The Commentariat -- Nov. 15, 2012

Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "President Obama said in his victory speech last week that 'elections matter.' On Wednesday, he made clear how much the election matters to him -- and to the way he intends to govern in his second term. Appearing in his first post-victory news conference, the customarily cautious Obama spoke like a politician with nothing to lose after winning the last race of his life. Over the course of an hour, he struck an unabashedly populist tone in characterizing his second-term 'mandate' to help the poor and the middle class, and he warned his partisan rivals that voters had sided with his approach to the economy during the long campaign."

Ezra Klein: "The White House is saying, clearly, that they won't permit the top tax rates to remains where they are. They're taking House Speaker John A. Boehner's proposed deal and rejecting it."

President Obama responds to a question from Jonathan Karl of ABC News re: Senators John McCain & Lindsey Graham's criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice:

     ... I'm happy to say NBC News made this their lede story for awhile: "President Barack Obama on Wednesday spiritedly defended U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over her response to the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, assailing Republican criticism of her as 'outrageous.'" ...

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "McCain mischaracterizes [Susan] Rice's words and then assumes she should have all the information that is known now about the Benghazi attack. Her claim that there was a protest is clearly wrong, but within the context of that week, it was not off base, since it appeared in news reports quoting witnesses and even in the president's daily briefing.... Susan Rice's remarks five days after the attack appear to be a sideshow, especially because she had virtually no role in the key issues surrounding the Libyan mission.... Given that McCain was so quick to excuse [former Secretary of State] Condi Rice for making remarks of much greater import, it seems rather unsporting to quickly rush to judgment and mischaracterization in the case of Susan Rice."

Here's the President's full news conference:

John Parkinson of ABC News: "... the House Republican Conference voted [John] Boehner [R-Ohio] in to another two-year term as speaker. Boehner rejected the president's call earlier Wednesday for Republicans to quickly pass Senate legislation that would extend middle class tax cuts, and he alternatively called on the Senate to take up House-passed legislation to extend all of the current tax rates for one year." ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "In order to overcome Republican obstructionism, Obama must indeed be willing to go over the [fiscal] cliff, allowing the tax cuts to expire and the automatic spending cuts, which were agreed upon during the last go-around with the Republicans, in the summer of 2011, to go into effect."

... "What we don't need to do is cut benefits." -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

GOP Excuse 127: Professors. Blowhard William Bennett, Bush Pere Secretary of Education & Drug Czar, in a CNN opinion piece: Obama won because Marxist professors are teaching our young people to be socialists. ...

... GOP Excuse 128: Blackmail/Cover-up. "Betty Cracker" of Balloon Juice: Obama blackmailed Petraeus into going along with his phony explanation of the response to the Benghazi attack. Betty details how this excuse, posited by Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post & Fox "News," works. Here's a sample of the "logic" behind this excuse: "The only way Obama could cover his ass in the Benghazi affair was to orchestrate a scandal to compromise the country's most prominent general, and he fiendishly used a wingnut

... GOP Excuse 129: Obama Gifts. Maeve Reston of the Los Angeles Times: "Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a 'superb' campaign with 'no drama,' and attributed his rival's victory to 'the gifts' the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama's first term." CW: if this is the GOP's idea of "outreach" to minorities & young Americans, I don't think it will work out too well. Romney's unremitting disdain of "the 47 percent" is pathological. ...

     ... Ashley Parker of the New York Times has more of Romney's remarks about all the "gifts" Obama gave to the moocher classes. ...

     ... Oh, look. #ObamaGifts is already a Twitter meme. ...

     ... ** Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times: "Now we know that Mitt Romney did not 'misspeak' when he whined to a big-money crowd that 47 percent of Americans mooch off government and 'believe they are victims.' He meant precisely what he said.... I guess Mr. Romney would not consider oil subsidies a gift. Or a tax system that allows him to pay a 14 percent tax rate. Or his proposal to build warships and warplanes and other fancy hardware that the military doesn't want or need.... It seems like no one in his party has figured out that it wasn't 'gifts' or bad luck that caused him to lose. It was his ideas." CW: Bobby Jindel seems to get it. ...

     ... ** Paul Waldman of American Prospect: Mitt Romney takes one last opportunity to be a jerk.... Romney seems appalled that Obama would be so diabolical as to pursue policies that were beneficial to people who then went to the polls to vote for him." ...

     ... Markos Moulitsas: "Romney rides off into the sunset, as big a dick as always." ...

... GOP Excuse 130: Obama Attacked Romney. President Obama's "whole campaign was a fear-and-smear attack to make Romney unacceptable and to blame George Bush for anything that happened while Obama was president. This was all personal: that Romney is a vulture capitalist who doesn't care about people like you, ships jobs overseas, is a quintessential plutocrat and is married to a known equestrian. An attack unanswered is an attack admitted to. -- Haley Barbour ...

... Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "A week after Mitt Romney fell short in his bid for the White House, Republican leaders offered tepid praise of his candidacy. But they quickly moved on and called for a new approach to the party's rebuilding efforts." Haley Barbour took an up-the-ass tack, suggesting the party needed to undergo "a proctological exam." Bobby Jindal rejected Romney's Obama Gifts excuse: "'I absolutely reject that notion. I don't think that represents where we are as a party,' Mr. Jindal said. He added, 'We have got to stop dividing the American voters.'" ...

... Philip Elliott of the AP: "Top Republicans meeting for the first time since Election Day say the party lost its bid to unseat President Barack Obama because nominee Mitt Romney did not respond to criticism strongly enough or outline a specific agenda with a broad appeal. In conversations at the Republican Governors Association confab in Las Vegas, a half dozen party leaders predicted the GOP will lose again if it keeps running the same playbook based on platitudes in place of detailed policies. Instead, they asserted, the party needs to learn the lessons from its loss, respect voters' savvy and put forward an agenda that appeals beyond the while [sic., white], male voters who are its base." ...

... Andy Borowitz: "Opting for a bold 'big tent' strategy to rebuild the party, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, told reporters today, 'We need to welcome people who believe in different things than we do, like math and science.'"

** Linda Greenhouse: "... the vote in four states in support of same-sex marriage, and the run-up to Election Day that saw both Democrats and federal judges pushing back against Republican strategies devised to selectively minimize voter turnout ... are directly relevant to cases on the Supreme Court's current docket...." ...

... BUT law professor Nathaniel Persily, also writing in the New York Times, suggests that "a perverse outcome of the 2012 campaign may be that President Obama's victory spells doom for the civil rights law most responsible for African-American enfranchisement" even though "a campaign marred by charges of voter suppression and Election Day mishaps also makes the need for federal protection of voting rights clearer than ever.... Congress needs to enact national rules governing voter registration, provisional and absentee ballots, and voter verification and access in a new Voting Rights Act tailored to the problems confronting American democracy today."

Here's Nancy Pelosi responding to a question yesterday from NBC News legacy Luke Russert:

Barton Gellman of Time has the cover story on the Petraeus Affair that puts all the principals -- especially Petraeus -- in a bad light.

... Greg Miller & Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "The FBI’s handling of the investigation that forced CIA Director David H. Petraeus to resign came under new scrutiny Wednesday as FBI Director Robert S. Mueller faced questions on Capitol Hill and President Obama alluded to lingering questions about the course of the inquiry...." ...

... Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "A computer used by Paula Broadwell ... contained substantial classified information that should have been stored under more secure conditions, law enforcement and national security officials said on Wednesday. The contents and amount of the classified material -- and questions about how Broadwell got it -- are significant enough to warrant a continuing investigation, the officials said." ...

... Robert Burns of the AP: "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday he knows of no other senior U.S. military officers being linked to the David Petraeus investigation that has ensnared the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen. Speaking at a Bangkok news conference, Panetta said he retains 'tremendous confidence' in Allen." ...

... Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. agent who helped start the investigation that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as C.I.A. director is a 'hard-charging' veteran counterterrorism investigator.... The agent, Frederick W. Humphries II, 47, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley.... Mr. Humphries passed on Ms. Kelley's complaint to the cybersquad in the Tampa field office but was not assigned to the case. He was later admonished by supervisors who thought he was trying to insert himself improperly into the investigation.... Mr. Humphries in late October contacted Representative Dave Reichert, a Republican from Washington State.... [A Federal Law Enforcement Officer Association lawyer] took issue with news media reports that have said his client sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley.... The photo was sent as a 'joke' and was ... not sexual in nature." ...

... Lolita Baldor of the AP: "A U.S. official says the Army has suspended the security clearance of ... Paula Broadwell [who] ... held a high security clearance. Because her clearance was issued through the Army, it was the service's move to suspend it." ...

... Luis Martinez of ABC News: "Jill Kelley ... has lost the privilege of visiting MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa< without an escort.... Kelley ... had been granted unescorted access to the base under a program initiated by the Air Force unit that runs operations at the base.... [A] Defense official said Kelley's privileges ... have been taken away 'as she is involved in an ongoing investigation.'"

Douglas Dalby of the New York Times: "The death of a woman who was reportedly denied a potentially lifesaving abortion even while she was having a miscarriage has revived debate over Ireland's almost total ban on abortions." CW: this needless, unconscionable death -- multiplied thousands of times over -- would have been/still could be in our future if the anti-abortion lobby gets its way.

Right Wing World

Over and above Excuses such as Nos. 127-129-130 above, et al., here's why the GOP will never, ever get right. Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "President Obama is using a Cold War-era mind-control technique known as 'Delphi' to coerce Americans into accepting his plan for a United Nations-run communist dictatorship in which suburbanites will be forcibly relocated to cities. That's according to a four-hour briefing delivered to Republican state senators at the Georgia state Capitol last month." CW: the Republican party is a party whose candidates not only have to be "severely conservative," they have to be severely unhinged.

To Form a More Perfect Union. Dana Milbank: "... a large number of patriotic Americans, mostly from states won by Mitt Romney last week, have petitioned the White House to let them secede.... It would be excellent financial news for those of us left behind if Obama were to grant a number of the rebel states their wish 'to withdraw from the United States and create [their] own NEW government' (the petitions emphasize 'new' by capitalizing it). Red states receive, on average, far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. The balance is the opposite in blue states. The secession petitions, therefore, give the opportunity to create what would be, in a fiscal sense, a far more perfect union." ...

... Looks like students at UNC are putting their Marxist educations to good use. This map, which shows the density of signatories to the secession petitions, was plotted (and I use that term in its narrowest sense, my conspiracy theorist friends) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Current as of noon Wednesday, Nov. 14. Via John Sides of the Monkey Cage:

Local News

America's Worst Governor Sees the Light. Maybe. AP: "Florida Gov. Rick Scott, one of the most vocal critics of the federal health care overhaul, is dropping his staunch opposition to the law. Scott said in an interview Tuesday with the Associated Press that he now wants to negotiate with the federal government. He said it's time for Republicans to offer solutions to help families after they lost their bid to defeat President Barack Obama." Thanks to James S. for the link.

News Ledes

AP: "In the midst of a political tempest that has engulfed his former CIA director and his top military commander in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama is traveling to New York City to view recovery efforts from the massive East Coast storm Sandy.While there Thursday, Obama will meet with affected families, local officials and first responders who have been dealing with the deadly storm...." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "President Obama got a look on Thursday at the muddy wreckage that Hurricane Sandy left in its wake, flying over ravaged neighborhoods in Queens, consoling devastated homeowners under tents and in the streets on Staten Island, and promising a strong and continuing federal role in the recovery."

Reuters: "BP Plc is expected to pay a record U.S. criminal penalty and plead guilty to criminal misconduct in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster through a plea deal reached with the Department of Justice (DoJ) that may be announced as soon as Thursday, according to sources familiar with discussions." ...

     ... Politico Update: "BP will pay a record $4.5 billion in fines and plead guilty to a dozen felony counts under a deal with the U.S. government to settle criminal charges stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that killed 11 workers and spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Federal prosecutors also announced new indictments against two BP supervisors for manslaughter and a former BP executive for hiding information from Congress and lying to law-enforcement officials."

New York Times: "Israeli warplanes struck dozens of militant sites in Gaza< early on Thursday, the second day of Israel's deadly offensive against Hamas and other militant groups, and rockets fired from the enclave reached far into Israel, killing three civilians when one struck an apartment block in this small southern town."

New York Times: "Completing only its second orderly hand-over of power in more than six decades of rule, the Chinese Communist Party on Thursday unveiled a new leadership slate headed by Xi Jinping, the son of a revered revolutionary leader and economic reformer, who will face the task of guiding China to a more sustainable model of growth and managing the country's rise as a global power."

AP: "The 17-country eurozone has bowed to the inevitable and fallen back into recession for the first time in three years as a sprawling debt crisis took its toll on the region's stronger economies. And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the eurozone at a time of high unemployment in many countries, there are fears that the recession will deepen, and make the debt crisis even more difficult to handle."

Washington Post: "An investigation into misconduct by Air Force trainers at a Texas base found that at least 48 female students were victims of sexual assault or other transgressions by their instructors, according to a report released Wednesday that dissected the culture that enabled the worst military sex-abuse scandal in recent history."

ABC News: Rita Crundwell, "a former comptroller for a small town in Illinois, pleaded guilty to embezzling $53 million from city accounts to feed a lavish lifestyle that included a nationally known horse-breeding operation. All of Crundwell's items are up for auction by the U.S. Marshals, including 400 horses. Only $7 million has been recovered so far."

A Difference of Opinion

I'm posting this exchange -- which took place late yesterday -- between contributor James Singer & me largely because I think Singer speaks for thousands of Reality Chex readers. I don't think Singer is wrong & I am right. I not only respect his point-of-view, I find it a perfectly valid one. Still, it is one that I am constitutionally disinclined to share.

Singer: Okay, since it's not going to become a reality show, I'll borrow a line from an episode of "Prime Suspect": They're "both adults; that's what adults do." Now, can we move on? Please?

CW: @James Singer. While I'm sympathetic to your view -- no, we cannot move on. And here's why: I have a penchant for knowing the whole story, & we certainly don't know the whole story here. I think we'll find out more in the coming weeks; already the thrust of the story has moved from Petraeus (who looks more & more like a standard-issue adulterer here & not the central character) to John Allen.

I've always been more interested in what makes people tick than in politics; in fact, for me, politics is sort of human interaction writ large. Whenever I'm inclined to say, "I can't believe you did that," I realize that I can't believe it because there's something about that person -- who is likely a person close to me -- that I don't know. Either I've ignored it or s/he's hid it.

Decades ago, a man I was in love with rejected me. I didn't understand why because there was little doubt he was in love with me, too. In fact, he rejected me numerous times, and we both kept coming back till I quit. I figured out the answer in 2008 -- after I read his obituary. I was terribly sad, really heartbroken, that he had died fairly young. But later I realized there was a clue hidden in his obituary that explained his treatment of me, a clue that cleared up a decades-old mystery for me. Maybe that's what "closure" is. At any rate, it helped me understand a dynamic that I completely missed when I was in love with him. It turns out I wasn't in love with the whole person, but with the part of the person who presented himself to me. I feel a certain bittersweet gratitude to him for revealing to me in death what he could not tell me when he was alive.

We can pretty much guess the whole story on Petraeus & Broadwell at this point, although our conventional wisdom may want tweaking. But we have more to learn about the motivations of other characters in this widening farce. And I really do want to find out how it ends. I hope nobody has to die for the revelation.

Singer: @Marie. Many of us have had affairs that didn't exactly end the way we wanted them to. Shit happens. But some of us--many most of us--have had affairs that ended exactly like we wanted them to. So of our failures, we got over them; of our successes we have pleasant memories. I refer you to the Onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/widening-petraeus-scandal-reveals-human-race-has-b,30368/

CW: @James Singer. Obviously, I didn't make myself clear. This isn't about the affair(s) & whether or not they worked out. Gen. Allen says he did not have sex with that woman Jill Kelley, & there is no reason to assume that his having written 15,000 (or however many) e-mails to a would-be socialite in a backwater Florida city is evidence of a sexual liaison. But it is evidence of a dangerous liaison, & I'd like to see if the media can figure out for us -- or help us figure out -- how these general officers operate & why they're getting into these entanglements with women of questionable characters & motives. I don't know the answer to that.

I find the Petraeus-Broadwell [affair] understandable & I'm rather sympathetic to it. But why Petraeus & Allen would get mixed up with the Khawam twins is another matter, and how the administration handles it will be interesting to see.

I understand that a lot of people -- probably more men than women, but I'm not sure -- are not interested in the nuances of relationships. I am. The fact that what I do here on Reality Chex happens to intersect with something that fascinates me is a bonus. Naturally, you need not check in here, & I won't be giving a take-home quiz on stories I link, so you need not pay them any attention. But I hope you won't feel in the future a need to ask me to STUF as you did in an earlier comment. For one thing, it won't do any good.

CW Update: BTW, I find this Onion "story" as compelling as the one Singer suggested: "Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal."

The Commentariat -- Nov. 14, 2012

CW: re: a discussion contributor Diane & I had yesterday, Byron Tau of Politico reports today, "Massachusetts leaders say there are no discussions about a change the state's Senate succession laws in the event that President Obama nominates Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) to his cabinet."

Jon Stewart on the inevitable fallout from the election results:

... AND he has some advice for Greedy Bastards:

Sam Stein & Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "President Barack Obama will enter high-stakes budget negotiations firmly committed to seeing the tax rates for high-income earners rise to pre-George W. Bush levels, he assured a gathering of progressive and labor leaders on Tuesday.... 'It was a very, very positive meeting,' said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka." ...

... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "Progressive activists are now preparing to turn the firepower they marshaled to reelect the president against him if he looks like he’s backing down on his mandate, as they see it, to preserve the social safety net and raise taxes on the wealthy."

Actor-comedian Rob Delaney proves a person need not be an expert to have good ideas. In a Salon opinion piece, he writes, "President Obama should junk the Race to the Top plan immediately. It is a deeply flawed reworking of George W. Bush's test-based, pro-charter school No Child Left Behind Act. Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should change course dramatically and publicly admit Race to the Top doesn't and can't work and then craft a new plan that doesn't treat education like an industry and coerce teachers to 'teach to the test,' while marching toward education privatization."

Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "The Kaiser Family Foundation polled Americans last week, right after the election, asking what they want to see happen next with the health-care law. Most notably, they saw support for repeal plummet to an all-time low.... This isn't exactly Americans gravitating toward the health-care law: Support for expanding the law or keeping it as is held steady at 49 percent. Those who no longer support repeal seem to have drifted into the 'don't know' category, about what should happen next."

The surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race. -- Paul Ryan, explaining GOP election losses

We did everything we could to discourage the blah people from voting. We never thought those lazy takers would stand up against us makers. -- CW translation ...

Too many black people voted. -- Neetzan Zimmerman (of Gawker) translation

... Michael Shear & Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times write that it isn't just urban (read minority) voters who rejected the Republican ticket. ...

... ** Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly: "... this habit of thinking of 'the urban vote' as being a policy-indifferent mob that is simply turned out to neutralize the 'big choices' being made by civic-minded folk, making the election results meaningless in terms of the direction of the country, certainly bears the pungent whisky-and-brimstone aroma of Old Dixie politics. Ryan would be well advised not to use this sort of terminology to support the no-mandate-election spin of his party." ...

... Paul Krugman: "Asians and Jewish households are much more Democratic than you might expect given their relatively high incomes, presumably because they see the GOP as believing fundamentally in a white Christian nation from which they will forever be outsiders." Krugman wonders if "over time Southern whites will finally become culturally assimilated, and start voting like the rest of their fellow citizens." ...

... Ryan Takes a Stand: Ideology before Party. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "The House's Republican leaders would dearly like to elevate Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington to lead the House Republican Conference, putting a female face into the pantheon of the white male Republican leaders. But standing in their way is Representative Tom Price of Georgia, one of the most conservative members of the House, who has lined up some big guns in his quest for the fourth-ranking post in the House Republican conference. The most important of those guns, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin..., showed no sign of retreat Tuesday in a letter sent to colleagues endorsing Mr. Price." ...

... The People Have Spoken. So We'll Do It My Way. John Parkinson of ABC News: "Despite a devastating loss last week, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan rejected Democratic claims of a mandate to raise tax rates on the wealthy. Asked whether President Obama has a mandate on taxes, Ryan told ABC News' senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl that the House Republican majority is proof that the president does not." CW: see my remarks in today's Comments section. ...

... NEW. Dan Amira of New York explains Ryan's Rules of Mandates: "If Ryan wins, it's a mandate. If Obama wins, his party also needs to control the House of Representatives -- otherwise, no mandate. What if Ryan and Romney won, but the Democrats still gained two seats in the Senate? Unclear, but we're guessing it's a mandate." CW: I'd file Ryan's Rules of Mandates as a subcategory under Sociopaths' Rules for Living.

NEW. Patrick Keefe in the New Yorker: "the Electronic Communications Privacy Act..., originally passed in 1986..., considers any e-mail that is over a hundred and eighty days old to be 'abandoned,' meaning that the author of the e-mail no longer has any reasonable expectation that it would remain private. So to obtain access to this e-mail, the F.B.I. doesn't need a court order; it just needs to ask your e-mail provider."

... Sari Horwitz, et al., of the Washington Post: "The FBI is making a new push to determine how ... Paula Broadwell obtained classified files, part of an expanding series of investigations in a scandal that also threatens the career of the United States' top military commander in Afghanistan. Senior law enforcement officials said that a late-night seizure on Monday of boxes of material from the North Carolina home of Paula Broadwell ... marks a renewed focus by investigators on sensitive material found in her possession.... The surprise move by the FBI follows assertions by U.S. officials that the investigation had turned up no evidence of a security breach -- a factor that was cited as a reason the Justice Department did not notify the White House before last week that the CIA director had been ensnared in an e-mail inquiry."

... Maureen Dowd: David Petraeus's "fall started as Sophocles and turned sophomoric.... It features toned arms, slinky outfits, a cat fight, titillating e-mails, a military more consumed with sex than violence, a plot with more inconceivable twists than 'Homeland,' and a Twitter's-delight lexicon: an 'embedded' mistress named Broadwell, a biography called 'All In,' an other-other woman of Middle East ancestry who was a 'social liaison' to the military, a shirtless F.B.I. agent crushing on the losing-her-shirt-to-debt Tampa socialite, a pair of generals helping the socialite's twin sister with a custody case, and lawyers and crisis-management experts linked to Monica Lewinsky, John Edwards and the ABC show 'Scandal.'” Dowd blames Petraeus for "So many more American kids and Afghanistan civilians ... killed and maimed in a war that went on too long. That's the real scandal." ...

... Vernon Loeb, who covers the Defense Department for the Washington Post & wrote All In with Paula Broadwell, writes in the Post that he had no clue about her affair with David Petraeus. ...

... Massimo Calabresi of Time argues that the Justice Department had a duty to tell the President or the investigation into Gen. Petraeus' affair with Broadwell. CW: I would argue that Gen. Petraeus himself had a duty to tell the President when he found out about the investigation. He didn't. Or so we are led to believe. ...

... The Family Khawam. Christina Ng, et al., of ABC News: "Jill Kelley, 37, is a Tampa socialite who ... forged tight friendships with top brass. Her sister, Natalie Khawam, also became friendly with major players, including both Gen. Petraeus and Gen. John Allen.... A U.S. official described Kelley as a 'nice, bored, rich socialite' who drops 'honorary' from her title and tells people she is an ambassador. ... Kelley and her husband Scott ... have been sued at least nine times. Court records indicate that the Kelleys owe more than $2 million on an office building and face foreclosure.... Natalie Khawam, who now lives with her sister and brother-in-law in Tampa, is deeply in debt and filed for bankruptcy in Florida in April 2012.... Khawam has also been embroiled in a child custody battle.... In November 2011, the D.C. Superior Court ruled that Khawam's husband would get sole legal and primary custody of the child. The judge wrote that Khawam 'has exhibited an utter disregard for the child's interest' in maintaining a meaningful relationship with his father, that she 'has extreme personal deficits in the areas of honesty and integrity,' and that she has exhibited a 'willingness to say anything, even under oath, to advance her own personal interests at the expense' of her husband, the child, and others.'" ...

... Jason Cherkis & Christina Wilkie of the Huffington Post: "... Jill Kelley ... founded a questionable charity for cancer patients with her surgeon husband, Scott Kelley.... While the origins of the seed money used to start the charity in 2007 are unclear, financial records reviewed by The Huffington Post reveal that the group spent all of its money not on research, but on parties, entertainment, travel and attorney fees. By the end of 2007, the charity had gone bankrupt, having conveniently spent exactly the same amount of money, $157,284, as it started with...." ...

... Adam Estes of The Atlantic: "Frustrated by the media attention, Jill Kelley's taken to calling 911 multiple times a day. On one of these calls a couple of days ago, the socialite told the dispatcher..., 'You know, I don't know if by any chance, because I'm an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property,' she said. 'I don't know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well.' ... Jill Kelley is an honorary consul of South Korea. (Who knew?) A diplomatic official confirmed her status to Foreign Policy.... He went on to clarify, however, that it's nothing more than a symbolic title and comes with no special treatment or protection. 'She does not work as a real consul,' the official said." ...

... Here's a screengrab from an ABC News Denver affiliates story on the Petraeus Affair, via John Aravosis of AmericaBlog:

     ... The station later ran an apology, which read, in part, "... when the 7NEWS reporter went on the Internet to get an image of the book cover, the reporter mistakenly grabbed a Photoshopped image that said, 'All Up In My Snatch.' 'It was a mistake,' said KMGH-TV News Director Jeff Harris." Via Crooks & Liars. ...

... CW: the other day I mentioned in the Comments section a mindblowing flow chart created for Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Gen. Petraeus's predecessor in Afghanistan, whose career was also brought low by a little too much public exposure. Now it seems certain media outlets are creating "Pentagon of Love" flowcharts to try to get a handle on the complicated interrelationships in the Petraeus Affair. Joe Coscarelli of New York magazine has one here. Here's another from Max Read of Gawker:

Local News

Kate Zernike of the New York Times: "Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who has pushed aggressively for cutting and capping taxes in New Jersey during his three years in office, said Tuesday that people who lived in towns destroyed by Hurricane Sandy were likely to pay higher taxes to help rebuild.... Mr. Christie said he expected the federal government to do as much as it had done for victims of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast to help rebuild New Jersey. And he said that municipalities would be allowed to raise property taxes more than the 2 percent limit that he signed into law in 2010 to cover costs brought on by the storm."

Right Wing World

Dominique Mosbergen of the Huffington Post: "A petition for Texas secession has qualified to receive a White House response. As of Tuesday evening, the petition -- which asks for the peaceful withdrawal of the state of Texas from the union -- had racked up more than 81,000 signatures. (Only 25,000 are needed to elicit an official response from the Obama administration.) ... Residents in more than 40 states have filed secession petitions to the Obama administration's 'We the People' program, which is featured on the White House website, in the last few days." ...

... Kevin Robillard of Politico: "

Gov. Rick Perry, who famously mused about secession in 2009, doesn't support an effort by some Texas residents who are petitioning to leave the United States. 'Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it,' Perry spokesman Catherine Frazier told the Dallas Morning News. 'But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government.'" ...

... The Houston Chronicle rebuts a popular misconception about Texas's "right" to secede (thanks to historian/genius Rick Perry for popularizing that one) -- and related facts/fictions. ...

NEW. You know your party is in trouble when -- Erick Erickson is the voice of reason: "We here at RedState are American citizens. We have no plans to secede from the union.... Too many people have spent the past four years obsessed with birth certificates. Now they are obsessed with voter fraud conspiracies, talk of secession, and supposed election changing news stories if only we had known."

News Ledes

New York Times: New York state "Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman's office has issued subpoenas to the Long Island Power Authority and Consolidated Edison as part of an investigation into whether the utilities violated state laws in their response to Hurricane Sandy.... [New York] Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Tuesday that he had named a commission with subpoena power to investigate the handling of the disaster by utility companies."

New York Times: "Congressional investigators took aim on Wednesday at a former colleague, Jon S. Corzine, blaming the onetime senator's risk-taking at MF Global for accelerating the brokerage firm's demise."

Washington Post: "Surprising virtually no one, Sen.-elect Angus King (I-Maine) said Wednesday that he plans to caucus with Senate Democrats, because 'affiliating with the majority makes the most sense.' King won a decisive election last week to succeed retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and throughout his year-long campaign refused to say with which party he would caucus once he arrived in Washington."

Guardian: "Hamas's military commander has been killed in an Israeli air strike in a move likely to herald a dramatic rise in violence in Gaza. Ahmed al-Jaabari, the head of the Islamist organisation's military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, died when his car was struck in Gaza City by a missile after Israel warned it may step up targeted assassinations, having endured almost a week of intense rocket fire from Gaza. Reports suggested three other Palestinians were also killed."

The Hill: "Former CIA Director David Petraeus will voluntarily testify before congressional panels investigating the September terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said.... The precise timing of Petraeus's visit to Capitol Hill hasn't been finalized, Feinstein said, though his appearance could be as early as Friday."

New York Times: "Syrian authorities ordered airstrikes for a third consecutive day close to the tense Turkish border on Wednesday, and said a French decision to recognize and consider arming a newly formed Syrian rebel coalition was an 'immoral' act 'encouraging the destruction of Syria.'"

Politico: "The president is scheduled to do his first press conference in months on Wednesday, at 1:30 p.m. EST in the East Room." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "President Obama on Wednesday declared that he would not extend tax cuts at upper income levels but that Congress should quickly do so for the middle class, and he praised David H. Petraeus's record while saying that national security had not been compromised during the intelligence official's affair with his biographer." The transcript is here.

Politico: "At a 10 a.m. news conference, [House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi] will answer ... whether she'll remain minority leader through 2014 -- or release her 10-year, ironclad grip on the Democratic Caucus." C-SPAN will no doubt carry the presser live, but I'm not sure exactly where.

     ... Update: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will remain in charge of the Democratic Caucus for the 113th Congress, the California Democrat announced on Wednesday morning. Pelosi revealed her decision before a room full of cheering Democrats, many of whom had privately lobbied her in recent days to stay put." CW: um, I thought the caucus had to vote on their leadership. I didn't realize they could crown themselves, a la Napoleon.

AP: "Pakistan freed several Taliban prisoners at the request of the Afghan government Wednesday, a move meant to facilitate the process of striking a peace deal with the militant group in neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said. The release of the prisoners -- described as mid- and low-level fighters -- is the most encouraging sign yet that Pakistan may be willing to help jumpstart peace talks that have mostly gone nowhere, hobbled by distrust among the major players involved, including the United States."

Reuters: "The United States announced an extra $30 million in aid to those affected by the war in Syria on Wednesday and called the formation of a new opposition coalition an important step that would help Washington better target its help. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the announcement after talks in Perth..., [Australia]."

AP: "President Hu Jintao stepped aside as ruling party leader Wednesday to clear the way for Vice President Xi Jinping to take China's helm as part of only the second orderly transfer of power in 63 years of Communist rule.In a possible break from tradition, Hu may also be giving up his post as head of the commission that oversees the military, which would give Xi greater leeway to consolidate his authority when he takes over."

AP: "With rampant unemployment spreading misery in southern Europe and companies shutting factories across the continent, workers around the European Union sought to unite in a string of strikes and demonstrations on Wednesday."

AP: "The chief operating officer of a utility company heavily criticized for its response to Superstorm Sandy is stepping down. The Long Island Power Authority announced Tuesday that Michael Hervey had tendered his resignation, effective at the end of the year.... LIPA has come under withering criticism since Sandy knocked out power to more than a million of its customers on Oct. 29, both for how long it was taking to get power restored and for poor communication with customers."