Internal links removed.
Thomas Edsall: "Key Democrats have reached agreement on a set of policies known as 'inclusive capitalism': a forceful market-oriented economic agenda intended to counter inequality, restrain the accrual of vast wealth at the top and provide the working and middle classes with improved economic opportunities.... Taken together, the Obama, Van Hollen, and Summers interpretations of 'inclusive capitalism' are a victory for the left of the Democratic Party.... While none of the proposals, or their advocates, acknowledge this explicitly, one of the objectives of the evolving Democratic economic agenda is to get back support among whites without college degrees...." ...
... CW: "Inclusive capitalism"? I'd call it New Deal Lite. And let's not forget to thank Larry Summers for his self-serving spasm of noblesse oblige. (See Monday's & Tuesday's Commentariats.)
Bernie Becker of the Hill: "Congressional Democrats said Tuesday they would seek any and all avenues to curb offshore tax deals, kicking off a new effort to punish what they call 'corporate deserters.' Senior Democrats on both sides of the Capitol brought back legislation to make it more difficult for corporations to merge with a foreign competitor and shift their legal address abroad."
Lauren Barron-Lopez of the Hill: "Senate Democrats are pressing amendments to legislation that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing their proposals would 'actually make it an American jobs bill.'...[Chuck] Schumer [D-N.Y.] along with Democratic Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.) and Al Franken (Minn.) urged Republicans to vote for the amendments that will be considered on Tuesday afternoon. Markey's measure would ban the export of all oil shipped through the Canada-to-Texas pipeline, while Franken's would require that American steel be used to build the pipeline.... 'This is just the beginning of the amendment process; we have many more that deserve a vote,' Schumer said.... Schumer said the amendments being proposed by Democrats Tuesday would 'improve' the Keystone bill, 'but not enough to vote for it.'" ...
... Update: Republicans voted down both Markey's & Franken's amendments. Apparently they don't want too many jobs in what Joni Ernst called "the Keystone jobs bill" in her SOTU non-response.
Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "Two GOP congresswomen have officially withdrawn their support for a proposed 20-week abortion ban that has recently sparked controversy within the Republican Party, asking to be removed as co-sponsors from the legislation. On Tuesday afternoon, during the House's session, Reps. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) and Jackie Walorski (R-IN) requested to remove their names from HR 36, the 'Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.'... Hours before President Obama is set to give his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, he indicated that he is prepared to veto HR 36 if Congress sends it to his desk. In an analysis published on Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that enacting a national 20-week abortion ban would increase federal spending on Medicaid by an estimated $235 million between 2015 and 2025...."
Jorge Ramos of Fusion: "When [Republicans] ask for our support in 2016, we will remind them of all the times they voted against immigrants. There are many: from their opposition to the Dream Act, to the blocking action that the House leader John Boehner has taken against the immigration reform bill for a year and a half, up to last week's vote in Congress. It's hard to forget when someone says no to you in your face. Republicans now have a Latino problem and less than two years to solve it." Via Paul Waldman.
Jamison Foser: "The United States Senate, controlled at the time by President Obama's fellow Democrats, held one vote on raising the minimum wage in 2014. After that vote failed in April, Democrats were supposedly going to make 'raising the minimum wage the main weapon in their 2014 electoral arsenal' by 'bringing the bill up for a vote again and again throughout the summer and fall.' It was a good idea -- one I've been urging for years -- but I never thought they'd act on it. And they didn't.... Instead of repeatedly forcing votes on incredibly popular policies that Republicans oppose, they hold one vote, then snicker as Republicans hold dozens of votes on repealing Obamacare. And, as a result, the national political debate for the past several years has been much more about repealing Obamacare than about raising the minimum wage." Via Waldman.
... Greg Sargent: Why can't the Democratic party attract poor & older white Americans? Because Democrats really aren't doing much for these voters, who are rightly pessimistic about getting their share of the pie. CW Note to Congressional Democrats: promising every two years to "save Social Security" is not a convincing comprehensive program to help these left-behinds.
Sarah Ferris of the Hill: "More than five years after the single-payer system was scrapped from ObamaCare policy debates, just over 50 percent of people say they still support the idea, including one-quarter of Republicans, according to a new poll. The single-payer option -- also known as Medicare for all -- would create a new, government-run insurance program to replace private coverage. The system, once backed by President Obama, became one of the biggest casualties of the divisive healthcare debates of 2009."
Right now, the top 1 percent in this country, the millionaires and billionaires the president demagogues so much, earn a higher share of our national income than any time since 1928. -- Sen. Ted Cruz (RTP-Texas), a year ago ...
... Steve Benen notices that Republicans accuse President Obama of engaging in "class warfare" when he proposes ideas to reduce income inequality, but when Republicans decry income inequality, as they are wont to do of late, it's apparently A-Okay.
Andy Borowitz: "A new Oxfam report indicating that the wealthiest one per cent possesses about half of the world's wealth has left the richest people in the world 'reeling with disappointment,' a leading billionaire said on Tuesday. Speaking to reporters in Davos, Switzerland, where he is attending the World Economic Forum, the hedge-fund owner Harland Dorrinson said, 'I think I speak for a lot of my fellow billionaires when I say I thought we were doing a good deal better than that.'"
Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "Years before the release in December of a Senate Intelligence Committee report detailing the C.I.A.'s use of torture and deceit in its detention program, an internal review[, known as the Panetta Review,] by the agency found that the C.I.A. had repeatedly overstated the value of intelligence gained during the brutal interrogations of some of its detainees.... New details of the Panetta Review ... came as Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the new chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote to President Obama with an odd request: He wants the committee's report back. Mr. Burr sent a letter last week to the White House saying that his Democratic predecessor, Senator Dianne Feinstein, should never have transmitted the entire 6,700-page report to numerous departments and agencies within the executive branch...."
Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Surveillance cameras at Vice President Biden's private Delaware residence failed to capture images of the gunman who fired shots near the house on Saturday night, leaving authorities with no leads or suspects.... The security system at the house has had a long track record of problems and false alarms, said several people familiar with the problem. It was so unreliable at times last year, occasionally giving incorrect data, that the Secret Service turned it off for several months -- warning agents at the time that cameras and alarms would be shut down indefinitely. The system was quickly repaired in November, after The Post first inquired about the problems."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Greg Wallace & Brian Stelter of CNN: "Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told CNN Tuesday she intends to sue Fox News in the wake of the channel's coverage of supposed 'no-go zones' for non-Muslims. Hidalgo said the channel had 'insulted' her city." ...
... Doreen Carvajal of the New York Times on "Le Petit Journal"'s mockery of Fox "News." ...
... See also today's Presidential Race below.
Doktor Zoom of Wonkette: "Bland centrist Ron Fornier, who seems to aspire to be David Broder without all the edginess, has graced us with some standards for judging Barack Obama's State of the Union address tonight. Needless to say, he thinks the Republican takeover of the Senate presents America with a beautiful opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to 'begin governing together' like good boys and girls -- if only Obama doesn't poison everything by trying to enact his agenda." Read on, especially the exchange between Fournier & Jamelle Bouie where Fournier (who is white) accuses Bouie (who is black) of being a racist. ...
... Charles Pierce: "Fournier ... writes about this president like a man with an odd kind of Tourette's, a medical condition that causes him to uncontrollably blurt out banalities like 'Leadership!,' or 'Bipartisan!'... The idea that 'progress' and 'partisan gains' are mutually exclusive is the most obvious tell of the Beltway hack. Throughout history, 'partisan gains' have been both good and bad for the country. Every party has had 'gains' that led to 'progress.' This mindless word-like utterance is true only if you long for the days in which Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans 'worked together' to deregulate the derivatives market, and to whack around some poor people. I don't." ...
... Steve M.: "It's not clear exactly what Fournier wants, but it's obvious that he thinks we're not supposed to look at inequities in wealth and taxation over the last several decades as we raise taxes to the level that will satisfy Fournier -- now the new burden is supposed to fall on everyone equally, even though the old burden didn't and still doesn't." ...
... If you're interested in reading Fournier in the original -- though I don't know why you would be -- here he is. It is, as Hamilton Nolan of Gawker describes it, "An Idiot's Guide to the State of the Union." This is not one of those general explainers to an upcoming event cheekily labeled 'Idiot's Guide.' This is, rather, a guide to Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, written by an idiot."
Scott Bomboy of the National Constitution Center: "A unanimous Supreme Court said on Tuesday that Arkansas can't dictate the length of a beard maintained by a Muslim prisoner, after he made his own case initially to the Court using a handwritten form."
Life Lessons for Geriatric, Reality-Deprived Supremes. Public Defender Seth Morris in Salon: "In December, in the midst of nationwide protests drawing attention to the broken relationship between the police and communities of color, the Supreme Court demonstrated an impressive disconnect with reality. It issued a decision in Heien v. North Carolina that tears at the fragile police-minority relationship, and will further erode confidence in government and law enforcement.... In Heien, a police officer pulled over a man for not having more than one functioning brake light when it turns out the law only requires one. The man then consented to a search and was found to be in possession of cocaine. The Supreme Court said the detention, which requires reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, did not violate the Fourth Amendment because the officer's mistake was a reasonable mistake of law.... This decision shows how poorly the Court understands the daily interactions of citizens and the police. The Supreme Court seems to still think that the police use the vehicle code solely to keep the roads safe. They don't. They also use the vehicle code to prey on poor people." (Emphasis added.)
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to making up shit. -- George Santayahoo ...
,,, Brendan James of TPM: "Speaker 'Wild Bill' Finley received big applause at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition convention on Sunday as he preached that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been a tea party member if he were alive today. Finley told the crowd the left has 'hijacked' King's dream and that racism would have died out long ago if it wasn't 'manufactured' by liberals.... He said that MLK, who worked closely with socialist and anti-capitalist civil rights activists throughout his career, would not abide the left's 'political agenda.' Finley said that if King were alive today the left would 'spit in his face.'" ...
... CW: Yes, it seems like only yesterday when Bernie Sanders said he didn't want to make blah people's lives better by giving them white people's money. I well remember when Al Franken said the White Citzen's Councils were a force for good. And how how about that Elizabeth Warren explaining "too big to jail" to David Duke's white supremacist buddies? Yeah, racism is a totally left-wing phenomenon.
Evan DeFilippis & Devin Hughes, in a Politico Magazine opinion piece: Homesowners' shooting innocent people "are the byproduct of a tragic myth: that millions of gun owners successfully use their firearms to defend themselves and their families from criminals. Despite having nearly no academic support in public health literature, this myth is the single largest motivation behind gun ownership. It traces its origin to a two-decade-old series of surveys that, despite being thoroughly repudiated at the time, persists in influencing personal safety decisions and public policy throughout the United States."
Presidential Race
Michael Falcone of ABC News: "'Yes, there is a chance,' he would challenge Clinton, Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an interview on 'Good Morning America' today. 'But I haven't made my mind up about that. We've got a lot of work to do between now and then. There's plenty of time.'"
Bobby Knows Best. Julia O'Donoghue of the Times-Picayune: "Gov. Bobby Jindal continued to claim Muslim 'no-go zones' exist in Europe Monday, even as British political leaders and American media outlets issued statements repudiating such statements. 'I think your viewers know absolutely there are places where the police are less likely to go. They absolutely know there are neighborhoods where they wouldn't feel comfortable,' Jindal told CNN in London Monday." Hey, he read it in the Right Wing News. It must be truthy. ...
... Ed Kilgore: "There are a couple of things that make this incident an abomination, even by Jindal's standards. For one thing, his staff put out an advance copy of his speech last week.... Bobby had plenty of time to amend his remarks to steer clear of the controversy, but instead decided to surf it for attention.... Then there's the fact that the context of this Yahoo Abroad ploy was that great and abiding scam, the Gubernatorial Trade Mission, whereby state chief executives, especially those thinking about a presidential run, pretend they can rustle up business for the home folks by jetting across the seas to hobnob with foreign 'job creators.'..." CW: On the taxpayers' nickel, I would add. ...
... CW: Maybe PM David Cameron should sue Muslim "expert" Bobby Jindal. ...
... digby: "I don't know if he's misinformed or lying but this is the kind of lunacy that we are going to be seeing more of. It's obvious that terrorism fear-mongering is back on the menu.... There are no 'no-go' zones where officials have just given up sovereignty and where the laws and rules of the state don't apply. But you have to love the chutzpah of this moron prefacing all his lies and misstatements by saying he 'dealing with reality and facts'. These are 'reality and facts' that even Fox News has disowned and apologized for.... @AndyWitney noted the fact that we have some Americans who believe in 'no-go zones' right here at home. Cliven Bundy comes to mind ... he and his friends fought off federal agents with firearms. But that's completely different, of course. Because Muslims." ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. "MSNBC is distancing itself from a guest who asserted on Monday that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal 'might be trying to scrub some of the brown off his skin.' Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights attorney and commentator, made the racially-tinged remark on MSNBC's 'Now with Alex Wagner.' It immediately prompted criticism. An MSNBC spokeswoman told CNN on Tuesday morning that Iftikhar won't be appearing on the channel again.... On Monday night, [Iftikhar] told CNN, 'I will apologize to Bobby Jindal when he apologizes to seven million American Muslims for advancing the debunked 'Muslim no-go zones' myth.'"
Paul Waldman: Mike "Huckabee is going to be the candidate of cultural resentment. He wants to be the spokesperson for those who feel that they're looked down upon by the elites.... There is without question a sizeable market within the Republican Party for this kind of appeal. The problem is that it isn't large enough to get you the presidential nomination." Waldman also discusses & embeds Jon Stewart's interview of Hucklebee. ...
... Ed Kilgore: "I thought Sarah Palin was the unequaled and all-time champion of conservative self-pity. But Huck's really giving her a run for her money. And he's almost certainly running for president. I do hope MSM types who still think Huck's this nice funny bass-playing 'populist' are exposed to this amazingly malicious book, which pretty much (unless the parts I've read are not representative) tells conservative Christians they'd better seize power or get ready for crucifixion."
God News, Wednesday Edition
Philip Pullella of Reuters: Catholics should not feel they have to breed 'like rabbits' because of the Church's ban on contraception, Pope Francis said on Monday, suggesting approved natural family planning methods. Francis used the unusually frank language during an hour-long news conference on the plane from Manila to Rome at the end of his week-long Asia trip." ...
... CW: I don't see these comments as exactly groundbreaking; I think Francis is saying, "Use the rhythm method. Don't use the pill." I would question how "natural" the rhythm method is: isn't it "natural" for a woman & her partner to want to have sex when she is fertile? I think so, & if I'm not mistaken, there are quite a few studies that have found women feel sexier when they are ovulating -- something that comes, you know, naturally. ...
... Never Mind. AFP: "Pope Francis on Wednesday described large families as a 'gift from God', just days after he said Catholics did not need to 'breed like rabbits'. In an apparent attempt to put the controversial comments he made on his way back from a visit to the Philippines into context, the Argentinian argued that the global economic system is the primary cause of poverty, rather than overpopulation."
Beyond the Beltway
Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times: "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York on Tuesday proposed the construction of an elevated AirTrain to La Guardia. It would be the first rail link to an airfield long lamented for its transit-starved location in Queens.... It is an ambitious, Robert Moses-style proposal from a governor determined to leave an imprint in his second term, although major elements remained to be worked out. When the train would start operating, for one, is far from certain.... Mr. Cuomo was also vague about how to pay for the train.... Proposals for a train to La Guardia have circulated in transportation circles for decades."
Al Baker & David Goodman of the New York Times: "Patrick J. Lynch, the president of New York City’s largest police union, who has openly clashed with the mayor in recent weeks, is facing a rare challenge to his leadership from a group within the union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. A slate of candidates, led by veteran union trustees, announced on Tuesday that they will run against Mr. Lynch in elections later this year, with Brian Fusco, a 27-year-veteran officer from Brooklyn, their pick for union president."
Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times: "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York on Tuesday proposed the construction of an elevated AirTrain to La Guardia. It would be the first rail link to an airfield long lamented for its transit-starved location in Queens."
Today in Responsible Gun Ownership. Abby Phillip of the Washington Post: "A 9-month-old boy was shot and killed by his 5-year-old brother in a Missouri home on Monday, police said. The boy found his grandfather's .22-caliber magnum revolver that was being kept on a shelf built into the headboard in the master bedroom, Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White told The Washington Post. The baby was in a crib in the same room when the gun went off, and a bullet struck him in the head."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress."
Politico: "The Navy fired the commanding officer of Naval Base Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday amid reports he's under investigation for being involved in an alleged extramarital affair -- and following the death of the husband of the woman the base commander was reportedly involved with."
AP: "French anti-terror prosecutors sought Tuesday to charge four men in connection with the attacks in Paris that left 20 people dead, which would be the first suspects charged in the country's bloodiest terrorist attacks in decades."