Today's edition of quick hits:
* The Senate Armed Services Committee this afternoon approved Chuck Hagel's nomination to become Secretary of Defense, 14 to 11, with one senator not voting. The vote came after an unnerving display of McCarthyism.
* An extraordinary scene: "Accused killer Christopher Dorner is surrounded by police inside a Big Bear area cabin after getting into a gun battle that left two San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputies wounded."
* Republicans sequester can help reverse this: "The Dow rose to its highest close of the year Tuesday, ending 146 points from a record. Stocks gained after impressive results from two big consumer brands. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 47.46 to 14,018.70, putting it within 1 percent of the record close of 14,164.53 set in October 2007. The Standard & Poor's 500 gained 2.42 points to 1,519.43, also close to its record."
* This will be big news: "President Obama plans to announce in his State of Union address on Tuesday night that half of the 66,000 American troops in Afghanistan will be home by this time next year, according to an administration official familiar with the speech."
* And this will be a powerful anecdote: "In the first lady's box at the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Desiline Victor, 102, will be seated among Michelle Obama's guests as a symbol of voters who faced long delays as they tried to cast ballots in last year's elections."
* The arc of history bends towards justice in France: "France's lower house of parliament approved a sweeping bill on Tuesday to legalize gay marriage and allow same-sex couples to adopt children, handing a major legislative victory to President Francois Hollande's Socialists on a divisive social issue."
* There's a fascinating, spirited discussion on fiscal policy underway between Chait, Scarborough, and others.
* Sounds right: "Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that universal background checks on gun purchasers have 'the best chance' of becoming law during President Obama's second term."
* Mariah Blake has a fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes shake-ups at the Washington Times following the death of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
* Though I'd generally prefer to ignore former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), it's hard not to marvel at the fact that he's apparently once again trying to get out of paying child support.
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
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'unnerving display of McCarthyism'. Another fine day in Senate History. It occurs to me that they have their rules a little skewed. They can't say F* YOU on the floor but they can lie and smear with impunity.
You should get Chucky Hagel a teleprompter gentlemen. The poor dear out there all by himself trying augment and lie without some well written, prefabbed lingo on the prompter.He can't think on his feet well enough to go out and "splain" things for a politician's politician like Obama.
He will either be another fall guy or he will be dismissed, no middle ground.
The plight of the Navy Seal who killed Bin Laden shines a light on the tremendous backlog of Vets waiting for their disability applications to be processed. In 2009, 4.1 billion was authorized to pay for a unified Health record system for the military, so that from induction to death, a member of the armed forces would have a single source of information for their medical records. More details in articles like this one from center for investigative reporting, this one, and this one from stripes.
As a seasoned software engineer experienced with these sorts of systems, the whole thing smells to high heaven. 4 billion for software? Why unify it? A database designed for a combat field hospital the same as one used for processing meds for an elderly patient in a VA hospital? That's an engineering nightmare, and severe overdesign. Why not just have robust import export data synchronization? Then you don't have to force all medical software to change their database designs. It then becomes a non intrusive addon.
Anyway, a billion was spent on this "system" and according to Cenk's show yesterday has only processed 700 or so applicants. Meanwhile tens of thousands of vets wait in the queue.
The waiting time is currently 8 months. It doesn't matter if the vet shot OBL, whether they were or were not a Seal, it is a dishonor that any veteran who has served our country has to wait that long. Pay some humans a billion dollars and those applications could be processed in short order.
But no- we want to automate and pay the military contractors the big bucks. Bernie Sanders supports the integrated system, so if it is in the long term interest to transition to such a system fine. But a rapid expensive switchover that has the cost of delaying issuance of benefits to current vets by this amount of time is unacceptable.
Part of the Esquire story is wrong about there being no health benefits. Part of it was due to the backlog, the other part was due to the vet's ignorance of VA programs, and one seems to be an omission by the author regarding automatic 5 year benefits. These discrepencies reported in this stripes article.
Here is a solution to the long wait. It flashed in the pan a few months ago and died. But it is a GREAT idea!
Treat a vet's application like the IRS treats our tax returns. That is, assume it is truthful. Then, randomly audit applications. There appears to be an unreasonable fear that some ne'er-do-well will sneak between the cracks and get some undeserved healthcare. And for that we hold up ALL the legitimate claims. It is absurd and embarassing!
I misreported a detail about the Cenk interview. In the first segment of yesterday's (2/11/2013) Young Turks, Uygur spoke with Aaron Glantz the author of the Center for Investigative Journalism story. I misreported what he stated. Glantz spoke of a half billion dollar system which has processed only 70 applications. It is not clear whether this system is part of the 4 billion dollar unified system or whether its status will change after Panetta announced the patching of the existing health records systems to share data more fluidly.
It might be an unrelated applications processing system. A half billion for that?
An extraordinary scene: It's no surprise but the difference in coverage between FOX's Steve Doocy and the various MSNBC hosts is plain to see. Hype and speculation on behalf of FOX, and good objective reporting by MSNBC.
As MSNBC does not list a phone number to directly give feedback, I'd just thought I would pass along that I'm watching "The Place for Politics" to hear about tonight's State of the Union address. It's a rather big story on its own.
Not to watch static video of police cars or a helicopter shot of a rustic house - waiting for 'action' that isn't going to happen anywhere in camera range anyway. When the suspect is actually apprehended (or somehow escapes again), then you might have some actual "Breaking" news.
They are waiting for the drone to get here and level the place with a missle. The sheriff of The county labeled him a domestic terrorist. As we learned, once a terrorist, you give up the right to surrender.
"The arc of history reaches France"... until the next street demonstration with a million-plus people. Don't forget that the French right-wing have decided to transform this issue as THE cornerstone of their fight against Hollande until 2014 (European, Municipal and Regional elections all in one!) at the latest. Abortion is law (ever since 1974 and Giscard d'Estaing, a conservative president!), economic and defense issues are more or less under the control of the EU (so France cannot change anything unless there is agreement between 27 countries, so as easy as to assemble the family for Thanksgiving, eh?), a situation that both conservatives and socialists are accepting as law and will not change for all the gold in the world. In short, expect a lengthy battle on this issue, since there is still a passage through the Senate (controlled by the left, but capable of swings) in order to become law. And don't forget that France has a high court, the Conseil Constitutionnel (a local version of the Supreme Court), with all former presidents (Chirac, d'Estaing and Sarkozy, all right-wing and conservative) being members of this council. So a legal challenge is not impossible. And the right-wing National Front may use this situation to increase its influence and recruit more members. Expect some surprises...
Deadbeat Dad Joe. So what is the news? He was a deadbeat in Congress, too.