The Commentariat -- Dec. 7, 2013

"In this week's address, President Obama shames the Party of Scrooge:

Gene Robinson makes a strong case for raising the minimum wage: "President Obama should specify a number --- at least $10 an hour -- and go out on one of his barnstorming tours. Democrats should make the issue a central theme of the 2014 campaign. I believe the public would respond, which means that, ultimately, Republicans would respond. The president has a long agenda. This is where he should start."

Charles Pierce has a fine tribute to Nelson Mandela. ...

... Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast: "In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan placed Mandela's African National Congress on America's official list of 'terrorist' groups. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney voted against a resolution urging that he be released from jail. In 2004, after Mandela criticized the Iraq War, an article in National Review said his 'vicious anti-Americanism and support for Saddam Hussein should come as no surprise, given his longstanding dedication to communism and praise for terrorists.' As late as 2008, the ANC remained on America's terrorism watch list, thus requiring the 89-year-old Mandela to receive a special waiver from the secretary of State to visit the U.S." ...

... Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic: "... William F. Buckley -- intellectual founder of the modern right -- effectively worked as a press agent for apartheid.... Apartheid would ultimately draw some of America's most celebrated conservatives into its orbit. The roster includes Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, Jesse Helms..., Jeff Flake..., Jerry Falwell ... [and] Pat Robertson.... When you see a Tea Party protestor waving the flag of slavery in front of the home of the first black president, understand that this instinct has been cultivated. It is still, at this very hour, being cultivated." ...

... Jamelle Bouie of the Daily Beast: "In 1985, William F. Buckley Jr. voiced his support for South African President P.W. Botha.... In the same column, he declared, 'Where Mandela belongs, in his current frame of mind, is precisely where he is: in jail.' ... You can find George Will writing in opposition to sanctions and Jerry Falwell leading a 'reinvestment' drive to counter the push to divest assets from South Africa. The conservative movement was so invested in opposition to Mandela that decades later it has become a problem for the latest GOP generation, which represents a constituency that still hates Mandela.... To wit, when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) paid tribute to Mandela on his Facebook page, he was met with a stream of angry condemnations." ...

... ** Adam Serwer of NBC News: "... Remember that sometimes the radicals are correct, that in the heat of the moment, movements for justice can be easily caricatured by those with authority as threats to public safety, and those seeking basic rights and dignity as monstrous villains. And then after the radicals win, we try to make them safe and useless to future radicals by pretending our beloved secular saints were never radical at all." ...

Rick Santorum -- Still an Ignoramus

He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people's lives -- and Obamacare is front and center in that. -- Rick Santorum, on Mandela ...

Mandela enshrined in the new South African constitution a fundamental right to health care for all citizens, and introduced a government-funded public health care system to help cover those who could not afford the private system already in place. That was the foundation for a new universal health care system the country unveiled two years ago, which is now expanding to cover the entire country by 2026. -- Adam Peck, Think Progress

... Igor Volsky & Zack Beauchamp of Think Progress provide a timeline of how the right campaigned to undermine Mandela. And, yeah, some of those apartheidchiks are still "representing" us. ...

... Very late last night I caught a bit of a BBC conversation (they do this a lot on this show) wherein they said that Raygun said that one of the reasons he supported the white guys running the place (my words) was because they were our friends and supported us during WWII. The BBC guys said Raygun, of course, was wrong. Those white guys had been collaborators. I'm gonna try to find something on this so Marie doesn't get mad at me. -- Haley Simon, in yesterday's Comments

Mr. Botha sided with the [Nazis], joining the right-wing Afrikaner nationalists in the Ossewabrandwag, or Ox Wagon Fire Guard, which was closely related to Daniel F. Malan's Reunited National Party. A paramilitary group within the Guard, modeled after the Nazi Brownshirts, agitated against the pro-Allied government of Jan Christian Smuts." Some time later, "Mr. Botha publicly condemned the Ossewabrandwag" but he remained active in the party that sided with the Nazis till 1944. -- Joseph Gregory, New York Times obituary of P. W. Botha, 2006

Despite a growing international movement to topple apartheid in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan maintained a close alliance with a South African government [led by P. W. Botha] that was showing no signs of serious reform. And the Reagan administration demonized opponents of apartheid, most notably the African National Congress, as dangerous and pro-communist. Reagan even vetoed a bill to impose sanctions on South Africa, only to be overruled by Congress. -- Justin Elliott in Salon, 2011

Can we abandon a country that has stood beside us in every war we've ever fought, a country that strategically is essential to the free world in its production of minerals we all must have and so forth? I just feel that, myself, that here, if we're going to sit down at a table and negotiate with the Russians, surely we can keep the door open and continue to negotiate with a friendly nation like South Africa. -- Ronald Reagan, speaking in support of Botha's apartheid regime, 1981

Reagan said, you know, these people supported us in World War II. I said, Mr. President, your history is bad. These guys you're talking about -- the South African apartheid regime [which Botha led] -- most of them supported the Nazis. -- Bishop Desmond Tutu, on a private conversation he had with Reagan

Yeah, Haley, I did have to do some Googling on this, but I'm not mad. And the BBC commentator was right. -- Constant Weader

... Al Sharpton, Chris Matthews: F. W. De Klerk & other South African apartheid leaders were more patriotic than Mitch McConnell & the GOP are:

The New York Times Editors write

"Some Bankers Aren't too Big to Jail." Danielle Douglas of the Washington Post: "Since 2008, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program [SIGTARP] has pursued criminal charges against 107 senior bank officers, most of whom have been sentenced to prison. Created to supervise the government bailout of the auto and financial industries, the agency has found dozens of cases of bank executives who misused bailout funds. SIGTARP has a staff of 170, a budget of $41 million and an enforcement track record that rivals agencies twice its size. The agency's work has resulted in $4.7 billion in restitution paid to the government and victims. Lawmakers are holding SIGTARP up as a model and questioning why other agencies are not producing similar results."

Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times profiles Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

John Wagner & Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "The Maryland official who directly oversaw the rollout of Maryland's health insurance exchange resigned Friday amid continuing technical problems that have hampered the state's online enrollment efforts. After an emergency session Friday night, the board of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange accepted the resignation of Rebecca Pearce, its executive director, and thanked her in a statement for working 'tirelessly and with tremendous dedication' for more than two years." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "The ObamaCare error rate has fallen dramatically." ...

... CW: Yesterday, I linked to a piece by a right-wing writer named Peter Schweitzer who claimed -- based on White House logs & Politico's daily calendar -- that President Obama had no one-on-one meetings with HHS Secretary Sebelius between July 12, 2010, & November 30, 2013. ...

... BUT. Dylan Byers of Politico: "The White House on Friday criticized as misleading a report in Politico Magazine claiming that President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius met just once since the signing of the Affordable Care Act more than three years ago. 'The published report that was written by an advocate is based on a ridiculously false premise,' White House press secretary Jay Carney said during a press briefing. 'Cabinet secretaries don't regularly get entered into the White House visitors logs, [though] they come frequently. Kathleen Sebelius comes frequently, and she meets frequently with the president.'"

Senate Races

Scott Brown, a potential GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, who has also explored a presidential run, briefly confuses New Hampshire with Massachusetts, which he did serve as Senator. Via Aaron Blake of the Washington Post:

     Don't worry, Senator; it happens to all the best presidential candidates:

Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican who was first elected to the Senate in 1978, set up a generational and ideological clash in the state's Republican primary when he announced Friday that he would seek a seventh term in 2014.... While Mr. Cochran, who turns 76 on Saturday, has the support of many leading Republicans in the state, he is already facing opposition from Chris McDaniel, 41, a state senator aligned with the Tea Party...." CW: Yes, because a guy who voted to support the South African apartheid regime, even as most Senators from his own party voted to impose sanctions against the racist South African government, is totally too liberal for Mississippi.

News Ledes

AP: "About 50 survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor paused Saturday at the site to honor those killed and remember the moment that plunged the U.S. into World War II."

New York Times: Merrill Newman, "an American veteran who had been held prisoner in North Korea for more than a month, landed in the United States on Saturday after his release by the government, which cited his 'sincere repentance' for his acts during the Korean War as the reason for letting him go."

New York Times: "Flying aboard a nondescript Air Force cargo plane under the cloak of secrecy, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel landed [Afghanistan] on Saturday.... Mr. Hagel was scheduled to meet with American commanders to discuss the status of the war, with troops to offer holiday greetings and with Afghan officials to see if he could press for a breakthrough in finalizing a bilateral security agreement."

'Tis the Season

As we approach the high holy days of the Christian faith, some turn to thoughts of the Baby Jesus & the fanciful nativity narratives. There are two, one by the author of the Gospel of Matthew & one by the author of Luke. There is little correspondence between the two stories.

Others think of buying gifts for the kids:

 

Still others reckon it's a bright idea to remind Reality Chex readers of what a wise fellow the Baby Jesus grew up to be.

I'm sure there are sites where such comments are well-appreciated. This isn't one of them. So I urge you to save yourselves the trouble of passing along ideas or sayings you attribute to Jesus. (Almost all of the sayings the Gospels ascribe to Jesus came from other sources, many from Pharisaic rabbis, others from Roman & Greek philosophers, etc.)

Whether or not your comment is germane to current events, I almost certainly will zap the whole comment if a portion of it smacks of proselytizing, particularly Christian proselytizing. I have neither time nor the inclination to edit your work. If you decide to push it, I will probably err on the side of caution & remove the comment. Most commenters know how to incorporate religious beliefs into their comments without advocating for those beliefs, & most do so in appropriate contexts. If you're not sure, your comment probably crosses the line. 

Perhaps this doesn't seem fair to you. Perhaps it isn't fair. But it is what is.

Pax vobiscum.

The Commentariat -- Dec. 6, 2013

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "House and Senate negotiators on Thursday closed in on a budget deal that, while modest in scope, could break the cycle of fiscal crises and brinkmanship that has hampered the economic recovery and driven public opinion of Congress to an all-time low. But the leaders of the House and Senate budget committees -- Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington -- encountered last-minute resistance from House Democratic leaders who said any deal should be accompanied by an extension of expiring unemployment benefits for 1.3 million workers. 'This isn't interparty bickering,' said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader. 'This is a major policy disagreement.'" ...

... Brad Plumer of the Washington Post explains why the federal unemployment extension must be reinstituted even as the unemployment rate is coming down (see today's News Ledes): "... even with steady improvement of late, the number of people who have been out of work for longer than 27 weeks is still historically high." These, of course, are the people whom the extension helps.

President Obama appeared on Chris Matthew's MSNBC show yesterday:

Paul Krugman on President Obama's December 4 speech on the economy: "Now ... we have the president of the United States breaking ranks [with conventional pundit wisdom], finally sounding like the progressive many of his supporters thought they were backing in 2008. This is going to change the discourse -- and, eventually, I believe, actual policy. So don't believe the cynics. This was an important speech by a president who can still make a very big difference." ...

... MEANWHILE, the Washington Post's fake liberal columnist Ruth Marcus laments, "... in an omission both disappointing and predictable, the president spurned the chance to challenge his own party on government debt and spiraling entitlement spending and to address the degree to which those entwined phenomena conspire to frustrate progressive solutions." Blah blah. ...

... CW: Now look at what else progressives are up against (and, yes, I'm proud to have ended a sentence with two prepositions) ...

... Ed Pilkington & Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian: "Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as 'free-market thinktanks', includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.... The proposals were co-ordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at state level.... The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83m drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline." ...

... Nick Surgey in TruthDig: "Google ... has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers. Organizations that received 'substantial' funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference), and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action. In 2013, Google also funded the corporate lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], although that group is not listed as receiving 'substantial' funding.... Google has a distinctively progressive image, but in March 2012 it hired former Republican member of the House of Representatives, Susan Molinari as its Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations. According to the New York Times, Molinari is being 'paid handsomely to broaden the tech giant's support beyond Silicon Valley Democrats and to lavish money and attention on selected Republicans.'" Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.

Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "In a sign of the left's new aggressiveness, a coalition of liberals is trying to marginalize a centrist Democratic policy group [-- Third Way --] that was responsible for a Wall Street Journal op-ed article this week that said economic populism was 'disastrous' for the party.... By directly going after [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren [D-Mass.], who has an avid following among progressives, Third Way all but ensured that it would get the fight it seemed to want to pick." ...

... Jonathan Chait has a funny, but ultimately informative, take on the Third Way-Warren contretemps, "pitting unruly McGovernite hippies against smarmy Corporate Shill-o-crats."

Peter Schweizer in Politico Magazine: "A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) analysis finds that from July 12, 2010, to Nov. 30, 2013, the president’s public schedule records zero one-on-one meetings between Obama and Sebelius. Equally shocking, over the same period, the president's calendar lists 277 private meetings with his other Cabinet secretaries (excluding full Cabinet meetings)." CW: Schweizer is a winger & so of course GAI is a right-wing tank. But assuming Politico verified his results (which may be a foolish assumption), this is a pretty stunning revelation. ...

... Michael Hiltzig of the Los Angeles Times: "... the [California] GOP website, coveringhealthcareca.com, looks like an effort to steer citizens away from coveredca.com, which is the legitimate enrollment site for California's individual insurance exchange.... There's only one course for the Assembly Republicans to take, if they're not going to have a reputation for lying and misrepresentation hung around their necks. They need to take their website down and disavow it. The right time for them to do so is now." ...

     ... CW: I linked to a story on this hoax a few days ago, & I noticed Al Sharpton ran a segment on it. Still, following Hiltzig & Sharpton are probably not high priorities to busy families who need health insurance. As Hiltzig noted in an earlier post, "Just a couple of weeks ago California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris shut down 10 bogus insurance sites, some of them with names very similar to the real thing. She must have overlooked the GOP's entry." Shutting down this scam was my recommendation, too. ...

... ** Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times: "Quinetta Rascoe is working to sign people up for coverage under Obamacare in rural North Carolina, where lawmakers are hostile and many of the neediest people are skeptical and uninformed." ...

... CW: Former Bushie & therefore WashPo columnist Michael Gerson writes a column on how surgery & treatment saved him from dying of kidney cancer. Funny thing, he never mentions how lucky he was to have health insurance to cover his extensive & expensive treatment. Or how he sure is glad that the less fortunate will now have that chance, too. Putz.

Mark Landler & David Sanger of the New York Times: "China appears ready to force nearly two dozen journalists from American news organizations to leave the country by the end of the year, a significant increase in pressure on foreign news media that has prompted the American government's first public warning about repercussions. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised the issue here in meetings with President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders, and then publicly chastised the Chinese on Thursday for refusing to say if they will renew the visas of correspondents and for blocking the websites of American-based news media."

Aaron Blake & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Obama lived with his uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while he was a student at Harvard Law School -- despite previously saying there was no record of the two having met.... Obama's relationship with his uncle is also news to scholars of the president, who also found no evidence that the two had met.... Onyango 'Omar' Obama faced a deportation hearing earlier this week following a drunk-driving arrest. During the hearing, he said that the president had lived with him while he was a student at Harvard."

Tim Egan Goes to San Francisco: "... the city named for a 13th century pauper from Assisi serves more as an allegory of how the rich have changed America for the worse."

Local News

Dayna Morales, Scam Artiste. John Batten of Bridgewater Patch: Dayna Morales, the New Jersey waitperson who claimed customers stiffed her because they didn't approve of her "gay lifestyle," received thousands of dollars in donations to make up for the lost tip before the customers came forward with strong evidence that they had tipped Morales generously tip & never wrote the supposed derogatory note. Morales "told NJ.com on Nov. 18 that she wouldn't be keeping any of the money, saying she planned to send it to the Wounded Warrior Project. But as of Wednesday, the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit that supports veterans returning from overseas duty, could not confirm Morales had made any donations.... Morales could not be reached for comment." ...

     ... Via Andy Martin of New York: "If we still wanted to give Morales the benefit of the doubt, we'd point out she could have donated anonymously from elsewhere. But we don't." ...

     ... CW: In my own effort to give Morales the benefit of the doubt, I once speculated that perhaps she was suffering from PTSD. Apparently not. Morales, though she has claimed to have endured harrowing combat experiences, never served in a combat zone. Of all her lies, & evidence of them keeps piling up, I find the false claims about combat service the most egregious.

News Ledes

New York Times: North Korea has released Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old American veteran of the Korean War, whom they had been holding since October 26 for "indelible" offenses against North Korea. "In early 1953, [Newman] served on the island of Chodo, advising North Korean anti-Communist guerrillas in raids on the mainland."

Reuters: "Storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear plant like one that spilled almost 80,000 gallons of radioactive water this year were built in part by workers illegally hired in one of the poorest corners of Japan, say labor regulators and some of those involved in the work."

Guardian: "Thousands of fast food and retail workers went on strike across the US on Thursday in a signal of the growing clamour for action on income equality."

AP: "Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned. The bride[, Elizabeth Lev,] is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, one of Pope Francis' top advisers." CW P.S. Of course this wouldn't be a "disgrace" at all if priests were permitted to have normal sexual relationships.

AP: "The Russian pilot who sent a Boeing 737 into a near-vertical dive, killing all 50 people on board, might have had a fake license, Russian investigators said Friday. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said his team believes that some pilots working for small regional airlines in Russia have not been properly trained but managed to get fake licenses in centers certified by the country's aviation agency."

Washington Post: "The U.S. economy added 203,000 jobs in November, according to government data released Friday morning, continuing several months of solid gains and raising hopes that the recovery is finally ready for takeoff. In addition, the national unemployment rate fell to 7 percent. This time, the decline reflected a pickup in hiring rather than a shrinking labor force."

New York Times: " The Pentagon announced Thursday that it had repatriated two longtime Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainees to Algeria, where, fearing persecution, neither man wanted to be sent."

New York Times: "In his first concrete step to address the clerical sexual-abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis will establish a commission to advise him on protecting children from pedophile priests and on how to counsel victims...."