Pulling Up The Ladder After You

Soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads, meet the next super-important voter group in US politics:  the New Rich.

Fully 20 percent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives, wielding outsize influence on America's economy and politics. This little-known group may pose the biggest barrier to reducing the nation's income inequality. 

The growing numbers of the U.S. poor have been well documented, but survey data provided to The Associated Press detail the flip side of the record income gap — the rise of the "new rich." 

Made up largely of older professionals, working married couples and more educated singles, the new rich are those with household income of $250,000 or more at some point during their working lives. That puts them, if sometimes temporarily, in the top 2 percent of earners. 

Even outside periods of unusual wealth, members of this group generally hover in the $100,000-plus income range, keeping them in the top 20 percent of earners.

What does the AP know about this group?

1) They don't believe they are rich.  Going from $250k down to $100k is a major pay cut in life no matter how you slice it, and they've taken some damage in the midst of the financial crisis, but for the most part they think they are solidly middle class and pinch pennies even though they are the top 20% of earners.

2)  Socially very liberal, fiscally, very conservative.   They are very friendly towards civil rights, women's issues, LGBTQ issues, and the environment, but they definitely resent any solution that raises taxes on them (see #1 above).  They are split between socially liberal Democrats, and fiscally conservative Republicans when voting.  Obama tied this group 49-49 with McCain in 2008, and lost it 54-45 to Romney in 2012.

3)  They are much more likely to vote.  They are 20% of the country's voting age population, and 25% of the total vote.  That right there makes them the new Voters To Get in 2014 and 2016.

4)  They are less white than they were 30 years ago, but still more than 75% white.  This group overwhelmingly believes that all Americans have equal opportunity to get ahead by hard work, too.

The last several years have been very good to this group, and they remain politically active in order to keep it that way.  In a very real sense, they are the new American middle class, not the new rich.  The other 80% of us, well, we just need to work harder, apparently.

And they definitely don't believe that government is any part of the solution.  They paid their dues, and they call the shots.  The ladder?  Well, that gets pulled up after them.  You gotta take care of your own, you know.

Of course the real point of the article is this:

Some Democratic analysts have urged the party to tread more lightly on issues of income inequality, even after the recent election of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who made the issue his top campaign priority. 

In recent weeks, media attention has focused on growing liberal enthusiasm for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., whose push to hold banks and Wall Street accountable could stoke Occupy Wall Street-style populist anger against the rich. 

"For the Democrats' part, traditional economic populism is poorly suited for affluent professionals," says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who specializes in political polarization.

At no point in the article do we see Republicans chided for their social bigotry.  Of course, that would make it easier to equate economic populism with social bigotry, too.  I'm sure that's coming as well. 

StupidiNews!

• The US Justice Department has indicted 18 current and former LA County Sheriff's deputies in connection with an FBI investigation into civil rights violations of prisoners and charges of corruption.
• Ex-San Diego Democratic Mayor Bob Filner will not go to jail for sexually harassing three female staff members, but will instead face three months of home confinement and three years probation.
• The first real test of the new Senate filibuster rules on presidential nominations begin with HUD nominee Rep. Mel Watt, who may still be delayed and even blocked by Republican procedural motions.
• The US Supreme Court will hear arguments today on the federal Clean Air Act and whether the Obama administration can direct states to limit air pollution that blows into neighboring states' jurisdictions.

Last Call For Son Of Shutdown Countdown

Your last call for a Grand Bargain shot tonight:

More than two-thirds, 68 percent, do not think Obama and Congress could reach a budget deal before government funding runs out in mid-January, despite reports that a congressional agreement could come this week. They’re also not optimistic lawmakers can succeed in getting a deal approved. 

“This is a very grumpy country right now,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion in New York. 

The public pessimism, said Miringoff, reflects months of growing dissatisfaction with Washington. 2013 has been a year of constant budget brinkmanship, most notably the Oct. 1-16 partial government shutdown. 

“The numbers go to their broken trust,” Miringoff said of the public.

And your evening chaser:

The budget deal Patty Murray and Paul Ryan are crafting isn't a "grand bargain." It doesn't put the nation's finances on a vastly different path (or even any different path). It doesn't reform the tax code or overhaul Medicare. It doesn't include infrastructure spending or chained-CPI. It doesn't even replace all of sequestration. 

But the deal does lift about a third of sequestration's cuts while giving agencies more flexibility to deal with the rest. It does mean the 2014 budget is the work of human hands rather than automatic cuts. It might be a vehicle for Capitol Hill to extend expiring unemployment benefits. And it would be a small but real boost to the economy. 

Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisors says the deal "would be a modest boost to GDP growth (relative to sequester). Maybe 1/4 percentage point." Moody's Mark Zandi adds in the possibility of extending unemployment insurance and estimates that "the lift to GDP next year compared to current law is .4. Small, but it matters." 

Politically, the deal is a signal that the age of grand bargains is over. Republicans and Democrats recognize that they can't come to a big agreement. What we don't know is if the age of mini-deals has yet begun. This deal could well fail before it's unveiled before Congress. It could well fail in the House of Representatives, where Democrats are pushing for an extension of unemployment benefits and conservative Republicans say they prefer sequestration.

In the age of "oppose Obama forever" this is the best we can hope for.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/08/211014/poll-ease-spending-cuts-but-no.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/08/211014/poll-ease-spending-cuts-but-no.html#storylink=cpy

The GOP Knows They're Screwed, But They Don't Know How To Fix It

It's so obvious even Chris Cillizza can figure that out.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor spoke Saturday -- a speech in which he tried to offer a vision for how the party can start winning again. Here's the crux of the Cantor argument: 

Winning elections is about convincing the voters that the we have their back, that we’re on their side. If we want to win, we must offer solutions to problems that people face every day. We have not done this recently and it has allowed Democrats to take power, it has allowed them to push their partisan politics, and even worse to enact their leftist agenda. 

Cantor is right. Republicans have lost recent elections -- both in Virginia and nationally -- because they have been unable to a) prove to voters they have a positive vision for the country and b) effectively push back on the picture that Democrats have painted of them as cold, unfeeling plutocrats. In the 2012 presidential election, for instance,Barack Obama won 81 percent of those voters who said a candidates who "cares about people like me" was the most important attribute in deciding their vote. 

But, simply diagnosing the problem is not terribly new -- or all that effective. The problem for Republicans at the moment -- particularly those in Congress -- is that the party is most animated not by its positive vision, to the extent one currently exists, but rather by its opposition to President Obama's vision. (Cantor described Obamacare as "one of the greatest attacks on hardworking taxpayers this country has ever seen.") And, attempts to re-imagine party positions on issues like immigration -- by the likes of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio -- have been met with passionate disapproval by the party base.

The reality of course is that the GOP doesn't want to fix their problems with women, LGBTQ, Latinos, African-Americans, young people, and anyone with a working conscience.  They want to punish them until those groups stop voting, and then win from there.  Nobody believes the GOP has the backs of anyone but themselves.  They'll never win on that nonsense.  But convincing voters that armies of leftist brownshirt thugs will harm them and their loved ones, and that the people supporting Democrats no longer should qualify as Americans?  Well, they'll still get at least 40% of the vote that way, every single time.

The only reason Republicans haven't won on the fear vote nationally yet is because the last guy from their side is currently painting cats and dogs, and from 2001 to 2008 they had that fear vote locked up tight.  It can happen again, and at the state level it already has.  Outside of Delmarva, New England and the West Coast, and a couple of Rust Belt states, the Democrats are fighting for their lives.

Better vote while you still can.

She Guided Me With Science!

Today's Google Doodle here in the US celebrates the 107th birthday of Grace Hopper, one of the pioneers of modern computer science, a US Navy Vice-Admiral, and all around awesome human being.

“Amazing Grace” Hopper would have been 107 today, and Google pays tribute with a home-page cartoon of the young computer pioneer at work. The Doodle prompts us to celebrate the great woman and mathematician and trailblazing programmer, even if she wasn’t the type to make a fuss over such things. 

Hopper once told CBS newsman Morley Safer she was not one for nostalgia. The “60 Minutes” interview was in 1983, when Hopper — who un-retired multiple times — was the oldest woman in the Armed Forces at age 76. 

It wasn’t just looking back, but also a refusal to push forward, that the ever-colorful Hopper had no time for. As a symbol of that battle against human complacency and resistance to change, she is said to have explained: “That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise." 

But for a day, at least, Google lets us turn back the hands to remember “Grandma COBOL’s” groundbreaking achievements. 

Hopper received a doctorate in mathematics at Yale and was teaching math at Vassar (her alma mater) when she joined the Naval Reserve. It was 1943, she was 37, and she felt called. As Hopper once told late-night host David Letterman in an eminently entertaining interview, while describing the national effort during World War II: “There was a time when everybody in this country all did one thing … together.” 

Hopper was sent to Harvard’s Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project, where she was one of the first programmers on the Navy’s Mark I computer — a 51-foot-long, 8-foot-tall mass of relays and vacuum tubes that was on technology’s cutting edge. Hopper is quoted as saying: “It had 72 words of storage and could perform three additions a second." 

Hopper would work on Harvard’s Mark II and III computers, as well, and go on to work on the UNIVAC I computer. She led the team that invented COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), as she pushed for computers to communicate by language instead of numbers.

Here's that Letterman interview, by the way.

An absolutely astonishing, brilliant, and funny woman.  She died New Year's Day, 1992, when I was but a wee lad just learning how to use telnet and ftp commands, too.

Happy birthday, Amazing Grace.

StupidiNews!

• More than 90 heads of state from around the world, including President Obama and the First Lady, will pay their respects to Nelson Mandela in South Africa over the next week.
• As protests by hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens against President Viktor Yanukovich continue, dozens of masked men pulled down the statue of Lenin in a Kiev square.
• Musicians Carlos Santana, Billy Joel, and Herbie Hancock were among the honorees in this year's Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC last night.
• Martial arts star Bruce Lee's famous yellow jumpsuit from his film "Game of Death" was auctioned off in Hong Kong for $106,000, commemorating the 40th anniversary of his 1973 death.
• The FCC says it will postpone a planned June 2014 auction of chunks of the electromagnetic spectrum until 2015 to be "technically ready, user friendly, and thoroughly tested".

Last Call For Hypocrisy Now!

With Congress's approval ratings in the single digits and 2013 being the least productive legislative year in modern history, House Republicans are claiming total victory in stopping President Obama.

While House Republicans have pinned the blame for Congress’ anemic legislative output on Senate Democrats, they make no bones about their efforts to blunt Obama’s rulemaking power.

“We’re left with no choice,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “The president can’t just go it alone, that’s not who we are as a country.”

In interviews with The Hill, several House Republicans claimed momentum in the messaging battle over federal regulations, which they’ve portrayed as too overbearing and expensive under the Obama administration.

The conference has sought to put the president’s rulemaking agenda on trial in dozens of hearings convened in 2013 by Republican committee and subcommittee leaders.

Lawmakers have taken aim at everything from new limits on the hours that truck drivers can spend behind the wheel to draft standards for the amount of pollution that can spew from power plants. They've also sought to highlight the cumulative effects of regulations on the private sector.

“I think it’s been made more visible,” Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) said. “And I do think we will continue to push because I think it’s vital to our small businesses and our industry in this country that we are successful.”

Of course 8 years ago, these same Republicans believed in the plenary nature of the Executive and believed it had nearly unlimited power, too, when Bush was in charge.  Now it's their sworn patriotic and Constitutional duty to oppose everything.

Funny how that works.

Employing An Inane Theory

Sen. Rand Paul believes there's all kinds of extra jobs openings out there, so if we kick people off extended unemployment, these lazy slobs will be forced to take them.

Democratic attempts to extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million workers were a "disservice" to the unemployed, Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday. 

"I support unemployment benefits for the 28 weeks they're paid for," the Kentucky Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." "If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers." 

Paul said a study had shown employers were less likely to hire the long-term unemployed like those who have been on 99 weeks of benefits.

In other words, Rand Paul has decided that the problem is "the longer you're unemployed, the less chance you have at getting hired"  which is correct, and the solution is "cut everyone off at 28 weeks so they go get jobs", which is pure stupidity.   It's a bit like saying "the longer a building is abandoned, the more likely it is to catch on fire or become home to criminals" which is correct, and then saying the solution is "Let's cut fire and police departments so people will be less likely to abandon buildings because they know bad things will happen" which is again, pure stupidity.

Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal dismisses this Randian nonsense in about 37 seconds.

In this chart, the red line is total job openings vs the total number of unemployed. As you can see, the number of job openings vs. the number of unemployed remained very low... even lower than the very bottom of the last cycle in the mid-2000s. There just aren't jobs out there for the unemployed to get.  

The blue line shows total private investment as a share of GDP. This investment remains very low by recent standards, and without investment new jobs won't be created.  

Bottom line, solving the unemployment problem isn't about ending some made-up dependency problem. It's about boosting investment and creating more job openings.

We're still in a situation where there's only about 1 job opening for every 3 job seekers, and that's after clawing back from a place where there was just one job opening for every 6 job seekers.  If this was 2001, when there were 9 jobs for every 10 job seekers (red line), Rand Paul would have a point.  But private investment as a share of GDP (the blue line) is at near historic lows, despite continuing record corporate profits. Again, private investment as a share of GDP was significantly higher in 2001 and that meant more jobs.

We need that investment, rather than maximizing shareholder profit.  But that would make sense.

You Stay Classy, Pickens County

The moment I read last night that President Obama had ordered the nation's flags to be flown at half-staff until Monday in memory of Nelson Mandela, I knew some red state jackass like this was going to make it all about himself.

Rick Clark, the sheriff of Pickens County, S.C., vowed on Friday to defy President Obama's order that U.S. flags be lowered to half staff in honor of deceased South African leader Nelson Mandela. 

Clark made his promise in a Facebook post to keep flying the flag at the Pickens County Sheriff's Office at full height. 

"I usually don't post political items, but today is different. I received this notification today, 'As a mark of respect for the memory of Nelson Mandela, the President orders that the flag of the United States be flown at half-staff effective immediately until sunset, December 9, 2013,'" Clark wrote. "Nelson Mandela did great things for his country and was a brave man but he was not an AMERICAN!!! The flag should be lowered at our Embassy in S. Africa, but not here."

Hey meatball, pay attention.  You might learn something.

In the early days of our country, no regulations existed for flying the flag at half-staff
and, as a result, there were many conflicting policies. But on March 1, 1954, President
Dwight Eisenhower issued a proclamation on the proper times.

Ike set out 30 days for President or former President, 10 days for a veep, Chief Justice or Speaker of the House, and from day of death until day of internment for other justices, other Congressional leaders and Cabinet officials.  Senators, House Representatives, and Governors are honored by their own states, and then there's this:

The president may order the flag to be flown at half-staff to mark the death of other
officials, former officials, or foreign dignitaries. In addition to these occasions, the
president may order half-staff display of the flag after other tragic events. 

So Sheriff Clark, get your head out of your ass.  The precedent for honoring a foreign dignitary like Mandela has stood for nearly 60 years.  There's no penalty for non-compliance, of course.  It just makes you, your county, and your state look like petty little assholes.

So congrats on that.  

'Murica!

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Jennifer Rubin is a terrible and stupid troll, but you knew this already.  Nowhere is she more terrible and stupid than on the subject of macroeconomics:

A drop to 7 percent unemployment and 203,000 jobs added is extremely positive news, suggesting there is something to be said for benign neglect. Without a stimulus, a new tax plan and or even a budget deal, we had the best month in quite a long time. The economy, if left largely alone, is very resilient.

The very next paragraph:

I agree with my colleague Greg Sargent that this shouldn’t lead to a cutoff in unemployment benefits. Seven percent is still a lot of unemployed people, and the number of long-term unemployed is still historically high. Conservative Doug Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum says via e-mail, “The unemployed are increasingly the long-term unemployed — the hardest policy problem to solve. In addition, memories are short — 200,000 jobs should not be a cause for celebration. At this pace, it will take another 19 months to get the unemployment rate down from 7.0 to 6.0 percent.” In exchange for extending unemployment benefits, Democrats should look at GOP ideas for consolidating and reforming work training programs.

To recap:  This proves Obama shouldn't do anything and let the jobs market correct itself, but why doesn't Obama do something about long-term unemployment?  And then there's the very next paragraph following the above:

The stratification in unemployment rates among college graduates (3.4 percent unemployment rate), high school graduates (7.3 percent) and high school dropouts (10.8 percent) is worrisome. If the president wants to do something about income inequality, focusing on the dropout program would be a good idea.

Obama should do nothing about unemployment and why hasn't he fixed income inequality yet?

This one is paragraph 5 on the list:

The improvement in the jobs pictures suggests a small-is-better approach to governance. Modest budget deals are perfectly fine for now. In the long-term our entitlement problem is deeply worrisome, but so far this president has shown neither the will nor the ability to face up to it. It will have to wait for the next president.

And finally she ends with this sentence:

Government should do no harm (see Nos. 1 and 5), but it would be better if both sides could agree on a package of growth-enhancing proposals.

We need growth, but Obama should do nothing and why hasn't he fixed the economy?

Here's a better economics question:  why is this vapid pile of derp still employed?

Last Call For Shut Up, Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum.  Still a moron.

"Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that, and that’s the reason he is mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed…and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that."

Because affordable health care policy is just like apartheid.

Even if you despise Obamacare, comparing it to apartheid and implying that the policies of the nation's first African-American president are even remotely equivalent to strict racial segregation laws of South Africa is pure demagoguery on multiple levels.

You can, Mr. Santorum, make that argument.  You can also look like a complete asshole.  America lets you do both.  What a country!

Once, Mandela Even Made The GOP Do The Right Thing

When Ronald Reagan refused to lift a finger to bring America's tremendous economic pressure on South Africa's apartheid government in 1986, the GOP revolted and forced the President to do the right thing.

Even Mitch McConnell.

Conservatives believed the U.S. had no business hectoring the South African government over apartheid. Senator Jesse Helms (R–N.C.), the Senate's leading race-baiter, took the Senate floor to filibuster on behalf of the apartheid government of South Africa. Helms was an old pro at using the filibuster: he had launched a similar one three years earlier against establishing a national holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. He was joined by like-minded conservatives including noted segregationist Strom Thurmond (R–S.C.) and future presidential hopeful Phil Gramm (R–Texas) in voting against the bill's final passage. Over in the House, Representative Dick Cheney (R–Wyo.) joined the minority in opposing the Anti-Apartheid Act. In earlier battles over South Africa, Cheney had denounced Nelson Mandela as a terrorist and argued against his release. 

But conservatives were unable to stop the majority from acting. Congress approved the bill and sent it to President Reagan. 

He vetoed it. 

Reagan took his case directly to the people on a live TV broadcast. He echoed Crocker in urging Americans to be patient with South Africa's apartheid government. Reagan argued that sanctions would disproportionately hurt black South Africans without significantly undermining apartheid, and blamed black extremists for contributing to the violence. Change, if it were to come at all, would happen incrementally. He believed he had sold his case effectively, and considered the matter closed.

This is the Reagan I remember, the one who was truly, completely, and shamefully on the wrong side of both justice and history on a number of issues:  how he destroyed labor and unions with his relentless strikebreaking, how he was content to let thousands die and millions languish in fear with his horrific treatment and dismissal of the AIDS epidemic, and his most despicable act, the veto of the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986.

Moderate Republicans (they existed back then) were so ashamed, that they overrode Reagan's veto in the House and Senate.  The rest of course is history:

Despite inconsistent enforcement by the Reagan administration, the law triggered a wave of international divestment in the apartheid regime. Banks refused to renew loans to South Africa. Foreign investment dried up, and exports to the U.S. and other countries contracted significantly. The enormous capital flight caused a dramatic decline in the exchange rate of the rand, and in 1989, Prime Minister P.W. Botha resigned. His successor, F.W. de Klerk, announced in his opening address to Parliament the end of the ban against the ANC and other black liberation groups, freedom of the press, and the release of all political prisoners. A few days later, Nelson Mandela walked out of Robben Island a free man after spending 27 years behind bars. Four years later, he was elected South Africa's first black president in the post-apartheid era.

Republican moderates deserve credit for having the courage to go against Reagan in passing the Anti-Apartheid Act. Though denounced by conservatives for their actions, they held firm. As a result, the United States directly contributed to the liberation of millions of people from one of the world's most oppressive regimes. It was a Wilsonian vision of America's ability to create positive change in the world, and it wouldn't have happened without Republicans working in common purpose with Democrats. When Newt Gingrich later became Speaker of the House, his partisan leadership style would make such collaboration all but impossible. But that was still eight years away, and for the moment members of both parties could take pride in what they had accomplished together.

Even Mitch McConnell, as I said, did the right thing.

"In the 1960s, when I was in college, civil rights issues were clear," explained Senator Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), who voted to pass the Act over Reagan's veto. "After that, it became complicated with questions of quotas and other matters that split people of good will. When the apartheid issues came along, it made civil rights black and white again. It was not complicated."

Which is about the most you can hope for and the most you're ever going to get out of a Republican senator on anything involving race.

PS, Reagan, Poppy Bush, and Dubya all considered Mandela a terrorist.

Endless GOP Sabotage

It's not like sabotaging the Affordable Care Act is new or anything, but our old friends at ALEC are pushing a red state boilerplate bill designed to remove state operating licenses for any insurance company that complies with federal exchange subsidies.

The ALEC bill works like this. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers receive subsidies to help offset costs of insuring more people at lower rates. Separately, businesses with more than 50 employees face a penalty if they don't offer health insurance. 

According to Cannon: "if an employer doesn’t purchase a government-prescribed level of health benefits, some of its workers may become eligible to purchase subsidized coverage through a health insurance 'exchange.' When the IRS issues the subsidy to an insurance company on behalf of one of those workers, that payment triggers penalties against the employer." 

Therefore, Cannon, claims, the penalty is triggered only if an insurance company accepts federal subsidies. The solution? Prohibit insurance companies in the state from accepting subsidies, by threatening to suspend their license. 

The problem is that the federal Affordable Care Act pretty clearly preempts states from implementing such a prohibition. 

Cannon's argument to the contrary is pretty weak. He acknowledges that the Affordable Care Act preempts state laws that “prevent the application of the provisions of this title,” but argues that Congress envisioned that states would retain their authority to set the terms of those licenses, because only state-licensed insurers can offer coverage on the exchanges. Therefore, Cannon argues, that because Congress made reference to state licensing in the Affordable Care Act, states therefore have free rein to enact restrictions on licenses, even if the exercise of that power would “prevent the application of the provisions of this title.”

It is a creative legal argument, but a pretty thin reed for states to rely upon when setting up a "nuclear option."

The plan of course is twofold:  to force a Supreme Court challenge on the constitutionality of the subsidies for policies bought on the federal exchanges (as well as the provision that stops states from penalizing insurers for complying with the ACA), and to get a friendly enough panel of federal judges to stay the payment of subsidies to states that pass this law while the case lingers in the courts.

If they can drag this out for years, the damage done to families looking for affordable insurance could be massive.  Imagine low-income families getting no subsidies at all to help pay for a plan when they would otherwise qualify, and you begin to see the political and financial carnage that would follow.

Even if the political damage would be mitigated by Republicans getting stuck with the blame, the damage to the federal exchange plan prices in a scenario like this would be pretty huge.  It would effectively shut down Obamacare in those states if allowed to continue, and that's the point.

Expect these laws to start ending up on the books soon as it becomes clear the law is working for people.

StupidiNews!

• Mexican law enforcement officials say the truck and all radioactive Cobalt-60 stolen earlier this week has been recovered, but that the thieves, still at large, may be suffering from fatal radiation poisoning.
• The International Red Cross says it will need $1.3 billion to cover humanitarian aid for Syria, Central Africa, the Philippines, and other region ins 2014.
• President Obama has met with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos at the White House, as the two men discussed trade, education, and the war on drugs.
• German lawmakers and Chancellor Angela Merkel have reached a tentative deal that would charge foreign drivers fees for using the country's famous autobahn roadways.
• The House has passed the country's first anti-"patent troll" bill, with a 325-91 victory for the Innovation Act, the legislation heads for the Senate.

Last Call: Nelson Mandela, Dead at 95

Finally put your burden down, Madiba.  The rest of us will carry it on together.

Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace. 

The question most often asked about Mr. Mandela was how, after whites had systematically humiliated his people, tortured and murdered many of his friends, and cast him into prison for 27 years, he could be so evidently free of spite. 

The government he formed when he finally won the chance was an improbable fusion of races and beliefs, including many of his former oppressors. When he became president, he invited one of his white wardens to the inauguration. Mr. Mandela overcame a personal mistrust bordering on loathing to share both power and a Nobel Peace Prize with the white president who preceded him, F. W. de Klerk. 

And as president, from 1994 to 1999, he devoted much energy to moderating the bitterness of his black electorate and to reassuring whites against their fears of vengeance. 

The explanation for his absence of rancor, at least in part, is that Mr. Mandela was that rarity among revolutionaries and moral dissidents: a capable statesman, comfortable with compromise and impatient with the doctrinaire.

President Obama spoke this afternoon on the occasion of Mandela's passing:

The world loses an actual hero, and we mourn.  Tomorrow we remember and move forward.