Panel of "distinguished historians" convened to find a President who had a worse Year 5 than Obama.

It's a history emergency over at Politico, where they've called out the experts to cast a better light on Obama than the light that's shining on him here in the present, where there are actual emergencies and the deficiencies of the experts convened to deal with them are glaringly obvious. But in the field of history, nothing occurs to expose the glitches and utter screwups. It's all already occurred and all that's left is to interpret what seems to have happened.

AND: I love the prominence of FDR and Ronald Reagan in this distinguished opinion-manufacturing. It's as if the experts know that their role in this history emergency is to boost Obama, and with that understanding, they find a way to say not only that there are Presidents with worse 5th years, but that having a wretched 5th year is the very mark of a great presidency.

Second term Obama is like second term Bush.

Ron Fournier makes 9 points of comparison.

And a new poll at WaPo says:

Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents. At this point in 2005, for example, former president George W. Bush was at 47 percent positive, 52 percent negative. All other post-World War II presidents were at or above 50 percent at this point in their second terms, except Richard M. Nixon, whose fifth year ended in 1973 with an approval rating of 29 percent because of the Watergate scandal that later brought impeachment and his resignation.

I find the headline there painfully funny: "Obama suffers most from year of turmoil, poll finds." It's always all about Obama! Even the suffering. Poor Obama. What about all the people who are suffering as the malfunctioning Obamacare machine cranks into action? I know, the point is that he's doing the worst in the poll, but phrasing it like that — Obama suffers most — is absurd. And I assume they mean to help Obama, to inspire sympathy for him. It's patronizing to him, and it's unsympathetic to everyone else who is suffering.

"What would Machiavelli have thought when President Obama apologized for the fiasco of his health care rollout?"

"Far from earning respect, he would say, all he received was contempt. As one of Machiavelli’s favorite exemplars, Cesare Borgia, grasped, heads must sometimes roll. (Though in Borgia’s case, he meant it quite literally, though he preferred slicing bodies in half and leaving them in a public square.)"

A paragraph from the op-ed titled "Why Machiavelli Still Matters," published in the NYT, marking the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's letter announcing the existence of his work, "The Prince."

The authors, John Scott and Robert Zaretsky, professors of political science and history, respectively, tweak Americans for their moralistic demands for virtues like honesty and generosity.

The proper aim of a leader is to maintain his state (and, not incidentally, his job)... [even] pursuing what appears to be vice [to achieve] security and well-being.

Even in a constitutional republic? And did Obama receive only contempt because he was honest or because he was dishonest? It seems to me that the contempt arises from our discovery of the dishonesty, not from his punctilious pursuit of virtue. Also, you have to take into account that Obama was elected — he did not seize power — and he was elected because people saw him as a repository of virtue. How does someone who was given power because of his perceived virtue retain power when a lack of virtue becomes apparent? How can he shore up his power by looking even less like the person people thought they had elected?

What would Machiavelli have thought? He'd have to do quite a bit of rethinking to make that Cesare Borgia stuff into advice for an American President.

The 10 finalists for Time's Person of the Year.

I know. I hate getting suckered into this annual nonsense, but the list presents some interesting options"

Bashar Assad, President of Syria
Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder
Ted Cruz, Texas Senator
Miley Cyrus, Singer
Pope Francis, Leader of the Catholic Church
Barack Obama, President of the United States
Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services
Edward Snowden, N.S.A. Leaker
Edith Windsor, Gay rights activist

It's not going to be Assad. If we were going to do Bad Guy persons of the year, somebody more dramatically bad would have won recently, like Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. It would be pathetic to reward Assad with that kind of attention. What about Vladimir Putin? He's not even on the list of finalists, probably because he's already won, back in 2007.

Scratch Hassan Rouhani. He hassan done enough yet.

It's not going to be Barack Obama. He's already won — repeatedly — right? And he was barely there this year, never around when anything was happening. I might accept a jocular nod to The Absence of Barack Obama, because that metaphysical being has been everywhere, involved in everything.

As for Kathleen Sebelius, that's ridiculous. If they were at all thinking of giving it to her, they should have switched to one of those nameless, faceless type of "persons" like The Endangered Earth (1988) or You (2006) or The Whistleblowers (2002) and give it to The Uninsured, The Young Invincibles, The Coders, or The Bugs or something.

It's not going to be Jeff Bezos, because he already won, even if that's hard to remember because it was so last century. 1999.

An entertainer has never won, so there's zero chance that the first one will be Miley Cyrus. Popes have won, but I think it's a bit early to go with another Pope yet, unless the Time folk are itching to play Obama's recently attempted income inequality theme. I think that would be shabby, so I say no.

That leaves Edith Windsor, Ted Cruz, and Edward Snowden. I think Edith Windsor is most likely, because: 1. She gives Time a chance to pick an individual woman, something they've done — embarrassing! — only once before. (It was Corazon C. Aquino, in 1986.) 2. She's a good figurehead for same-sex marriage and gay rights, which were very big this year. 3. It lets Time vary the usual focus on politics, economics, and foreign affairs.

There's Ted. Dear sweet, crazy, everyone-hates-him Ted. If Time is smelling blood and wants to punch around a conservative, the man to pick on is definitely Ted Cruz.

Edward Snowden is an interesting choice, but I don't think it helps Obama to create an occasion for everyone to focus on the NSA problem. Yeah, it's a distraction from healthcare.gov, but does Obama want help in that form? This is a 4th reason to go with Edith Windsor: Gay marriage is a subject that casts a flattering light on Obama.

So we have a winner, don't you think? Edith Windsor.

"Considering Which Head or Heads May Roll for a Troubled Website Rollout."

A NYT headline... head- or heads- line.

Is severed head covered in the Obamacare-conforming plans?

The article, by Michael D. Shear, begins:

For weeks, the president and his aides have said they are not interested in conducting a witch hunt in the middle of the effort to rescue the website.

But they've gotten interested. Apparently, a witch hunt is just the right distraction for the holiday season. But heads are rolling, so the image is a guillotine — a reign of terror. But feel free to picture hangings (witch execution, American-style) or burnings at the stake (if you want to go medieval).

The possible targets include Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary; Marilyn Tavenner, the head of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services; Mike Hash, the head of the health and human services health reform office; Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer at Medicaid and Medicare; Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the website; Jeanne Lambrew, the head of health care policy inside the White House; David Simas, a key adviser involved in the rollout; and Todd Park, the president’s top adviser on technology issues.

Don't pick all women. That would look bad. Maybe Mike Hash and Todd Park, I'd say, just going on the optics of the names. You just need heads. Which heads would look best on a pike?



Ha ha ha. Remember George Bush's head on a pike? Those were the days! Oh, the distractions of yore! What would distract the folks today? Will Obama traipsing about the country for 3 weeks, right up until Christmas Eve eve, do the trick? Think of all the pretty, empathetic people that can be lined up behind him. Just like a choir of Christmas carolers... bringing good tidings of great joy. But heads must roll! It's execution time. More apt for the Easter season, but Christ, you know it ain’t easy/You know how hard it can be/The way things are going/They’re gonna crucify me.

No, no, no. Our modern Messiah must survive. The metaphorical executions must be directed somewhere lower down. I say Mike Hash and Todd Park and then throw in a lady too. Kathleen Sebelius. No, make it Marilyn Tavenner.

That's a nice array of heads. Enough of a purge to settle you down until the new year?

Are people burning out on the Obamacare debacle?

That's a question occurred to me when I saw this ludicrous list of "most read" articles in The Daily News:



Is everyone crawling deep into the low-information/aversion-to-politics hole?

IN THE COMMENTS: Henry said:

1. Not too sexy for Obamacare.
2. This cat is covered.
3. Drowning is not covered.
4. Early adopters don't.
5. Beer goggles are covered.
6. Fat kids cost the same as skinny kids.
7. Obamacare will make you go blind.
8. Whats with all the kids?
9. Self-employed Comedian live-tweets insurance loss.
10. Birth control is free. Don't you people listen?

Obama at 37%.

As pictured by Drudge:



Bush's final approval rating in the CBS poll was 22%, but he didn't sink as far as 37% until 2006, 2 years after reelection. [ADDED: According to what's shown now here, Bush was at 37% in November 2005, which corresponds exactly to Obama. I was looking at a less detailed graph.] Bush's real sinking in the polls occurred with Katrina, which the media exploited to damage Bush.

By contrast, the media have generally boosted Obama, especially last year, facilitating his reelection. They minimized the various scandals, and they declined to delve into the looming problems in Obamacare.

Now we see crashing in Obama polls, and part of this is the media's fault. 1. They lulled people into thinking Obama was doing well enough, which continued his presidency, based on a false picture. 2. When the true picture could no longer be obscured, it was so glaring and obvious, and it got everyone's attention. 3. So many people were liking Obama because liking Obama was a cultural phenomenon, which inflated Obama's popularity and left it vulnerable to crashing when, at long last, there's a cultural message that it's the thing now not to like him anymore. 4. Plenty of people probably never liked him all that much, and they're just liberated from the social pressure to follow the latest thing, which is now so 5 years ago.

In these the last days of Obama as a religion, the WaPo writes of the "dwindling faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes that have buoyed him in the past."

Oh, the language of the once-true believers is so careful! And yet you can still see that it was a religion, kind of a religion. There was faith, but it's dwindling. It was faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes. And our faith buoyed him. We kept him aloft in the heavens and — this is a report on a poll — in the polls.

On three measures of leadership and empathy that have been tested repeatedly in Post-ABC polls, Obama now is underwater on all three for the first time. Half or more now say he is not a strong leader, does not understand the problems of “people like you,” and is not honest and trustworthy. Perceptions of the president as a strong leader have dropped 15 points since January, and over the past year the percentage of registered voters who say he is not honest and trustworthy has increased 12 points....

Also interesting, but not specifically about Obama:

Forty-three percent say the Republican Party is too conservative, compared with 36 percent who say its views are just right. For Democrats, 46 percent say the party’s views are too liberal and 41 percent say they are about right.

So more people think the Democrats are too liberal than think the Republicans are too conservative. But the "about right" percent is 5 points higher for Democrats than for Republicans. Unless more people have no opinion of Republicans than of Democrats, that must mean more people think Republicans are too liberal than think Democrats are too conservative.

Ratings for the tea party movement are quite similar to those of the Republican Party. But in the aftermath of the partial federal government shutdown, a majority say they oppose the movement for the second time in two months. And more than four in 10 say the movement has too much influence on the GOP, while only 25 percent say its influence is about right.

Does that mean that about 35% would like the Tea Party to have more influence — and 60% say the Tea Party should have as much or more influence than it has now? Considering that Democrats were being polled here too, that sounds like an amazing amount of support for the Tea Party.

ADDED: I'm addressing the form of expression in the article, but I realize that I can click through to the details. 17% think Republicans are too liberal and 10% think Democrats are too conservative.And 21% think the Tea Party has too little influence in the Republican Party. 11% have no opinion. So 46% think the Tea Party has either the right amount of influence or should have more. Only 43% think it has too much.

AND: Here's the detailed view on the Tea Party question. Among Republicans, 40% say "about the right amount" and 26% say "too little," for a total of 66% percent positive. 26% say too much. Among Democrats, 59% say too much. Interestingly, among the 18 to 39 year-old group, 47% say right amount or too little, and 39% say too much. It's the oldest group — 65 and older — that is most antagonistic to the Tea Party. 50% say too much, and the combined too little and right amount group is 39%.

BUT: Here's the detailed view on the question of whether people support or oppose the Tea Party, and there you see clear opposition in the 18 to 39 year-old group.

The NYT acknowledges Obama's in trouble by reminding us that Bush was really, really bad. Remember?!!

At the website front page the teaser headline  — which is also the headline in the paper version — is:  "As Troubles Pile Up, a Crisis of Confidence for Obama." But if you click to the article, the headline becomes "Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response."

I can think of a whole bunch of non-parallels:

1. Bush's political party didn't design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

2. Bush didn't have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

3. Bush didn't have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

4. The Republican Bush believed he could not simply bully past the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and impose a federal solution, but the Democrat Obama and his party in Congress aggressively and voluntarily took over an area of policy that might have been left to the states.

5. The media were ready to slam Bush long and hard for everything — making big scandals out of things that, done by Obama, would have been forgotten a week later (what are the Valerie Plame-level screwups of Obama's?) — but the media have bent over backwards for years to help make Obama look good and to bury or never even uncover all of his lies and misdeeds.

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn't use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad.

But let's check out the asserted parallels in that NYT article by Michael D. Shear:

The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.

But unlike Mr. Bush, who faced confrontational but occasionally cooperative Democrats, Mr. Obama is battling a Republican opposition that has refused to open the door to any legislative fixes to the health care law and has blocked him at virtually every turn. 

Oh, well, that's another nonparallel. Republicans oppose Obama, unlike those Democrats who sometimes helped Bush. And the NYT reinforces my point #5 (above).

But think about it this way, NYT. What if Bush and the Republicans had created the hurricane, and the Democrats adamantly believed it would be better not to have a hurricane? Would the Democrats have been "occasionally cooperative" to Republicans who smugly announced that they won the election and they've been wanting this hurricane for 100 years and canceling the hurricane was not an option?

Republicans readily made the Hurricane Katrina comparison. 

Oh? Note the wording. It doesn't say that important Republicans were bringing up Katrina on their own. I suspect that the journalist, Shear, asked various Republicans to talk about Bush and Katrina and some of them did.

“The echoes to the fall of 2005 are really eerie,” said Peter D. Feaver, a top national security official in Mr. Bush’s second term. “Katrina, which is shorthand for bungled administration policy, matches to the rollout of the website.” 

Okay, so Shear got Feaver to put a name on the assertion that Republicans made the comparison. No other Republican is named. Shear moves on to Obama's "top aides" and tells us — here's my point #5 again —  that they stressed how unlike Katrina it is, since "Mr. Obama is struggling to extend health care to millions of people who do not have it. Those are very different issues."

I agree. The health care screwup isn't a natural disaster. Obama and the Democrats made their own disaster, stepping up to do something they should have known they weren't going to be able to do well, and they lied about what they were doing to get it passed.

And yet they meant well. They wanted to help people. Unlike Bush, who — what? — asked for that hurricane?

ADDED: My point #4, above, draws from this passage in Bush's "Decision Points" (previously blogged here):

If I invoked the Insurrection Act against [Governor Blanco's] wishes, the world would see a male Republican president usurping the authority of a female Democratic governor by declaring an insurrection in a largely African American city. That left me in a tough position. That would arouse controversy anywhere. To do so in the Deep South, where there had been centuries of states' rights tensions, could unleash holy hell.

And the NYT would have framed it that way (which is my point #5).

"If you can’t take some joy, some modicum of relief and mirth, in the unprecedentedly spectacular beclowning of the president, his administration, its enablers, and, to no small degree, liberalism itself..."

"... then you need to ask yourself why you’re following politics in the first place. Because, frankly, this has been one of the most enjoyable political moments of my lifetime. I wake up in the morning and rush to find my just-delivered newspaper with a joyful expectation of worsening news so intense, I feel like Morgan Freeman should be narrating my trek to the front lawn. Indeed, not since Dan Rather handcuffed himself to a fraudulent typewriter, hurled it into the abyss, and saw his career plummet like Ted Kennedy was behind the wheel have I enjoyed a story more."

Is Jonah Goldberg enjoying himself too much?

Only "46% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the president purposely misled Americans about the potential impact of the health care law."

"45% disagree and think Obama honestly expected the law to work out the way he said it would" and 10% don't know, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of Democrats believe the president was saying what he honestly expected to happen. Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major party think the president was deliberately misleading the country....

Younger voters are much less critical of the administration’s response than voters 40 and over are. Most voters under 40 think the president was honestly mistaken about the impact of the health care law.....

This is great news for Obama, considering how bad the lie was, all the press it's getting, and the extra incitement to anger caused by the horrible website. I'd say he's taken the worst hits, and now has no reason to (pretend to) try to keep "promises" made to that small — what is it, 15 million? — set of persons who liked the — substandard! — health insurance they had. Triage, baby. The death panel says: Let those broken promises die. Palliative care only. The website is what must be saved.

The important thing — for those who want Obamacare to succeed — is to continue to pull everyone into the system. The people are well on their way to processing what might be new information — it's not true that some folks get to stay out — so ignore them while they work through their stages of grief. All the effort should go into the website, the intake point to the system that all must enter.

If you don't want Obamacare to succeed, you can keep pounding the Democrats over the lies and broken promises, but I think your hopes are in rooting that the website will remain in its permanent vegetative state as various deadlines come and go and next year's election comes around, and then maybe you can get your mitts on that pullable plug.

"Whatever Bill Clinton’s motives — Republicans say he is distancing his wife, Hillary Clinton, from the ObamaCare debacle in advance of a White House run..."

Says Jonathan Easley at The Hill in a piece titled "Obama is boxed in by Bill Clinton."

Do we really need Republicans to explain that Bill is out to help Hillary? How could anyone begin to analyze Bill Clinton's remarks about Obamacare without the assumption that he's positioning Hillary for 2016?

Now, Bill's main quote was: "I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, that the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they’ve got." And I think we know that it's not really possible to keep Obamacare and somehow force private insurance companies to re-activate all the plans that have been canceled. What Bill is really saying is Obama lied. Obama made promises he knew would be broken, because that's what it took to get the government's health-care machine going.

Hillarycare failed, but the up side of that is that Hillary isn't loaded with the political damage that had to happen in the process of dragging everyone into the machine. That's all on Obama. Millions feel the pain and the anger as the big machine grinds into motion and pulls them in. In retrospect, it's a benefit to Hillary that Obama got the win in '08 and that his name went on the "care" that's hurting so much.

Once Obamacare is in motion and everybody's in and the screaming at the intake point has given way to muffled groaning from inside the grinding machinery, a beneficent Hillary will sweep forward with plans for easing that pain. The competent one is here at last, now that you're all in there and can't complain to her about that nasty, deceitful intake process.

ADDED: Jonathan Cohn explains how "Bill Clinton Is Wrong" about "How Obamacare Works." But Cohn is assuming (or pretending) that Bill isn't smart, devious, and political (which I'm taking for granted).

Obama's newest famous quote is "I'm really good at killing people" — but what was the context?

The Daily Mail cherry-picked the quote out of the new book "Double Down: Game Change 2012." The book's not out for normal people until tomorrow. (Buy it here.) So I'm stuck wondering. DM says:

A Washington Post report makes passing reference to the anecdote, saying that while speaking with his aides about the drone program Obama bragged that he was 'really good at killing people.' The Obama Administration has not responded specifically to reports of the alleged boast from the President.

The Daily Mail is punctilious enough to say "alleged" but can't resist characterizing the words as a "boast." We're told he "bragged." The headline says "President Obama joked...." Let's assume for the purposes of discussion that Obama really did say those words in that order. But let's try to imagine why he might have said that.

Perhaps you're imagining a childish man, exclaiming "I'm really good at killing people" like a numbskull teenager playing a first-person-shooter video game. Or maybe you're picturing someone more like a movie super-villain in his vast underground lair, cackling to his fawning minions as he creepily caresses his "kill" button.

But it's possible to think of a context in which Obama would be sympathetic. I could imagine a serious discussion of the lack of genuine accomplishment in his administration.

O: What will history say we have done? Nothing! I was the embodiment of hope, and everything I have touched has turned to ashes.

AIDE: But, sir....

O: What are the accomplishments? Name the accomplish of the Obama administration! What will people say?!

AIDE: He killed bin Laden.

O: A pathetic, isolated idiot sitting in his hovel, watching bad porn. The SEALs blew him away. That was really amazing of me.

AIDE: [Names several significant terrorists who have been killed through the drone program.]

O [sadly, sarcastically]: I'm really good at killing people.

Intent on writing this little dialogue, I searched for a list of 4 or 5 good names for the aide to tick off in an effort to bolster the President's spirits. See if you can do that. I couldn't do it. I kept running into "A List Of Children Killed By Drone Strikes In Pakistan and Yemen." Go there. Scroll through those names (and ages) and think about that context and why Obama might have said I'm really good at killing people.

When you send Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel out to do your PR, you must be really desperate.

Did you see this character on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday? If not, you've got to watch this video. Here's the transcript, but you won't get the high anxiety feeling from the text alone. It must be experienced visually and aurally.

Now, I've watched this twice (and read the transcript), and I believe Zeke — older brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood-based talent agent Ari Emanuel — is damned sharp and even honest and he's willing to argue and stand his ground and more. I appreciate that. There is something to be defended here — Obamacare — and so if they aren't willing to acknowledge the fraud and to resubmit healthcare reform to Congress — which I believe is the only morally correct response — then they'd better step up, take the hard questions, and give real answers. And that's what Ezekiel Emanuel is doing there. It's spectacular!

But this is not the kind of harsh, in-your-face talk America is used to! This is the kind of guy you expect to be working hard behind the scenes. A mellower, friendlier face is what we expect. Did you see Deval Patrick on "Meet the Press" yesterday? That's the norm. So soothing! Everything's going to be all right. Ezekiel Emanuel? That was so weird! That was not Everything's going to be all right. That was PANIC!!!!

"Obama unable to govern like he campaigns"... a painfully funny front-page teaser at the L.A. Times...

... takes us to a more-painful-because-they're-serious headline: "Why can't Obama run the government as smoothly as his campaign?" Subhead: "The president increasingly seems to be battling top-level management failures as much as policy or political problems, observers say."

Remember when Obama, running for President in 2008, was asked what executive experience he had and he said running his campaign was executive experience?

Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years. And, certainly, in terms of the legislation that I passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina of how we handle emergency management, the fact that many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place as we speak, I think, indicates the degree to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.

Manage large systems... provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.... 

Back to the L.A. Times:

As a candidate, he vowed to restore government competence to earn back trust, and to make a case for expanding the government's role in people's lives.

"We simply cannot afford to perpetuate a system in Washington where politicians and bureaucrats make decisions behind closed doors, with little accountability for the consequences … and where outdated technology and information systems undermine efficiency, threaten our security and fail to serve an engaged citizenry," Obama said in 2009...

"It seems to be that this White House has no chain to the top, even just the conventional 'protect the boss' standard that ought to be in place everywhere," [said Bob Stone, project director of the Clinton-era government reform effort]. "When something is about to burst, you warn the boss. That's both a management issue and a political issue.... It's hard to see that the president has really had any interest in actually managing the government."

Let's take a look at the news stories that have crowded Obama's woes off the front page.

At www.nytimes.com right now, there's a welter of stories on topics like the improved politeness of Russian service employees, a policy disagreement between Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Claire McCaskill over how to handle claims of sexual assault in the military, and the YouTube Music Awards.  See the list after the jump, and then answer my poll.
1. "Russian Service, With Politeness Added/Russian companies like Aeroflot are carrying out elaborate training that is producing a new generation of service employees who are customer-oriented."

2. "A Fiscal Scold, Germany Is Poised to Open Wallet at Home/Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is being pushed to accept policies that would sharply increase domestic spending, even as she shows few signs of easing austerity for the rest of Europe."

3. "Panel Says Climate Change Poses Risk to Food Supplies/A leaked draft of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that climate change could reduce output and send prices higher in a period when global food demand is expected to soar."

4. "2 Democrats Split on Bill to Fight Military Sex Assault/The conflict has created an uncomfortable division between Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Claire McCaskill."

5. "The Pills of Last Resort/For desperate patients, the pace of clinical drug trials can be lethally slow. But there is a way for them to beat the clock."

6. "Celebrating Pop That’s Just a Click Away/The YouTube Music Awards, an online celebration of pop music and performers, will debut on Sunday, joining a crowded field of congratulatory broadcasts."

7. Parole granted in the case of a 1995 killing.

8. The LAX shooting.

9. "Surge in Iraqi Violence Reunites Maliki and Obama."

10. "MORE NEWS/U.S. Drones Said to Kill Pakistani Taliban Leader/Ex-Governor of Florida Seeks Old Job in New Party/Snowden Appeals to U.S. for Clemency on Leaks."

What do you think the NYT is trying to do?
	Help Obama by distracting us with something, anything.
	Appeal to readers who are weary of all the scandals and glitches.
	Present unique variety suitable to a Saturday morning.
pollcode.com free polls

Another Barry Blitt New Yorker cover about Obama.

"When I heard that the troubled Obamacare Web site was built by a Canadian company, of course I felt personally responsible," says Blitt (because he's from Canada). "I’ll be happy when the glitches are all worked out and everything’s running smoothly, so I can put this all behind me."

Nice drawing. The sentiment is rather stickily sweet for the circumstances, but it's The New Yorker, shoring up support for the once-beloved President.

Embarrassingly lame joke Jennifer Granholm had ready for her "Meet the Press" effort to buck up support for Obamacare.

"First of all, the President is so mad about about this that he himself with go down and supervise the writing of code if this is not fixed by the end of November."



That's not just lame, actually. It's enraging. Who cares how mad Obama is? It's not like his overflowing emotions are fixing anything. Is his anger supposed to work as a painkiller when what we want is a cure? I think of this:



Quite beyond the irritating palliative medicine of Obama's choler, there's the flaunting of rank incompetence. Obama supervising the writing of code?! He knows nothing about writing code. The notion that he'd select himself as the supervisor of an activity about which he lacks any expertise only heightens our suspicion that he's been selecting the wrong people all along.

How can "Obama and Clinton really believe that young people are all going to become extraordinarily altruistic just in time for Obamacare to be smoothly implemented"?

John Althouse Cohen is skeptical, in this Facebook post, linking to "Bill Clinton: Obamacare 'Only Works' If 'Young People Show Up' and Buy Insurance."

Clinton says (text and video at that second link):

"I think it’s important for you to tell the people why we’re doing all this outreach, because this only works, for example, if young people show up and even if they buy the cheapest plan, they claim their tax credit so it won’t cost them much — 100 bucks a month or so. We’ve got to have them in the pools, because otherwise these projected low costs cannot be held if older people with preexisting conditions are disproportionately represented in any given state. You’ve got to have everybody lined up..."

Now, I might suspect him of slyly undercutting Obama's grand plan. He's almost coming out and warning young people that the old are exploiting you, you should take alarm, and you can free yourself from this plot by saying no, I'm not jumping into that pool, I'm not lining up for my own destruction.

But Obama is sitting right there next to him. They're side-by-side in 2 big, upholstered Clinton Global Initiative armchairs. Obama restates Clinton's point:

"What happens is, if you don’t have pools that are a cross-section of society, then people who are already sick or more likely to get sick, they’ll all rush out and buy insurance. People who are healthy, they say, ‘You know what, I won’t bother.’ And you get what’s called adverse selection."

You can get snookered in a comfy chair.

"We have no relation to Mr. Snowden, his relations with the American justice or his travel around the world."

"He chooses his route himself, and we have learned about it from the media," said Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S. officials, and we proceed from that."

I think back to what Michael Haz wrote in the comments to yesterday's Edward Snowden post:

Mr. Snowden, his computers and everything stored in his brain are now in possession of the KGB. He will now fully understand the meaning of the word 'disappeared'.

The press, the Department of State and Barack Obama have all been played for the rubes they are by Vladimir Putin. And there is nothing any of them can do about it. The amateurs have met the pro, and the pro won, then erased all tracks.

Meanwhile, 20 or so reporters were thrown way off the track as they happily enclosed themselves in a Snowdenless, Cuba-bound metal tube for 12 hours. What newsless meditations did they hammer out for publication? The New Yorker's John Cassidy lambasted the on-the-tube, not-in-the-tube newsmediafolk like David Gregory who, he asserts, have demonized Edward Snowden:

Snowden took classified documents from his employer, which surely broke the law. But his real crime was confirming that the intelligence agencies, despite their strenuous public denials, have been accumulating vast amounts of personal data from the American public. The puzzle is why so many media commentators continue to toe the official line. About the best explanation I’ve seen came from Josh Marshall, the founder of T.P.M., who has been one of Snowden’s critics. In a post that followed the first wave of stories, Marshall wrote, “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the U.S. military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does.”

In the end, for all its faults... Marshall's going all last-paragraph-of-"1984." ("O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.") Except... Marshall never resisted.

Back to Cassidy:

I suspect that many Washington journalists, especially the types who go on Sunday talk shows, feel the way Marshall does, but perhaps don’t have his level of self-awareness. It’s not just a matter of defending the Obama Administration, although there’s probably a bit of that. 

Oh, just a tad. Probably! But...

It’s something deeper, which has to do with attitudes toward authority. Proud of their craft and good at what they do, successful journalists like to think of themselves as fiercely independent. 

Like to... but trapped on Aeroflot flight to Cuba, you start noticing your lack of independence. And those journalists who didn't get bamboozled into your lamentable predicament look so enragingly smug.

It’s not surprising that some of them share Marshall’s view of Snowden as “some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law.”

A political philosophy I don’t agree with.... What is that? Resistance to big government? Cassidy — who says — he's "with Snowden" because he's "the underdog" — ends with "Which side are you on?" which is the title of an old union song. Here's Pete Seeger singing it. Bob Dylan repurposed it in "Desolation Row":

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”

Unlike the Titanic, the Aeroflot flight reached its destination uneventfully.

All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name