The Commentariat -- September 13
We are in this wrestling match with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. -- Barack Obama, on the economy
Lawrence Wright, in The New Yorker, on the wages of intolerance: look to the Danish model.
Factoid of the Day. America’s Muslim community is more ethnically diverse than that of any other major religion in the country. Its members hold more college and graduate degrees than the national average. They also have a higher employment rate and more jobs in the professional sector. (Compare that with England and France, where education and employment rates among Muslims fall below the national averages.) These factors have allowed American Muslims and non-Muslims to live together with a degree of harmony that any other Western nation would envy. -- Lawrence Wright
The Age of Unreason. George Packer of The New Yorker: "Evidence, knowledge, argument, proportionality, nuance, complexity, and the other indispensable tools of the liberal mind don’t stand a chance these days against the actual image of a mob burning an effigy, or the imagined image of a man burning a mound of books." ...
... Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post: "... across the Muslim world, militant Islam's appeal has plunged. In the half of the Muslim world that holds elections, parties that are in any way associated with Islamic jihad tend to fare miserably, even in Pakistan.... Over the past few years, imams and Muslim leaders across the world have been denouncing suicide bombings, terrorism and al-Qaeda with regularity." In the U.S., the right-wing's "campaign to spread a sense of imminent danger" is unjustified.
"The Year of No Inflation." David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "... the Fed has a dual mission: keep inflation contained and maximize employment. By any measure, inflation is contained, and the economy is millions of job shy of maximum employment." ...
... Former federal agent Robert Mazur in a New York Times op-ed: "Bankers are escaping prosecution because law enforcement is failing to expose the evidence that some bankers market dirty money.... What’s needed is a small but elite multi-agency task force, including representatives of the intelligence community and accomplished members of law enforcement agencies from other nations, that could identify the institutions and businesses that handle the bulk of the dirty money flowing around the globe."
Paul Krugman writes that by manipulating its currency policy, "China is taxing imports while subsidizing exports, feeding a huge trade surplus.... Time and again, U.S. officials have announced progress on the currency issue; each time, it turns out that they’ve been had." ...
... Deborah Solomon of the Wall Street Journal: and Tim Geithner says, yeah, that's right. ...
... AND the Constant Weader (#4) is skeptical of Geithner's sincerity. ...
... In a Wall Street Journal interview, "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Washington is at risk of undercutting an already sluggish economic recovery if it fails to provide quick, additional support to business and individuals. Mr. Geithner said the biggest challenge facing the economy right now was Washington paralysis.... Mr. Geithner's comments are part of a White House campaign to convince a nervous public that the administration understands what ails the economy...." Here are excerpts of the interview.
The Democratic National Committee introduces the Boehner Economic Plan:
... Here's a related Wall Street Journal post by Laura Meckler.
John Boehner on extending middle-class tax cuts:
... We welcome John Boehner's change in position and support for the middle class tax cuts, but time will tell if his actions will be anything but continued support for the failed policies that got us into this mess. -- Robert Gibbs
... Andrew Leonard of Salon: "Since four Democratic senators and Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman have already expressed doubt about raising taxes on the wealthy, Senate Republicans are sitting in a very strong position. So Boehner can say whatever he wants, and theoretically neutralize Obama's recent push on the tax cut issue -- in which the president has relentlessly portrayed the Ohio Republican as Chief Apologist For the Rich." BUT Leonard points to this Bloomberg news article & wonders if Mitch McConnell will really throw all his muscle behind making sure rich people can buy new BMW convertibles. ...
... Bloomberg: "Wealthy Americans have the price of a BMW convertible riding on the outcome of the Congressional battle over tax cuts set to expire this year."
... No Surprise Here from Sen. BMW -- Bitchy Moaning Whiner. New York Times Update: "With the focus now shifting to the Senate over a potential compromise on the expiring Bush-era income-tax cuts, Senator ... said on Monday that he favored maintaining the lower rates for everyone, including the wealthiest Americans, for at least one more year." ...
... Update 2. Michael Crowley of Time: the Boner's spokesman effectively admits Boehner's stance is a stunt:
Boehner's words were calculated [emphasis mine] to deprive Obama of the ability to continue making those false claims, and as a result we are in a better position rhetorically to pressure more Democrats to support a full freeze.
Robert Gibbs responds to Newt Gingrich's far-out appeal to far-out crazies:
... Even Andy Card, Dubya's Chief-of-Staff who was irked that President Obama sometimes went jacketless in the Oval Office, is "disappointed" in the Newt:
CW: several states hold primaries tomorrow, & the Delaware Republican contest is a doozy. You might want to read some of the Delaware stories linked on the Campaign 2010-General page.
John Leland of the New York Times: as Congress threatens to raise the age for Social Security eligibility, "a new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that one in three workers over age 58 does a physically demanding job ... that can be radically different at age 69 than at age 62. Still others work under difficult conditions ... for long stretches. In all, the researchers found that 45 percent of older workers, or 8.5 million, held such difficult jobs. For janitors, nurses’ aides, plumbers, cashiers, waiters, cooks, carpenters, maintenance workers and others, raising the retirement age may mean squeezing more out of a declining body." ...
... AND Speaking of Hard Labor, Susan Craig of the Times writes that as many as 60 Goldman Sachs partners could become, boo-hoo, "de-partnered" this year.
A Bomb in the Attic. Hugh Sidey for Time: President John F. Kennedy & the Defense Intelligence Agency believed Russians had used inspection-free diplomatic pounches to smuggle atomic bomb parts into their Washington, D.C. embassy, & had then assembled the bomb on the third floor of the embassy.
After California's Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman runs this ad, which includes a 1992 cliip of Bill Clinton falsely accusing Jerry Brown of raising California taxes when he was governor ...
... Jerry Brown responds:
... Update: Brown apologizes to President Clinton, bashes Whitman. His statement is here.
... New York Times Update, September 14: "President Bill Clinton endorsed his long-ago rival Jerry Brown for governor of California, brushing aside Mr. Brown’s recent snippy joke about the Monica Lewinsky scandal."
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