The Commentariat -- Dec. 3, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Ross Douthat's latest sermonette, one which I found particularly risible. ...

... Imani Gandy, writing in Balloon Juice: "As for Douthat’s claims that those who choose not to have children are somehow being decadent, it is fairly obvious that he is saying that women who choose to remain childless are selfish or damaged in some way. And for that bit of 1950s thinking, I offer Mr. Douchehat a hearty 'fuck you.'”

Cliff Notes

Jake Sherman & Carrie Brown of Politico: "House Republican leaders on Monday sent President Barack Obama a counteroffer aimed at avoiding the fiscal cliff, but it doesn't hike tax rates on the wealthy or deal explicitly with tricky issues like the debt ceiling and the sequester." ...

... The Washington Post has the GOP "plan," which it derives from this two-page letter from Speaker Boehner, et al. CW: As far as I can tell it doesn't begin to explain how these geniuses plan to garner that $800BB in increased revenues. What loopholes?

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Mr. Obama, scarred by failed negotiations in his first term and emboldened by a clear if close election to a second, has emerged as a different kind of negotiator in the past week or two, sticking to the liberal line and frustrating Republicans on the other side of the bargaining table."

E. J. Dionne: "We became so accustomed to Obama’s earlier habit of making preemptive concessions that the very idea he'd negotiate in a perfectly normal way amazed much of Washington.... House Republicans have, so far, been unwilling to assume any risk to get what they claim to want. They seem to hope a deal will be born by way of immaculate conception, with Obama taking ownership of all the hard stuff while they innocently look on.... The only way to keep the next four years from becoming another long exercise in gridlock and obstruction is for Obama to hang tough now."

Caroline Bankoff of New York magazine: "In the spirit of political theater, John Boehner did an interview with Fox News Sunday during which he said, 'Right now I would say we're nowhere, period. We're nowhere.' He also described himself as 'flabbergasted' by the proposal [Treasury Secretary Tim] Geithner showed him on Thursday.... 'I looked at him and said, "You can't be serious,'" Boehner recounted. 'I've just never seen anything like it. You know we've got seven weeks between Election Day and the end of the year, and three of those weeks have been wasted with this nonsense.'" ...

... OR, as Andy Borowitz reports, "Tensions over the so-called fiscal cliff reached a boiling point today as House Speaker John Boehner accused President Obama of acting like he won the November election." ...

Raising taxes on the so-called top two percent -- half of those taxpayers are small business owners who pay their taxes through their personal income tax filing every year. -- John Boehner

By any measure, Boehner's statement ... was incorrect. Only a relatively small percentage [3%] of small-business owners would be affected by a tax increase.... There is some question, however,whether even that claim is especially relevant. Readers with personal experience have fiercely disputed whether higher taxes would make much difference in whether a small business would hire new employees. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post ...

... In a post titled "Operation Rolling Tantrum," Paul Krugman writes: "John Boehner has just declared that he's going to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage every time we hit the debt limit. Nor will it be a case of holding the nation at gunpoint until it meets GOP demands; Republicans are signaling that they don't intend to make any specific proposals, they're just going to yell and stamp their feet until Obama soothes them somehow." Krugman predicts that if they keep this up, the 2014 election will be a referendum on the rolling tantrum/obstructionism of the GOP. ...

... Krugman elaborates in his column: "... when you put Republicans on the spot and demand specifics about how they're going to make good on their posturing about spending and deficits, they come up empty. There's no there there." ...

... Heather of Crooks & Liars: "Sen. Orrin Hatch continued the whining we've seen from Republicans over the fact that President Obama didn't immediately cave on these so-called 'fiscal cliff' negotiations in this week's Republican weekly address.... Much of what President Obama proposed this week appeared in his 20-page plan, released in October. If there's any party that hasn't negotiated in good faith for years now, it's the Republicans." With video.

Corporate Welfare, Part 2. Louise Story of the New York Times: "Texas offers more incentives to attract business than any other state, but the lines between decision makers and beneficiaries are often blurred, leaving questions about whether Texans or companies gain more.... To help balance its budget last year, Texas cut public education spending by $5.4 billion -- a significant decrease considering that it already ranked 11th from the bottom among all states in per-pupil financing.... Yet highly profitable companies like Dow Chemical and Texas Instruments continue to enjoy hefty discounts on their school tax bills...."

Justin Gillis & John Broder of the New York Times: "Global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011 and are likely to take a similar jump in 2012, scientists reported Sunday -- the latest indication that efforts to limit such emissions are failing." ...

... Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker writes that a carbon tax may be an idea whose time has come. "Not long ago, the Congressional Research Service reported that, over the next decade, a relatively modest carbon tax could cut the projected federal deficit in half. Such a tax would be imposed not just on gasoline but on all fossil fuels ... so it would affect the price of nearly everything, including food and manufactured goods." CW: but here's what I don't get: if the revenue generated is used to reduce the deficit, how does that substantially reduce emissions? I can't see that a "modest tax" would result in more than "a modest reduction" in fuel usage. If it's going to be treated as nothing more than a "sin tax," I can't see much point to it. If you have some insights on this, please share.

News Ledes

New York Times: "A military appeals court on Monday ordered the removal of the judge presiding over the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in a deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, citing the judge's appearance of bias after he ordered Major Hasan forcibly shaved before the start of his trial."

New York Times: "President Obama called on Russia on Monday to renew a two-decade-old nuclear disarmament program that Moscow has threatened to cancel as the two sides try to figure out the future of a rocky relationship now that elections in both countries are behind them. Russia declared this fall that it would not renew the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has helped rid the former Soviet Union of thousands of nuclear weapons since the end of the cold war. But in a speech, Mr. Obama chose to interpret the Russian statements as a negotiating position to change the program rather than halt it altogether." Video of the speech is here.

New York Times: "After showing a measure of unity against President Mohamed Morsi's decision to put his edicts above the law, Egypt's judges splintered on Monday, with one leading judicial official saying many judges would cooperate with plans to hold a public vote on a draft constitution supported by the president."

Guardian: "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have ended months of intense speculation by announcing they are expecting their first child, but were forced to share their news earlier than hoped because of the Duchess's admission to hospital on Monday. News that the duchess is in the 'very early stages' of pregnancy with the third-in-line to the throne was officially released after she was taken to the King Edward VII hospital in central London, suffering from hyperemesis gravidarun, very acute morning sickness."

New York Times: "UBS, the Swiss banking giant..., is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase the bank's profits...."

Guardian: "Britain and France have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to London and Paris in protest at Israel's authorisation of 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem."

AP: "It's not clear how long it will take workers to clear a hazardous gas from a ruptured tank car that derailed from a freight train in southern New Jersey last week. More than 100 Paulsboro residents won't able to return to their homes in the 12-block evacuation zone until at least Saturday."

AP: "Japanese officials ordered the immediate inspection of tunnels across the country Monday after nine people were killed when concrete ceiling slabs fell from the roof of a highway tunnel onto moving vehicles below. Those killed in Sunday's accident were traveling in three vehicles in the 4.7-kilometer (3-mile) long Sasago Tunnel about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Tokyo."

Al Jazeera: "Borut Pahor, Slovenia's centre-left former prime minister, has been elected president in a runoff vote, beating incumbent President Danilo Turk, preliminary official results suggest. Pahor won 67 per cent of the vote against Turk, who received a 33 per cent ... after nearly all votes were counted.... Slovenians voted on Sunday amid growing discontent with cost-cutting measures designed to avoid an international bailout."

New York Times: "The growing evidence of a link between head trauma and long-term, degenerative brain disease was amplified in an extensive study of athletes, military veterans and others who absorbed repeated hits to the head, according to new findings published in the scientific journal Brain."

The Commentariat -- Dec. 2, 2012

Cliff Notes

Mark Smith of the AP: "President Barack Obama is ready to entertain Republican proposals for spending cuts, but GOP lawmakers must first commit to higher tax rates on the rich and specify what additional spending cuts they want in a deal to avoid the looming 'fiscal cliff,' Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said. 'The ball really is with them now,' Geithner, one of the president's chief negotiators with Capitol Hill, said during appearances on five Sunday talk shows."

Jia Lin Yang & Suzy Khimm of the Washington Post: "U.S. multinationals have spent years pushing for a change to the tax code that would eliminate taxes on business profits overseas.... Now ... lobbyists and some on Capitol Hill are latching onto the 'fiscal cliff' as a potential springboard for their cause." Support comes from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform co-chaired by Erskine Bowles & Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), President Obama's jobs council, Mitt Romney's economic platform, the Business Roundtable & the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Some tax experts warn, however, that such a change could radically alter how companies behave and have broad implications for the economy. Without the right safeguards, they say, eliminating taxes on foreign profits and switching to what is known as a 'territorial' system would blow a hole in tax revenue, give multinationals more leeway to exploit tax havens and drive jobs overseas." CW: No kidding. Hey, what could be more American than more tax breaks for the ultra-rich corporations/people?

"What Does Jack Think?" Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times profiles Jack Lew, President Obama's chief of staff & a former budget director under both the Obama & Clinton administrations.

Louise Story of the New York Times: "A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains. The cost of the awards is certainly far higher.... For local governments, incentives have become the cost of doing business with almost every business."

Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "Just as the housing market is recovering, a growing group of homeowners -- widows over the age of 50 whose husbands alone were holders of the mortgage -- are losing their homes to foreclosure because of a paperwork flaw that keeps them from obtaining loan modifications. In the latest chapter of the foreclosure crisis, homeowners over 50 are falling into foreclosure at the fastest pace of any age group, according to nationwide data, in part because women are outliving their spouses and are unable to cope with cuts in their pensions, ballooning medical costs -- and the fine print on their mortgages." CW: Nice going, Banksters. Nothing like hitting elderly widows when she's down. No one can say you jackasses are not living up to your stereotype. ...

... Kevin Roose of New York: banksters dread the coming of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, fearing she is more than "one of a hundred."

Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News: "... the story McCain and Graham are trying to sell is getting harder and harder to swallow."

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, "It might have been."Mitt Is Bored, Ann Is Disconsolate. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Four weeks after losing a presidential election he was convinced he would win, Romney's rapid retreat into seclusion has been marked by repressed emotions, second guessing and, perhaps for the first time in the overachiever's adult life, sustained boredom, according to interviews with more than a dozen of Romney's closest friends and advisers.... By all accounts, the past month has been most difficult on Romney's wife, Ann, who friends said believed up until the end that ascending to the White House was their destiny. They said she has been crying in private...."

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: David "Petraeus was neither a conquering hero nor an empty suit. To view his military record through the lens of his personal failure merely serves to replace one myth with another."

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said. The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units."

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi's "recent tone and actions reminded critics of the autocratic ways of his predecessor, and have aroused a new debate here about his commitment to democracy and pluralism at a time when he and his Islamist allies dominate political life."

Right Wing World

Tom Tomorrow in AlterNet.

Andre Tartar of New York: Defeated Tea Party Rep. Allen West (Florida) compares himself to -- Abe Lincoln.

News Ledes

The Hill: "President Obama and former President Bill Clinton hit the golf course on Sunday."

AP: "The trial of an Army private charged with sending U.S. secrets to the website WikiLeaks is being pushed back from February to March. Military judge Col. Denise Lind announced the change Sunday at a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade for Pfc. Bradley Manning."

AP: "The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has returned home to a hero's welcome after winning a resounding endorsement for Palestinian independence at the United Nations. Some 5,000 people thronged a square Sunday outside Abbas' government headquarters in the West Bank. Many hoisted Palestinian flags and balloons in the colors of the flag." ...

... Reuters: "Israel said on Sunday it was withholding this month's transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, after the United Nations' de facto recognition of a Palestinian state."

Reuters: "Protests by Islamists allied to President Mohamed Mursi forced Egypt's highest court to adjourn its work indefinitely on Sunday, intensifying a conflict between some of the country's top judges and the head of state. The Supreme Constitutional Court said it would not convene until its judges could operate without 'psychological and material pressure', saying protesters had stopped the judges from reaching the building."

Reuters: "Suicide attackers detonated bombs and fired rockets outside a major U.S. base in Afghanistan on Sunday, killing five people in a brazen operation that highlighted the country's security challenges ahead of the 2014 NATO combat troop pullout."

Reuters: "A strike by clerical workers at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach idled most of the busiest U.S. cargo shipping complex for a fifth day on Saturday as container-laden vessels waited to be unloaded and marathon contract talks stretched into the night. Some 10,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 were refusing to cross picket lines of some 500 striking clerical workers, effectively shutting down 10 of the two ports' combined 14 container terminals."

Reuters: "Kansas City Chiefs starting linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend to death, then drove to the team training facility and killed himself in front of the coach and general manager in a burst of violence on Saturday that stunned the NFL and its fans." CW: (1) give a guy a job where he gets his head bashed several times a day; (2) give him a gun; (3) act all surprised when he kills his girlfriend over a trivial argument, then takes his own life.

The Commentariat -- Dec. 1, 2012

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. Still harping on the middle-class tax cuts. And here's that My2K page where you can tell Congress what $2,000 means to you. The ABC News story, by Mary Bruce, is here.

Zachary Goldfarb & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: Obama & Boehner trade barbs.

Steven Dennis of Roll Call: "Ever since Republicans walked away three times from bipartisan debt talks in 2011, the White House has eschewed sweet-talking the GOP and dismissed suggestions from the likes of presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin that Obama embark on assorted charm offensives involving cocktails and late-night White House get-togethers with lawmakers.... Instead, carrying a big stick is in at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and the fiscal cliff is the biggest stick Obama will ever have -- a $600 billion bucket of pain largely aimed at GOP priorities, such as tax cuts and defense spending."

David Firestone of the New York Times: "Republicans reportedly laughed when they saw the Obama administration's initial offer in the fiscal negotiations yesterday. The idea that President Obama might actually want to enact his campaign promises -- tax hikes on the rich, modest Medicare cuts, investments in infrastructure -- is apparently considered a joke to the party that has shown virtually no flexibility in the last four years.... But once the laughter dies down, they will have to come to the table with a responsible offer of their own, rather than simply declaring a stalemate, as Speaker John Boehner did today.... If they continue to refuse to do so, the public won't find it very funny."

Mike Lillis of The Hill: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday announced Democrats would circulate a discharge petition to force a House vote to extend current tax rates only on annual household income below $250,000.... Democrats would need the support of more than 20 Republicans to secure the 218 signatures needed to force the bill to the floor."

** Our Stenographic Press. Michael Grunwald of Time: "It's really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama's opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan. It's even more amazing to see them pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn't cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.... As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day."

Deirdre Walsh & Ashley Killough of CNN: "House Speaker John Boehner named Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan as the chairman of the House Administration Committee on Friday, three days after the Republican conference took heat for electing only males as committee heads." Miller ran for chair of the Homeland Security Committee but lost out to a white guy. CW: as far as I can tell the main job of the House Administration Committee is to make sure the bosses have all they need in way of coffee and pencils & stuff. Miller actually said she was "humbled & honored" by the appointment. I wish a Republican woman would write to me & argue that Boehner didn't intentionally humiliate women with this appointment.

Post-Election Analysis of the Absurd. Paul Waldman of American Prospect: Tea Party types like brand-new Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) are arguing that Romney never made the case for conservatism. "In fact, that was the best thing about this election: for all the trivia, it presented a fundamental ideological debate, with both candidates talking about first principles throughout. Conservatives aren't happy that they lost that argument. But even though it's not particularly good politics to condemn the voters for not seeing the light, it's a lot more honest than saying they never got the chance to hear what conservatism had to offer." ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "For months, conservatives yelled from the rooftops about how 2012 presented the sharpest choice ever in governing philosophies.... But as soon as they lost, Republicans suddenly decided that it hadn't been a big-picture election after all. It was about bribing Hispanics. It was about voter turnout machinery. It was about Hurricane Sandy. It was about Mitt Romney being a bad candidate.... Conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed." ...

... CW: Yesterday I decided not to link this piece by Noam Scheiber of TNR, who got hold of some of Romney's internal polling because the piece was pretty much in the weeds & only substantiated what others had reported earlier: that Romney's own pollster thought Romney had several routes to winning the election because they put him ahead in several states he lost. But Paul Krugman puts this bit in the larger context of the "epistemic closure" of the conservative mind. Krugman writes, "My immediate question is not so much why those polls were wrong, but rather why the campaign didn't have severe doubts about what its pollsters were telling them.... All this in turn ties in, I think, with a phenomenon I notice a lot on the right (you can see it often in the comments on this blog): the persistent portrayal of people who disagree with them as marginal figures with trivial support." ...

... CW: the other thing I think you have to credit -- and for some reason scarcely anybody is saying this -- is that Mitt Romney, who ran as a Super-Numbers-Man who could fix any problem with his laser-sharp focus on arithmetic realities, was never anything of the sort. Mitt's successes in life should be attributed to a silver spoon & ruthless indifference, not to super-competence. If Mitt wasn't "severely conservative," why did he only read The Severely Conservative News? This is just more evidence that Romney -- as we've all said -- would have made a horrible president. Not only is he ideologically a throwback to the 19th century, he is incapable of seeing any data or listening to any ideas that don't conveniently fit into his worldview. This is the mindset of disaster-in-the-making. The country's good fortune was that the Romney disaster ended with the campaign. ...

... Nate Silver on the polls: "... when campaigns release internal polls to the public, their goal is usually not to provide the most accurate information. Instead, they are most likely trying to create a favorable news narrative -- and they may fiddle with these assumptions until they get the desired result.... The seeming inaccuracy of Mr. Romney's internal polls ought to present a warning to future campaigns.... Campaigns may also be fooling themselves."

... CW: AND some liberals like Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post are feeling kinda sorry for Romney of the White House Lunch Date. So I'll re-caption that photo: "President Romney welcomes Kenyan Ambassador to Oval Office." Tomorrow I will write on the blackboard 100 times "I will not be such a sore winner." ...

... Gail Collins has some reflections on the Obama-Romney lunch, too. ...

... For earlier presidential history, we turn to historian Paul Finkelman, who writes in a New York Times op-ed: Thomas Jefferson "was a creepy, brutal hypocrite.... His proslavery views were shaped not only by money and status but also by his deeply racist views, which he tried to justify through pseudoscience."

CW: I am going to get sick of stories like this one by Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post on the rising star Kelly Ayotte (RTP-N.H.), an "influential new voice" & Sarah Palin's pick for perfect "mama grizzly." Ayotte, who is auditioning for Joe Lieberman's post as Third Stooge by joining Top Stooges McCain & Graham in lambasting Susan Rice, had the gall to speak at Sen. Warren Rudman's memorial service about Rudman's bipartisanship which she hoped would inspire the Senate to come together now.

Oh, noes! Pat Robertson Denies Creationism. Thanks to Akhilleus for the heads-up:

Local News

Laura McGaughy of the (New Orleans) Times Picayune: "Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's school voucher overhaul was dealt a blow Friday when a Baton Rouge area judge declared the diversion of public money by the voucher program to private schools unconstitutional." ...

... Or, as Charles Pierce put it: "... Over the past year, Jindal has managed to marry educational 'reform' grifting to Christian theocracy by allowing charter schools in his state to employ to teach from Jesus-on-a-dinosaur creationist textbooks. Well, today, a local judge pretty much blew up the whole system on him." Read the whole post in which Pierce comments on Jindal as presidential timber.

News Ledes

USA Today: "The U.S. Military Academy's Cadet Chapel at West Point hosted its first same-sex marriage Saturday. Penelope Gnesin and Brenda Sue Fulton, a West Point graduate, exchanged vows in the regal church in a ceremony conducted by a senior Army chaplain."

New York Times: "Enrique Peña Nieto became president of Mexico early Saturday, beginning a six-year term in which he has promised to accelerate economic growth, reduce the violence related to the drug war and forge closer, broader ties with the United States."

New York Times: "Israel is moving forward with development of Jewish settlements in a contentious area east of Jerusalem, defying the United States by advancing a project that has long been condemned by Washington as effectively dooming any prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." ...

... AP: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met senior Israeli and Palestinian officials Friday, with each side locked in a pattern of actions that the United States had expressly warned against: the Palestinians winning U.N. recognition of their claim to a state on Thursday and the Israelis retaliating Friday by approving 3,000 new homes on Israeli-occupied territory."

Reuters: "International garment firms have demanded fast action to ensure the safety of Bangladeshi textile workers, a week after a plant fire killed more than 100 people.... Mohammad Shafiul Islam, President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), said a 19-member buyers' forum was blunt in suggesting it would 'lose confidence' in the country's industry unless change came fast. Rights groups have called on big-brand firms to sign up for a fire safety program."

AP: "A freight train derailed Friday on a [New Jersey] railroad bridge that has had problems before, toppling tanker cars partially into a creek and causing a leak of hazardous gas that was blamed for sickening dozens of people, authorities said." ...

... The South Jersey Times has the finger-pointing story, plus one on the impact of the chemicals released in the wreck.

ABC News: "PFC Bradley Manning choked back tears during a second day of testimony at a hearing before his military trial as he claimed he didn't tell his family about the conditions of his confinement at the Marine brig at Quantico, Va., because he did not want them to worry. He also expressed concern that doing so could lead to an end to visiting privileges for his family."