Constant Weader -- I get a lot of supportive letters from readers, and some hilarious pans, too, but this post in the Democratic Underground is really something:

Marie Burns has built a cult following and a blog based on her trenchant comments on New York Times op-ed pieces. Today she adds another dimension to Paul Krugman's piece, "The World As He Finds It."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/opinion/15krugman.htm...

Marie's take:

-edit-

"... we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems."

This of course the pose that made Obama famous in his 2004 convention speech: "... there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America...." I'm not much of an historian, so I'm not sure any other single speech has ever created a President, but it could be argued that this one did. Even though I live in Republicanland, the day after the 2004 election, when I was totally down in the dumps, a car passed me by sporting a bumper sticker that read "Obama 2008." Cheered me right up.

We all want to believe the sentiments of the 2004 speech. But adults with clear views of the political landscape know better. I expect Obama, who has borne the brunt of the untruthiness of his inspiring fantasy, knows better, too. But. But. It is the pose that made him, and he seems incapable of escaping it. In fact, even a casual observer can now see Obama has no interest in trying to escape the illusion of kumbaya America.

However, we err in believing Obama "just doesn't get it"; that his waffling and repeated capitulations to Republicans, to China, to whatever counterforce he meets -- are the result of his naivete or inexperience or lack of a skill set. I think Obama knows just what he is doing. He believes in the correctness of the elite establishment. He is a David Brooks dream President. "The world as he finds it" is messy, and this is a guy who picks up his socks. He prefers the neat platitudes of the ruling class he has been invited to join. He admires those "smart businessmen" on Wall Street who financed his campaign. He likes to chat with "respectable" establishment newsmen like John Harwood & Steve Kroft (how many interviews has Obama given "60 Minutes"?). He enjoys the company of long-time lobbyists like Tom Daschle. The President of the United States likes smooth operators. It is his intention to be one of them.

The smooth operators are not inclined to cede any of their power to the riffraff that is the rest of us. They have, once again, a friend in the White House, and they're happy with that. If Mitch McConnell & John Boehner are not exactly la creme de la creme, they too do the bidding for the elite. They do it for the cash, if not for the cachet.

The President returned to Washington from Japan yesterday, and today his ostensible friends & foes in the Congress will be back to bicker. Obama may have missed the kabuki theater in Japan, but he'll be right at home in Washington where he will star once again in a very familiar kabuki dance. We in the hinterlands are the captive audience of this stylized drama, a form of theater that holds few surprises and inevitably ends tragically for us. (All emphases D/U.)

For a better comment on Krugman's column, check out Karen Garcia's (#10) masterpiece. And recommend it!

We, the People -- Are Screwed

Art by Crockett Johnson.Frank Rich: "It’s the very top earners, not your garden variety, entrepreneurial multimillionaires, who will be by far the biggest beneficiaries if there’s an extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for income over $200,000 a year (for individuals) and $250,000 (for couples). The resurgent G.O.P. has vowed to fight to the end to award this bonanza, but that may hardly be necessary given the timid opposition of President Obama and the lame-duck Democratic Congress."

The New York Times moderators again found my comment too -- something. So here it was:

The President has been hinting for weeks that he will roll on tax cuts for the wealthy. His faint, equivocal denials are merely a redeployment of the tactic he used during the healthcare debate on provisions like the public option. Every remark he has made is a signal to Republicans that he'll go along with them. Political observers should stop pretending that the President really opposes tax cuts for the super-rich, & he would let them expire if it weren't for those darned Republicans. Everybody in Washington knows what s/he's doing, and everybody will play his or her role in seeing that the oligarchy remains intact and continues to prosper at the expense of the rest of us.

What will happen is this: Democrats will get almost enough Congressional votes to let tax cuts for the rich be decoupled from those for the rest of us. But, gosh, they'll just fall short. A few "villains" like Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson or a disgruntled Arlen Specter or a nothing-to-lose Blanche du Arquansau will hold out. The President will sigh audibly & repeat a slightly-more eloquent version of David Axelrod's "We have to deal with the world as we find it." Then he will quietly sign the bill extending tax cuts to all. Everyone in Washington will have played his part and most partisans from both sides will be none the wiser. That, Mr. Axelrod, is "the world as we find it." It's pretty disgusting. And so are you, for playing your role so well.

If that scenario sounds familiar to you, it's because you've witnessed it before: on the public option drama, on the plan to allow those 55 and older to buy into Medicare, on curbs to derivatives trading. The Congress proposes, the Congress disposes. Somehow they just can't quite pass legislation that helps us commoners.

There is a way out of the tax cuts impasse. It won't succeed, but it's a darned good backup plan. It's the suggestion of Sen. Mark Warner, a brilliant businessman & politician himself. Warner suggests a Republican-friendly compromise that has eluded All the President's Men: scrap the tax cuts for the rich & put the cuts, at least temporarily, into growth businesses that will create jobs for middle-class Americans. Let's see how far Warner's reasonable compromise goes. Enjoy the idea while you can. You may never hear of it again.

Who will stand up to the rich? Nobody in Washington. It's pitchfork time. You will find me among the angry mob.

The Commentariat -- November 14

Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post writes that "After nearly two weeks of introspection, President Obama's top advisers have concluded that the 'shellacking' Democrats took on Election Day was caused in large part by their own failure to live up to expectations set during the 2008 campaign, not merely the typical political cycles and poor messaging they pointed to at first." CW: so does this mean the President will veer left & -- mind you, in an effort to win re-election & not because he gives a shit -- try to do keep some campaign promises? ...

... Kornblut's colleague Greg Sargent assesses the reality as opposed to the storyline: "My guess is that insiders are, understandably, mainly leaking along these lines to project a sense that they 'get the message' of the elections, and that we'll ultimately see a different and more sophisticated comeback strategy play out. Also: Note that officials seem to recognize above that overseeing tangible improvements in the economy will do more to brighten Obama/Dem prospects than any high-profile displays of 'compromise' will. That's good." ...

... Steve Benen: "the White House should imagine Republicans being as reckless, irresponsible, ignorant, ill-tempered and child-like as humanly possible -- and then expect that to happen, because it probably will."

Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress: duplicitous John McCain moves the goalposts again on DADT. With video of McCain's star turn on "Press the Meat," as my friend Karen Garcia aptly calls it.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "The intense focus on the coming struggles between President Obama and congressional Republicans obscures one of the most important and underreported results of the midterm elections: the GOP takeover in the states. Republicans picked up at least 675 state legislative seats Nov. 2. As with the increases in the House, that gain is the biggest any party has made in state legislative seats since 1938 and is far larger than the GOP's tally in its 1994 landslide. Given the distribution of those gains, Republicans have the power to work their will in the states in ways they can't begin to think about doing in Washington."

Paul Krugman on the catfood commission's mandate: it was supposed to "produce a package good enough to accept as is.... Instead, it produced a PowerPoint that is one part stuff that has long been on the table, one part conservative wish-list, and one part just weirdly ill-considered."

** Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a 'safe haven' in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad." A pdf of the Justice Department report is here.

Brian Friel of the Congressional Quarterly, in a New York Times op-ed: ten issues Darrell Issa, et al., are likely to "investigate," and ten they should (but probably won't) look into, according to oversight experts.

New York Times Editorial Board: "... there are too many signs that Republicans relish tooth-and-claw politicking from within government as the easy alternative to the actual labor of governing.... Profiles of the incoming Republican freshmen are not encouraging. Half deny the science of global warming, and 39 percent signed on to the know-nothing move to end birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment....

Eric Lipton of the New York Times: former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), a lobbyist for creating tax loopholes for big corporate interests, returns to the Senate, where he hopes to get on the Finance Committee -- the one that creates tax loopholes for big corporate interests.

Nina Mandell of the New York Daily News: Cindy McCain was against DADT before she was for it.

Our Most Superficial President Ever. AP: "Former President George W. Bush says he doesn't miss much about the White House, just the pampering. Bush told more than 3,000 people at a sprawling central Florida retirement community on Saturday that he misses the convenience of Air Force One and never waiting in traffic jams. The 43rd president said, most of all, he misses being commander in chief of the U.S. military."

Have a Big Mac, Fatty. Felicity Lawrence of the Guardian: In Britain, "the Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease...." CW: this is what you get with conservative government.