The Commentariat -- April 9

The President's weekly address focuses on the budget compromise:

President Obama's statement on the budget agreement:

     ... See related stories under Friday's Ledes. ...

... Carrie Budoff Brown of Politico: President Obama's protestations to the contrary, anti-abortion measures did make it into the final budget deal: "did agree to ban the District of Columbia from using federal and local taxpayer funds on abortions — a move already being cheered by abortion opponents as a noteworthy victory. The deal also includes a guarantee that the Senate will vote on bill that would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood, according to a House Republican summary." ...

... Greg Sargent: "... for all the talk about conservatives wanting more out of this deal, the simple truth is that this battle was fought almost entirely on their terms. By agreeing to steep, if temporary, cuts in advance, Dems acceded to the GOP’s austerity/cut-cut-cut frame at the very outset, and the debate unfolded entirely on that rhetorical turf." ...

... Ezra Klein: "Boehner ... managed to get more from the Democrats than anyone had expected, sell his members on voting for a deal that wasn’t what many of them wanted and avert a shutdown. There is good reason to think that Boehner will be a much more formidable opponent for Obama than Gingrich was for Clinton." ...

... Brian Beutler of TPM: "This was a little fight. Puny even. It was the easiest test [Speaker Boehner will] face all year, and he barely passed. In just a few weeks, he'll have to convince the same petulant bloc in his party to support raising the debt limit, or force the country into default. When that's done, he'll have to run point on yet another spending fight -- to keep the government running next year.... That the focal point of policy on Capitol Hill is on what should be cut -- and not when to cut, or whether cutting is even wise -- illustrates just how brief the progressive moment lasted after Obama's election in 2008. It also represents a colossal failure of government." ...

... Bob Reich: "The right-wing bullies are emboldened. They will hold the nation hostage again and again.... The President continues to legitimize the Republican claim that too much government spending caused the economy to tank, and that by cutting back spending we’ll get the economy going again.... He is losing the war of ideas because he won’t tell the American public the truth: That we need more government spending now — not less — in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession." ...

... Matthew Cooper of the National Journal: "The budget skirmish ends. The war begins." ...

What we have here is a flea, wagging a tail, wagging a dog. The flea are the minority of House Republicans who are hard right, the tail is the House Republican caucus, and the dog is the government. -- Chuck Schumer, in a Senate floor speech

Joe Nocera: the N.C.A.A. has a disturbing double standard: one for rich white men, one for poor black men. White UConn coach Jim Calhoun got "a slap on the wrist" -- which also allowed him to get an $87,500 bonus on top of his $2.3 million annual salary -- for "breaking the rules egregiously and repeatedly." But 19-year-old Perry Jones, who is black and who did nothing wrong -- when he was in high school and wiithout his knowledge his severely ill and poverty-striken mother borrowed (and repaid) money from a coach -- was suspended during the tournament and fined. The comments on Nocera's column are here.

Right Wing World *

Actually, I have great respect for [Gail] Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. -- Donald Trump, in a letter to the New York Times Editor

Gail Collins responds: Trump is "falling further and further into the land of the lunatic fringe." Comments on Collins' column are here.

In yesterday's Commentariat, we brought you Sen. Jon Kyl making a speech on the Senate floor in which he claimed that "well over 90 percent" of Planned Parenthood's services were dedicated to abortions:

     ... That figured turned out to be a little off. The figure is closer to three (yes, that's 3) percent, not 90 percent. Undeterred by calls to retract his remark, Kyl had a spokesperson send a note to CNN which read, in part, "...his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions":

     ... CW: See, it's okay if you tell out-and-out lies on the Senate floor, and it's okay if those lies go unchallenged into the Congressional Record. It's okay if you just make stuff up and fail to apologize, because facts are troublesome things that don't always fit a Senator's prejudices. What's important here is the illustration. On a related note, I had forgotten what an all-out misogynist Kyl was, but Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reminds us of Kyl's position on women's health issues, which he expressed during the debate over healthcare legislation. "I don't need maternity care":

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

... "Tourist in Chief." New York Times: "Just hours after reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown, President Obama paid a brief visit to the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday — presumably to highlight that it, and other national monuments, were open for business." ...

... The Hill: "President Obama on Saturday signed a seven-day extension of government funding, which is the first part of a agreement to keep the government running through the end of the current fiscal year. The bill was signed without fanfare 13 hours after Democratic and Republican congressional leaders reached a last-minute deal Friday to avoid a government shutdown."

AP: "Demonstrators burned cars and barricaded themselves with barbed wire inside a central Cairo square demanding the resignation of the military's head after troops violently dispersed an overnight protest killing one and injuring 71. Hundreds of soldiers beat protesters with clubs and fired into the air in the pre-dawn raid on Cairo's central Tahrir Square in a sign of the rising tensions between Egypt's ruling military and protesters."

Al Jazeera: "Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, have shelled rebel positions west of Ajdabiya. There are reports the town is on the brink of falling to Gaddafi troops, in a major setback for rebels who earlier in the day had pushed westward towards Brega. Our correspondents, citing reliable sources, said gun battles were taking place in the streets of Ajdabiya on Saturday." ...