The Commentariat -- May 2

Sen. Mark Warner brings a buzzer to meetings of the 'Gang of Six' senators who are working to craft a grand deficit-cutting deal. If talks get too tense, Mr. Warner, a Virginia Democrat, hits the button, which intones: 'Bullshit detected. Take precautions.' -- Wall Street Journal ...

... The paragraph above opens a disconcerting WSJ article by Naftali Bendavid & Damian Paletta, which informs us that the Gang of Six is still working on what is surely to be a horrible budget compromise. I hope there's enough bullshit being spewed to break up that old gang of special interest advocates. The budget they should be working from is the Congressional Progressive Caucus proposal. But, needless to say, they aren't.

Paul Krugman: Republicans ran hard against the bank bailout -- pretending it was Obama's idea, not Henry Paulson's -- and now they're planning to dismantle all the regulations that might prevent another crisis -- and another bailout. I've put up a comments page for Krugman on Off Times Square and have posted my comment on his column. Update: Karen Garcia has posted her comment also.

Robert Reich: "That’s the proposal emerging in the Senate from Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee and also Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri. It would get the deficit down not by raising taxes on the rich but by capping federal spending.... According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the McCaskill/Corker plan would require $800 billion of cuts in 2022 alone. That’s the equivalent of eliminating Medicare entirely, or the entire Department of Defense." It's still a pig.

E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "Those who would use the debt limit as a way of reducing spending risk increasing the deficit by forcing our debt-service costs upward. Moreover, conservatives show little actual interest in decreasing the deficit.... What they really care about is reducing government outlays and keeping tax rates on the wealthy low."

Ezra Klein: "Sen. Al Franken introduced the Pay for War Resolution. 'Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us well over a trillion dollars,' he said in a floor speech.... My one qualm with Franken’s approach to this issue is that he frames it almost entirely in terms of fiscal responsibility.... The importance of paying for war — of paying, really, for anything — is that it forces you to make decisions about what is and isn’t worth doing.... But all in all, this is a very worthwhile piece of legislation from a man who has turned out to be a very serious and thoughtful senator."

Rory Carroll of Reuters: "California is putting its reputation as a pioneering environmental heavyweight on the line as it prepares to launch a carbon market in eight months' time.... The idea of capping greenhouse gas emissions and providing cleaner companies with the potential to profit off their success in doing so is not new, but it has never been tried in the United States on this scale."

Robert Parry in TruthOut: "... the 'birther' case became a stand-in for those who saw political benefit in undermining Obama's legitimacy with the American people. By drawing attention to his ethnicity, 'birtherism' became as much a code word for racism as was the states' rights excuse used by white segregationists in the South a half century ago. While some on the American Left seem to have forgotten how extraordinary it was for the United States to elect a talented black politician as president, it does not appear that the right has been so colorblind."

Right Wing World *

Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds. Neera Tanden of The New Republic: "While Republicans initially manufactured lies about [healthcare reform] — anyone remember death panels? — they eventually focused on one provision in the bill that was focused on cutting costs: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).... Now, more than a year after health care reform passed, Paul Ryan, facing stiff opposition to his plan to end Medicare as we know it, has taken to attacking the IPAB as a way to rebut his critics.... What’s fascinating about the posture of these cosponsors is that it runs into direct conflict to the vote the House took mere days ago on the overall Ryan budget.... So, after all of their complaining about how the IPAB moved too far away from public accountability, they’ve just proposed eliminating all such accountability, insisting instead that private insurance companies know best."

Local News

Wisconsin Gov. Walker's "Starvation Scheme." TruthOut Buzzflash: Gov. Scott Walker wants to "allow a for profit corporation to decide who gets food and who doesn’t. On top of this 20 million dollars will be taken away from Wisconsin in Federal aid for help." Apparently Walker also doesn't care that his proposed plan has a lousy track record. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, privatization of the food stamp program failed in Texas & Ohio; Ohio is still locked in a suit with the private provider who didn't provide. Here's the Journal Sentinel article by Jason Stein. ...

... Gov. Scott Walker is a genuine high school graduate, but he doesn't think much of libraries. Mark Karlin of TruthOut Buzzflash: Walker is planning to cut Wisconsin library funding by $18.5 million in 2012 alone. The cuts come at a particularly bad time, according to Rhonda Putney, President of the state Library Association: "It's not just books and story times and computer access. We're helping people look for jobs and learn computer skills, so they can apply for jobs. That's been a really big focus."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts announced Monday that he had asked to conduct his annual training as a member of the state’s Army National Guard this summer in Afghanistan." CW: Scott Brown may have begun his Senate career as an uninformed, gaffe-prone doofus, but he is turning into a darned smart Senator & politician.

AP: "President Barack Obama plans to visit New York City on Thursday to mark the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The White House says Obama will visit ground zero, the site of al-Qaida's attack on the World Trade Center, and meet with the families of those killed nearly 10 years ago."

President & Mrs. Obama hosted a dinner for bipartisan leaders & their spouses. Politico: "President Obama was congratulated by dozens of lawmakers Monday night for authorizing an attack that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The members of Congress, who were eating dinner at the White House, interrupted Obama’s opening remarks with sustained applause as he said, 'Last night, as Americans learned the United States had carried out an operation that resulted in the capture and the death of Osama bin Laden —.” Update: see video under May 3 Commentariat above.

Las Vegas Sun: "Sen. John Ensign apologized Monday to an all but empty Senate chamber for his extramarital affair with a former aide and hoped aloud that his legislative record would speak for him.... Ensign's farewell speech was notable as much for who was not there as for what he said. Not a single colleague came to hear him speak or to pay tribute to his service. The gallery was empty of family members and staffers who often pack its seats for such occasions."

Las Vegas Sun: "Saying the decision on who to elect should rest with the people and not “politically elite' powerbrokers,' Secretary of State Ross Miller announced today that the special election ballot for the 2nd Congressional District will be open to all candidates and not just nominees selected by the state’s political party.... The special election will be Sept. 13 to replace U.S. Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who will be appointed to the U.S. Senate next month following Sen. John Ensign’s resignation." CW: this means Sharron Angle is in the mix.

AP: The Obama "administration used DNA testing to help confirm that American forces in Pakistan had in fact killed bin Laden, as U.S. officials sought to erase all doubt." ...

... Reuters: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday cooperation with Pakistan helped lead the United States to the Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden was found and killed by U.S. special forces." That's about all there is to this article (at 1:20 pm ET), tho it might be fleshed out later.

** New York Times: "Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the most devastating attack on American soil in modern times and the most hunted man in the world, was killed in a firefight with United States forces in Pakistan on Sunday, President Obama announced." Here's the AP story. The Washington Post's lead story is here. A new, updated New York Times story includes related WikiLeaks info.

     ... The New York Times' The Lede is following reactions to the killing.

     ... Here's the Al Jazeera story, with video report. Al Jazeera also has a liveblog of developments related to Osama's killing.

Chicago Tribune: "The Boston University center that studies brain injuries to professional athletes says former NFL player Dave Duerson had brain damage when he committed suicide in February. The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the B.U. School of Medicine announced on Monday its findings on its examination of Duerson's brain. The safety who began his NFL career with the Chicago Bears was 50 when he shot himself in the chest." New York Times story here.

Washington Post: "The U.S., British and Italian embassies were attacked and burnt by mobs in the Libyan capital Sunday, hours after a NATO airstrike was reported to have killed one of Moammar Gaddafi’s sons and three of his grandchildren. Britain responded to the attack on its embassy and ambassador’s residence, which were gutted by fire, by expelling Libya’s ambassador to London. The United Nations announced that it had temporarily withdrawn its 12 international staff members from Tripoli and sent them to neighboring Tunisia after a mob entered its compound."

The Commentariat -- May 1

President Obama speaks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner:

Here's a handy graph to whip out when your Republican friends (& certain stupid members of Congress) say the national debt is all Obama's fault. Washington Post graphic.Those Irresponsible Republicans. Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post explains in simple terms with straightforward numbers how the federal government got in the fiscal mess it's in. "The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts.... Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.... All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate." Oh yeah, and do blame Alan Greenspan. Thanks to Doug R. for the link.

New York Times Editors: "In an announcement on Friday afternoon — the time slot favored by officials eager to avoid scrutiny — the Treasury Department said it intends to exempt certain foreign exchange derivatives from key new regulations under the Dodd-Frank law. These derivatives represent a $4 trillion-a-day market, one that is very lucrative for the big banks that trade them." CW: also entirely coincidental that Geithner made that announcement right after Obama went to Wall Street hat-in-hand. You see how campaign money comes out of your pocket: bankers contribute to Obama, Obama gives bankers a deal, bankers trade with abandon & get in trouble, taxpayers bail out bankers. If you pay federal taxes, you just made a campaign contribution to BaracK Obama.

New York Times Editors: "President Obama should take the court up on its transparency blessing forthwith and sign a proposed executive order that would require government contractors to disclose their donations to groups that support or oppose federal candidates.

Dave Eggers & Ninive Calagari in a New York Times op-ed: "... the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years." The authors compare the way the U.S. & countries with more successful educational results recruit & hire teachers."

Maureen Dowd ruminates on the British royal wedding, the Grimms' version of "Cinderella," and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Pretty cheerless stuff....

... I've put up a comments page for Dowd on Off Times Square. You can comment on other political matters there, too. I've posted my own comment, too. Update: PLUS I've added a little challenge for readers on Off Times Square -- an opportunity to tell Democrats what to do in 2012. Be creative!

Dream On. Karen Garcia: "Presente.Org, one of the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy groups, is asking its members for input on a formal plan to withdraw active support for the president's re-election, in light of his continued failure to executive power to defer the deportation of a million DREAM Act candidates."

George Zornick of The Nation: Republican Congressmembers & right-wing front groups play defense at townhall meetings, screening questions & bussing in supporters.

ProPublica has a whole page of stories about the dangers of fracking, a method used to extract natural gas. I've sent the link to the page along to the New York Times' Fracking' Joe Nocera, friend of Boone Pickens.

Right Wing World *

Right Wing World Hypes a New Round of Birther Conspiracy Theores. Media Matters: the long-form certificate is "an obvious forgery"; the pdf of the birth certificate has been altered; delivery doctor is dead & his wife didn't know he had delivered Obama -- how curious. Oh, there will be more.

The Hatch Identity. Justin Elliott of Salon: "Around noon [Thursday], I posted a piece looking back at Sen. Orrin Hatch's sponsorship of a 2003 measure to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president. Less than 24 hours after the piece went up, a tech blogger discovered that the section of Hatch's website that mentioned the 'Presidential Eligibility Amendment' had mysteriously disappeared." A spokesperson for Hatch told Elliott that the section had disappeared because the Senator has a "brand new website," but Elliott writes that "the design of Hatch's website looks the exact same as it did yesterday. The only thing that has changed is that the archive of Hatch's bills now ends at 2008. Everything before that, including the 2003 Presidential Eligibility Amendment, is gone." CW: Hatch has been in the Senate since 1976. But in Right Wing World, if some of your past votes & bill sponsorships don't comport with your new fake persona, you just erase them & establish a brand new Website identity.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

** New York Times: "Osama bin Laden has been killed, two United States officials said. President Obama was expected to make an announcement on Sunday night, almost ten years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One of the officials said that American forces, acting on intelligence, launched a 'targeted assault' that killed Mr. Bin Laden, whose ability to elude capture for so long deeply frustrated the Bush administration." Story has been updated. Here's the AP story....

     ... Update: Here's the Al Jazeera story, with video report. Al Jazeera also has a liveblog of developments related to Osama's killing.

AP: "Pope Benedict XVI beatified Pope John Paul II before more than a million faithful in St. Peter's Square and surrounding streets Sunday, moving the beloved former pontiff one step closer to possible sainthood."

AP: "Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting Saturday was dominated by somber topics as CEO Warren Buffett explained to about 40,000 shareholders how the company had been battered by a trusted former employee’s misdeeds and a string of natural disasters. Buffett assured the crowd at an Omaha convention center that Berkshire is strong enough to withstand both the David Sokol scandal and the estimated $1.7 billion in insurance losses that drove profits down 58 percent in the first quarter." Here's the New York Times story. AND here's the Times' liveblog of the meeting.

The Commentariat -- April 30

I've posted an Open Thread for Saturday on Off Times Square.

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... AP Related: "President Barack Obama declared Saturday that oil companies are profiting from rising gasoline prices and urged Congress once again to end $4 billion a year in oil and gas company tax breaks." ...

... John Broder of the New York Times: "Both parties are planning legislative maneuvers this week to try to caricature their opponents as either in the pockets of the oil companies or hostile to domestic energy production."

Charles Blow: "... the right, with a new boost of energy from [Donald] Trump, is reaching for new frontiers. The language and methodology are different, but the goal is the same: to deny, invalidate and subjugate, to distract from real issues with false divisions. Trump is helping the right shape new weapons from old hatreds, forming shivs from shackles, all the while patting himself on the back and promoting his brand. But his point of pride is the right’s mark of shame." ...

     ... Update: the moderators nixed my comment on Blow -- which I thought was a pretty good one -- but you can read it on Off Times Square. Update of the Update: my comment on Blow is at #56.

Gail Collins remarks on state legislatures that can't take care of important matters -- like accepting federal grants for unemployment insurance aid -- but they're doing a great job at selecting state guns & vegetables.

Joe Nocera remarks that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting will not be all fun and games this year in the wake of the scandal and resulting resignation of his one-time heir-apparent David Sokol. ...

... Here's a related Los Angeles Times story by Walter Hamilton.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner is tonight. Dana Milbank doesn't think much of it: "The correspondents’ association dinner was a minor annoyance for years, when it was a 'nerd prom' for journalists and a few minor celebrities. But, as with so much else in this town, the event has spun out of control. Now, awash in lobbyist and corporate money, it is another display of Washington’s excesses."

Brad Johnson of Think Progress: "Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s top climate scientists, who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather, said he believes that it is 'irresponsible not to mention climate change' in the context of these extreme tornadoes."

This story has been around for a couple of days, & I've been ignoring it, but now that it's made the front page of the New York Times, here it is: "A group including former White House officials, union leaders and one of Hollywood’s biggest producers have joined forces to start an outside effort to help President Obama and Congressional Democrats in 2012 by using the very sort of anonymous, unlimited donations from moneyed interests that the president has so deplored. Co-founded by the former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton and with seed money from the Service Employees International Union and the film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, the group’s entrée into the early 2012 contest all but ensures that the presidential race will be awash in cash from undisclosed corporate and labor sources with huge stakes in Washington policy making."

You know, it doesn’t really matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass. -- Donald Trump, to an Esquire writer in 1991

** Donald Trump Is a Wink-Wink Racist, but He's a Forthright Sexist. Anna Holmes in a Washington Post op-ed, cites numerous instances of Trump's crassly sexist remarks & actions. His sexist remarks "spotlight Trump’s particular brand of boorishness.... Women should be sexy, but not sexual..., a willingness to relinquish autonomy over one’s fertility is both an asset and a job requirement; and female worth is quantified not by character or accomplishment but by hip-to-waist ratio. These ideas about women have explicitly political implications as well, echoing the ideology at the core of the antiabortion movement’s recently heightened assault on women’s reproductive rights... The message is clear: Women can’t be trusted to define, or control, their own bodies, so it’s up to men to do it for them." Trump recent joined the anit-choice bandwagon, even as he demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of Roe v. Wade.

Jon Cohn of The New Republic had a great series this week on what is wrong with the Republican House/Ryan bill. I linked the first one on food stamps earlier this week, but dropped the ball on the posts that followed:

     (2) "Raising the age at which Americans become eligible for Medicare, or whatever program Republicans put in its place, would make health insurance more expensive for businesses, workers, and their employees, all while leaving one-fifth of future 65- and 66-year-olds with too little insurance or none at all." ...

     (3) "Eliminating key provisions of Dodd-Frank.... Take it away, as the Republican budget would, and costly bailouts become more likely, not less. In that sense, I guess, this really is about government spending after all." ...

     (4) "According to Adam Hersh and Sarah Ayres of the Center for American Progress, the end result of the Republican budget would be a 53 percent reduction in per capita spending on education and training, a 28 percent reduction in scientifically oriented research and development, and a 37 percent reduction in transportation infrastructure." ...

     (5) It doesn't reduce the deficit. Krugman references this "feature" in his Flim-Flam Man post, linked below under Right Wing World, & I've linked Cohn's post there, too.

Right Wing World *

Paul Ryan, Flim-Flam Man. Paul Krugman: "Jon Cohn points out that the real question about the Ryan plan isn’t whether it reduces the deficit in the right way; it’s whether it reduces the deficit at all.... The truth is that this is almost surely a deficit-increasing plan, not a deficit-reducing plan. Meanwhile, Jon Chait looks at Ryan being interviewed about his plan and sees “a stream of misleading and outright false claims”.... I don’t know when if ever the Beltway crowd will admit it, but they were, indeed, flim flammed; the man they decided was an upright, honest deficit hawk is in fact an evasive, dissembling guy who wants to use the deficit, not end it." ...

... Here are the articles by Cohn and Chait:

     ... Jonathan Cohn: "... the tax cuts in the House Republican budget would very nearly offset the spending cuts, leaving a modest $155 billion in additional savings over ten years." ...

     ... Jonathan Chait: "Paul Ryan, in an interview with CBS News, offers up the latest incarnation of his budget spin. Ryan is a very smooth front man, and has skillfully employed carefully crafted language worked out by a team of pollsters, but -- being in the position of defending wildly unpopular priorities -- he is offering up a stream of misleading and outright false claims." Chait has the video, which I can't embed because it gets screwed up every time I make a change to the page. Chait goes on to debunk all of Ryan's central claims. ...

... Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes. Jordan Fabian of The Hill: "Contrary to some of the angry scenes at certain of his town-hall meetings, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Friday that the crowds are 'overwhelmingly supportive' of his budget plan. Ryan claims that his constituents know him well and appreciate that he is trying to reduce the nation's debt and deficits with his 2012 budget plan, which is strongly opposed by Democrats."

You have to ask, 'Why are you taking care of Alabama and other states?' I know our [aid request] letter didn't get lost in the mail. -- Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas)

Jed Lewison of the Daily Kos: "So hundreds die in storms throughout the South and Rick Perry's response is to question why those states are getting federal aid instead of Texas? Funny how he doesn't mention that Texas has already gotten at least $39 million in firefighting aid from FEMA over the past two fire seasons and has already received 22 grants in this fire season alone." Odd talk, coming from "Mr. Secession himself."

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

President Obama spoke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this evening. New York Times: "Many of President Obama’s friends and foes alike got shellacked — as expected — on Saturday night when Mr. Obama took to the stage at the gussied-up White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton. But none so much as Mr. Trump, reality television star, birther and Republican presidential aspirant. As a hair-gelled, grimly unsmiling Mr. Trump sat at a nearby table — a guest of the Washington Post — Mr. Obama ripped one punch after another at the real estate tycoon." Video under May 1 Commentariat.

Al Jazeera: "Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, the youngest son of the Libyan leader, and three of his grandchildren have been killed in a NATO air strike, a Libyan government spokesman said. Gaddafi and his wife were in the Tripoli house of his 29-year-old son, Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, when it was hit by at least one missile fired by a NATO warplane late on Saturday, according to Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim." New York Times story here.

Washington Post: "Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) announced Friday that he plans to sign legislation that would prevent Planned Parenthood in the state from receiving Medicaid funds. When he does, Indiana will be the first state to take that step." CW: this is an excellent way to raise the number of unwanted pregnancies in that population of parents who are least able economically & socially to rear a child. Fucking brilliant, Mitch! You just added unfortunate, unwanted children to your welfare rolls. (I try not to comment on news stories, but sometimes I just can't help it.)

New York Times: "Soldiers fired on protesters carrying olive branches and seeking to break the military’s siege of a rebellious town in Syria on Friday, killing at least 16 people, as thousands took to the streets in what organizers proclaimed a “Friday of Rage” against the government’s crackdown on a six-week uprising, witnesses and activists said." ...

... Reuters: "The United States slapped sanctions on Syria's intelligence agency and two relatives of President Bashar al-Assad on Friday in Washington's first concrete steps in response to a bloody crackdown on protests. Assad, Syria's long-serving ruler, was not among those targeted under an order signed by President Barack Obama but could be named soon if violence by government forces against democracy protesters continued, a senior U.S. official said."