Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 840

1.3 Million Americans Lost Unemployment Benefits Today

AP

Unemployment benefits dried up for an estimated 1.3 million Americans on Saturday as politicians let the recession-era holdover federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program expire. 

The program first started in 2008 as an emergency measure to help Americans stay afloat during the recession. For the past four years, politicians have renewed the program, continuing to provide the millions of unemployed Americans with an extra 47 weeks of extra unemployment insurance payments. When Congress passed the two-year bipartisan budget deal last week, the program was left off the books. Lawmakers let unemployment benefits expire for over a million struggling Americans — the ones who need it the most — smack in the middle of the holidays. 

The problem seems to be that the program costs money. Lots of money, in fact — extending the program for another year will cost an estimated $25 billion. So, naturally, The New York Times reports this will be the next hill that Republicans will die over spending cut demands on: 

Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for an extension of the program, though the constrained fiscal environment makes its reinstatement somewhat less likely, aides said. Members of the Republican leadership have indicated that they might be willing to extend the benefits, but only if Democrats offset the new spending with other cuts.

But it also seems like a small price to pay to support the struggling and unemployed. The exact effects cutting the program will have is unclear, but experts expect job growth to suffer and stunted economic growth. Unemployment may go down, because some who have been unemployed for a long time will leave the workforce entirely. The Wall Street Journal explains: 

The long-term unemployed who face expiring payments are found in every state except North Carolina, which had its extended benefits cut off earlier this year after failing to meet federal guidelines. Since extended unemployment was eliminated in the state, its jobless rate has tumbled. But much of the decline is from people dropping out of the labor force.

 

The biggest consequence the program's expiration will have is on Americans who relied on those payments to pay bills, buy groceries, or avoid homelessness. Buzzfeed's Jacob Fischler spoke with five people affected by the program's expiration and the story will, appropriately, break your heart.

       

Paul Graham Proves Sexism in Tech Is Still a Problem

Twitter: @PaulG

Once again, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham's mouth has landed him in hot water. The loose-lipped Silicon Valley power broker said some dumb stuff about women. 

In an interview with The Information, Graham was asked about discrimination in the tech scene. Troves of evidence exist revealing sexism in tech exists, like this year's TechCrunch Disrupt conference, as one example. But Valleywag highlighted Graham's comments that show he doesn't see sexism as a problem, and in fact thinks women are just naturally behind the hacking eightball. Graham now contends the whole thing is one big misunderstanding. 

The Information's Eric Newcomer asked whether Graham's startup accelerator, Y-Combinator, discriminates against women, and his answer quickly became a defense of tech culture as a whole. Graham said his company does not discriminate, and that any gender imbalance can be explained by the fact that girls don't start hacking at the same age boys do. 

If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us. If we really wanted to fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start startups now.

It's already too late. What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that. God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that.

Later, Graham tried to explain that discrimination cannot exist because girls attend tech conferences too. Besides, the time thing. "We can't make women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years," he said, later in the interview. 

The notion of limits on when and how one can start coding is astonishing. Coding is supposed to be the one thing anyone can learn and change their life with. What about all the homeless people? Silicon Valley is supposed to be where bootstraps pick themselves up by the bootstraps and change the world. But apparently that's not an option for women because of they're too busy not being on the computer at 13-years-old. 

People were predictably outraged over Graham's comments about girls not hacking for the last ten years. A storm is brewing. That these comments are coming from Graham, an extremely important and influential person in the tech world, is especially troubling. "Here is a hacker hero—the figurehead behind Hacker News!—and he has no clue how to get girls to care about tech," said Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku. But maybe they should not be surprising, considering this is the same guy who admitted discriminating against startup founders with foreign accents. 

At one point Graham also said startups sometimes don't hire people who did not start hacking until studying computer science in college. This, according to Graham, is why there's some confusion. See, he meant to say "these women," as in the ones who didn't start hacking until college:

What I actually said was "make *these* women look..." I was simply explaining why CS major != hacker. All that got cut.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) December 28, 2013

(Update, 5:25 p.m. Graham expanded his defense in emails to Valleywag. He was allegedly misquoted during an interview for a profile on his wife.) To summarize: girls aren't interested in hacking or coding at an early age, but sometimes they start in college, and then they'll have terrible job prospects because they didn't start early enough. Or, something. That's a rough outlook for any women hoping to break into tech's boys club. 

Following Graham's logic can be difficult. Tiku put it best when she said he's merely "justifying the status quo," rather than examining a real problem. Graham has once again proven himself proud to be the champion of everything wrong with Silicon Valley culture. Thankfully, there are people like Elissa Shevinsky telling women they can go to liberal arts school and read Plato and still play with computers. 

       

John Kerry Continues His Quest for Middle East Peace Next Week

AP

The Secretary of State returns to the Middle East shortly after the holidays end to continue pursuing his White Whale.

Palestinian sources tell the AFP that John Kerry will spend "a number of days" in the Middle East, starting on January 4, for another round of peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Kerry will "discuss the peace process and negotiations with Israel," the source said, during his tenth visit to the region since March.

Kerry has aggressively pursued what many think is impossible since becoming the top U.S. diplomat and, if you listen to him, the Massachusetts-native might be on the right track. On December 6, just after his ninth visit, Kerry said the two sides were "closer than we have been in years" to a deal. "The naysayers are wrong to call peace in this region an impossible goal," Kerry told reporters at the time. 

The two countries agreed to nine months of peace negotiations, a deal brokered by Kerry that expires in April 2014. The two sides have sparred publicly during the talks, but you can't exactly expect them to start playing nice right away. These things take time. Israel is expected to release another round of Palestinian prisoners next week, a condition under the peace talk deal. Very little is known about what a deal might look like.

       

U.S. Marines Detained in Libya While Searching for Escape Routes

What's left of Gaddafi's old military compound in Tripoli, Libya. (AP)

The search wasn't the most successful ever, especially considering gunshots may or may not have been fired while the four U.S. military personnel were at a routine checkpoint. 

Here's what we know for sure: the Associated Press reports four U.S. Marines were detained Saturday by Libya's Interior Ministry. There was an "incident" at a checkpoint near Sabratha, about 40 miles from Tripoli, the capital, officials told NBC News, which led to the mix-up. The New York Times reports the four detained Marines were special forces assigned to diplomats in Tripoli researching potential escape routes for their protection detail. 

So, what happened at the checkpoint? No one really knows for sure. "Reports of gunfire could not be confirmed," the Guardian notes. "Circumstances under which the four were detained remains unclear and no one was reported injured in the incident," writes Al-Jazeera. Something happened, though, and it angered Libya enough to detain the Marines for about four hours. 

"After running into a problem at a checkpoint — many of which are run by local militias — they were detained and later moved to the Ministry of the Interior," officials told The New York Times. 

The Marines were under "Libyan government custody," according to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, indicating they were never detained by security forces or the military. The State Department called the Libyan government to sort through the issues, and the Marines were eventually released to the Embassy's front door.

       

A&E Will Have the Anti-Gay Patriarch of 'Duck Dynasty' Back

A&E

Despite putting him on "hiatus" earlier this month, A&E is bringing back Phil Robertson, the patriarch of Duck Dynasty who said some really horrible things about gay people, back to the show. 

In a statement via Deadline, the network said that the show will begin to film with Robertson this coming spring. Their defense was as such: 

...Duck Dynasty is not a show about one man’s views. It resonates with a large audience because it is a show about family… a family that America has come to love. As you might have seen in many episodes, they come together to reflect and pray for unity, tolerance and forgiveness. These are three values that we at A+E Networks also feel strongly about.

So after discussions with the Robertson family, as well as consulting with numerous advocacy groups, A&E has decided to resume filming Duck Dynasty later this spring with the entire Robertson family.

Which essentially boils down to: America loves Duck Dynasty ,and the show gets us huge ratings so: sorry, Robertson's back on. 

Robertson became the source of headlines for his homophobic comments in the January issue of GQ. Robertson said, for instance:  "Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men..." In the aftermath of those comments and A&E's subsequent suspension of Robertson, a variety of GOPers—from Sarah Palin, to Bobby Jindal, to whoever Ian Bayne is—jumped to Robertson's defense on the grounds of free speech. In the article, Robertson also shared his belief that black people in pre-Civil Rights Louisiana were perfectly happy.

But they have no cause for concern anymore. Robertson basically received no punishment for saying hateful things—he didn't miss any filming—and the network will get its coveted ratings juggernaut back. 

       

What the Wolf of Wall Street's Victims Think of The Wolf of Wall Street's Movie

AP

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street has been roundly praised by critics and welcomed by Christmastime moviegoers, but it's received a frostier reception from an altogether more exclusive set of observers: those personally victimized by the real wolf, Jordan Belfort.

Naturally, that includes those hapless investors swindled by Belfort's Stratton Oakmont firm into purchasing fraudulent stocks and losing thousands of dollars. Those byproducts of Belfort's greed were the subject of a recent Times Dealbook feature that's worth reading in full. Here's a quick taste of how some are greeting the movie adaptation:

For many of them — small-business owners and people like Steve Orton, a State Farm insurance agent from Alpharetta, Ga. — the publicity for the movie has brought back the old pain. Still, Mr. Orton said, while “it kind of sickens me, I really feel like I owe it to myself to complete the circle to see it.”

Ken Minor, a real estate appraiser in Gilroy, Calif., said the experience “hurt me pretty bad.” He drew on a home equity line of credit to buy stocks with Mr. Belfort’s brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont, and still has not repaid it. “I’m not a rich guy,” he said, “and I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

Paramount

But the list of Belfort's victims ought also to include Christina McDowell, whose father, it seems, collaborated with Belfort on some of his petty schemes, only to wind up in prison after the wolf-turned-informant testified against him. McDowell's open letter to the filmmakers "and the wolf himself," which appears in L.A. Weekly, has quickly become a bit of a manifesto for those viewers troubled by Scorsese's almost grotesque fetishization of greed. An excerpt:

Belfort's victims, my father's victims, don't have a chance at keeping up with the Joneses. They're left destitute, having lost their life savings at the age of 80. They can't pay their medical bills or help send their children off to college because of characters like the ones glorified in Terry Winters' screenplay.

Let me ask you guys something. What makes you think this man deserves to be the protagonist in this story? Do you think his victims are going to want to watch it? Did we forget about the damage that accompanied all those rollicking good times? Or are we sweeping it under the carpet for the sale of a movie ticket? 

So: are we? McDowell's scathing take prompts some worthwhile questions. Spoilers may follow (though, frankly, it's hard to "spoil" a film that has as inevitable a plotline as Wolf of Wall Street).

Does making Belfort the "protagonist" make the film an endorsement of his douchebaggery?

Well, no. Of course not. Scorsese carries with him a long filmography of desperately masculine and intensely flawed protagonists—think Jake LaMotta, Travis Bickle, and Henry Hill, for instance. And Wolf's view of Belfort's greed is so unflinching as to be nauseating in parts, unless you aspire to be a stockbroker billionaire snorting coke off of prostitutes' asses, which—well, we'll get to that in a bit.

Anyway: whether Scorsese condemns Belfort enough—or whether it's his job to do so in any sort of moralistic fashion—is another question. Vulture's David Edelstein points to Taxi Driver as having drawn a thicker wall between subject and filmmaker. But Wolf, too, establishes Belfort as a fundamentally unreliable narrator (even if an outrageously entertaining one), most memorably during the already-infamous driving-on-Quaaludes scene. Only thing is, Belfort's the only narrator, the only vantage point Wolf provides for his crimes. Which brings us to:

How does Scorsese's film depict Belfort's victims?

It doesn't, for the most part. They're invisible—voices on the other end of the cold-call phone lines. It's understandable, given that cinematic treatment, for those who lost life savings to Belfort's greed to feel played. And it's easy for audiences to forget that white-collar crime isn't victimless crime, that Stratton Oakmont's swindling cost real human collateral. 

Consider that what's discomfiting about Wolf, then, isn't how it glorifies the bad guys, but how it steers clear of the victims entirely. Admittedly, that'd make for a less glamorous movie.

Why do people complain about how immoral Wolf of Wall Street is when they loved Casino and Goodfellas?

The parallel isn't so silly as it may seem. Not only is Wolf another three-hour epic about organized crime, it bears the flashy tone, fast narration style, and decadent plot arc of Casino (and, to a lesser degree, Goodfellas) to a startling degree. Scorsese replaced De Niro with DiCaprio as his go-to male lead years ago; now, Jonah Hill makes a surprisingly adept fast-talking sidekick seemingly modeled after Joe Pesci.

Those films, you'll recall, are full of scummy mobsters carrying out hits and putting people's heads in vices. So why's Wolf making us so squeamish?

Here's one reason: part of what makes mob movies so alluring are the complex and inscrutable honor codes and family rules that govern mob life, even with all the killing and double-crossing. At Stratton Oakmont, the only moral code is to make as much money as humanly possible, no matter the deception required. Another explanation, though, is that Scorsese's audience—college-educated middle- and upper-middle-class film nerds and the like—is far more likely to know someone like Jordan Belfort than someone like Henry Hill, even if the Wall Street titan you went to college with hopefully doesn't sink yachts in the Mediterranean or sex up hookers in the office elevator. For the Scorsese viewer, banker douchebaggery hits closer to home than mobster douchebaggery. Case in point: this account of a night at the movies with Jordan Belfort's biggest admirers.

But Belfort learned his lesson, right? He went to prison and everything? 

Well, sort of.

Okay, it's not so simple. He ratted out his friends in exchange for a far reduced prison sentence (during which he was cellmates with Tommy Chong, of all people!), and he's still a very wealthy man. Esquire reports that Belfort and his sidekick, Danny Porush, may have stowed some of their money away in the Bahamas, and even if that's false, he's still comfortably profiting from book proceeds and his current gig as a motivational speaker touting the lessons he took away from his fast-track to the top. In other words, he's still using his power of persuasion to con innocent adults into paying him money for something of no real value.

On the bright side, Scorsese's film is here at last to expose him as the vicious bastard he is. Or to glorify his sins beyond all reasonable comprehension. That's in the eye of the beholder, really. 

       

A Viewer's Guide to Weekend Movies: Force-Feeding Your Holiday Hangover

Relativity Media

The entertainment industry has made it virtually impossible for you not to retreat into the comfort of the movies this weekend. Whether it's the aggressive and sexy amorality of The Wolf of Wall Street or a night at home with ghosts and home invaders, you have plenty of options to while away the waning hours of 2013 with. We can help sort them out for you.

In Theaters

The traditional year-end blizzard of movie releases hit on Christmas Day, leaving movie theaters blanketed with the fresh powder of new options for your moviegoing pleasure. Now that you've got the family packed up and send back from whence they came, you're free to enjoy Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street in peace. Just you and your closest cheering finance bros.

If you're looking for something … you know, else, you're kind of faced with a mixed bag. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is admirably ambitious and has its heart in the right place, but it mostly mistakes doing cool-looking stuff for genuine profundity and is also positively groaning under the weight of excessive, distracting product-placement.

What else? If you're into action, there are a few options. Keanu Reeves takes his fascination with martial arts and Asian culture (see: The Matrix) (see also: Little Buddha) to the next level with 47 Ronin, co-starring the guy who played Emily Thorne's revenge sensei on Revenge. Those opting for more traditional fisticuffs could find themselves taking in Stallone and De Niro mustering up the strength to throw a singular punch in Grudge Match.

Then, of course, there's the Justin Bieber movie, which you should probably go see, as it could really use the money.

In Limited Release

The Weinstein Company's curious decision to exempt August: Osage County from the rush of Christmas Day releases—after months of misleading trailers designed to sell it as an outrageous family comedy—sees its payoff when it opens this weekend, in verrrry limited release. New Yorkers can see it at either the Lincoln Square or Union Square multiplexes, while Los Angeles residents can shlep to the AMC Century City 15 or The Landmark. Or they can find guild members who have screeners and watch it at their houses.

Director Ralph Fiennes's The Invisible Woman is only playing three theaters across the nation this weekend, so moviegoers looking for their fix if Charles Dickens biopics, Felicity Jones, or ideally both, should hope they live near New York's Angelika Film Center or Lincoln Plaza Cinemas (and seriously, GOOD LUCK at those two pits of despair), or L.A.'s Laemmle Royal.

Finally, Peter Berg's ode to soldiers, Lone Survivor, is playing in New York at Lincoln Square and in L.A. at the Regal LA LIVE Stadium 14.

Video on Demand

Kind of a wonderful grab-bag if you're looking to pay a bit for your at-home entertainment this week. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut Don Jon (iTunes link) wasn't exactly a very good movie, but it has its moments—a fun Scarlett Johansson performance, aping her "marble columns" voice to perfection, plus a legitimately very good Julianne Moore turn that's getting lost in the year-end shuffle—and I wouldn't be un-interested in seeing how JGL follows this one up. He's occasionally up his own ass, but his brand of enthusiasm for making art is the kind of thing that could really spark if something truly interesting inspires him.

I wrote in our year-end roundups that Despicable Me 2 (iTunes link) was one of the year's highest-grossing movies despite no one you actually know having seen it. So you could change that. Be the social-media ambassador of a disrespected blockbuster! Or, you know, sit the kids down in front of it while you go out for dinner.

Finally, in a year that was somewhat light on mainstream horror fare, it's kind of a shame that both You're Next (iTunes link) and Insidious Chapter 2 (iTunes link) opened within three weeks of each other. Which wouldn't seem so weird if they both opened on or around Halloween, but of course they didn't. You can make your New Year's Eve the scariest night of the year by watching them back-to-back, though.

Streaming Online

A mixed bag of Netflix offerings this weekend. Indie comedies The Lifeguard and C.O.G. got patchy support earlier this year, but if you're a big fan of Kristen Bell or Jonathan Groff, respectively, feel free. Speaking of Groff, if you're on a real kick for handsome, white, publicly out-of-the-closet leading men, there's always the fourth season of USA's White Collar.

Those in the mood for a TV series of a more classic design can opt for the very first season of The Dick Van Dyke Show. TV the way they used to make it! With ottomans!

Also, you might want to take your opportunity to watch one of these movies due to expire soon.

Movies on TV

HBO's Saturday night premiere movie is Warm Bodies, which actually turned out to be a pretty good movie, despite being the 1000th take on the zombie film (and 300th comedic "reimagining"). This is mostly thanks to the fine performances of underrated young actors Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer. They're surprisingly sweet together, and he's believably awkward despite having played the world's most infuriatingly confident boy on Skins.

       

Target's Massive Data Breach Is Bringing Everyone Down, Even Hackers

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez talks during a news conference outside of a Target store, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2013, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP PHOTO/JULIO CORTEZ)

Earlier this month, Target disclosed that 40 million credit cards used at its retail locations were compromised in the second largest retail data breach in U.S. history. Now the company, its customers and even hackers selling the stolen credit card information are dealing with the fallout, and everyone — with the possible exception of the criminals who pulled off the stunt and Brian Krebs, who broke the story and is flexing his cyber security bona fides on the Target crime beat — is worse off. Here's a quick roundup of how the Target debacle is affecting every identifiable party involved. 

The Customers: Bank PINs may have been stolen

Target customers were, to put it lightly, disappointed to learn that their credit card information was compromised during the busiest shopping season of the year. Making matters worse for consumers, banks enacted an unorthodox withdrawal and spending cap on debit cards due to the scope of the crime — and possibly because the theft may be even more severe than Target is reporting. According to Reuters, a source familiar with the situation revealed that whoever stole the credit card info also nabbed encrypted personal identification numbers (PINs). The theft of encrypted data would increase the scope of the crime significantly, as hackers could unscramble the encrypted code and use it to withdraw funds from victims' accounts. This breach would help explain why banks would take the drastic measure of restraining use of ATM cards. Reuters elaborates: 

Daniel Clemens, CEO of Packet Ninjas, a cyber security consulting firm, said banks were prudent to lower debit card limits because they will not know for sure if Target's PIN encryption was infallible until the investigation is completed. As an example of potential vulnerabilities in PIN encryption, Clemens said he once worked for a retailer who hired his firm to hack into its network to find security vulnerabilities. He was able to access the closely guarded digital "key" used to unscramble encrypted PINs, which he said surprised his client, who thought the data was secure.

Target has denied that any unencrypted PIN information was stolen, though spokeswoman Molly Snyder did say that some "encrypted data" was accessed,  adding, "We continue to have no reason to believe that PIN data, whether encrypted or unencrypted, was compromised. And we have not been made aware of any such issue in communications with financial institutions to date." 

Target: Called out for negligence

Though Target has made an effort to ease the burden on affected customers, many are unimpressed by their response. Shoppers — some of whom have taken up a class-action lawsuit against the retailer — received a paltry 10 percent discount for their troubles, in addition to free credit-monitoring services. Target lost customers, and is cooperating with the Department of Justice investigation of the breach, though it says it is not being investigated itself. 

The store has been criticized by lawmakers, as well. Senator Robert Menendez accused the chain of caring about "the bottom line" over its patrons and urged the Federal Trade Commission to issue a harsh punishment to the company, saying that "people need to know that they aren’t going to get ripped off shopping, either by silent hackers or by the merchants themselves." Senator Richard Blumenthal also chimed in, writing in a letter to the FTC that “given the scope and duration of Target’s recent data breach, it appears that Target may have failed to employ reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect personal information." The senators hope the FTC will look into security measures across retail shops in general, dragging Target to the center of a larger campaign. 

The Hacker: Tracked down and exposed 

Krebs took it upon himself to track down at least one vendor of the private data, and did so in a spectacularly intricate fashion. The cyber security expert details the virtual chase on his blog, where he outs Ukrainian hacker Andrew Hodirevski for manning the site rescator.la, which has been selling data stolen during the Target breach. Krebs tracked down Hodirevski, known online as Rescator, by looking up personal information Rescator has offered about himself on the web, including a braggy confession that served as an administrator of the defunct hacker forum darklife.ws. Photos of Helkren, his Darklife nom du guerre, were posted to Darklife by rival hackers. Krebs retrieved the images, along with some of Helkren's user names across other sites, and matched them to social media profiles linked to Hodirevski. Krebs did not hesitate to post some (fairly embarrassing) information culled from the social media sites to his blog — like a list of his goals, including world domination — as well as an IM conversation he had with a contact (kaddafi.me) who works with Hodiresvki. The sting is about as hacker-nerdy as you can would hope: 

(2:05:17 PM) kaddafi.me: What’s all the commotion about Rescator anyways?

(2:05:20 PM) krebs//: well i have a story about him going up tomorrow

(2:05:23 PM) kaddafi.me: Did you even notice other shops are selling same shit?

(2:05:32 PM) krebs//: sure

(2:05:46 PM) krebs//: but I’m not looking at other shops right now

(2:06:05 PM) kaddafi.me: Well you should )

(2:06:10 PM) krebs//: in time 

Eventually, kaddafi.me offered Krebs a $10,000 bribe not to run the story, and we can imagine he's not super pleased that Krebs did. 

       

The Obamacare Repeal Movement, Now Doomed, Will Never Entirely Go Away

Associated Press

In five days, millions of people who aren't currently insured will suddenly have health care coverage under Obamacare. This puts Republican opponents of the program in a difficult position. If you've been railing against people getting kicked off of their plans, what do you do next? The best political answer may be simple. Nothing different.

The New York Times reports that Republicans aren't entirely sure what to do at this point, but are facing pressure to do something. After months of campaigning against the Affordable Care Act and in the wake of the law's fumbled implementation, Republican voters expect action — "nearly two-thirds of Republicans wanted to have the Affordable Care Act repealed," the paper reports, "and most Republican lawmakers are appealing to those constituents." There are some Republican proposals in the works that would change the policy: Georgia Rep. Tom Price proposes scrapping the law, but keeping the pre-existing condition requirement; Wisconsin's Paul Ryan is coming out with a plan soon. Neither would be signed into law, and, The Times notes, Republican approval on health care is even lower than President Obama's.

Leading to the fundamental question, as articulated by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham:

"The hardest problem for us is what to do next,” Mr. Graham said. “Should we just get out of the way and point out horror stories? … You become a more effective critic when you say, ‘Here’s what I’m for,’ and we’re not there yet. So there’s our struggle."

"It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away," Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson told the paper, given that people now have coverage. Earlier this month, Salon's Brian Beutler, with some prescience, anticipated this bind. According to estimates in the wake of the December 24 deadline, at least 2 million people will have enrolled in the federal and state exchanges. And as The Washington Post reports, nearly 4 million people have gotten coverage under the expansion of Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. That's six million new enrollments, at least: 1.8 million higher than even Fox News' estimate of those who've seen policies cancelled. In Johnson's words, "There’s something there."

That reality hasn't sunk in for the public. Opposition to Obamacare is still politically potent, as evidenced by a new push from the conservative PAC Americans For Prosperity. As Politico reports, the group just launched ads targeting two freshman House Democrats, trying to link them to Obama's "if you like it, you can keep it" flub. It's an odd strategy — neither representative was in Congress when the ACA was voted on, and the Republicans already have a strong majority in the House. But AFP is investing $600,000 early in the campaign cycle, likely suggesting that polling shows something not easily seen with the naked eye.

Via Nonprofit Vote

The main reason the electoral push against Obamacare will continue is because of demographics. The large majority of those who've gotten coverage are low income Americans covered under Medicaid. And as the graph at right (from Nonprofit Vote) shows, low income Americans are much less likely to vote. What's more, in the 2014 off-year election Republicans will almost certainly comprise a higher percentage of the electorate than they did last year. Two-thirds of whom, at this point, want Obamacare gone — in part, because most of them aren't recipients of new policies.

So why not keep pushing for reform in the abstract? Obamacare may already have simply become another government program that, like the "entitlements" of Medicare and Social Security, exists in the disparaged background of national politics, something that people want to cut in the abstract and (at least eventually, for Obamacare) keep intact in practice. Given the demographics and the timeframe, it will probably still be a punching bag next November, and will still prompt furious floor speeches on behalf of doomed legislation. In 2015, though, that furor will likely be gone.

       

Five Best Friday Columns

Speaker of the House John Boehner.  (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Paul Krugman at The New York Times on long-term unemployment. "More than a million unemployed Americans are about to get the cruelest of Christmas 'gifts.' They’re about to have their unemployment benefits cut off. You see, Republicans in Congress insist that if you haven’t found a job after months of searching, it must be because you aren’t trying hard enough. So you need an extra incentive in the form of sheer desperation," Krugman argues. Some Democrats aren't sympathetic either: "There’s been a somewhat strange debate among progressives lately, with some arguing that populism and condemnations of inequality are a diversion, that full employment should instead be the top priority. As some leading progressive economists have pointed out, however, full employment is itself a populist issue." Bottom line? The economy shouldn't be based in fear. Bob Annibale, the global director of community development and microfinance at Citi, tweets, "Over 1 million unemployed to lose benefits in January. A new labor paradigm." 

Alec MacGillis at The New Republic on private-sector failings. During the rocky rollout of healthcare.gov, many argued that the government simply couldn't produce a large, working site like Amazon. "Just imagine, the chorus went, if tech giants like Amazon or Google had been in charge of the Web site instead of those clueless, fusty bureaucrats," MacGillis writes. But Christmas brought Amazon's own failings. "A surge in online shopping this holiday season left stores breaking promises to deliver packages by Christmas, ... Companies from Amazon to Kohl's and Wal-Mart" all missed delivery dates, MacGillis notes. "The Great Christmas Delivery Screwup of 2013 should inject a bit of perspective and humility into the ranks of the loudest private-sector champions. The fact is, the clichés are true: life is complicated, stuff happens and sometimes things don’t work out as planned," he argues. Daily Beast columnist Stuart Stevens tweets, "The argument that any massively centralized system has inherent flaws is key argument against making health care the same."

Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic on fatherhood. "When my son was born, I stayed at home. And for most of our relationship, my wife made more money than me," Coates confesses. "I felt a lot of things in those days — lonely, broke, sometimes frustrated. But what I didn't feel in my allegedly hyper-macho black community was stigmatized. ... If anything, I felt like I got a lot more credit than I deserved. I'd put the boy in the stroller, head down Flatbush, and a cheering section would damn near break out," he writes. The "stigma" stay-at-home dads face is nothing compared to "the stigma that women feel when they're trying to build a career and a family." The New Inquiry's Mal Harris tweets, "Ta Nehisi-Coates is good on fatherhood/young and broke parenting." 

Ezra Klein at The Washington Post on Obamacare's longevity. By January, "at least two million people will have health insurance through Obamacare's exchanges and more than four million people will have health insurance through the law's Medicaid expansion," Klein writes. In the words of Tea Party Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, "It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away. There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare." Klein argues, "The GOP's campaign against Obamacare has been most effective when Republicans could claim, reasonably or not, that the law was taking something away from people: Canceling their plans, or penalizing them for going without insurance, or changing their doctor. But by the end of March, it's likely that at least 8-10 million people will be getting insurance through Obamacare." Dr. William Dale, the chief of geriatrics at the University of Chicago, tweets, "The politics of 'loss aversion': why Obamacare (in some form) is here to stay."

Mehari Taddele Maru at Al Jazeera English on the escalating South Sudan crisis. "While the situation in Somalia remains fragile, the Republic of Sudan and the State of Eritrea face a precarious future. Most dreadful for the entire region, however, is the possibility of another state failure in the form of South Sudan," Maru writes. "On December 15, an armed confrontation erupted at the centre of the South Sudanese governmental authority, the presidential palace in Juba ... that has now begun to deteriorate into a civil war," he explains. How to fix it? "For the long-term stability of Africa's newest nation, democratization is necessary, but also insufficient. Delivery of public services and economic development will be critical. It is for this reason that the transformations of the SPLM into a democratic party, and the reform of the SPLA into a state army, are prerequisites for a stable South Sudan," Maru argues.