The Commentariat -- April 19
Ben Bradlee & Bob Woodward at the Nixon Library Museum. AP photo.
Barry Goldwater was a tremendously useful source. No one thought that Barry Goldwater would have a friend at The Washington Post, but he was my wife’s mother’s — should I say it? — boyfriend. We saw a lot of Barry Goldwater. -- Ben Bradlee, legendary Washington Post editor, speaking at the Nixon Library
** "Watergate's Last Chapter." James Hohmann of Politico. "When the museum at Richard Nixon’s library opened in 1990, the only American to resign the presidency was still alive, and his loyalists were still fighting the battles of the early 1970s. The museum’s display on Watergate quoted a book accusing Bob Woodward of 'offering bribes' to get scoops. The library director made his own views plain: 'I don’t think we’d ever open the doors to Bob Woodward. He’s not a responsible journalist.' On Monday evening, the library did indeed open its doors to Woodward and his old boss, former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee.... A crowd of almost 1,000 welcomed Woodward and Bradlee with a standing ovation...."
President Obama tells off Texas newsman Brad Watson of WFAA. Via Michael Scherer of Time:
... Too bad President Obama didn't do this with Bill O'Reilly, who during his Super Bowl interview confrontation, interrupted the President 48 times, by this count:
Democrats are already running against Paul Ryan & his nasty budget plan:
CW: This story is firewalled, so the link is useless for nonsubscribers, but the lede is enough. Dave Wessel of the Wall Street Journal: "U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy. The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad." CW: I guess we'll have to ask GE CEO Jeff Immelt, President Obama's top outside advisor on jobs creation, what to do. Update: thanks to reader Barbara S. who found this link to the full article, which is good for a limited time. ...
... A reader suggests this post from David Sirota on Ikea's "race to the bottom": Ikea opened a plant in Danville, Virginia, to build the same products Ikea makes in its home country of Sweden because the Danville plant pays less than half the minimum wage & benefits paid in Sweden. Don't kid yourself that the U.S. "won" by paying its workers a pittance compared to European standards. "... workers in Danville have lost ground in the overall transaction — just as workers in the rest of America and around the world are losing ground in what has become a destructive wage-cutting race to the bottom." Here's the underlying story by Nathaniel Popper of the Los Angeles Times.
Fracking Joe Nocera of the New York Times has dropped his advocacy for natural gas drilling to get back to something he knows something about: "the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ... is a coddler, a protector, an outright enabler of the [financial] institutions it oversees." Comments are here.
Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Income for the Obama household continued to slip in 2010, tax returns show, as proceeds from President Obama’s best-selling books tapered off. But just as he has said, his income is easily high enough to make the family eligible for a tax increase under his own deficit-reduction proposals." ...
... Also from Calmes: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on May 5 will host the first meeting on deficit reduction with members of Congress since President Obama last week called for a bipartisan group to start negotiating an austerity plan, the White House announced late on Monday. One problem, though: The Republican House and Senate leaders have not named their negotiators and show little inclination to do so. The Democratic leaders were hardly more enthusiastic in announcing their designees over the weekend." ...
... Adam Sorensen of Time: "When political debate grinds to a standstill and all hope for compromise seems lost, there’s nothing quite as cathartic as getting everyone together in a room and… restating irreconcilable differences in front of the cameras. President Obama’s deficit reduction proposal and Paul Ryan’s “Path” are miles apart, and there’s limited enthusiasm on both sides about a yet-to-be-detailed plan from the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Six. But all those parties will likely be represented at a May 5 Blair House summit just announced by the White House."
Jay Newton-Small of Time: "... everyone is still playing politics with the debt ceiling. This shouldn’t be that surprising: we’re months away from a deal and now is the time to draw lines in the sand. But the S&P’s bleak outlook should serve as a warning: The next two months of public negotiations could have real repercussions on the markets." ...
... Brian Beutler of TPM: "... House Democrats are coalescing around the view that the debt limit should be hiked without major concessions to the GOP attached to it.... If House Democrats hold to that position, they'll force House Republicans to pass a debt limit hike with only Republican votes.... There's a high likelihood [Republican Tea Party members] would reach way too far, and be a non-starter in the Senate and with the White House.... [Speaker] Boehner ...knows the debt limit needs to be lifted. He knows that to get a debt limit bill through the Senate, he needs Democratic buy in. And if [Minority Leader] Pelosi and her leadership team keep Democrats aligned, he knows that means ditching just about all the concessions Republicans want."
Bill Saparito of Time: "It's been an interesting couple of days in the place where money and gambling intersects, otherwise known as Wall Street. Over the weekend, the Internet gambling sites PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker got taken down by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which among other things covers lower Manhattan, where the NYSE lives. On Monday, the stock market got taken down by Standard & Poors.... This is hypocrisy doubled down. The connection between the two events is that Wall Streeters absolutely love poker.... Hasn't Bharara now charged more people (11) for running poker sites that people like and that have harmed few, than he has for causing the financial collapse that has harmed all of us?"
Greg Sargent: Texas Democrats are pushing retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to run for the Senate in 2012. Because of Sanchez' culpability in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, for which "Senate Dems excoriated Sanchez, if Sanchez does enter the race, we could very well see a full and public airing of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Could get very interesting."
David Ingram of the Legal Times: "House Republicans have hired former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clement to lead their defense of the ban on federal recognition of same-sex marriage, giving lawmakers the benefit of one of the nation's best-recognized appellate lawyers." ...
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Speaker John Boehner’s (R) office announced that American taxpayers would pay former Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. Clement, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, is widely viewed as one of nation’s leading appellate attorneys. He is also one of the most expensive."
House-Hunters International. Missed this one. David Sanger & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has begun seeking a country, most likely in Africa, that might be willing to provide shelter to Col. if he were forced out of Libya, even as a new wave of intelligence reports suggest that no rebel leader has emerged as a credible successor to the Libyan dictator."
NEW. The Tea Party, Finnish Edition. Karl Ritter & Matti Huuhtanen of the AP: "They call themselves the True Finns: down-to-earth, hardworking people who love their country but feel neglected by its political elite. They're tired of bailing out southern Europeans who lived beyond their means. And wary of Somali, Iraqi and other immigrants who are slowly reshaping the homogenous nation of their forefathers — the tenacious Finns who halted the advance of the mighty Red Army during World War II. Overnight they've redrawn the political map of this Nordic country and caused a major headache for European countries negotiating a bailout package for debt-ridden Portugal."
Right Wing World *
A Downside to Constantly Lying to Your Base? -- Donald Trump. Adam Serwer: in the Washington Post: "Trump’s candidacy is largely a problem of the GOP’s own making. It’s a symptom of circumstances Republicans have spent the last two years tacitly cultivating as an asset. Republican leaders have at best refused to tamp down the most outlandish right-wing conspiracy-mongering about the president and at worst have actively enabled it. The result: A substantial portion of their base believes a complete myth about the president’s birth certificate, and Republicans are stuck with a candidate shameless enough to exploit the issue without resorting to the usual euphemisms more respectable Republicans tend to employ when hinting at the president’s supposed cultural otherness." ...
... After running down some of Donald Trump's "qualifications," Gene Robinson says, in view of the lackluster field of Republican presidential candidates, "If he now has decided to take himself seriously, I’m afraid we’re going to have to follow suit."
Susan Page of USA Today: All of the GOP candidates for president are "fatally flawed," & each is trying out different methods of hiding or getting around their "afflictions." "As the Republican presidential field begins to form for 2012, the major contenders have been trying different strategies — apologies, explanations, rebuttals and more — to try to deal with flaws that could be fatal in the eyes of GOP primary voters. (P.S. Luckily, John McCain is ready with some good advice for them.)
Right Wing World's favorite "intellectual" magazine, the National Review, proves one thing: a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Roger Ailes Is Nuts. "The small-town newspapers in New York's Hudson Valley that Fox News chief Roger Ailes owns with his wife Elizabeth are in a staff revolt after employees caught Ailes spying on them with News Corp. security goons." The Ailes, who own a large retirement home in the area, bought two local papers which Elizabeth "manages." "Ailes ... has run the papers with the singularly paranoid and abusive management style he brings to all his projects, resulting in the defection of his hand-picked editor and two top reporters earlier this month after Ailes told them he'd had them followed, and their private conversations surveilled, to catch them saying mean things about him. The spying followed years of intense weirdness between the editor and the Aileses, who once asked him to personally stop a break-in at their home and who implied that, after Roger's death, he'd be expected to replace him in their marriage." And the beat goes on.
* Where facts never intrude.
News Ledes
President Obama held a townhall meeting at Northern Virginia Community College this morning:
Washington Post: "A White House plane carrying Michelle Obama came dangerously close to a 200-ton military cargo jet and had to abort its landing at Joint Base Andrews on Monday as the result of an air traffic controller’s mistake, according to federal officials familiar with the incident. Ultimately controllers at Andrews feared the cargo jet would not clear the runway in time, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for their agencies."
New York Times: "Pfc. , the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking classified government documents to the Web site , will be moved from near-solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va., to another prison under conditions that may be less restrictive.... Last week, a torture investigator said that he had been denied an unmonitored visit to Private Manning , while has said that his treatment may violate his rights."
Pioneer Press: "More than enough signatures have been collected in an effort to recall Republican Wisconsin state Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, organizers announced Monday. Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zielinski said a petition will be filed with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board on Tuesday.... Across the state petitions to recall three other senators — Luther Olsen, R-Ripon; Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac; and Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse —already have been filed with the Government Accountability Board."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The state's top election watchdog agency has satisfied itself that results certified by Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus for the April 5 election are consistent with totals reported by municipalities, though 'a few anomalies' were found in a four-day investigation."
The Hill: "Despite long odds against immigration reform, President Obama on Tuesday urged a wide range of activists and officials to keep pushing the issue. The president told the group, which included Rev. Al Sharpton, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that for Congress to act, they will have to put pressure on Capitol Hill."
Los Angeles Times: "At least three people were killed and a large number were arrested early Tuesday after Syrian security forces opened fire on peaceful protesters in Homs, the country's third-largest city, said a resident who participated in the demonstration." With horrifying AP video.
AP: "The storms that chugged across the South last week killed at least 44 people in six states, but the worst devastation came over about four hours Saturday in North Carolina.... Statewide, costs will likely be at least in the tens of millions because the weather raged through densely populated cities, trashing homes, businesses and public buildings."
Michelle Obama on White House laundry duty:
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