The Commentariat -- November 30

In my column in today's New York Times eXaminer, I have an "exchange" with former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller about his view of the paper. The NYTX front page is here.

CW: Mostly because it annoyed me, I didn't link Jonathan Chait's long New York magazine article wherein he examines the sorry history of "liberal disappointment" in Democratic presidents. It is worth reading if you have a grain of salt handy. ...

... BUT even if you don't read Chait, do read Katrina vanden Heuvel's rebuttal in the Washington Post: "The biggest liberal groups in the country lined up to help pass [President Obama's] agenda. They stayed loyal even as his aides cut deals they found deplorable.... He faced unified Republican obstruction, not liberal opposition. Powerful corporate lobbies were able to purchase sufficient conservative Democrats ... to dilute, delay and sometimes defeat reform. Progressives in Congress criticized the limitations, but produced votes when it was time to get something passed.... If anything, Obama was hurt because progressives were too loyal rather than that they were too critical."

David Dayen of Firedoglake: The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which is mostly useless, has found that ten major lending institutions have unlawfully foreclosed on as many as 5,000 active-duty service members, in violation "of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, in particular the restriction on foreclosing on active duty military while they are overseas. The scandal has led to an extreme degree of restitution from the banks, which have been camo-washing their reputations by providing settlements of up to $117,000 per wrongful foreclosure.... Violations of the SCRA carry with it potential sentences of up to a year in prison."

CW: Don't kid yourself that Congressional Republicans (and no doubt some bank-financed Democrats) are whacking just the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because Elizabeth Warren is so mean or something. They are working overtime (or, rather, having their staffs work overtime) to dismantle the entire financial regulatory framework, such as it is (and it's already a revolving-door joke with the "regulators" making nice to the "regulated" who will soon employ said regulators at 10 times their current salaries. Public service, my ass). See, fer instance, Charles Pierce's remarks on funding cuts for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which is tasked under Dodd-Frank with regulating derivatives trading. (The Politico backstory is here.)

Greg Sargent shows how the payroll tax cut, proposed by President Obama and Congressional Democrats would benefit 113 million Americans, but Republicans are caterwauling that paying for it with a surtax on the super-rich "amounts to a job-killing tax hike on small businesses." Not only is that not true, the tax itself would in no way be a hardship on the 345,000 rich people who would pay an additional 3.25 percent, only on that part of their income that was over $1MM. ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "The anti-tax crowd is boxed in.... Are Republicans going to deny the average working family a $1,500 tax break in order to spare millionaires a modest increase? That $1,500 or so, multiplied by every paycheck in America, would have a huge effect on economic growth next year, widely estimated as between 1.5 and 2 percentage points. The tax increase would affect only a tiny fraction of small businesses with employees, despite the endless Republican claims that it would stifle job creation." ...

... Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: "The GOP has, time and again, blocked any legislation that would increase taxes by the slightest amount on the ultra-wealthy, even with tax revenue at a 60 year low, taxes on the rich the lowest they’ve been in a generation, and income inequality out of control.

Right Wing World

Maureen Dowd is back on her game today, for the first time in a long time, with an "Essence of the Newt" piece. She doesn't cover any new ground (though her borrowing from Barney Frank's news conference yesterday is good), but she nicely puts together a string of outrageious hypocrisies that defines the leading GOP contender du jour.

Charles Pierce of Esquire: "Herb Cain, could have the slimmest chance of being elected president of the United States is a better measure of the depth of this country's problems than the Consumer Price Index is."

After running a now-notorious ad which cut a remark by Barack Obama so as to completely change the meaning of what he said, Mitt Romney had the gall to go on Fox "News" and complain about Democratic oppo ads that portray him as a flip-flopper: "There's no question but that people will take snippets, things out of context, and show there are differences, which there are not." I ran an extended DNC Mitt v. Mitt on the November 28 Commentariat. Here's the 30-second version:

No-Information Governors. It turns out those oft-mocked "low-information" swing voters may be better informed than Republican governors:

I don’t read newspapers in the state of Ohio. Very rarely do I read a newspaper. Because ... reading newspapers does not give you an uplifting experience.... I have found my life is a lot better if I don’t get aggravated by what I read in the newspaper. -- Ohio Gov. John Kasich

No. -- Florida Gov. Rick Scott, when asked if he read Florida newspapers

Via Steve Benen. CW: these governors will never pay a political price for boasting about their willful ignorance. They are just showing their base they are not "elitists." Besides, when everybody is a know-nothing, how would the know-nothing voters ever find out their governor was Know-Nothing-in-Chief?

Perry Ups Voting Age, Election Day. Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "At a town hall meeting at the Institute of Politics at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm’s College Tuesday, Rick Perry asked that all of the college students in the crowd who will be 21 by Nov. 12 support his bid for the presidency.... The voting age in the United States is, of course, 18. And the 2012 election will be held on Nov. 6, 2012." With video.

I repudiate, and I call on the President to repudiate, the concept of the 99 and the 1. It is un-American, it is divisive, it is historically false…. You are not going to get job creation when you engage in class warfare because you have to attack the very people you hope will create jobs. -- Newt Gingrich

[Religious right activists] are the majority in the country who must stand up and take this nation back from the ‘minority elite’ who are ruining it. -- Newt Gingrich

Translation by Steve Benen: ... when it comes to the economy..., we’re all one people, and we must pay no attention to the wealth that divides us. When it comes to the culture war, we’re not one people, and those who believe ... should target and defeat those Americans who disagree. If a right-wing voice rails against the 'minority elite,' he’s speaking the truth. If an Occupy activist rails against the 'minority elite,' he’s an un-American radical.

Local News

Elizabeth Hartfield of ABC News: "On Monday night the United Wisconsin coalition, the committee organizing the effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, announced that it had collected 300,000 signatures since the recall kicked off on Nov. 15. The signature-gathering process has moved very quickly so far.... United Wisconsin will need to collect 540,208 signatures by Jan. 17 in order to get a recall of Governor Walker on the ballot."

News Ledes

President Obama speaks on the American Jobs Act in Scranton, Pennsylvania:

Reuters: "Stocks surged on Wednesday after major central banks agreed to make cheaper dollar loans for struggling European banks to prevent the euro-zone debt woes from turning into a full-blown credit crisis. The Dow posted its best day since March 2009 after the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and other major central banks stepped in to head off escalating funding pressures that threaten the key arteries of the world's financial system."

Reuters: "Nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, the U.S. mission in Iraq is fast winding down with only 13,000 troops left in the country. Hundreds are departing each day until the end of 2011."

New York Times: "The police broke up large Occupy encampments in Los Angeles and Philadelphia early on Wednesday, arresting hundreds of protesters who had been camped out for the past two months and who had remained in public squares beyond city-mandated deadlines this week." Los Angeles Times story here, with video. Philadelphia Inquirer story here. ...

     ... Inquirer Update: "Occupy Philadelphia protesters gathered for a general assembly Wednesday evening outside Police Headquarters at Eighth and Race Streets. About 100 protesters marched to the police building from Rittenhouse Square late Wednesday afternoon."

Philadelphia Inquirer: "A feisty President Obama warned that the economy would suffer a 'massive blow' if Republicans block his proposal to extend an expiring payroll-tax cut, rallying supporters at a campaign-style rally in ... [Scranton, Pennsylvania]."

AP: "Britain ordered all Iranian diplomats out of the U.K. within 48 hours and shuttered its ransacked embassy in Tehran on Wednesday, in a significant escalation of tensions between Iran and the West. The ouster of the entire Iranian diplomatic corps deepens Iran's international isolation amid growing suspicions over its nuclear program. At least four other European countries also moved to reduce diplomatic contacts with Iran." Guardian story here.

New York Times: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived [in Naypyidaw, Myanmar,] on Wednesday to measure the depth of the political and economic opening that the country’s autocratic, military-dominated government has unexpectedly begun.

ABC News: "The latest person to accuse former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky of sexual abuse also claims that Sandusky threatened to hurt the boy’s family if he ever told anyone about the abuse. Sandusky’s newest accuser, who is now 29, had not told anyone about the abuse until he read about the grand jury presentment charging Sandusky with 40 counts of child molestation over 15 years, his lawyer Jeff Anderson said today. Until that time, he had thought he was the only victim."

Politico: "A deal between Boeing and its Machinists union Wednesday could quiet GOP attacks against the Obama administration and National Labor Relations Board about the fate of a South Carolina 787 Dreamliner plant. If the tentative deal is ratified allowing the Boeing’s new 737 MAX aircraft to be built in Renton, Wash., the union said it will withdraw its grievances against the aerospace manufacturer over the South Carolina plant, potentially putting an end to a seven-month, highly charged labor debate."

The Commentariat -- November 29

If it's Tuesday, it must be time to deal with David Brooks. My column in the New York Times eXaminer is here. The NYTX front page is here.

** Poll of the Month. "Fox 'News' -- Making Americans Ignorant 24/7." Fairleigh Dickinson University: "Sunday morning news shows do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.... People who watch Fox News ... are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all.... Exposure to Sunday morning news shows helps respondents on" a question about the Occupy movement. "Listening to NPR also helps, but the biggest aid to answering correctly is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart...." ...

... In our Continuing Education series dedicated to making sure Reality Chex readers are way better informed than Foxbots, we bring you Jon Stewart lecturing on "competitive shopping":

** Dahlia Lithwick profiles Justice Elena Kagan in New York magazine.

Joe Nocera writes an excellent column explaining why Germany has screwed up the European Union & rendered the collapse of the euro almost inevitable. He also makes a good argument about why they should have known better & why they'll be sorry.

Half of them think like Michelle Bachmann and the other half are afraid of being primaried by someone who thinks like Michele Bachmann. -- Barney Frank, on Congressional Republicans

Paul Kane of the Washington Post profiles Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who announced his retirement today. See also Monday's Ledes. ...

... Charles Pierce of Esquire, who was a Boston reporter, writes a fine remembrance of Frank's career.

Garrett Epps of The Atlantic with the News from Brownbackistan. How teenager Emma Sullivan stood up to Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. The First Amendment lives, even in Brownback's Kansas. CW: Read Epp's essay; he gives you more than the she said/he said.

E. J. Dionne calls out so-called "moderate" pundits like Tom Friedman of the New York Times and Mark Miller of the Washington Post (without naming them) for the third-party advocacy. "We need moderation all right, but a moderate third party is the one way to guarantee we won’t get it."

Right Wing World

"Here We Go Again." CNN: "An Atlanta businesswoman accused GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain of having had an affair with her that lasted 13 years, an Atlanta television station reported Monday."

      ... Here's the original report from Dale Russell Atlanta's Fox5 TV. Update: the interview of Ginger White:

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: Michele Bachmann claimed last week that she had never said "anything inaccurate" during the Republican presidential debates. "The record clearly shows that Bachmann has said many inaccurate statements during the debates, sometimes repeatedly."

Glenn Kessler: Grover Norquist appeared on "Press the Meat" this weekend and made up stuff. "Norquist has every right to his opinions on the dangers of excessive government spending and taxation, but he needs to come up with a better set of facts to make his case. His description of recent budgetary history bears little relation to the historical record. His comment on the stimulus bill was also highly misleading."

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "A judge on Tuesday sentenced Dr. Conrad Murray to four years behind bars -- the maximum punishment possible -- for his part in Michael Jackson's death, saying the doctor’s role in the singer’s fatal overdose was 'money-for-medicine madness.' In blistering and lengthy remarks, Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor lambasted Murray for failing to express any remorse for the pop star’s death and suggesting in a recent documentary that Jackson bore responsibility for his own demise." With video.

New York Times: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived [in Baghdad, Iraq] on Tuesday for a historic visit meant to inaugurate a new relationship between the United States and Iraq, just weeks before the last American troops are scheduled to leave the country."

Washington Post: "Businessman Herman Cain told senior members of his campaign on a conference call this morning that he is reassessing whether or not to remain in the Republican presidential race. On the conference call, which National Review listened to and transcribed, Cain denies the allegation of an affair with an Atlanta woman named Ginger White, which came to light on Monday, but acknowledged that the 'firestorm' had caused a rethinking."

New York Times: "The AMR Corporation, the parent company of American Airlines, said on Tuesday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to reduce labor costs and shed a heavy debt burden."

Guardian: "Dozens of Iranian protesters have forced their way into the British embassy in Tehran, tearing down the Union flag and throwing documents from the windows."

Guardian: "The former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain has been told by the Metropolitan police that they are investigating evidence that his computer, and those of senior Northern Ireland civil servants and intelligence agents, may have been hacked by private detectives working for News International [Rupert Murdoch's company]. The suggestion that the minister's computers, containing sensitive intelligence material, may have been compromised is the most serious sign yet that newspaper malpractice extended far beyond the hacking of mobile phone voicemail, into the realm of other electronic data." ...

... Guardian: Rupert Murdoch's son "James Murdoch has seen off a revolt by nearly a third of BSkyB's independent shareholder to be reappointed as chairman of the satellite broadcaster at the company's annual general meeting.Provisional figures announced at the meeting in London on Tuesday gave him 81.24% of the vote, with 18.76% against."

Al Jazeera: "Egypt's first free elections for decades have entered a second day, with turnout so far described as 'very high'. Logistical problems plagued many polling stations on Monday but the first day of voting passed mostly peacefully. Egyptians are voting to create the first democratically elected assembly in the country's history."

The Commentariat -- November 28

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer: "In his most recent New York Times op-ed column, Frank Bruni warns that the 'presidential race is shaping up to be … especially mean and mendacious.' But Bruni himself, if not mean, is certainly mendacious. His central premise is untrue as is much of the 'evidence' he provides to try to support it." The NYTX front page is here. ...

... Today's Off Times Square topic is "The Pits." You'll have to read it to get it. But of course you can write about any topic related to politics.

NEW. How to Attack Female Candidates. Libby Copeland in Slate: "A review of the advertising suggests that conventions of negative advertising against women are often different from the conventions of advertising against men." Here are some "common tropes" used to defeat a woman running for office: she's nutty, a power-mad bitch, a wicked witch, frivolous, deviant, uppity, a woman. With sample ads.

George Packer of the New Yorker talks to Occupy Wall Street protesters about why they're participating in the movement.

The Fed: a Banker's BFF. Bob Ivry, et al., of Bloomberg News: "The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret.... The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue."

Paul Krugman: "... two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions." Krugman explains to dummies why raising taxes on today's super-rich would make a big dent in the deficit as would "taxing financial transactions, which have exploded in recent decades. The economic value of all this trading is dubious at best. In fact, there’s considerable evidence suggesting that too much trading is going on."

Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: Mayor Cory Booker brings doughnuts & coffee to Occupy Newark protesters. "Indeed, the Occupy Newark protest has unfolded with disarming civility in one of the nation’s grittiest cities."

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "Just a little more than an hour after some House Democrats recently demanded an inquiry into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s ethics, Senate Republicans stepped up the pressure on Justice Elena Kagan to take herself out of the court’s decision on the health-care reform act. The process repeated itself a few days later. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) called for the release of more documents about Kagan’s role as President Obama’s solicitor general; the liberal group People for the American Way came out with another broadside against Thomas. Accusations about both justices, from the left and the right, show no signs of dissipating now that the Supreme Court has said it will review the constitutionality of Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010."

Aram Roston of the Daily Beast: Supreme Foods is the new Halliburton, a European-based company which services, has imported all of the U.S military’s food into Afghanistan, and its contract was extended by the Pentagon in 2010 for two years and $4 billion without the normal competitive bidding. But that’s just part of its business.... The rise of Supreme Group is a classic tale of a Pentagon procurement system still laboring to overcome decades of suspicions about overpriced hammers and toilet seats, conflicts of interests, kickbacks, and a revolving door between the government and private contractors.

Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: "Americans have never met a hydrocarbon they didn’t like. Oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, tar-sands oil, coal-bed methane, and coal, which is, mostly, carbon—the country loves them all, not wisely, but too well. To the extent that the United States has an energy policy, it is perhaps best summed up as: if you’ve got it, burn it. America’s latest hydrocarbon crush is shale gas."

Right Wing World

Mitt v. Mitt. Here's a related AP story:

John Cassidy of the New Yorker: With Republicans facing the dismal prospect of voting for either Mitt or Newt, the Donald is thinking of making a comeback -- just in time for his release of a new book.

Max Read of Gawker on the New Hampshire Union Leader's endorsement of Newt Gingrich: "It must be a proud moment for Newt, to be included with such GOP luminaries as Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes and Pierre S. DuPont IV — all of whom received the coveted Union Leader endorsement and went on to illustrious careers as a television racist, a publisher of listicles, and a terrible Wall Street Journal columnist, respectively." Hilariously, TwitterWorld is totally confused to learn a "union leader" has endorsed Newt. With sample Tweets. ...

... Not So Fast, Skeptics. Nate Silver demonstrates that the Union Leader endorsement actually does help a New Hampshire candidate: "As it happens, although only three of the six Republicans endorsed by The Union Leader during this period won their primary, all six outperformed their polling."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A federal judge in New York on Monday threw out a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal, saying that the S.E.C.’s policy of settling cases by allowing a company to neither admit nor deny the agency’s allegations did not satisfy the law. The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, ruled that the S.E.C.’s $285 million settlement, announced last month, is “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest” because it does not provide the court with evidence on which to judge the settlement. The ruling could throw the S.E.C.’s enforcement efforts into chaos...."

NECN: "Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts fourth Congressional District has said he will not seek re-election for 2012." Updated Boston Globe report here.

     ... Update: C-SPAN has video of Frank's full press conference here.

Reuters: "Police in riot gear began closing in early on Monday on some 2,000 anti-Wall Street activists who defied a midnight deadline to vacate an eight-week-old encampment outside Los Angeles City Hall as some protesters blocked traffic."

AP: "Since the lifting two months ago of a longstanding U.S. ban on gays serving openly in the military, U.S. Marines across the globe have adapted smoothly and embraced the change, says their top officer, Gen. James F. Amos, who previously had argued against repealing the ban during wartime."

Al Jazeera: "Egyptians have started casting their ballots in the first parliamentary elections since former president Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a popular uprising earlier this year. Long queues were seen outside many polling stations amid tight security arrangements as voters flocked to the polls on Monday morning." The Al Jazeera liveblog is here.

New York Times: "Warnings that the debt crisis in Europe could cause credit to dry up across the global banking system, endangering the world economy, multiplied on Monday despite fresh efforts by European leaders to prevent the euro monetary union from fracturing."

New York Times: "Millions of voters in [the Congo] ... streamed into the polls on Monday and already many are bracing for serious unrest."