The Commentariat -- Dec. 8, 2012
The President's Weekly Address:
... Here's the transcript. Same ole, same ole.
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would enter the national debate over same-sex marriage, agreeing to hear a pair of cases challenging state and federal laws that define marriage to include only unions of a man and a woman."
Karen McVeigh of the Guardian: "The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for 'children [link fixed] with potential hostile intent'. In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as 'deeply troubling', army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as 'military-age males', had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces." CW: how is it that I read this first in a non-U.S. source? Looks like Current TV covered it, but that's about it.
Scott Shane & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Private [Bradley] Manning faces a potential life sentence if convicted on charges that he gave WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization, hundreds of thousands of confidential military and diplomatic documents. But for now, he has been effectively putting on trial his former jailers at the Quantico, Va., Marine Corps base. His lawyer, David E. Coombs, has grilled one Quantico official after another, demanding to know why his client was kept in isolation and stripped of his clothing at night as part of suicide-prevention measures."
Cliff Notes
Daniel Newhauser of Roll Call: "Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio did not rule out a compromise agreement to raise taxes as part of a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, but he kept the ball in President Barack Obama's court when it comes to finding a way to get there."
Paul Krugman: "Ezra Klein says that the shape of a fiscal cliff deal is clear: only a 37 percent rate on top incomes, and a rise in the Medicare eligibility age. I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that this is just a case of creeping Broderism, that it's a VSP fantasy.... Because if Obama really does make this deal, there will be hell to pay. First, raising the Medicare age is terrible policy.... Second, why on earth would Obama be selling Medicare away to raise top tax rates when he gets a big rate rise on January 1 just by doing nothing?"
... And yet, and yet. It ain't just Ezra Klein who's getting the vibes from the White House. Here was Lawrence O'Donnell the other day:
The president ... always says, 'I have to have the top rates go up' -- and it's worth noting that he doesn't specifically say I have to have 36 or 39%, he doesn't offer a specific number. But he always says, 'but we're willing to do that by significant spending cuts in entitlements.' ... He brings it up. He doesn't say the word Medicare, but that s what he's talking about.
... Digby thought O'Donnell was blowing smoke then, but she doesn't think so now. ...
... AND if you think O'Donnell isn't connected enough to "read" the President, how about Joe? Zeke Miller of Buzzfeed reports, "Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that the Obama administration is flexible about raising tax rates on the nation's highest earners, as long as they do rise. 'There are two irreducible minimum requirements for us,' Biden said at a lunch with Americans who would be affected by the fiscal cliff. 'The top brackets have to go up -- this is not a negotiable issue; theoretically we can negotiate how far up. But we think it should go -- the top rate should go to 39.6%.'"
** Dan Froomkin of the Huffington Post: "... according to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.... Lies from Republicans generally and standardbearer Mitt Romney in particular weren't limited to the occasional TV ads, either; the party's most central campaign principles -- that federal spending doesn't create jobs, that reducing taxes on the rich could create jobs and lower the deficit -- willfully disregarded the truth.... Mann said he was struck in conversations with journalists by how influenced they were by the heavily funded movement to promote a bipartisan consensus around deficit reduction and austerity.... Mann and Ornstein said that in practice, the fact-checkers may have made things worse rather than better." ...
... Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "The issue isn't that Republicans are 'too' conservative, whatever that might mean. It's that the party, and to a startling degree the conservative movement generally, has failed to develop reality-based policy proposals; has decided in many cases that compromise itself is against its principles; and has (in the case of the Romney/Ryan campaign) repeatedly violated norms about lying in campaigns."
Dana Milbank: Jim DeMint "is, arguably, the perfect candidate to run a post-thought think tank."
CW: don't think Apple is getting all patriotic & shuttling its manufacturing ops back to the U.S.A. Quentin Hardy of the New York Times reports that the few computers it will produce in the U.S. will likely be larger ones which businesses use & they're making the move to save on shipping costs of the heavier product.
Gail Collins is less than impressed that in January, women will comprise a whopping 20 percent of the U.S. Senate.
Charles Pierce: "Of all the unfathomable quirks -- and I am being very kind, it being the holiday season and all -- of the Obama Administration, its unfathomable rigidity on the topic of marijuana makes less sense than any of the others."
Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "... President Obama is dropping his principled objection to some forms of political fundraising to help pay for the post-election party.... The Presidential Inaugural Committee will accept unlimited corporate donations to help fund Obama's inauguration festivities next month, reversing a voluntary ban on the money he imposed on the inaugural four years ago and during the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Obama will also allow individuals to contribute up to the legal maximum for the 2013 inauguration -- $250,000 -- lifting a $50,000 cap he voluntarily imposed in 2008...." ...
... John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation: "The decision prioritizes a lavish celebration over the integrity of the office, and bodes poorly for an administration whose first term can be characterized as slowly turning away from a principled approach to money in politics in favor of political expediency and fundraising." ...
... Dylan Byers of Politico: "Because inauguration day falls on a Sunday in 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts will officially administer the official oath of office [to President Obama] in a private ceremony that day. The public inauguration on the Capitol Building's West Front -- at which Roberts will administer a second, symbolic oath of office -- will take place the next day. In early meetings with the inaugural committee, officials privately indicated to reporters that the Jan. 20 event could be closed to reporters and cameras." The press is not amused.
Sarah Lyall of the New York Times has an expanded story on the suicide of a British nurse whom Australian DJs tricked into divulging information about the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge who was hospitalized at the time.
Local News
Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times: "Charlie Crist is becoming a Democrat. Crist -- Florida's former Republican governor ... on Friday evening signed papers changing his party from independent to Democrat. He did so during a Christmas reception at the White House, where President Barack Obama greeted the news with a fist bump for the man who had a higher profile campaigning for Obama's re-election this year than any Florida Democrat."
Don't Tell Douthat. Emily Ramshaw of the New York Times: "When [Texas] state lawmakers passed a two-year budget in 2011 that moved $73 million from family planning services to other programs, the goal was largely political: halt the flow of taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood clinics. Now they are facing the policy implications and, in some cases, reconsidering. The latest Health and Human Services Commission projections ... indicate that during the 2014-15 biennium, poor women will deliver an estimated 23,760 more babies than they would have, as a result of their reduced access to state-subsidized birth control. The additional cost to taxpayers is expected to be as much as $273 million -- $103 million to $108 million to the state's general revenue budget alone -- and the bulk of it is the cost of caring for those infants under Medicaid." CW: who could have guessed? Take away a woman's birth control, & she'll start having babies.
Chicago Tribune/AP: "Republicans slammed right-to-work legislation through the Michigan House and Senate Thursday, drawing raucous protests from throngs of stunned union supporters, whose outnumbered Democratic allies were powerless to stop it.... Details of the bills weren't made publicly available until they were read aloud on both floors as debate began. The chaos drew raucous protests from hundreds of union supporters, some of whom were pepper-sprayed by police when they tried to storm the Senate chamber.... After repeatedly insisting during his first two years in office that right-to-work was not on his agenda, [Gov. Rick] Snyder [R] reversed course Thursday," & said he would sign the legislation." ...
... Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press: "Health care providers could use a 'moral objection' or 'matter of conscience' standard to refuse service to patients under a bill passed by the [Michigan] state Senate today.... The state already has a conscientious objection clause for abortion services, but the new law also could give the green light to doctors to refuse to write birth control prescriptions and opens the door to a refusal of service for all sorts of ailments, said state Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw. Kahn, a cardiologist ... was the only Republican to join most of the Democrats to vote against the bill." ...
... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama will wade into the midst of the Michigan debate Monday when he visits a Detroit area auto plant in a state he won resoundingly in part because of the support of the UAW. A White House spokesman said the president opposes right-to-work legislation but could not say whether Obama plans to address it directly in his remarks Monday." CW: a comprehensive story about the whys & wherefores of the state GOP's move.
News Ledes
New York Times: Italian "Prime Minister Mario Monti said he intended to resign after losing the backing of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's party, according to a statement issued late Saturday by the president's office."
New York Times: "Facing the most serious crisis of his presidency, Mohamed Morsi is leaning more closely than ever on his Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, betting on their political muscle to push through a decisive victory in the referendum on Egypt's divisive draft constitution." ...
Update: "Struggling to quell protests and violence that have threatened to derail a vote on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, President Mohamed Morsi moved Saturday to appease his opponents with a package of concessions just hours after state media reported that he was moving toward imposing a form of martial law to secure the streets and allow the vote." ...
... Washington Post: "Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi early Sunday annulled most of an extraordinary Nov. 22 decree that gave him near-absolute power.... The decree ... will be replaced by a modified version of the original declaration. But the most controversial article, which placed all of Morsi's actions beyond judicial review, is gone...."
... AP: "Egypt's military warned Saturday of 'disastrous consequences' if the crisis that sent tens of thousands of protesters back into the streets is not resolved, signaling the army's return to an increasingly polarized and violent political scene." Al Jazeera story here.
Al Jazeera: "More than 100,000 Palestinians have gathered in Gaza for a rally marking the 25th anniversary of Hamas to be addressed by the ruling movement's leader in exile. Khaled Meshaal crossed from Egypt on Friday. His speech was set to be the headline event of the rally."
Reuters: "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify on a report expected to be released next week on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, a top Republican lawmaker said on Friday."
Guardian: "Talks on a new climate deal ground on through Friday night in Qatar, as countries failed to agree on key issues including: rescuing the Kyoto protocol, finance and compensation for poor countries suffering the effects of climate change, and how to structure a proposed new global climate change agreement. The negotiations, which have gone on for more than a fortnight, looked set to last for most of Saturday. But the marathon session left many delegates hopeful of rescuing a deal amid the frustration and confusion of the night."
AP: "Americans swiped their credit cards more often in October and borrowed more to attend school and buy cars. The increases drove U.S. consumer debt to an all-time high. The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their borrowing by $14.2 billion in October from September. Total borrowing rose to a record $2.75 trillion."