The Commentariat -- Nov. 13, 2012

Kimberly Dozier & Pete Yost of the AP: "CIA Director David Petraeus was shocked to learn last summer that his mistress was suspected of sending threatening emails warning another woman to stay away from him, former staff members and friends told The Associated Press Monday. Petraeus told these associates his relationship with the second woman, Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, was platonic...." CW: this is a very long report that includes a useful timeline. ...

... Martha Raddatz, et al., of ABC News: "The FBI withheld its findings about Gen. David Petreaus' affair from the White House and congressional leaders because the agency considered them the result of a criminal investigation that never reached the threshold of an intelligence probe, law enforcement sources said today. The sources said agents followed department guidelines that generally bar sharing information about developing criminal investigations." ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "The FBI team spent weeks (months?) tracing email metadata, which requires court permission. Once they figured out the emails had come from Broadwell, they began tracking her movements. Then they went to court to get a warrant to read her email. Then they apparently got a warrant to monitor a second email account belonging to someone Broadwell was having an affair with. It turned out to be Petraeus. Wow. What kind of juice does Kelley have? This sure seems like a helluva lot more than your ordinary FBI attention to some harassing emails." CW: it is. I once asked that very same office -- which is the closest FBI office to Fort Myers -- to register the theft of items on which they maintain a database, & they couldn't be bothered to even respond, much less register the stolen items. Apparently name-dropping is required. ...

... Update. Scott Shane & Charlie Savage of the New York Times seem to answer the question: "... law enforcement officials insisted on Monday that the case was handled 'on the merits.' The cyber squad at the F.B.I.'s Tampa field office opened an investigation, after consulting with federal prosecutors, based on what appeared to be a legitimate complaint about e-mail harassment. The complaint was more intriguing, the officials acknowledged, because the author of the e-mails, which criticized Ms. Kelley for supposed flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus at social events, seemed to have an insider's knowledge of the C.I.A. director's activities. One e-mail accused Ms. Kelley of 'touching' Mr. Petraeus inappropriately under a dinner table." Read the whole article. That film about the Petraeus Affair? It's going to have to be a screwball comedy. ...

... Devlin Barrett, et al., of the Wall Street Journal have more detail on the shirtless FBI agent & his pivotal role in this hilarious caper. ...

... A bit more from gossip columnist reporter Michael Daly of Newsweek. ...

... Tom McCarthy of the Guardian: "On Monday night, the FBI was searching Broadwell's North Carolina house. Agents entered the residence in Charlotte carrying boxes around 9pm (2am GMT). There was no sign that Broadwell or members of her family were at the house during the FBI search." CW: this bit is recounted in a few other news stories, too.

... OR, as Kevin Drum puts its, "This is pretty rich. If you connect the dots, it seems as if this whole thing got started by a smitten FBI agent; would have been closed without charges; but then got reenergized by some Benghazi-fueled (?) concerns that Petraeus was covering up for Obama. Or something. In the end, Petraeus was undone by the wingnuts." ...

... BUT WAIT, there's more. Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times: "Gen. John Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, is under investigation for what a senior defense official said early Tuesday was 'inappropriate communication' with Jill Kelley.... General Allen is now in Washington for what was to be his confirmation hearing as commander in Europe. That hearing, the official said, will now be delayed." ...

     ... Here's the Washington Post's story on the Allen Angle, by Craig Whitlock & Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

... CW: various writers have been wondering on paper why Kelley needed to lawyer up with top Washington attorney Abbe Lowell. For instance, here's John Cook of Gawker: "It's not clear why she would need a lawyer at all, given the fact that she is a victim in this situation.... Even if Kelley simply found it prudent to keep a lawyer handy -- why Lowell? It's like hiring David Boies because your friend got a speeding ticket. Lowell is the quintessential Washington power broker. He represented Clinton before the Senate during his impeachment trial. He specializes in disgraced political figures, including John Edwards. He's the kind of guy you hire when you're seriously fucked." CW: People may be stupid, but their motives are always explicable, in one way or another. Here, it looks as if Kelley's relationship with Gen. Allen may be the explanation. ...

Bmaz of emptywheel has a plausible, novel theory: "... the handful of emails Paula Broadwell sent to Kelley reportedly did not mention Petraeus by name. This latest report at least raises the possibility Broadwell was referring to an inappropriate relationship between Kelley and Allen, and not Kelley and Petraeus. I am not saying such is the case, but it is also arguably consistent with the currently known substance of Broadwell's emails to Kelley...." ...

... General Sexcapades. Thom Shankar of the New York Times: "... a worrisomely large number of senior officers have been investigated and even fired for poor judgment, malfeasance and sexual improprieties or sexual violence -- and that is just in the last year." ...

Jon Stewart discovers he's "the worst journalist in the world":

...

... BUT, fortunately, Stewart has a sensible take on the whole story, or that is, the whole story up till 6 pm last night -- unlike the genius conspiracy theorists at Fox "News":

... Bernard Finel in Balloon Juice: "The reality is that even before Petraeus and Broadwell slept together, their relationship was a tangled web of conflicts of interest. He was one of her dissertation advisors, and her dissertation was largely about him! He managed to get her access as a 'reporter' in Afghanistan, even though she has no journalism background, and in reality was more of a personal publicist for Petraeus. But she was also a reserve officer in the Army, making her, at least sometimes, his subordinate." ...

... Finel's concerns didn't seem to bother Petraeus. Sari Horwitz, et al., of the Washington Post: "... two longtime military aides to Petraeus said that he did not intend to resign until it became clear that his extramarital affair with Broadwell would become public after the first phase of the FBI investigation of his e-mail accounts."

... AND now, for our Snapshot of the Day:

... With a bonus tweet from Friend Rupert:

... The above is courtesy of Karoli of Crooks & Liars, who has a complicated conspiracy theory in the works. ...

... CW: The lamebrains at Fox "News" Nation call Don Imus' interview of Paula Broadwell "awkward," but I think she comes across as composed, articulate & knowledgeable. Video, with partial transcript.

Frank Rich on the Petraeus Brouhaha & takeaways from the election. Thanks to MAG for the link. ...

... John Sides: the 2012 election was not a realignment, or great shift in the makeup of the parties.

CW: I think we all know this, but it doesn't hurt that Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic reminds us that the Republicans' excuse that Democrats only win because they give "free stuff" to moochers is perfectly balanced by Republicans' promises to give free stuff to their base of old folks -- and Cohn doesn't say so -- but really rich people.

Karen DeYoung & Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "President Obama is considering asking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to serve as his next defense secretary, part of an extensive rearrangement of his national security team that will include a permanent replacement for former CIA director David H. Petraeus. Although Kerry is thought to covet the job of secretary of state, senior administration officials familiar with the transition planning said that nomination will almost certainly go to Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. John O. Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, is a leading contender for the CIA job if he wants it.... Officials cautioned that the White House discussions are still in the early stages and that no decisions have been made."

Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who built and then lost the largest Democratic majority in a generation, is considering ending her historic 10-year reign as Democratic leader after the second disappointing election in a row for her caucus."

CW: I missed Jim Fallows' "morning-after" thoughts on the election, but they still hold up. Give them a read. ...

... Paul Krugman did. He adds, "... the Democrats now look like the natural party of government." BUT, he warns, "... you know what could really produce the kind of dispirited base that was supposed to doom Obama in 2012? A sellout on key Democratic values as part of a Grand Bargain. If, say, Obama raises the retirement age in return for vague promises on revenue (promises that would be betrayed at the first opportunity); if he appoints a deficit scold to a major economic post; it could all fall apart." CW: I hope Krugman builds his next column on this. Obama needs to read it. ...

... AND pay no attention to former Treasury Secretary, former Obama advisor, former Wall Street wheeler-dealer & perpetual megarich guy Bob Rubin, who writes in a New York Times op-ed: "Fiscal cliff ... blah, blah ... Simpson-Bowles ... good work ... blah, blah ... entitlement reforms ... blah, blah ... I was right ...." CW: this seems more like Obama's opening argument than an independent opinion. It is, of course, discouraging.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "With both parties positioning for difficult negotiations to avert a fiscal crisis as Congress returns for its lame-duck session, Democrats are latching on to an idea floated by Mitt Romney to raise taxes on the rich through a hard cap on income tax deductions.... The cap -- never fully detailed by Mr. Romney -- is similar to a longstanding proposal by Mr. Obama to limit income tax deductions to 28 percent...."

CW: I missed this important report from CNN: "Less than 48 hours after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election, a shop at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. has already knocked down the price of its Romney merchandise -- by 60%."

Jake Miller of CBS News: "... almost a week after the election, it is now becoming clear just how lopsided President Obama's victory was in some cities: in dozens of urban precincts, Mitt Romney earned literally zero votes."

Time to return to ...

Right Wing World

Adios, Y'all. Neetzan Zimmerman of Gawker: "In the aftermath of last week's presidential election, residents in at least nineteen states have put up petitions on the government's 'We the People' petitioning website seeking the right to secede from the rest of the country." ...

... David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "Here's the thing about that: Red states, by and large, are moochers. They can't sustain themselves. If California were to secede, the state would have a balanced budget (or nearly balanced.) If Alabama were to secede, it wouldn't be able to pay for its stop signs."

Paul Waldman of American Prospect: whether or not it's good for the Republican party, right-wing media are going to continue to spew the usual stuff because that's what they audiences want, & the media are in business first, politics second.

Congressional Races

AP: "Former Democratic state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has been elected to represent a new Phoenix-area congressional district, emerging victorious after a bitterly fought race that featured millions of dollars in attack ads. Sinema becomes the first openly bisexual member of Congress.... One other congressional race remains undecided in Arizona. Rep. Ron Barber, the hand-picked successor to Gabrielle Giffords, had a lead of a few hundred votes over Republican Martha McSally in the Tucson-area district."

Local News

CW: As a proud Floridian, I am happy to say that --

Arizona is Worse than Florida. Ryan Reilly of TPM : "Hundreds of thousands of ballots have yet to be counted in Arizona nearly a week after Election Day, a majority of which appeared to come from Maricopa County. Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett's said Saturday that approximately 486,405 ballots still have to be counted across the state, representing more than a quarter of the 1.8 million votes cast." The ACLU & other groups are protesting lack of transparency & racial discrimination. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division may investigate. ...

Doktor Zoom at Wonkette: "To the surprise of absolutely no one, the mess appears to be at least in part a result of the state's efforts to suppress minority voting enhance ballot security, resulting in a large number of provisional ballots that must be verified by hand.... Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has pledged to ensure a fair tally of the uncounted ballots by launching an investigation into Barack Obama's college transcripts."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A military prosecutor on Tuesday said the evidence against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, presented over the last week here in a pretrial inquiry into the killings of 16 Afghan civilians, was so damning that the case should go forward as a capital crime."

New York Times: "France announced Tuesday that it was recognizing the newly formed Syrian rebel coalition and would consider arming the group, seeking to inject momentum into a broad Western and Arab effort to build a viable and effective opposition that would hasten the end of a stalemated civil war that has destabilized the Middle East."

AP: "President Barack Obama opens a new campaign Tuesday to build pressure on Congress to cut the federal debt the way he sees fit, meeting with labor leaders who want lawmakers to raise taxes on the wealthy and guard against slashing health benefits for seniors. Obama was kicking off a series of meetings this week with labor officials, business executives and congressional leaders aimed at pushing Congress to avert the so-called 'fiscal cliff' and find consensus on a plan to prevent more financial hardships next year. The week will include a tone-setting news conference Wednesday...."

Al Jazeera: "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in Australia for talks on security and strategic talks. Clinton, who arrived on Tuesday, will be joined by Leon Panetta, US defence secretary, for the talks with counterparts Bob Carr and Stephen Smith on Wednesday that are expected to focus on regional security and greater US use of Australian facilities. It comes after the arrival of US Marine and Air Force units to northern Australia, seen as evidence of an American 're-balance' towards the Pacific after a decade of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

AP: Abu Qatada, "a radical Islamist cleric described by prosecutors as a key al-Qaida operative in Europe, was freed from prison Tuesday after a court ruled he cannot be deported from Britain to Jordan to face terrorism charges." Guardian story here.

Al Jazeera: "Work has begun to open the grave of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ahead of an exhumation of his body for a murder probe, a source close to his family said."

The Commentariat -- Nov. 12, 2012

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "As he prepares to meet with Congressional leaders at the White House on Friday [to discuss the federal budget], aides say, Mr. Obama ... will travel beyond the Beltway at times to rally public support for a deficit-cutting accord that mixes tax increases on the wealthy with spending cuts. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will meet with corporate executives at the White House.... Though many of them backed Mitt Romney, scores have formed a coalition to push for a budget compromise similar to the one the president seeks. He hopes to enlist them to persuade Republicans in Congress to accept higher taxes on the assurance that he can deliver Democrats' votes for future reductions in fast-growing entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid." ...

     ... CW: they are not "entitlement" programs! And cutting them -- except for inefficiencies -- is stupid, counterproductive policy. People are still going to get sick, & if they can't get medical care, they're going to get sicker. "Let's Have More Sick People" is not an economy-boosting plan.

What's going to happen on January 1? ... The deficit is going to dramatically reduce. There will be this intense austerity squeeze.... Washington is so obsessed with the debt and deficit, and right now they are freaking out, and markets are freaking out, about the spectre of an automatic, massive reduction in the deficit. No one actually cares about the deficit. -- Chris Hayes ...

... Paul Krugman: "The fiscal cliff poses an interesting problem for self-styled deficit hawks. They've been going on and on about how the deficit is a terrible thing; now they're confronted with the possibility of a large reduction in the deficit, and have to find a way to say that this is a bad thing." ...

... ** In his column today, Krugman builds on the blogpost linked above. Oh, and he implicitly backs up my disdain for the Let's Have More Sick People plan. Plus this: "Appointing [deficit scold Erskine Bowles to replace Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary], or anyone like him, would be both a bad idea and a slap in the face to the people who returned President Obama to office."

It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer. -- Bill Kristol, Editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard, speaking on Fox "News" Sunday ...

... Meghashyam Mali of The Hill: "Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Sunday said Democrats were prepared to allow the expiration of all George W. Bush-era tax rates if Republican lawmakers objected to raising taxes on the wealthiest." ...

... Matt Yglesias of Slate: "The American political system is full of checks and balances, and the way the game works is that tie goes to the status quo. And in this case, the status quo is that the [Bush] tax cuts expire. Conservatives can perhaps console themselves with the realization that the expiration isn't an underhanded liberal trick. It's their own trick.... The House Speaker has no leverage on the Bush tax cuts. We should stop taking him seriously." CW: Yglesias suggests Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is stupid because he doesn't get this. Schumer is not stupid; he is the Senator from Wall Street. He is also the #3 man in the Senate, & he will try to lead Senate Democrats to "concede" to Republican demands, as if he's performing some heroic act of bipartisanship. Chuck Schumer is looking out for Chuck Schumer.

Ian Millhiser & Josh Israel of Think Progress: Ohio's GOP Secretary of State, the now infamous Jon Husted, has a plan to rig Ohio's vote in the Electoral College in 2016, one that he borrowed from an aborted plan proposed by Pennsylvania's Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. Under Husted's plan -- had it been in effect this year -- Romney would have received the bulk of Ohio's Electoral College votes. CW P.S. As Millhiser made clear in a post I linked yesterday, gerrymandering matters. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.

"Huge Clusterfuck." Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica has an excellent write-up of all that went wrong with the Romney campaign's vaunted "ORCA" GOTV system, one that a Romney spokesperson boasted was far superior to the Obama campaign's "Narwhal" system. Thanks to Lisa for the link.

John Cassidy of the New Yorker has a pretty readable post on polling & forecasters of the presidential race.

Greg Sargent: "Republicans have long been mystified by Obama's ability to retain his bond with voters in defiance of conditions that self-evidently seemed to doom him. If they just prevented Obama from succeeding, he'd surely sink under the fundamentals.... The ultimate irony is that this miscalculation may have led Republicans themselves to unwittingly conspire in creating the narrative that enabled Obama to survive." ...

... Thanks for the memories, Orange Man:

... CW: I don't know who wrote this post in the National Memo, but it's one of the best I've seen of Monday-morning quarterbacking the presidential election: "Why did Mitt Romney lose? It couldn't be because the GOP is wrong on taxes, health care, women's rights, immigration, education, marriage, regulation, diplomacy, climate change, evolution, science, polling, jobs numbers, fashion, sex, Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, Meat Loaf. No, it had to be Hurricane Sandy, ORCA, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, mean ole Barack Obama actually daring to release negative ads, one New Black Panther, a mural in one polling place'."

Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian on the Petraeus Affair(s): "... the relationship between the now-former CIA Director and his fawning hagiographer should be studied in journalism schools to see the results reliably produced by access journalism and the embedding process." Read the whole column. Greenwald notes, "Thomas Ricks, formerly of the Washington Post, argued that Obama should not have accepted [Petraeus's] resignation.... Like most people in the media, Ricks has long been an ardent admirer of Petraeus, even turning his platform over to Paula Broadwell in the past for her to spread her hagiography far and wide." Thanks to contributor cowichan for the link. ...

... Maybe Ricks has had a sudden change of heart. In a New York Times op-ed, he writes: "Our generals actually bear much of the blame for the mistakes in the [Iraq & Afghanistan] wars. They especially failed to understand the conflicts they were fighting -- and then failed to adjust their strategies to the situations they faced so that they might fight more effectively. Even now, as our wars wind down, the errors of our generals continue to escape public investigation, or even much internal review." CW: but, hey, we scrutinize their sex lives! ...

... Michael Crowley of Time: as Petraeus goes, so goes his military doctrine, not that he hadn't pretty much abandoned it anyway. ...

... Scott Shane & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "High-level officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department were notified in the late summer that F.B.I. agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital affair involving the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, government officials said Sunday. ...

... The Washington Post story, by Karen DeYoung & Sari Horwitz, is here. ...

... Eli Lake of Newsweek: Paula Broadwell "gave a speech last month asserting otherwise unreported information about the Benghazi attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.... The CIA Sunday denied her claim that prisoners were held at the annex, which has not been reported elsewhere. As her answer continued, Broadwell seemed to speak on behalf of Petraeus." With video.

... Jayne Mayer of the New Yorker examines the time line of who knew what when, & finds unanswered questions about motivations of key political players, including Petraeus. ...

     ... CW: I've believed from the get-go there is a plausible explanation for Petraeus's resignation, and that "Had an affair; no security breached" ain't it. BTW, since House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) knew the contours of the story before the election, it would have been political malpractice for him not to have slipped word to Romney &/or Ryan, & nobody has every accused Eric Cantor or excessive propriety. And I'd be damned surprised if Eric Holder didn't give the President a heads-up, especially as he was likely aware -- via FBI Director Mueller -- that Cantor was in the loop. This was an October Surprise that didn't happen, either because Romney couldn't see the profit in it or because he couldn't figure out how to leak it in a way that wouldn't have his fingerprints all over it. ...

... Okay, Andy Borowitz has located a fellow who has that plausible explanation I was seeking: "The scandal involving former C.I.A. director David Petraeus took a startling twist today, as a leading right-wing conspiracy theorist claimed that Gen. Petraeus initiated his affair with author Paula Broadwell last year to avoid testifying about Benghazi this week."

A picture being worth a thousand words & all: Natalie Khawam (Jill Kelley's identical twin sister), David Petraeus, Scott Kelley, Jill Kelley & Holly Petraeus in Tampa, Florida. Photo by the Tampa Bay Times, via the New York Daily News.Adam Goldman, et al., of the AP, re: David Petraeus: "A senior U.S. military official identified the second woman Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, Fla., and serves as the State Department's liaison to the military's Joint Special Operations Command, where among other duties, secret drone missions are worked on.... The military official ... said Kelley had received harassing emails from Broadwell....A friend of Kelley and Petraeus ... also said the two saw each other often, but the nature of their friendship was unclear." ...

... Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The woman who reported to the F.B.I. that she had received threatening e-mails from a woman romantically linked to David H. Petraeus ... is a friend of Mr. Petraeus and his wife, Holly, who lives in Tampa, Fla.... The woman, Jill Kelley, 37, is 'a very well-known person of influence in the Tampa community,' active in community organizations that support military causes.... Tampa is the home of the military's Central Command, which Mr. Petraeus headed before serving in Afghanistan and then as C.I.A. director. It was during the Petraeuses' time in Tampa that they became friends with Ms. Kelley and her husband, Dr. Scott Kelley." ...

... Bill Hutchinson of the New York Daily News: Kelley is "the unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base." ...

... Matthew Solan, et al., of the Daily News have a lot more here. And it's a New York tab, so you know it's all tasteful. ...

... Five factoids about Jill Kelley & her family from Nina Strochlic of Newsweek. ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: neighbors in Charlotte, North Carolina, say Paula Broadwell is a good neighbor-soccer mom who dines by candlelight.

David Remnick of the New Yorker: "The effort [to halt climate change] should begin with a sustained Presidential address to the country, perhaps from the Capitol, on Inauguration Day. It was there that John Kennedy initiated a race to the moon -- meagre stakes compared with the health of the planet we inhabit."

Annie-Rose Strasser of Think Progress: "Zane Tankel, the CEO of Applebee's New York Franchise, Apple-Metro, is so dedicated to not spending money on his employees that he's refusing to hire anyone new. Why? Because he might have to provide them health care.... Studies have shown that a company that provides health care has a higher retention rate for its employees, reports more employee satisfaction, and draws the best employees to the job." ...

      ... CW: Tankel is as stupid as he is heartless. Most large employers will have to provide health insurance, so the playing field will be more-or-less level. People are not going to stop eating at restaurants (though you couldn't get me inside an Applebee's except by force), and if Applebee's has to raise the price of nachos by 50 cents to cover healthcare costs, so does everybody else. You can't make guys like Tankel give a shit about the health & well-being of their employees, but now they'll have to provide insurance or pay a penalty. Some people won't be decent human beings unless the law requires it. Now the law requires it.

The Half-Enlightenment Dawns upon Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.):

News Ledes

New York Times: "Israeli tanks made a direct hit on Syrian artillery units on Monday, the army said, responding to mortar fire that fell near an army post in the Israeli-held Golan Heights. It was the second consecutive day that Israel confronted fire along its border with Syria<."

New York Times: "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo plans to ask the federal government for at least $30 billion in disaster aid to help New York City and other affected areas of the state recover from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy...."

AP: "The BBC's news chief and her deputy have 'stepped aside' while the broadcaster deals with the fallout from a child abuse scandal that forced its director-general to resign, the broadcaster said Monday. Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news and current affairs, and her deputy, Stephen Mitchell, have handed over their responsibilities to others for the time being 'to address the lack of clarity around the editorial chain of command,' the corporation said."

The Commentariat -- Nov. 11, 2012

AP: "Saturday marked the first of what will be three days of Veterans Day commemorations across the United States. The holiday falls on a Sunday, and the federal observance is on Monday."

Here, at long last, is your final Electoral College map, assuming of course there are no rebels among the collegians. The tally 332 for President Obama; 206 for Mitt Romney. Not exactly a close call:

... Thanks to Jeanne B. for forwarding the graphic. ...

... Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: "... in Florida..., after days of counting absentee ballots, the official results are in, at last: To the surprise of no one, Mr. Obama narrowly beat out his Republican rival 50 percent to 49.1 percent, a difference of about 74,000 votes.... A record number of Florida voters -- 8.4 million, or 70 percent of those registered -- cast ballots."

For those who are discouraged that the country seems dominated by the right, these maps -- called "cartographs" -- which contributor Lisa forwarded, should make you feel better. ...

** AND there's this. Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Although a small number of ballots remain to be counted..., votes for a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives outweigh votes for Republican candidates.... There is a simple explanation for how this happened: Republicans won several key state legislatures and governors' mansions in the election cycle before redistricting, and they gerrymandered those states.... [For instance,] President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points, but Democrats carried only 5 of the state's 18 congressional seats." Get that? More people voted for Democratic candidates for the House than for Republican candidates. Absent GOP gerrymandering, the House would be about evenly divided, or Democrats would have a slight majority.

Prof. Stephen Hahn, in a New York Times op-ed, on political racism: "Although our present-day tactics are state-issued IDs, state-mandated harassment of immigrants and voter-roll purges, these are not a far cry from the poll taxes, literacy tests, residency requirements and discretionary power of local registrars that composed the political racism of a century ago. That's not even counting the hours-long lines many minority voters confronted." ...

... Brian McFadden of the New York Times has a few ideas for modernizing the vote. Here are some of them:

CLICK ON CARTOON TO SEE ENLARGED IMAGE.Maureen Dowd: "Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and moochers who did not belong in their 'traditional' America. But the more they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male domination the boot."

Graph from Derek Thompson of The Atlantic.

Image by the ever-fabulous DriftglassKen Vogel of Politico: The Many Excuses of Karl Rove are not going over that well. "In his Wall Street Journal column the next day, he blamed Obama's win on an 'anonymous New York Times headline writer,' a 'hotel employee with a cell phone camera' who recorded damaging video of Romney criticizing American voters, and Hurricane Sandy, among other factors. And on Thursday, Rove told Fox News that Obama won by 'suppressing the vote.' ... Some donors have called Crossroads officials to ask how their polling could have been so far off, while others are openly grumbling that the groups should have spent more on the ground game. Rival operatives -- long frustrated by Rove's dominance of big GOP money — are seizing on the discontent, questioning whether he's hurting the cause and privately urging donors to shut him out." ...

... In case you're the one person who has gotten over his schadenfreude & is feeling a little sorry for poor, maligned Karl, this should snap you out of your conservative compassion. Dan Eggen & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Some of the biggest winners in the most expensive election in U.S. history weren't the politicians, but the private consultants who brought in tens of millions of dollars in fees for advertising, fundraising and other campaign activities. In the presidential race alone, the two main media firms working for President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney earned profits for handling more than half a billion dollars of campaign advertising, according to disclosures and ad tracking data.... Their combined cut could easily be $25 million or more at standard industry rates. Other big earners were the digital strategy companies, telemarketing firms, air charter services, pollsters and consultants who saw a spike in business in a presidential contest that cost at least $2.6 billion." ...

... AND Rove is scarcely contrite. Karen Tumulty of the Post: "As Rove sees it, the campaign proved that American Crossroads and its more secretive issue-advocacy arm, Crossroads GPS -- which allows donors to remain anonymous -- are here to stay. Rove is pondering new missions for Crossroads to address weaknesses laid bare by the GOP's back-to-back failures to win the White House and the fact that the party fell short when expected to win back the Senate."

Eli Lake, et al., of Newsweek: "They were the gang who couldn't shoot straight. Romney's ground-game operation was a disaster -- from technology that didn't work to field operatives who didn't understand their tasks. The result: Obama won."

Alexander Burns of Politico: "For Republicans, one of the worst parts of the GOP's 2012 trouncing was that they didn't see it coming."

Roll Back the Enlightenment! Paul Krugman: Republicans, with their "faith-based analysis," have been getting everything wrong for some time. "You might think that the election debacle would force some reconsideration. But I doubt it; if the financial crisis didn't do it, nothing will." ...

... Case in Point. Let me put it very clearly. I am not willing to raise taxes to turn off the sequester. Period.... Look, [President Obama] may think it would be helpful to his presidency to continue to divide and demonize us. But my answer will still be short and firm: No. We won't agree to any tax increases that will hurt the economy. -- Senate Minority Mitch McConnell, in the spirit of bipartisanship

Gail Collins: "If Hillary Clinton ... follows through on her plan to not decide anything for a year, it would put the 2016 presidential speculation on ice, at least on the Democratic side. And that would be a signal service to the American public, the best-prepared candidate in American history: one who's lived in the White House, served in the United States Senate, a woman who knows virtually every head of state in the world.... If Clinton follows through on her plan to not decide anything for a year, it would put the 2016 presidential speculation on ice, at least on the Democratic side. And that would be a signal service to the American public, which needs an election break."

Matt Sedensky of the AP: "Firebrand Republican Rep. Allen West was defeated by Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy, according to the state's vote count Saturday, but the incumbent won't concede. The state issued complete but unofficial results showing Murphy with a lead of 2,442 votes, or 50.4 percent. That's beyond the half-percent margin needed to trigger an automatic recount. A handful of overseas and military ballots remain outstanding, but under state law the decision for a recount is based on Saturday's count.... The race was the country's most expensive House race...."

Katharine Seelye of the New York Times profiles Senator-Elect Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Garance Burke of the AP: "Longtime Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack lost her seat Friday to Democrat Raul Ruiz, a Harvard-educated physician who mobilized the district's growing swath of Hispanic voters.... Bono Mack served eight terms after winning an election in 1998 to fill the seat of her late husband, entertainer Sonny Bono. Her current husband, GOP Rep. Connie Mack IV of Florida, lost his bid for the U.S. Senate." Thanks to James S. for the link to this delightful news.

Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books: a number of losing presidential candidates have gone on to post-election careers dedicated to public service. What could Mitt Romney do? Absolutely nothing.

Scott Shane & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. investigation that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as C.I.A. director on Friday began with a complaint several months ago about 'harassing' e-mails sent by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus's biographer, to an unidentified third person, a government official ... said Saturday. When F.B.I. agents following up on the complaint began to examine Ms. Broadwell's e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Mr. Petraeus that revealed that they were having an affair...." ...

... This Washington Post report, by Sari Horwitz & Greg Miller, is clearer than the NYT report: "The collapse of the impressive career of CIA Director David H. Petraeus was triggered when a woman with whom he was having an affair sent threatening e-mails to another woman close to him.... The recipient of the e-mails was so frightened that she went to the FBI for protection and help tracking down the sender, according to the officials. The FBI investigation traced the threats to Paula Broadwell, a former military officer and a Petraeus biographer, and uncovered explicit e-mails between Broadwell and Petraeus.... The e-mails from Broadwell indicated that she felt the other woman was becoming involved with Petraeus.... [Officials] said the e-mails were 'threatening and harassing' but not specific enough to warrant criminal charges.... The recipient of the e-mails complained to Petraeus about them and ... the FBI later obtained e-mails between Petraeus and Broadwell in which they discussed the harassment." ...

... Michael Wines of the New York Times: "... in a digital era..., the odds of exposure have become exponentially greater.... That prominent figures throw caution to the winds may be no accident.... A 2001 study in the Journal of Family Psychology concluded that the incidence of extramarital affairs rises with income and education.... Many scandals burst open in part because powerful men usually are rotten at picking mistresses. ...

... Joby Warrick, et al., of the Washington Post: anonymous sources say Petraeus had "an unusual bond" with Broadwell, which made his aides nervous & which Broadwell exploited. ...

... Kimberly Dozier & Pete Yost of the AP: "... the CIA, FBI and White House face questions from Congress about Petraeus' love life and how his emails came under investigation.... Petraeus' sudden departure made news before House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed, catching lawmakers who oversee the intelligence community off guard.... CIA officers long had expressed concern about Broadwell's unprecedented access to the director. She frequently visited the spy agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., to meet Petraeus in his office, accompanied him on morning runs around the CIA grounds and often attended public functions as his guest...."

Jonathan Weisman & Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "On a conference call with House Republicans a day after the party's electoral battering last week, Speaker John A. Boehner dished out some bitter medicine, and for the first time in the 112th Congress, most members took their dose. Their party lost, badly, Mr. Boehner said, and while Republicans would still control the House and would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years. Members on the call, subdued and dark, murmured words of support.... It was a striking contrast to a similar call last year, when Mr. Boehner tried to persuade members to compromise with Democrats on a deal to extend a temporary cut in payroll taxes, only to have them loudly revolt."

News Ledes

President Obama honors veterans at Arlington National Cemetery:

New York Times: "Greece’s fragile government pushed a tough budget of spending cuts and tax increases for 2013 through Parliament early Monday, moving a step closer to unlocking crucial rescue financing from the country's foreign creditors. The vote occurred as about 20,000 demonstrators gathered outside Parliament to protest austerity measures, the second such protest in a week."

New York Times: "Lawmakers with authority over intelligence and national security expressed consternation on Sunday that the F.B.I. investigation that led to the resignation of David Petraeus as director of central intelligence could have been conducted without the knowledge of officials in the White House or Congress. They also voiced puzzlement that it came to a head within hours of President Obama's re-election."

New York Times: "Syrian opposition factions signed a tentative agreement on Sunday to create a unified umbrella organization that could pave the way for long-elusive international diplomatic recognition, as well as more funding and improved military aid from foreign capitals."

AP: "A roaring explosion that leveled two homes and set two others ablaze in a huge fire forced about 200 people from a devastated Indianapolis neighborhood where at least one person was killed, authorities said Sunday. The powerful nighttime blast shattered windows, crumpled walls and inflicted other damage on at least 14 other homes.... The cause of the explosions remains unknown...."

AP: "Israeli aircraft struck the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing a Palestinian man, as militants bombarded the Jewish state with rockets and mortars in a fierce second day of fighting. The clashes have threatened to draw the two sides into a major confrontation two months before Israeli elections, a possibility underlined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's warning that Israel was ready to strike harder against the militants if the violence persisted."

AP: "Israel was drawn into the Syrian civil war for the first time on Sunday, firing warning shots into the neighboring country after a stray mortar shell fired from Syrian territory hit an Israeli military post. The Israeli military said the mortar fire caused no injuries or damage at the post in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and then annexed. But in recent weeks, incidents of errant fire from Syria have multiplied, leading Israel to warn that it holds Syria responsible for fire on Israeli-held territory."