The Commentariat -- November 10

Paul Krugman took a quick look at the Catfood's Commission draft report. He says, "And it really is that bad." See links to the news & the report itself under Wednesday news in the right column.

Lee Fang of Think Progress. "Apparently, [Supreme Court Justice Samuel "Not True"] Alito is a regular benefactor for highly political conservative fundraisers." Fang approached Alito at one of them. With video.

David Sanger of the New York Times: "With China leading the critics of American economic policy, officials acknowledge that President Obama is going to have a difficult time winning any kind of consensus strategy" at the G-20 meeting in South Korea. ...

... Howard Schneider of the Washington Post: "An international backlash against the Federal Reserve's move last week to pump billions of dollars into the U.S. economy is threatening to undercut the Obama administration's economic goals for this week's G-20 meeting of world leaders."

President Obama speaks at the University of Indonesia:

     ... Here's the transcript of the President's remarks.

Municipal Swaps -- Another Way Banks Ripped Us Off. Michael McDonald of Bloomberg: "For more than a decade, banks and insurance companies convinced governments and nonprofits that financial engineering would lower interest rates on bonds sold for public projects such as roads, bridges and schools. That failed promise has cost more than $4 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as hundreds of borrowers from the Bay Area Toll Authority in Oakland, California, to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, quietly paid Wall Street to end agreements since 2008."

Michelle Nichols of Reuters: "Charitable giving by wealthy Americans dropped by more than a third between 2007 and 2009 as the worst U.S. recession in decades put pressure on the nonprofit sector, according to a study released Tuesday."

Jim Rutenberg & Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "Republican leaders are digging in for a battle over control of the Republican National Committee, judging that its role in fund-raising, get-out-the-vote operations and other tasks will be critical to the effort to topple President Obama. Some senior party officials are maneuvering to put pressure on Michael Steele, the controversial party chairman, not to seek re-election when his term ends in January or, failing that, to encourage a challenger to step forward to take him on."

"No" on Healthcare Pays off for Some Dems. Eric Ostermeier of Smart Politics: "A Smart Politics analysis finds that while just 11 percent of Democrats who voted 'yes' on the health care bill in congressional districts carried by John McCain in 2008 were reelected to the 112th Congress (2 of 18 representatives), 39 percent of those who voted 'no' in McCain districts will return to their offices in D.C. (9 of 23)."

CW: before the polls had closed, I predicted the November 2 election would produce a Franken/Coleman-style recount. Little did I know it would be in Minnesota.

"Who is this woman, this fruit bat in fleece and Gore-Tex, clenching the side of the rock face above a glacier, screaming 'Tahhd! Tahhd!' at her husband, piercing the tranquillity of the Alaskan paradise?" Hank Stuever of the Washington Post reviews "Sarah Palin's Alaska." The show may suck, but Stuever's review is fun. (I know this belongs in Infotainment, but it's too rich to bury.)

I probably won’t even vote for the guy. I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me. -- George W. Bush, on John McCain, in 2008 ...

... BUT Bush's spokesperson denies the story. CW: well, he would.

George Bush does care about black people. Kanye West expresses regrets for his famous remark:

But he doesn't care about black people's names. He calls Kanye "Conway."

The Commentariat -- November 9

                   The rich, the right and the white ...

                   Keep the fires of calamity burning bright.

                          -- Akhilleus, comment (#8) on Brooks

Dan Froomkin channels President Dubya in book tour mode: "if you don't like my non-answers on the teevee, buy the book (where you won't find the answers)."

Austrailia's Hamish & Andy interview Secretary Hillary Clinton -- pretty funny:

Winnie Hu of the New York Times: New Haven, Connecticut "city and school officials announced on Tuesday that a new program, called New Haven Promise, will offer to pay eligible students’ way through any public college or university in Connecticut. The program will also pay up to $2,500 a year to those who attend a private college in the state. The program — to cost $4.5 million a year, financed primarily by Yale University — is open to students who live in the city and have attended its public schools, including charter schools, since at least ninth grade, regardless of family income."

New York Times reporters on President Obama's visit to Indonesia, gay marriage & Conan:

Michael Scherer of Time: once again "humble housewife" Sarah Palin doubles down on one of her frequent misstatements of fact, proving -- even as she was insisting she could read -- that she can't read, lives in fact-free world, & looks down her nose at the "fancy" people who cite actual facts.

Gold Ain't as Golden as Glenn Beck Says. David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "Gold is at a record only if you fail to adjust for inflation. And you should almost always adjust for inflation."

Mike Schneider & Martin Crutsinger of the AP: "The nation's economic stress fell in September to a 16-month low, thanks to more hiring in New England, fewer foreclosures in the mid-Atlantic and declining bankruptcy filings in the Southeast, according to The Associated Press' monthly analysis of conditions around the country."

** Sharon Theimer of the AP:  "Despite knowing for decades that terrorists could sneak bombs onto planes, the U.S. government failed to close obvious security gaps amid pressure from shipping companies fearful tighter controls would cost too much and delay deliveries."

John Broder of the New York Times: "With energy legislation shelved in the United States and little hope for a global climate change agreement this year, some policy experts are proposing ... [to] include greenhouse gases under ... the Montreal Protocol [which] was adopted in 1987 for a completely different purpose, to eliminate aerosols and other chemicals...."

N. C. Aizenman of the Washington Post: it's the states who are reponsible to implement much of the new Affordable Care Act, and Republicans -- who made gains in governorships & state legislatures -- are likely to restrict the way the law is administered as much as possible.

Republican Hyposcrisy Watch -- Campaign Promises Edition. Nick Wing of the Huffington Post: "Kentucky's Senator-elect Rand Paul already appears to be making a rapid departure away from one of his campaign promises: an earmark ban that stood as a conservative cornerstone, a position Paul touted to indicate he was serious about tackling the reckless spending practices of Washington." ...

... Republican Hypocrisy Watch -- Big Spender Edition. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "As governor, [Chris] Christie [of New Jersey]..., has pushed to cut government spending and waste, making him a rising star in the Republican Party.... [But] when he was a top federal prosecutor..., [he] routinely billed taxpayers for hotel stays whose cost exceeded government guidelines, according to a report the Justice Department released on Monday." Christie was one of five attorneys general who “exhibited a noteworthy pattern of exceeding the government rate and whose travel documentation provided insufficient, inaccurate or no justification for the higher lodging rates.”

President Bush isn't the only Republican out with a new book. Steven Levingston of the Washington Post reviews Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's Leadership and Crisis; the book's July release date was pushed back because of the oil spill. In this new version Jindal devotes "a significant portion of the book [to] disparaging the federal government’s response to the spill." He also has a section he calls, "Men Behaving Badly," in which he pouts about politicians involved in sex scandals; Levingston notes that Jindal conveniently forgot all about Louisiana's Sen. David Vitter & former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The Newt has written a lovely blurb for the book jacket.

No one cares if you smoke a joint or not. -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ...

Accuracy in Media/Polling -- There's a Concept. Mark Blumenthal in the Huffington Post: "A remarkable bi-partisan group of campaign pollsters released an open letter this afternoon that assailed the 'sometimes uncritical media coverage' of the 'proliferation' of public pre-election polls that fail to disclose basic information about how they are conducted and that "have the capacity to shape media and donor reactions to election contests." Includes pdf of letter.

And So Are You. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "On Friday, in an interview with an Australian newspaper, [Rupert] Murdoch ... divulged that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had described President Obama as the most 'arrogant man' he had ever met after playing his first and presumably last round of golf with the commander in chief."

In the News: Washington Post: "The Obama administration reiterated its support Monday for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" law and policy as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) worked to strip language repealing the ban from the annual defense authorization bill."

Isn't It Fantastic?

Bob Herbert: "Great sacrifices will have to be made if the U.S. is to get its act together, and those sacrifices will have to be shared. We can start now, or we can wait and continue to fantasize about an eventual triumph in Afghanistan, or about cutting budgets with some magic cleaver until they’re finally balanced and all’s right with the world, or whatever other impossible dream is floated by the chronically dissembling political class to blind us to the real world."

The Constant Weader comments:

Please, the reason "we can’t find the courage to make some really tough decisions about warfare, taxes, public investment, etc.," is that the American people don't want to do that. Republicans have been repeating the Reagan fantasy of cutting taxes to increase revenues for so long the American people think it makes sense.

Besides, we're used to it: as Eugene Steuerle of the Brookings Institution wrote recently, "... for close to 15 years now, all major congressional actions have basically been giveaways." We haven't paid for anything. Even before the financial market meltdown, a huge percentage of Americans paid no income tax. Now that more people are out of work, even fewer pay taxes. Almost half of American households paid no income tax in 2009.  But, hey, we're spending more to make up for it.

This isn't an American dream. It's a nightmare. How to get out of it? Why, that dean of Washington pundits, David Broder, suggested last week that the best way to get us out of our economic hole was to start getting ready for a war with Iran.

This is the kind of thinking that passes for brilliant in Washington. And it turns out there is some validity to Reagan's trickle-down theory. Economic good times don't trickle down, but ludicrous ideas sure do. Americans think their taxes -- you know, the ones they don't pay -- should be even lower, at the same time they think we have to be strong on defense and go over and "kick some ass" in Iran.

Now may be an excellent time to speak truth to the public. As long as American homeowners thought they could keep spending more than they earned & "make up the difference" by taking out more & bigger home equity loans, there was no reasoning with them. But when home values plummeted, many Americans came up against stark reality in their own experience. Maybe they're ready for politicians who will show them the stark realities we face as a nation.

The problem is, of course, that politicians who still have their jobs haven't the courage to risk losing them by telling the truth. Since Republicans now control the House, and the House controls the purse strings in the House, it appears Republicans will have to be the first to summon some courage. How likely is that?