The Commentariat -- Dec. 9, 2013

Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "House and Senate negotiators were putting the finishing touches Sunday on what would be the first successful budget accord since 2011, when the battle over a soaring national debt first paralyzed Washington. The deal expected to be sealed this week on Capitol Hill would not significantly reduce the debt, now $17.3 trillion and rising. It would not close corporate tax loopholes or reform expensive health and retirement programs. It would not even fully replace sharp spending cuts known as the sequester, the negotiators' primary target. After more than two years of constant crisis, the emerging agreement amounts to little more than a cease-fire." CW: Still up-in-the-air: extended unemployment benefits, but it doesn't look good. ...

... Erik Wasson of the Hill: "Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that he hopes extended jobless benefits will be part of the budget deal, but Democrats are not at this point insisting on it.... Durbin's soft position echoes that of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) who appeared last week to say no deal would be possible without the extension of jobless benefits expiring Jan. 1, but then walked the ultimatum back." ...

... Test Question. Explain Rand Paul's logic. Kevin Robillard of Politico: "Democratic attempts to extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million workers were a 'disservice' to the unemployed, Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday. Paul said a study had shown employers were less likely to hire the long-term unemployed like those who have been on 99 weeks of benefits." ...

     ... Paul Krugman takes a stab at the test question: "... the G.O.P. answer to the problem of long-term unemployment is to increase the pain of the long-term unemployed: Cut off their benefits, and they'll go out and find jobs. How, exactly, will they find jobs when there are three times as many job-seekers as job vacancies? ... Employment in today's American economy is limited by demand, not supply.... The odds, I'm sorry to say, are that the long-term unemployed will be cut off, thanks to a perfect marriage of callousness ... with bad economics. But then, hasn't that been the story of just about everything lately?" ...

     ... Digby: "It's this twisted Randroid sanctimony that really gets to me. It's bad enough that this creep thinks the unemployed are parasites and moochers. But he has the brass balls to adopt a disgustingly unctuous 'compassionate' tone to suggest that he's following Christian teachings by throwing them out on the street." ...

... Khalil AlJajal of Mlive: "Democrats responded in a variety of ways to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's Friday visit to Detroit. The Kentucky Republican was in town helping the GOP effort to start reaching out to minorities in Michigan and to introduce his 'Economic Freedom Zones' plan. Paul plans to introduce legislation next week that would turn zip codes with unemployment rates over 1.5 times the average into zones where federal income taxes would be reduced to 5 percent, capital gains taxes would be eliminated and other incentives would be offered to potential residents and entrepreneurs." ...

... Heather of Crooks & Liars: "Is there anyone out there who honestly believes that Sen. Rand Paul wasn't going to continue his father's racket of pretending he actually wants to be president in order to raise lots of money from their gullible followers?"

"It's a Godsend." Abby Goodnough, et al., of the New York Times interview Americans who are glad to be getting insurance under the ACA. "... for all those problems, people are enrolling. More than 243,000 have signed up for private coverage through the exchanges, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and more than 567,000 have been determined eligible for Medicaid since the exchanges opened on Oct. 1. For many, particularly people with existing medical conditions..., the coverage is proving less expensive than what they had. Many others are getting health insurance for the first time in years, giving them alternatives to seeking care through free clinics or emergency rooms -- or putting it off indefinitely."

** Ta-Nehisi Coates: On Nelson Mandela, Newt Gingrich gets it right & challenges wingers who are attacking Mandela in death. And not for the first time. Here's Newt's full post. CW: This might be the first time I've embedded remarks by Newt Gingrich with which I agree:

... Worth keeping in mind, of course, is the point Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars makes: "... I might be more willing to accept [Newt's alleged shock at conservatives' hateful remarks about Mandela] if Newt didn't play into racist dogwhistles all the time."

Thomas McGarity, in the New York Times: "... there's a crucial dimension the president left out [of his speech on inequality]: the revival, since the mid-1970s, of the laissez-faire ideology that prevailed in the Gilded Age.... It's no coincidence that this laissez-faire revival -- an all-out assault on government regulation -- has unfolded over the very period in which inequality has soared to levels not seen since the Gilded Age." ...

... Case on Point. Matthew Goldstein & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "Even as five regulatory agencies prepared to vote Tuesday on a regulation that seeks to rein in risk-taking on Wall Street -- an effort known as the Volcker Rule -- lawyers and lobbyists were gearing up for another round of attacks against it. In recent letters and meetings with financial regulators, lobbyists for Wall Street banks and business trade groups issued thinly veiled threats about challenging the Volcker Rule in court, people briefed on the matter said. The groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are hinting that they could use litigation to either undercut or clarify the rule, which is intended to bar banks from trading for their own gain and limit their ability to invest in hedge funds."

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies conducting criminal investigations collected data on cellphone activity thousands of times last year, with each request to a phone company yielding hundreds or thousands of phone numbers of innocent Americans along with those of potential suspects. Law enforcement made more than 9,000 requests last year for what are called 'tower dumps,' information on all the calls that bounced off a cellphone tower within a certain period of time, usually two or more hours, a congressional inquiry has revealed. The little-known practice has raised concerns among federal judges, lawmakers and privacy advocates who question the harvesting of massive amounts of data on people suspected of no crime in order to try to locate a criminal.... The inquiry, by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), into law enforcement's use of cellphone data comes amid growing scrutiny of the bulk collection of geolocation data overseas and of Americans' phone records in the United States by the National Security Agency." ...

... Mark Mazzetti & Justin Elliott of the New York Times: "American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.... The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden." ...

... Edward Wyatt & Claire Miller of the New York Times: "Eight prominent technology companies, bruised by revelations of government spying on their customers' data and scrambling to repair the damage to their reputations, are mounting a public campaign to urge President Obama and Congress to set new limits on government surveillance." The Guardian story, by Dan Roberts & Jemima Kiss, is here. ...

... Ryan Lizza has a lo-o-o-ng piece in the New Yorker on NSA overreach. CW: The bit of it I've had time to read is excellent. ...

... NSA-Speak. Amy Davidson of the New Yorker gives a short lesson on how to tell when NSA leaders are lying.

Saymour Hersh, in the London Review of Books, points to intelligence evidence that the Syrian government was not necessarily responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on August 21. "... in recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the [Obama] administration's assurances of Assad's responsibility a 'ruse'."

Andrea Elliott, in the New York Times, explores the life of Dasani, an 11-year-old Brooklyn girl, whose family is homeless. With photographs. This horror story has received some extra attention because the Las Vegas Sun, apparently inadvertently, ran it before the Times uploaded it on its own site.

Katherine Boyle of the Washington Post: "This year, the Kennedy Center honored actress Shirley MacLaine, opera singer Martina Arroyo, musician Carlos Santana -- who beamed while sitting next to first lady Michelle Obama -- and two piano men: Herbie Hancock and Billy Joel. If the honorees had performed together, it would have been a dream collaboration -- but as is the 36-year custom, they sat, smiled and watched others pay tribute to lives lived on stages and screens." ...

... The Post has extended profiles of the recipients: MacLaine, Arroyo, Santana, Joel and Hancock. There's a photo gallery here and short videos here. ...

Now, when you first become President, one of the questions that people ask you is what's really going on in Area 51. When I wanted to know, I'd call Shirley MacLaine. I think I just became the first President to ever publicly mention Area 51. How's that, Shirley? -- Barack Obama, at the reception for Kennedy Center honorees

... White House: "President Obama delivers remarks at a reception celebrating the 2013 Kennedy Center Honorees":

CW: This is predictably awful, & therefore smile-inducing. And at least it's accurate:

Local News

Gallop Asian Bistro, Bridgewater New Jersey: Dayna "Morales and Gallop Asian Bistro have made a joint decision that Ms. Morales will no longer continue her employment at our restaurant. We wish her well in the future." CW: The comments are withering.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Bill Porter, an Oregon door-to-door salesman who plied his trade for decades despite having severe cerebral palsy, and whose story inspired an Emmy-winning television film starring William H. Macy, died last Tuesday in Gresham, Ore. He was 81."

Washington Post: "Eleanor Parker, an actress of patrician beauty nicknamed 'the woman of a thousand faces' for the range of parts she played, from a terrified prisoner in 'Caged' to the icy baroness in 'The Sound of Music,' died Dec. 9 at a medical facility near her home in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 91." ...

     ... Update: The New York Times obituary is here.

Reuters: "China expressed 'regret' on Monday that South Korea had extended its air defense zone to partially overlap with a similar zone declared by Beijing two weeks ago that has raised regional tensions."

Reuters: "Cuba has temporarily reopened consular services in the United States after its bank postponed closing the accounts of its diplomatic missions in Washington and New York, it said in a statement released to media on Monday."

AP: "A plodding storm that dumped heavy snow on the unsuspecting Mid-Atlantic region threatened to make roads dicey in the northeast corridor for Monday's commute while travel disruptions continued to ripple across the country days after the same system first began wreaking havoc in the skies. The seemingly never-ending storm that coated parts of Texas in ice struck with unexpected force on the East Coast, blanketing some spots in a foot of snow and grinding highways to a halt." ...

     ... Reuters Update: "A deadly winter storm kept a tight grip on much of the United States on Monday as cold, snow and ice spread across the East Coast, snarling traffic and knocking out power to thousands. As much as 5 inches of snow were forecast for Monday night into Tuesday as much of the area from Virginia to coastal New England were under winter weather advisories...."

New York Times: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the country's top military officer Monday, hoping to improve one of Washington's most complicated relationships -- one marked by agreement on the dangers of terrorism but also by deep differences over how to counter the threat."

Reuters: "Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved parliament on Monday and called a snap election, but anti-government protest leaders pressed ahead with mass demonstrations in Bangkok seeking to install an unelected body to run the country. Police estimated about 160,000 protesters converged on Yingluck's office at Government House, but there was none of the violence and bloodshed seen before the demonstrations paused last Thursday out of respect for the king's birthday."

Guardian: "Cordons of riot police moved into central Kiev early on Monday afternoon in what appeared initially to be preparations by the Ukrainian government to regain control of Independence square and Kiev city hall, occupied by anti-government protesters for the past week."

Santa Cruz Sentinel: American Merrill Newman said he was well-treated during his North Korean detention.