The Commentariat -- January 20

On the 50th anniversary, E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post recalls John F. Kennedy's inaugural address. Here it is:

Sargent Shriver. Art by Justin Gabbard for the New York Times.In a New York Times op-ed, Bono remembers Sargent Shriver. ...

Scott Stossel of The Atlantic, who is also Shriver's biographer, remembers his subject:

Even as the disease[Alzheimer's] robbed him of his memory, and sometimes of his logic, it did not rob him of his spirit -- warm, ebullient, devout, inspiring -- which was essential to all that he achieved.

Michelle Obama endorses Wal-Mart's promise to phase more healthful foods into their product line. Getty image.New York Times: "Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, will announce a five-year plan on Thursday to make thousands of its packaged foods lower in unhealthy salts, fats and sugars, and to drop prices on fruits and vegetables. The initiative came out of discussions the company has been having with Michelle Obama, the first lady, who will attend the announcement in Washington and has made healthy eating and reducing childhood obesity the centerpiece of her agenda. Aides say it is the first time Mrs. Obama has thrown her support behind the work of a single company." ...

... Debbie Wilgoren & Ylan Mui of the Washington Post say Michelle Obama gave Wal-Mart "a glowing endorsement" today for promising to sell healthier food. But Karen Garcia sees the connection between the First Lady & Wal-Mart as long and murky.

... AND when she wasn't doing that... Washington Post: "Visitors touring the White House got more than they bargained for Thursday when first lady Michelle Obama and the family dog, Bo, dropped in to welcome them on the second anniversary of President Obama's inauguration." You might want to watch part of the video, which runs an hour.

Right. Michelle & Barack Obama await the arrival of China's President Hu in advance of the state dinner. Reuters picture.

Cathy Horyn of the New York Times on the dress.

If, like me, you thought Michelle Obama looked stunning at the state dinner last night, you're not a right-winger. Media Matters has a roundup of the usual loons who are all upset because the First Lady wore a communist red dress.

Peter Finn of the Washington Post: "A recently completed investigation of the killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan nine years ago makes public new evidence that a senior al-Qaeda operative executed the Wall Street Journal reporter.... The new report which was prepared by faculty members and students at Georgetown University, U.S. officials have concluded that vascular technology, or vein matching, shows that the hand of the unseen man who killed Pearl on video is that of [Khalid Sheik] Mohammed. The report also says Mohammed told the FBI that a senior al-Qaeda operative advised him to take control of Pearl from his original kidnappers." The report is here.

Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "When the conservative financier Charles Koch sent out invitations for a political retreat..., he highlighted past appearances at the gathering of 'notable leaders' like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. [Common Cause,] a leading liberal group, is now trying to use that connection to argue that Mr. Scalia and Mr. Thomas should disqualify themselves from hearing campaign finance cases because they may be biased toward Mr. Koch, a billionaire who has been a major player in financing conservative causes.... Common Cause filed a petition with the Justice Department on Wednesday asking it to investigate potential conflicts by Justices Scalia and Thomas and move for their disqualification from the landmark Citizens United case...."

Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun: "The robust firearms economy is showing striking defiance of the recession, as well as the ritual condemnations of gun violence in the wake of the recent shooting of 19 people ... in Tucson." ...

... Whither Obama? Glenn Thrush of Politico: "Gun control is a perilous issue for President Barack Obama ... so the push for new restrictions following the Tucson shootings puts the president in an especially tricky political predicament.... White House officials have remained noncommittal about an effort by liberals in the House and Senate to restrict access to the kind of high-capacity ammunition magazines that allowed suspect Jared Lee Loughner to inflict mass casualties in a matter of seconds using a single, legal handgun. Gun control advocates say Obama ... has the moral responsibility to make some kind of statement on the issue...." ...

... Nicole Santa Cruz & Ashley Powers of the Los Angeles Times: Arizona "Gov. Jan Brewer, long a champion of services for the mentally ill, reluctantly agreed to cut funding amid a budget crisis. It's just one example of the battle mental health advocates across the U.S. face as cash-strapped legislatures chop services." ...

... Michael Powell of the New York Times: "As state governments struggle with the fiscal damage caused by the recession, an income tax increase has become a rarely used remedy." ...

... Right. But some states have other great budget-balancing ideas:

Charles Mahtesian of Politico: "By the geriatric standards of the Senate, the retirement of 68-year-old Sen. Joe Lieberman comes at a relatively young age. But Wednesday’s news that the Connecticut Democrat plans to leave the stage in 2012 surprised no one: It was clear the role he played was outdated and even clearer that he was thoroughly unsuited for the modern political era." ...

... Gail Collins: "Lieberman has reached a point in his public career when every single thing he does, including talking about his grandparents, is irritating." ...

... Lieberman's eulogy to Lieberman was narcissistic even by Washington standards. If he had started lip-synching Piaf doing 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien' nobody would have been surprised. -- Karen Garcia (#11) ...

... Peter Applebome of the New York Times: two Senators from Connecticut -- Chris Dodd & Joe Lieberman -- how is one not like the other? ...

... At least Lieberman is better than Utah's new loony Sen. Mike Lee, who thinks "child labor laws, the minimum wage, and bans on race and gender dicrimination are unconstitutional." And, BTW, so is federal disaster assistance. Ian Millhiser's Think Progress story is here; it includes audio. Thank you, Utah. ...

... AND former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) continues to move up the race for worst Senator ever. Washington Post: "In an interview with the conservative CNS News, [Santorum] linked President Obama's race to his position on abortion."

For a host of reasons, my friends don't care for Rep. Anthony Weiner, but for stuff like this, I do:

Leslie Gelb in the Daily Beast: in the war of wills Hu won the summit, without having to do much but stand up and smile. ...

... "The Rise of the Chinese Cheneys." Nicholas Kristof: "China today resembles the Bush era in America: Hard-liners are ascendant. Brace yourself."

Good luck running against me, Amb. Huntsman!

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is preparing to increase the use of military commissions to prosecute Guantánamo detainees, an acknowledgment that the prison in Cuba remains open for business after Congress imposed steep new impediments to closing the facility."

Anne Kornblut & Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "President Obama is moving his political operation outside the White House and will launch his reelection campaign in March or April. With the biggest parts of a staff reshuffling behind him, Obama has approved some more moves for his political team, shifting his political director to the Democratic National Committee and sending two key operatives to serve as deputy campaign managers in what will be his campaign headquarters in Chicago."

AP: "In the latest milestone in Gabrielle Giffords' recovery from a bullet wound to the brain, the congresswoman stood up and looked out a window even as preparations got under way for a move to Houston, where she'll undergo extensive mental and physical rehabilitation. Her swift transition from an intensive care unit to a rehab center based on the latest research, which shows the sooner rehab starts, the better patients recover."

     ... New York Times Update: "Representative Gabrielle Giffords continues to recover remarkably well from a gunshot to the head and is likely to be moved to a Houston rehabilitation hospital on Friday, her doctors and her husband said on Thursday."

State Visit of Hu Jintao

Guests at the state dinner for China's President Hu Jintao. New York Times photo.President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host President Hu of China at a State Dinner at the White House:

Nia-Malika Henderson & Roxanne Roberts of the Washington Post on the guests & the festivities.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times on the guest list for the state dinner. Here's the guest list, & I'm sorry to report Tom Friedman is on it. ...

... Ben Smith: labor is mighty miffed at being snubbed in favor of bankers & Mrs. Murdoch. ...

... Jena McGregor of the Washington Post on John Boehner's declining to attend this and two other state dinners the Obamas have hosted. Many say Boehner is just plain rude; others accuse him of dereliction of duty.

Secretary Clinton & Vice President Biden welcome President Hu to lunch at the State Department:

President Obama & Hu hold a lo-o-o-ng press conference:

New York Times: At a joint press conference, "President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China both pledged on Wednesday to nurture what they called their two nations’ growing common interests, but they also acknowledged differences in the areas of trade and human rights as they held their eighth meeting in two years."

Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "As Chinese President Hu Jintao was being feted at the White House Wednesday, a bipartisan collection of congressmen gave a much sharper welcome to the leader of the world's most populous nation, questioning China's handling of its domestic economy and its alleged human rights abuses.... On Thursday, after Wednesday night's state dinner hosted by President Obama, Hu will come to Congress for meetings on both ends of the Capitol with some of his critics."

President Obama and President Hu of China hold an expanded bilateral meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House. White House photo.Washington Post: in a brief news conference, "President Obama, hosting Chinese President Hu Jintao on a state visit, announced Wednesday that a series of new commercial deals would increase U.S. exports to China by more than $45 billion."

President Obama & Hu meet with business leaders:

President Obama, Vice President Biden & Secretary Clinton held a bilateral meeting with President Hu this morning. AP story here.

President Obama welcomes President Hu:

... Here's the whole shebang. It lasts for a little more than half-an-hour:

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of industrial policy. But when competing against countries that practice it skillfully and aggressively, we may have no choice but to respond in kind - if for no other reason than as a way to negotiate a more level playing field for American firms and American workers. China has already leveraged this advantage to wipe out large swaths of American industry, build up a $3 trillion dollar war chest and help to put the U.S. economy in a rut characterized by low growth, high unemployment and unsustainable trade deficits."

Don Lee & Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times: "Little headway may be made on intellectual property, currency valuation and other issues that Obama and others in Washington want China's president to address."

John Pomfret of the Washington Post: "Chinese President Hu Jintao will highlight [Chinese company] Wanxiang's U.S. operations on Friday during an event in Chicago. Hu is hoping to show Americans that in addition to providing them with cheap goods, Chinese companies can also give them good jobs.... In speeches last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke both complained that China was not open enough to U.S. products, had not done enough to let the value of its currency appreciate against the dollar and was not respectful of U.S. intellectual property rights."

Nicholas Johnston & Hans Nichols of Bloomberg News: "The itinerary, which has a business focus..., is an illustration of the importance both countries place on their economic relationship and meshes with the U.S. president’s goals of boosting exports and spurring job growth."

January 21 News Updates on President Hu's Visit

New York Times: "President Obama warned President Hu Jintao that if China did not step up its pressure on North Korea, the United States would have to redeploy its forces in Asia to protect itself from a potential North Korean strike on American soil.... Mr. Obama’s warning, first made in a phone call to Mr. Hu last month and repeated over a private dinner at the White House on Tuesday, persuaded China to take a harder line toward North Korea..., which opened the door to a resumption of dialogue between North and South Korea."

The Hill: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday urged Chinese President Hu Jintao to bolster his commitment to human rights and climate-change prevention...."

Reuters: during the welcoming ceremony on Wednesday, Sasha Obama practiced her Chinese with President Hu.

The Commentariat -- January 19

President Obama & Vice President Biden issue statements memorializing Sargent Shriver, who died yesterday. ...

... Rick Hertzberg remembers Sargent Shriver.

This Defies Conventional Wisdom. Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "... child rearing among same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country...."

Christopher Beam: "As Simon & Schuster prepares to release O: A Presidential Novel, based on the Obama administration and starring a thinly veiled Barack Obama as the character 'O,' the publisher is trying to keep the identity of its anonymous author under wraps. Slate imagines a few possibilities." Happily for New York Times readers, Tom Friedman has been on hiatus; perhaps he was busy writing O. Beam thinks the Friedman book would read something like this:

The situation room was dark and shadowy. Five-star General Donald Patroclus was explaining the new Afghanistan strategy to O.
'Afghanistan is like a burrito,' he said. 'When you bite one end, a little bean juice is gonna come out the other.'
O looked intrigued. 'Go on.'
'So you need two things. First, you need to make a better tortilla. Wheat instead of cornmeal. Then you gotta wrap it tight. And then, just in case, you need napkins—lots and lots of napkins.'
'That makes perfect sense,' said O.
'But really, it's all about India. See, India's like a giant bag of Funyuns …'

     ... Read all of the "writers"' literary efforts. They're a hoot. AND, since we're doing Friedman, here's this from David Rees (click on the cartoon to see a larger image):

Okay, so while we're being uncivil to media personalities:

American economist Richard Wolff in the Guardian: " The myth of 'American exceptionalism' implodes. Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers. But since 2008, it has made them pay for its failures." ...

... David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "Alone among the world’s economic powers, the United States is suffering through a deep jobs slump that can’t be explained by the rest of the economy’s performance.... One obvious [reason] is the balance of power between employers and employees. Relative to the situation in most other countries — or in this country for most of the last century — American employers operate with few restraints.... Study after study has shown that unions usually do benefit workers." ...

... There's more from Leonhardt on the U.S. jobs slump here. ...

... Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "The new regulatory board charged with overseeing the stability of the financial system took its first big steps on Tuesday to set out tentative guidelines to limit trading by banks for their own accounts and to restrict the growth of the biggest financial companies. The Financial Stability Oversight Council ... created by the Dodd-Frank Act, also proposed rules as to which large financial companies that were not banks would be regulated by the Federal Reserve.... The recommendations made public on Tuesday are subject to revision based on public comments and the recommendations of various other state and federal regulatory agencies." ...

... Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: "The nation's four biggest banks can grow even bigger, with the potential to add at least another trillion dollars onto their balance sheets before they even reach the limits imposed by the Obama administration, according to an administration study released Tuesday." ...

... Susanne Craig & Eric Dash of the New York Times: "Goldman Sachs executives ... are now poised to reap a windfall that was sown in the dark days of the financial crisis in 2008. Nearly 36 million stock options were granted to employees in December 2008 — 10 times the amount issued the previous year — when the stock was trading at $78.78. Since those uncertain days, Goldman’s business has roared back and its share price has more than doubled, closing on Tuesday at nearly $175." ...

... Eric Dash: "Industrywide, [bank] revenues are off 17 percent from their peak in 2007, and the latest figures are flat or declining.

Paul Krugman: "... in general right-wing think tanks prefer people who genuinely can’t understand the issues — it makes them more reliable. Doesn’t this apply to both sides? Not equally. There was a time when conservative think tanks employed genuine policy wonks, and when asked to devise a Republican health care plan, they came up with — Obamacare! That is, what passes for leftist policy now is what was considered conservative 15 years ago; to meet the right’s standards of political correctness now, you have to pass into another dimension, a dimension whose boundaries are that of imagination, untrammeled by things like arithmetic or logic." CW: I'm so glad to see Krugman coming right out & saying this -- it needed to be said. ...

... NEW. Ezra Klein: "Republicans have refused to play by [the] rules. They have claimed, as Doug Holtz-Eakin, Joseph Antos and James Capretta do in today's Wall Street Journal, that the CBO's work is now the product of 'budget gimmicks, deceptive accounting, and implausible assumptions....' They have created a separate world for themselves when it comes to this bill, a world where there are no accepted estimates except the ones they choose to accept (notably, they regularly mention the CBO results that they think help their case), where there is no neutral arbiter who can be relied on to set the premises of the debate, and thus, where policy debate is not really possible." ...

... NEWER. What about the Uninsured? This from Klein: "The lack of concern for how more than 30 million Americans will get their health-care coverage makes for an ugly contrast with the intense concern that Rep. Andy Harris -- a proponent of repeal -- found when he heard that his congressional health-care coverage wouldn't begin until a month after he took the oath of office." ...

... Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: "Private health insurance plans catering to Medicare recipients are making millions by taking money the government sends in advance -- but isn't immediately needed -- and using it to make investments, federal investigators say.... In financial parlance, it's called 'playing the float.' In contrast with another government program that also deals regularly with health insurers, Medicare lets its plans keep the cash.... A Medicare official said ... little can be done to change the situation.... The inspector general's office disagrees."

Stephanie Cutter of the White House on the costs of repealing the Affordable Care Act:

Kate Nocera of Politico: "The pharmaceutical industry, which spent months cutting deals with Democrats to protect its interests, has remained mum on Republican repeal efforts.... This method of laying low makes perfect sense, according to Chris Jennings, who was senior health care adviser to former President Bill Clinton. Rather than support the repeal effort, which has little chance of becoming law, PhRMA and AHIP are saving their firepower for more practical targets." ...

... Lisa Lerer & Drew Armstrong of Bloomberg News: "With a symbolic vote to repeal President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is starting a two- year campaign to undermine the law through piecemeal dismantling tactics and efforts to weaken public support." ...

... House Republicans Debate Healthcare Repeal. Dana Milbank: "In the debate's early stages, they avoided virtually all violent speech, instead resorting to less provocative insults to describe the health-care law.... The new GOP majority generally showed a skill that had been lacking in the Republican caucus for the past two years: self-restraint."

Emily Bazelon of Slate, a Connecticut resident, on why she loathes, loathes, loathes Joe Lieberman. Her friend Judy Chevalier writes that there's a "peculiar Connecticut liberal cocktail party game: 'I hated Joe Lieberman before you hated Joe Lieberman.'" ...

... Her colleague Dave Weigel notes that "Lieberman would have lost anyway." ...

... Here's the backstory: New York Times: "Saying his independent-minded approach to politics does not 'fit comfortably into conventional political boxes,' Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, made it official on Wednesday, formally announcing that he would not seek a fifth term in 2012." Here's the Hartford Courant story, with videos of Lieberman's announcement speech. Here's the text of Lieberman's speech, via the Courant.

AP: "A federal grand jury has indicted the suspect in the deadly Arizona shooting that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The indictment against Jared Loughner ... accuses him of attempting to assassinate Giffords and trying to kill two of her aides. It does not include two murder charges included in an earlier criminal complaint for the deaths of another Giffords aide and a federal judge." ...

... Richard Oppel, Jr., et al., of the New York Times: "The chief investigator for the [Pima County] sheriff’s department ... has for the first time publicly described the brief and gory video clip from a store security camera that shows a gunman not only shooting Representative Gabrielle Giffords just above the eyebrow at a range of three feet, but then using his 9-millimeter pistol to gun down others near her at a similarly close range. The video ... also reveals that Judge John M. Roll appears to have died while saving the life of Ronald Barber, one of Ms. Giffords’s employees. Mr. Barber ... has since left the hospital." ...

... James Grimaldi of the Washington Post: "An old policy memo from the Clinton administration paved the way for accused Arizona gunman Jared Loughner to buy his first firearm. Put in place by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, the policy prohibited the military from reporting certain drug abusers to the FBI, which manages the national list of prohibited gun-buyers.... The Reno policy told federal agencies not to report people who had voluntarily given drug tests for fear it would deter them from seeking treatment...." ...

... Diane Sawyer of ABC News interviews Mark Kelly, husband of Gabrielle Giffords:

     ... Here's a related story by Bradley Blackburn of ABC News. ...

... Denise Grady & Jennifer Medina of the New York Times: "In an exuberant e-mail to family and friends Tuesday, the mother of Representative Gabrielle Giffords described remarkable progress by her daughter. According to the e-mail, Ms. Giffords scrolled through photographs on her husband’s iPhone, tried to undo his tie and shirt and even began to look at get-well cards and pages of large-print text taken from a Harry Potter book.... Members of Ms. Giffords’s staff said they worried that the message ... might paint an overly optimistic picture of the congresswoman’s condition." ...

... Sam Dolnick of the New York Times: Rep. Gabrielle "Giffords’s aides opened ... the congresswoman’s district office [in Tucson], two days after the shooting..., and the office has stayed open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday since. It has been one of the staff’s few constants since a gunman opened fire at a community event on Jan. 8...."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: the Supremes hear a state secrets case. "But the justices did not seem inclined to use the opportunity to give the lower courts guidance about its contours." ...

... ** Dahlia Lithwick tells the story much better: "the court today seized the opportunity to conduct a rollicking roller-derby smash-up on American contract law." ...

You say they're at fault, they say you're at fault. Under the state-secrets doctrine we can't resolve that question. Why don't we call the whole thing off? -- Chief Justice John Roberts

... Federal Judges Are Really Old. Joseph Goldstein of Slate: "Today, aging and dementia are the flip side of life tenure, with more and more judges staying on the bench into extreme old age. About 12 percent of the nation's 1,200 sitting federal district and circuit judges are 80 years or older...."

Local News

Joe Romm of Climate Progress: "$#*! My Texas AG Says: 'It is almost the height of insanity of bureaucracy to have the EPA regulating something that is emitted by all living things.' So the EPA shouldn’t regulate the discharge from living things.  I guess the Texas AG just wants crap all over the place.  Literally. [Insert your joke about sewage treatment here.]" Via this Krugman post: "... given the way we’re heading — with politicians arguing that the federal government has no right to ban child labor — don’t be surprised to see the anti-sewer movement making a comeback, and to see elected representatives, even if they know better, holding their noses and going along."

Kristofer Rios of the New York Times: "After fighting for more than a decade for better wages, a group of Florida farmworkers has hashed out the final piece of an extraordinary agreement with local tomato growers and several big-name buyers, including the fast-food giants McDonald’s and Burger King, that will pay the pickers roughly a penny more for every pound of fruit they harvest. Farm laborers are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States, and the agreement could add thousands of dollars to their income.... Some labor experts said the agreement could set a precedent for improving working conditions and pay in other parts of the agriculture and food industries, nationally and worldwide."