The Commentariat -- November 29

I see [us Americans as] an insular people who are insensitive to foreign sensibilities, who are lazy, obese, complacent and increasingly perplexed as to why we are losing our place in the world to people who are more dynamic than us and more disciplined.
-- Edmund Morris, historian, on "Face the Nation"

Paul Krugman comments on President Obama's decision to freeze the wages of non-military government employees:

Yep, that’s exactly what we needed: a transparently cynical policy gesture, trivial in scale but misguided in direction, and in effect conceding that your bitter political opponents have the right idea. ...

    ... That's all he wrote. Here's the backstory.

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "As President Obama’s fiscal commission faces a deadline this week for agreement on a plan to shrink the mounting national debt, liberal organizations will unveil debt-reduction proposals of their own in the next two days, seeking to sway the debate in favor of fewer reductions in domestic spending, more cuts in the military and higher taxes for the wealthy.... On Monday, the progressive policy organizations Demos, the Economic Policy Institute and the Century Foundation will unveil a liberal blueprint.... On Tuesday, a separate coalition ... — the Citizens’ Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America’s Economic Future — will release a similar outline. Both plans are comparable to one recently proposed by Representative Jan Schakowsky, a liberal Democrat from Illinois who is a member of the Bowles-Simpson commission." CW: here's an overview of Schakowsky's plan, and here's a pdf of the detail. ...

... Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: "Job-based health care benefits could wind up on the chopping block if President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans get serious about cutting the deficit. Budget proposals from leaders in both parties have urged shrinking or eliminating tax breaks that help make employer health insurance the leading source of coverage in the nation and a middle-class mainstay." ...

... Elisabeth Bumiller & Tom Shanker of the New York Times: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is attempting "... to contain the exploding cost of health care for nearly 10 million eligible beneficiaries against the pain and emotions of those who say they have already 'paid up front' with service in uniform, particularly those who deployed to America’s two current wars. The 10 million figure includes active-duty personnel, retirees, members of the National Guard and Reserves and their families."

Shannon McCaffrey of the AP: "At least 13 state lawmakers in five states have defected to Republican ranks since the Nov. 2 election, adding to already huge GOP gains in state legislatures. And that number could grow as next year's legislative sessions draw near."

American Exceptionionalism. Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "... with Republicans and tea party activists accusing President Obama and the Democrats of turning the country toward socialism, the idea that the United States is inherently superior to the world's other nations has become the battle cry from a new front in the ongoing culture wars. Lately, it seems to be on the lips of just about every Republican who is giving any thought to running for president in 2012.... Some, however, wonder whether Obama's conservative critics are sounding an alarm about the United States' place in the world - or making an insidious suggestion about the president himself." CW: Tumulty is a straight reporter, but her report zeroes in on the insidious us-against-them demagoguery that we will be subjected to for the next two years. ...

... New York Times Editorial Board: "... more than 70 percent of voters in Oklahoma still approved a state constitutional amendment [against the enforcement of Islamic law]..., apparently persuaded by anti-Islamic activists, and a few cynical politicians, that Oklahoma was about to be brought under Islam’s heel.... It is fear-mongering, of course, and all too successful.... The issue helped drive the high Republican turnout at the polls in Oklahoma.... The voters of Oklahoma were badly misled by demagogues into passing a profoundly un-American measure."

Michael Pollan & Eric Schlosser in a New York Times op-ed: "The Senate should pass the food safety bill that would allow the F.D.A. to prevent food safety problems, rather than respond only after people have become ill."

William Glaberson of the New York Times: "As part of his annual budget, New York’s chief judge [Jonathan Lippman] will propose a $100 million increase in state financing for lawyers who represent the poor in civil cases that deal with 'the essentials of life' like eviction and child support, according to people who have worked on the plan.... If approved by the Legislature, it would ... be a striking acknowledgment that the state’s court system is being overwhelmed by some 2.3 million people a year who cannot afford representation." CW: bear in mind that, with the exception of small claims, this still leaves out the poor & middle class who still cannot afford to bring suit against parties they believe have wronged them.

** Happy Birthday, Bush v. Gore. Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker: "Over [the] decade, the Justices have provided a verdict of sorts on Bush v. Gore by the number of times they have cited it: zero.... [But] Bush v. Gore would resonate.... The case didn’t just scar the Court’s record; it damaged the Court’s honor." For more on Bush v. Gore, listen to one of the dissenters below.

Justice John Paul Stevens

Tales from the WikiLeaks Papers

Scott Shane & Andrew Lehren write the New York Times main story: "A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats. Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks.... WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday. The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict." The Times' overview page. links to other stories. The Lede is following reactions to the WikiLeaks release. 

David Leigh of The Guardian has a good, brief synopsis. AND here's The Guardian's overview page.

Der Spiegel's overview page (English version) is here.

The WikiLeaks site is here, BUT Times of India, November 28: via Twitter, WikiLeaks claims it is under "denial of service" hack attack.

Zachary Roth of Yahoo News lists the "top ten revelations from the WikiLeaks cables."

Arshad Mohammed & Ross Colvin of Reuters: "The White House condemned the release of the [WikiLeaks] documents, saying their release could endanger the lives of people who live under 'oppressive regimes' and 'deeply impact' the foreign policy interests of the United States and its allies....

... Here's Robert Gibbs' full statement on the leaked documents.

Der Speigel: "In the documents..., US diplomats stationed across the globe report back to the State Department in Washington, communicating sensitive information about international arms deals, evaluating political developments or assessing the corruption level of local leaders. The compendium of reports, most of which cover the period from 2003 until the end of February 2010, sheds light on America's at times arrogant view of the world. Never before have so many political revelations embarrassed the US State Department in one fell swoop."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The treasure trove of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks ... chronicle the Iranian nuclear standoff from its genesis. The diplomatic memos disclose the extent to which many of the United States's allies in the Arab world repeatedly implored Washington to stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons." ...

... Iran Sanctions: Bush 0, Obama 10. David Sanger & James Glanz of the New York Times: "In day-by-day detail..., cables ... tell the disparate diplomatic back stories of two administrations pressed from all sides to confront Tehran. They show how President George W. Bush ... struggled to put together even modest sanctions. They also offer new insights into how President Obama, determined to merge his promise of 'engagement' with his vow to raise the pressure on the Iranians, assembled a coalition that agreed to impose an array of sanctions considerably harsher than any before attempted."

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the nited Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries. Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies."

Robert Booth & Julian Borger of The Guardian: "Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK."

Der Spiegel: "The ... documents ... reveal that the US has an extensive network of informants in Berlin and was kept informed of coalition negotiations as Chancellor Merkel was forming her current government. US officials, the cables show, are skeptical of several top German politicians. The ... secret documents from the US State Department show just how critical the American diplomats were of the new German government."

Barak Ravid of Haaretz: "Israel tried to coordinate the Gaza war with the Palestinian Authority.... Both the PA and Egypt refused to take control of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave."

Der Spiegel: "The leaked diplomatic cables reveal that US diplomats are skeptical about Turkey's dependability as a partner. The leadership in Ankara is depicted as divided and permeated by Islamists.

David Bernstein, in the Volokh Conspiracy, on Saudi & other Arab states' effort to get the U.S. to attack Iran: "It’s quite a blow to conspiracy theorists, is it not, that the combined weight of two of their favor bogeymen, 'the Zionists' and 'the Arabs' haven’t been able to get the U.S. to take military action against Iran."

Spencer Ackerman in Wired: "Perhaps the most worrisome news to come out the diplo doc dump is that North Korea secretly gave Iran 19 powerful missiles with a range of 2,000 miles.... 'If fired from Iran,' the New York Times notes, a missile with that range could 'let its warheads reach targets as far away as Western Europe, including Berlin.' ... No wonder why European leaders are suddenly so keen on missile defense. And no wonder why so many of the leaders of the Arab Middle East are increasingly freaked out by Iran’s growing conventional arsenal — and nuclear program."

Amy Davidson of The New Yorker: "... the Guardian noted that the database the documents lived in had 'a very wide distribution among diplomatic, government and military circles,' and that about three million people are allowed to read 'secret' things. Maybe those were three million eminently respectable people, all carefully vetted.... Or maybe the government, if it expects the word 'secret' to constitute a clear warning about the potential for danger to one’s country, should think hard about what the word means."

Kevin Drum of The Nation: "... so far I just don't see these leaks causing an epic amount of damage. Obviously feelings will be bruised by the blunt language in some of the cables — though if Spiegel's excerpts are typical, the language is only slightly blunter than your run-of-the-mill anonymous carping — and foreign officials might be reluctant for a while to share confidences with American diplomats.... Hillary Clinton will indeed have her hands full for a while. But honestly, there's hardly anything here that I haven't already read on the front pages of multiple newspapers. Titillating, but not much more.