values that the right wing fundies keep screaming about but routinely violate...but I digress.) I think Obama has handled things about as well as he could, given the unprecedented opposition he's faced. It's the system that's broken, and I'm not sure what can be done, at this juncture, to repair it.
One thing I desperately hope doesn't happen is Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren running for president. (I so envy Charlie Pierce -- I've got Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow to "represent" me in the Senate.) Sanders and Warren are far more valuable and effective right where they are (see Kennedy, Ted). Warren is the only politician I have *ever* supported financially, and I live in Michigan.
Thank you all for your stimulating conversation. And especially to Marie for keeping this valuable forum going.
Re Warren for President... I remember her campaign. She wasn't very good at it. And if I recall correctly, Marie didn't think so either. Please, please let her stay in the senate.