The Commentariat -- April 10

David Plouffe talks to ABC News' Christiane Amanpour about the "historic" & "draconian" budget cuts:

     ... Print story here.

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "... in agreeing Friday night to what he called the largest annual spending cut in the nation’s history, the president further decoupled himself from his party in Congress, exacerbating concerns among some Democrats about whether he is really one of them and is willing to spend political capital to defend their principles on bigger battles ahead." ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times asks historians & other political observers what President Obama is all about. Not surprisingly, Baker doesn't really get a definitive answer. ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post looks at the practical considerations surrounding the Unknowable Mister Obama: "Nervous Democrats fear that Obama gave away too much in the last-minute agreement that averted a government shutdown. They worry even more about the coming fights over raising the debt ceiling and particularly Obama’s response to the budgetary blueprint outlined last week by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.)." ...

... ** For an excellent essay on "how the left learned to be helpless," novelist Kevin Baker's year-old analysis -- which appeared in Harper's -- is still right on target. Thanks to reader Patricia H. for suggesting it. (You may want to zoom in; the print is pretty teensy.) ...

... Paul Kane, et al., of the Washington Post on how Obama, Boehner & Reid negotiated the budget deal: "In the end, Boehner got the huge budget cut conservatives wanted. Obama got to take credit for bringing the sides together. And Reid got a chance — in a dispute over funding for women’s health groups — to rally a beleaguered Democratic base. Outside the White House and Capitol, their long staredown had a serious cost. For days, a city had been creakily, and expensively, preparing to shut itself down. And a country had watched in amazement: Was the U.S. government really fighting over whether to reauthorize itself?" ...

... No Democracy for D.C. If you are a resident of Washington, D.C., a district that is 90-some percent Democratic, your lords and masters are white Republican right-wingers from places far and wide. That's not what this post by the Washington Post's Ben Pershing says, but that's what it means.

Karen Garcia notes that the real sticking point for the GOP in the budget battle was about sex -- not about abortion, as they claim -- but about sex between responsible men and women who want to stay healthy.

Steve Benen on the efficacy of the Republican hostage strategy, and BTW, how the media help them.

James Horney of the nonpartisan Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: "Chairman Ryan’s widely reported claim that his plan produces $1.6 trillion in deficit reduction proves illusory. In fact, the numbers in his plan show that his budget produces just $155 billion in real deficit reduction over ten years (see graph). That means that, despite proposing $4.3 trillion in what would be the most severe and wrenching budget cuts in U.S. history — two-thirds of which would come from programs for people of low or moderate incomes — the plan barely reduces deficits at all over the next decade. That’s because his budget cuts are offset by $4.2 trillion in tax cuts that would go disproportionately to those at the top. In essence, at least for the next decade, this plan is far less a blueprint for addressing deficits and far more a proposal to redistribute large amounts of resources from those at the bottom to those at the top." ...

... Jim Fallows of The Atlantic ticks off a handy list of why Paul Ryan's budget plan is neither "brave" nor "serious," the punditocracy's characterizations notwithstanding.

There’s nothing serious about this plan. And the way our pundit class swooned over this fantasy document suggests that all those people lecturing the American people about our unwillingness to face up to reality and make hard choices should spend some time looking in the mirror. -- Paul Krugman, on Paul Ryan's budget proposal & media reaction

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." ...

The Wunderkind Wizard of Washington

Paul Krugman tears Paul Ryan's "ludicrous and cruel" plan to little bitty shreds.

Once again, my comment was iced, so here it is:

Karen Garcia aptly labeled Paul Ryan and his plan Cheez Whiz, but I have another Whiz in mind -- the Wizard of Oz. Ryan has somehow managed to wrap into his persona the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion & the Tin Man.

The Scarecrow may be a stretch, for you have to assume that Ryan doesn't have a brain. If you take him at his word -- that he really believes he has devised a great plan that will be good for the country -- then he is the Scarecrow. As Krugman and other analysts have illustrated these past few days, Ryan's numbers, especially those based on Heritage Foundation projections, are unbelievable. Ryan isn't above contradicting himself, either -- accepting some CBO numbers while rejecting others. So if you believe Paul Ryan is an honorable man, you have to assume he doesn't have a brain -- like Frank Baum's Scarecrow.

The Cowardly Lion is an easy one. Even in this newspaper, columnists have been calling Ryan "courageous" and "brave." If Ryan were courageous, he would have told the truth when he rolled out his plan. Instead, he concentrated only on the spending cuts in his roll-out video with its charts and graphs. Had he even mentioned the big ole tax cut part -- which the cowardly Mr. Ryan did not -- he would have completely undermined his argument that these humungous cuts in essential services were necessitated by the deficit. You just can't say in the same breath you are going to cut programs for the neediest Americans and cut taxes (to below the middle-class tax rate) for the richest Americans without somebody catching on. Ryan roars, all right, but he is a Cowardly Lion. He doesn't dare tell the truth about his own program.

And the Tin Man? The Tin Man -- just like Paul Ryan -- lacked a heart. I don't know what has made Mr. Ryan so craven, but perhaps he thinks of each of us as just a number. (Probably shouldn't be the Social Security number -- deep in his heart, Ryan wants to gut Social Security, too, but he's saving that part of his plan for another day.) If Ryan thought of us as living, breathing people rather than as abstract numbers, he would have to think of the people under age 55 whose retirements he plans to decimate. He would have to think of the disabled people he will leave to fend for themselves. He would have to think of the poor, sick people who would not be able to get medical help until it was perhaps too late. He'd have to think of the deserving students who couldn't get low-interest financial aid for college. If Ryan had a heart, he couldn't sleep at night. He couldn't look at himself in the mirror. So I can only conclude he isn't sleeping, doesn't have a mirror -- or, more than likely, he doesn't have a heart. He's the Tin Man.

In Baum's story, it turns out the Scarecrow really had a brain, the Cowardly Lion really had courage all along & the Tin Man did indeed have a heart. But real life isn't as neat as fiction. In real life, we got Paul Ryan, a man devoid of those characteristics that define us as honorable women and men.

Wunderkind? I'm not sure Ryan even qualifies as humankind.