;)
The Commentariat -- Oct. 31, 2013
This came to me via democrats.org with a request for a donation at the bottom. Naturally, I cropped that out. But feel free to give.
... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama on Wednesday offered an impassioned defense of his Affordable Care Act, promising to fix the malfunctioning health care website but pledging to 'grind it out' over the weeks and months ahead to prove the law's Republican critics wrong. Speaking at Faneuil Hall, where Mitt Romney, his onetime rival for the White House, signed into law a similar health care program for Massachusetts, the president accused his opponents of trying to undermine the national law. But he said the experience in the Bay State gives him hope." ...
... Justin Sink of the Hill: "Vice President Joe Biden apologized Wednesday for the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov, calling the technical issues plaguing the website 'inexcusable' ... during an interview with HLN. The vice president said President Obama 'tried to get online'" to check out the website glitches.... He also depicted the president as diligent in the weeks leading up to the debut of the website. 'We were under the impression that it was ready to go,' Biden said. 'We had the president to his credit almost seven weeks out asking, was it ready, and we were told by the pros we were all ready to go -- all online.'"
... John Dickerson of Slate: "What started as a website debacle is growing into a relitigation of the underlying operation. The Affordable Care Act passed with cracks and inconsistencies that are now re-emerging in the context of the website's bad launch. In some cases that simply gives Republicans new lines of attack. In others, like this argument over keeping your old health care, the failure of the site is weakening the administration's ability to engage in those old debates.... When the website doesn't work and the promises of 2009 and 2010 are revised, questions of credibility infect everything the administration says.... This debate over his initial claim lends credibility to [Republicans'] longstanding opposition to the law." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... most of the caterwauling is over a small minority of a small minority of a small minority: people who don't have employer-based insurance, and want bare-bones policies (or no insurance at all), and don't qualify for the Obamacare subsidies.... There's scarce an argument about the horrific 'rate shock' facing healthy individual policyholders that isn't ultimately an argument against insurance -- risk-spreading via broadly constituted pools of people -- itself." ...
... ** Reality Chek. Jonathan Cohn: "Republicans have repeatedly endorsed proposals that would take insurance away from many more Americans -- and leave them much, much worse off. Start with the federal budgets crafted by Paul Ryan.... According to projections prepared by Urban Institute..., between 14 and 20 million Medicaid recipients would lose their insurance. And that doesn't even include the people who are starting to get Medicaid coverage through Obamacare's expansions of the program. That's another 10 to 17 million people. And it's not just people on Medicaid who would lose coverage if Republicans got their way.... Under the Republican plan..., people losing employer insurance would end up in the dysfunctional, non-reformed individual market -- the one full of confusing, junk policies that might not cover basic services.... The people losing Medicaid ... would end up with ... nothing at all." ...
... Gail Collins: "'In almost every case, you can argue that the second terms have been pretty dreadful,' said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian. Think about it. Richard Nixon had to resign. Bill Clinton got impeached. George W. Bush had an average second-term approval rating of 37 percent, which the Gallup people say was the worst presidential plummet in modern history. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and spent much of his second term in the bedroom."
... William Branigin & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "New problems emerged Wednesday with the implementation of President Obama's health-care law even as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius assured lawmakers that 'miserably frustrating' problems with a nearly month-old health-insurance Web site would soon be fixed. The Web site, HealthCare.gov, was down again most of the morning while Sebelius was testifying before a House committee. And new security issues with the site were raised Wednesday after an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post and other media outlets showed that, days before the Web site's launch, administration officials knew it put the privacy of user data at risk.... [See also AP story linked below.] Sebelius, testifying Wednesday morning before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, offered assurances that consumers' personal data were safe." ...
... Humor Break. Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post highlights "five genuinely bizarre topics that have occurred this morning." ...
... Dana Milbank: "... whoever came up with House Republicans’ plan to deal with Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday didn't have a brain. It was their big chance to flambé the secretary of Health and Human Services and the person who has overseen the disastrous launch of Obamacare.... The hearing ... didn't turn out to be the humiliation for Sebelius that Republicans had in mind.... Sebelius doused her questioners with an unexpected and extended confession of responsibility. This was a sneaky and dastardly thing for her to do: sneaky, because it wasn't in the advance testimony she gave the committee, and dastardly, because in today's Washington, any acceptance of responsibility is so rare that the Republicans -- who were counting on her evading and deflecting -- were caught off-guard."
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "... Kathleen Sebelius repeatedly told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday that it would be 'illegal' for her to sign up for coverage in Obamacare's health care exchanges, raising eyebrows from health care journalists and pundits. The Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein wrote that 'in reality, as stated on Healthcare.gov, she would be eligible to obtain coverage through an Obamacare exchange. She just wouldn't be able to claim government subsidies to help her purchase insurance,; he claimed. CNN made a similar claim. But ThinkProgress has confirmed that Sebelius, who turned 65 in May, is enrolled in Medicare and is thus ineligible to enroll for insurance through the exchanges." ...
... Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar & Jack Gillum of the AP: "An internal government memo obtained by The Associated Press shows administration officials were concerned that a lack of testing posed a 'high' security risk for President Barack Obama's new health insurance website. The Sept. 27 memo to Medicare chief Marylin Tavenner said a website contractor wasn't able to test all the security controls in one complete version of the system." ...
... As contributor P.D. Pepe suggests, the video below is an amazing thing to see. Fox "News"'s Greta Van Susteren partially debunks Jan Crawford's misleading CBS "News" report about Floridian Diane Barrette, who is unhappy with ObamaCare because the new plan her insurer offered her cost ten times the premium of her current junk plan. As soon as Crawford ran her phony story, Fox "News" was anxious to interview Barrette. After Van Susteren's interview, Fox "News" cancelled another interview Fox had scheduled.
... Humor Break. Matt Miller of the Washington Post imagines a "Crossfire" segment of December 1936 as Americans begin signing up for FDR's new "Social Security" program. Clever. ...
... How Not to Respond to the GOP Talking Point of the Week. Manu Raju of Politico: "Sen. Mary Landrieu said Wednesday she would propose legislation to ensure all Americans could keep their existing insurance coverage under Obamacare, a fresh sign of the political problems the law&'s rollout has created for congressional Democrats. Landrieu, a Democrat who faces a tough reelection in Louisiana in 2014, said she would either offer her own bill or formally sign onto another measure that would ensure that the law would not force anyone off of their existing health policies." CW: For the most part, the policies people are "losing" are junk policies that will either (a) force the policyholders to pay expensive medical bills should they become ill, or (b) force the well-insured to pay the bills of the underinsured (or essentially uninsured), as we're doing now thru increased costs for medical services, which translate into increased premiums. ...
... Sabrina Siddiqui of the Huffington Post: "For all their fury, most of the House Republicans who had demanded their own closed-door briefing from the administration on President Barack Obama's struggling health care rollout were no-shows on Wednesday. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) told reporters that 'about 20 members' attended the House GOP briefing, at which senior Health and Human Services Department official Mike Hash laid out some of the issues facing the Healthcare.gov website. The meeting was scheduled after House Republicans cried foul when they weren't included in last week's closed-door session with Democrats." CW: They were going to show up -- till they found out "closed-door" means there are no cameras to ham for. ...
... Humor Break. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took to Facebook Wednesday to troll President Obama, arguing that while his health care reform plan in Massachusetts is an example of good reform, it should not be used as a model for the nation." Kaczynski goes on to link numerous stories about Romney's urging Obama to copy RomneyCare for the national program.
"In this slide from a National Security Agency presentation on 'Google Cloud Exploitation,' a sketch shows where the 'Public Internet' meets the internal 'Google Cloud' where user data resides. Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing." -- Washington PostBarton Gellman & Ashkan Soltani of the Washington Post: "The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot." ...
... Gellman, et al., provide a graphic here charting how the NSA infiltrates private networks. ...
... Tony Romm of Politico: "A new report that the U.S. government had infiltrated links to Google's and Yahoo's data centers around the globe drew a sharp rebuke Wednesday from the National Security Agency.... The program ... relied on a broad, decades-old executive orderand allowed the NSA access to data-center connections in secret outside the United States, according to The Washington Post.... Asked about the leak, Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA's leader, said earlier Wednesday he was unaware of the Post's report -- adding the NSA is 'not authorized' to access companies data centers and instead must 'go through a court process' to obtain such content. The NSA, meanwhile, emphasized it hadn't tried to circumvent U.S. law under the executive order.... 'The assertion that we collect vast quantities of U.S. persons' data from this type of collection is also not true,' a spokeswoman said. But the NSA aide declined to discuss further whether the agency -- perhaps under other authorities -- had infiltrated data center connections at all." ...
... The Washington Post has the full NSA statement here. ...
... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The director of the National Security Agency conceded on Wednesday that it may need to scale back some of its surveillance operations on foreign leaders, in the wake of an international outcry. Launching a public defence of the NSA for the second time in as many days, [Keith] Alexander acknowledged that limiting the program may be necessary in order to maintain diplomatic relations. 'I think in some cases the partnerships are more important,' he told an audience in Washington." ...
... NEW. Mark Mazzetti & David Sanger of the New York Times: "How the N.S.A. continued to track [Angela] Merkel as she ascended to the top of Germany's political apparatus illuminates previously undisclosed details about the way the secret spy agency casts a drift net to gather information from America's closest allies. The phone monitoring is hardly limited to the leaders of countries like Germany, and also includes their top aides and the heads of opposing parties. It is all part of a comprehensive effort to gain an advantage over other nations, both friend and foe." ...
... Michelle Nichols of Reuters: " The United Nations said on Wednesday that the United States has pledged not to spy on the world body's communications after a report that the National Security Agency had gained access to the U.N. video conferencing system." ...
... Adam Taylor of Business Insider: "According to a new report in Italian magazine Panorama..., the NSA ... is believed to have been intercepting calls within the Vatican before and during the [Papal] Conclave. There are also suspicions that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who would later be chosen as Pope Francis, was under surveillance for a number of years." CW: If true, that would be too much. I don't want my taxpayer dollars wasted spying on cardinals. And, can we have a teensy bit of respect for religious freedom? ...
... NEW. Steven Myers of the New York Times: "Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor living in asylum in Russia, now has a job at one of the country's major Internet companies, a lawyer who has represented him since he arrived here as a fugitive from American prosecution four months ago said Thursday.... [The lawyer's] assertion about the employment offer could not be verified. Other claims about Mr. Snowden's secretive life here have turned out to be unsubstantiated."
Mike Lillis of the Hill: "New revenue must be part of any bipartisan agreement to eliminate the sequester, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday. Although President Obama has reportedly signaled an openness to tackle the across-the-board cuts without hiking taxes, Pelosi warned that such a strategy wouldn't fly with House Democrats." Contributor James S. wrote in yesterday's Comments that Democrats finally seem to have a leader in Harry Reid. May I remind him that Nancy Pelosi was standing tough when Harry Reid was still dancing with Mitch McConnell -- and letting McConnell lead. ...
... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Paul Ryan killed any lingering hopes of a grand bargain within moments of the budget conference kickoff on Wednesday. In his opening remarks, the Wisconsin congressman and chairman of the House budget committee laid down a firm marker against new taxes, which are essential to any major deficit reduction proposal that can pass Congress and be signed into law."
Erik Wasson of the Hill: "The federal budget deficit for fiscal 2013 was $680 billion, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday. This is the first time that the deficit has fallen below $1 trillion during President Obama's time in the White House."
Congress of the Absurd: 27 Senators in Search of an "Out" Clause. As if they were characters in a Beckett or Ionesco play, all 27 GOP Senators who voted to allow President Obama to raise the debt ceiling & re-open the government voted on Tuesday to "disapprove" of the bill they voted for. Sahil Kapur reports, "The purpose was to give these senators political cover to say they disapprove of a debt limit hike." ...
... Charles Pierce: "... the people who did the right thing, and helped the country avoid the fiscal abyss, find themselves obligated, essentially, to apologize to the people who did the most damage, and to the people who supported them, because, otherwise, there might be a political price to be paid for not wrecking the economy. This is not leadership. This is submitting to an ideological show trial because you want to keep your job at the expense of actually doing your job."
Hunter Walker of TPM: "Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker submitted a resignation letter to the city clerk ahead of his swearing in as a U.S. Senator on Thursday."
John Harwood of the New York Times: "American politics has grown increasingly polarized by race, as well as by party and ideology." CW: Yeah, depending upon the setting, of course, I generally "suspect" every white person I meet is a Republican/conservative & every black person I meet is a Democrat/liberal. Of course I know that isn't true, but my suspicion works pretty well in Southwest Florida.
A People in Transition. Ta-Nehesi Coates goes to homecoming at Howard University.
Linda Greenhouse: when history proves judges' and justices' assumptions wrong.
Gubehrnatorial Race
Roanoke College: "Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened a 15-point lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli (46%-31%), while 14 percent of likely voters in Virginia remain undecided in the 2013 Gubernatorial election, according to The Roanoke College Poll. Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis claimed 9 percent of respondents." CW: Hmm. So was the Quinnipiac poll I linked yesterday, which showed Kenny closing in on Terry an outlier? I hope so. (Never thought I'd be rooting for Terry McAuliffe.) ...
... Hoist with His Own Pen. Paul Schwartzman of the Washington Post: "For years, [Ken Cuccinelli] articulated [his] conservatism in the Cuccinelli Compass, honing a combative political persona and providing opponents with material that has now driven up his negative poll ratings and lifted McAuliffe." ...
... CW: Turns out Cooch has a macabre sense of humor which, not surprisingly, involves offing a prominent woman. Schwartzman writes, "In 2008, as the Democrats convened for their national convention, Cuccinelli relayed in his newsletter a satirical schedule of events, including, '1:35 am -- Bill Clinton asks Ted Kennedy to drive Hillary Clinton home,' a joke that evoked reminders of a fatal accident in which Kennedy drove off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Mass., nearly 40 years earlier. In a subsequent issue, he ... [wrote] 'How to Start Each Day with a Positive Outlook,' which involved naming a computer file after the former first lady and sending 'it to the trash. Your PC will ask you, "Do you really want to get rid of Hillary Rodham Clinton? (Firmly) Click "Yes."'"
News Ledes
AP: "Government safety rules are changing to let airline passengers use most electronic devices from gate-to-gate. The change will let passengers read, work, play games, watch movies and listen to music -- but not make cellphone calls."
AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry will launch a nine-day trip by traveling to Riyadh for talks on Sunday with King Abdullah amid tensions with the Gulf Kingdom."
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Reader Comments (7)
I'm a sucker for these congressional hearings; I find them fascinating especially these days when the atmosphere is fraught with tension due to the great divide of our legislators. There was not one Republican questioning Sebelius that didn't start out by that little itty bit of false comity before lashing into her like rabid wolves. One of these creatures––don't remember his name––insisted over and over she agree that Obama was responsible for this debacle even though she had said at the outset she was the one responsible and then apologized. "Isn't he your boss?" he snarled. Many times questions were asked but Sebelius was never allowed to finish before she was bombarded by another question. Someone, a Democrat, told these clowns on the other side of the divide, that they would be on the wrong side of history. I'm pretty sure that will be the case and what fun it will be to play videos of the circus crew making fools of themselves in years to come. What a legacy! Talk about the Wizards of Oz––all those dolts behind the curtain revealed––bring in the clowns!!!
It appears that Randy Randy has finally responded to his use of plagiarizing in an interview saying that he ALWAYS gives attribution ––the problem is he has NEVER given credit to anyone of those screen writers. It seems strange to me that in this 21st century when we have the technology to be able to revisit and view anything and everything there are those like Randy Randy that somehow fail to recognize this. Seems Mittens has the same problem saying he never said his health care in Mass. would be great to implement nationally. Or that other dude that's running for Attorney G. in VA. whose really awful homophobic rhetoric is on tape but is denying he ever said any of it. How do these people operate I wonder. Wouldn't you think they would be embarrassed to be caught red handed? To deny something that can be proven and they must know that it can be proven??? I don't get it.
One more thing: Yesterday we gave high fives to Dowd for finally writing a decent column. A few more of these hand slappings belong to Greta Van Sustern. This will make you believe again––for just a few moments maybe:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/30/1251682/-Wow-Fox-Corrects-CBS-News-Obamacare-Insurance-Plan-Loss-Horror-Story?detail=email
Re; Just another day at the office. I, for one, love the little smiley face on the NSA picture graph above. Why not add a little "He, he, he" under it? How do you draw a little smirky face?
And now they've got their PP's caught in a device. (Pope Papers)
"Check this out, Francis was logged into the Victoria Secrets site."
Got to be the shoes.
On "dreadful" second terms:
There's a point of view issue here. Lacking the natural buoyancy the newly-elected President carries into his first term, and with a two-term limit to the Presidency, tho' circumstances differ widely (my thoughts wander to the possible connection between a sex scandal and a stroke) for each President, declining energy and accomplishment in a second act might be only natural, like the ebbing of tides.
But in at least two of the cases mentioned, what might not have been good for the President was surely good for the country. I remember the joyous whoops that filled that old Volvo sedan there in Idaho when a friend and I heard news of Nixon's resignation. And tho' Clinton surely embarrassed some of us--I'm not sure he is capable of being embarrassed himself--by occupying the White House he did keep a Republican out of it for four more years. (Tho' as I argued before I think his dalliance with Monica propelled Bush II into office, with dire consequence the nation is still feeling...These might have beens or soooo complicated.)
As for Obama, he already done more than Clinton did in far rougher and more politically toxic times...and he, not the Romneybot, is there for another three years. Just think and cringe at what Romney and the House as currently constituted might have come up with in only their first year. For just one instance, surely not a diplomatic solution to the Syrian use of chemical weapons.
All (or at least more than one) things considered, a limp second term might not be all bad.
PD,
Wingnuts have learned that there is hardly ever a price to be paid for lying. Remember when Paul Ryan lied through his teeth about being a world class marathoner? Certain outlets followed up on that but if there was ever any reference to it on Fox it lasted three, maybe four nanoseconds.
The Rat's entire campaign to rule the world was one looooonnnggg lie. One after the other. The problem is, from the point of view of a healthy democracy, that too few voters are engaged enough to get to the truth about most issues. If I'm a 'bagger politico and I say that I'm qualified to write a national budget (like Ryan) even though I don't know the difference between COLA and cola, it will likely only be commented on by certain writers and only in journals, newspapers, websites, etc. that are visited by moderate to low information voters with less frequency than trips to the proctologist's office.
And voters who do occasionally watch a newscast will watch their preferred outlet. If your PO is Fox then you will likely never hear anything not wingnut approved. So if I lie through my teeth, the only people I need to worry about are people who go to sites like this, and what do I care if those people know I'm a lying sack of shit. They ain't voting for me anyway. Plus, if liberals criticize me, my base of nitwits will throw me a parade.
The larger problem is that such mendacity is not more widely and correctly reported. I'll give you a very simple but entirely too common example. This morning most news outlets reported that, starting today, a family of four on food stamps better learn to like fried rat. The reports all begin with something like "SNAP support for families on food stamps has been drastically reduced by congress."
Say what? Congress??? Don't you mean Republicans???? This is a Republican idea carried out by Republicans. Saying that congress did it is technically true, and even if there was some Democratic support, it's still reported as a "both sides are to blame for this" issue when nothing is further from the truth.
And few people out there have the time to look it up, or if they do take the time, they might not go to the best places for their information.
Bottom line, liars gonna lie. Cheaters gonna cheat. If they get called on it, very few will hear about it and fewer will care.
Of course they might hear about it AND care if reporting on these things was less cowardly, less opionion-y and more based in fact, but I don't want anyone turning blue waiting for that.
Lil' Randy lifting lines from Wikipedia for his speeches.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/us/politics/senator-rand-paul-is-accused-of-plagiarizing-his-lines-from-wikipedia.html?src=recg
A real deep thinker, that one.
Tommy,
I don't find it at all remarkable that Li'l Randy and his Li'l Sycophants are aghast that anyone would think of plagiarism as a bad thing. He's working straight off the wingnut playbook. Chapter One, section three: Remember: you are NEVER wrong.
So what could be so bad? The sad thing is that it would have been so easy to paraphrase that statement, just play around with it a bit and come up with your own way of saying it. How hard is that? Millions of high school and college students do it all the time. Ah... but see? That type of thing is only for the rubes. I guess a wingnut senator's time is more precious and important than ethical behavior (as much as these guys posit themselves as workaday everymen, their actions exhibit an elitist self-regard). So here's where actions like this open a window into a person's inner life and thought processes.
Stealing someone else's thoughts and words and passing them off as your own is not just a simple mistake. It's representative of a particular weltanschauung, a world view that says "You can do whatever you want. You are above rules, ethics, law, morality." Don't forget, this is the asshole who "certified" himself to work on people's eyes. ("But doctor, should you really be sticking a fountain pen into my little girl's eyeball?" "Don't worry ma'am. I'm self-certified.")
He wants to abolish regulations and economic controls so that the fantasies of a (terrible) fiction writer, Ayn Rand, can come to fruition.
The guy isn't just unethical. He's not right in the head. But he's still considered an inspirational hee-roe and great leader by bug eyed 'baggers, and taken way too seriously by way too many in the media.
What a world.