The Commentariat -- December 29

** In all of Mexico, there is only one gun store. -- William Booth of the Washington Post

War and good health are incompatible. -- President Jimmy Carter ...

... Maggie Fick of the AP: former President Jimmy Carter has nearly won his 30-year battle against the guinea worm, having reduced the annual number of cases from an estimated 50 million to a reported 3,190, but the worm persists in the unstable nation of Sudan where "semi-nomadic pastoralists who have little education and low sanitation standards." You can read more about it at this Carter Center site.

Harry Reid. Contour photo. Mark Warren of Esquire profiles Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Mikhail Gorbachev, in a New York Times op-ed, urges the Senate to ratify the nuclear test ban treaty, which must be ratified by all "nuclear technology holder states."

Sean Gregory of Time: unlike New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who has been sharply criticized for his handling of blizzard cleanup) & New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (who was AWOL in Disney World), Cory Booker, "... the tweeting mayor of Newark, N.J., is now a social-media superhero, able to move towering snowbanks in a single push — or by sending the shovels and plows your way."

David Hilzenrath of the Washington Post: "More banks failed in the United States this year than in any year since 1992, during the savings-and-loan crisis, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Amid high unemployment, a struggling economy, and a still devastated real estate market, the nation is closing out the year with 157 bank failures, up from 140 in 2009. As recently as 2006, before the bubble burst, there were none. Now, there are more on the horizon." ...

... ** Christine Harper of Bloomberg: "Wall Street’s biggest banks, whose missteps caused a global financial crisis and economic slowdown two years ago, were more agile when it came to countering the political and regulatory response.... Lawmakers spurned changes that would wall off deposit-taking banks from riskier trading. They declined to limit the size of lenders or ban any form of derivatives. Higher capital and liquidity requirements agreed to by regulators worldwide have been delayed for years." ...

... David Leonhardt of the New York Times on 2010: the year the economy fizzled. Leonhardt has a follow-up post here.

David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: Team North Dakota breaks up. Sens. Byron L. Dorgan & Kent Conrad & Rep. Earl Pomeroy are "best friends and Democrats who spent the last 18 years serving as North Dakota’s entire Congressional delegation," but Dorgan his retiring & Pomeroy lost his re-election bid. CW: and we are left with Conrad. Eeww.

Jay Millman of The Hill lists the key provisions of the Affordable Health Law that will go into effect January 1.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "... the memory of the attempted bombing last Christmas Day hangs over the presidential Hawaiian escape. Mr. Obama and his advisers, still smarting over the criticism they received for the seemingly flat-footed response, have gone into overdrive to prepare for what counterterrorism experts say is a heightened threat this holiday season."

Shai Oster, et al. of the Wall Street Journal: "Foreign companies have been teaming up with Chinese ones for years to gain access to the giant Chinese market. Now some of the world's biggest companies are taking a risky but potentially rewarding second step—folding pieces of their world-wide operations into partnerships with Chinese companies to do business around the globe

A Distinction without a Difference: Earmarks v. "Lettermarks." Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "Though [new Sen. Mark] Kirk and other Republicans thundered against pork-barrel spending and lawmakers’ practice of designating money for special projects through earmarks, they have not shied from using a less-well-known process called lettermarking to try to direct money to projects in their home districts. Mr. Kirk, for example, sent a letter to the Department of Education dated Sept. 10, 2009, asking it to release money 'needed to support students and educational programs' in a local school district."

Trevor Curwin, writing for NBC: "With energy prices increases likely as economic growth picks up, the next-generation of nuclear energy could prove to be a cleaner, cheaper solution to keeping power prices down. Several firms are working on new reactor technologies that replace the classic uranium fuel rods with less expensive and less polluting ones, composed of thorium. 'There are no technical hurdles,’ says John Kutsch, executive director of the Thorium Energy Alliance, an industry trade group, pointing out the process itself is already technologically proven." Thanks to reader Doug R. for bringing this to my attention.

Army History, Revised. Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "The Army's official history of the battle of Wanat - one of the most intensely scrutinized engagements of the Afghan war - largely absolves top commanders of the deaths of nine U.S. soldiers.... An initial draft of the Wanat history ... placed the preponderance of blame for the losses on the higher-level battalion and brigade commanders who oversaw the mission.... The final history, released in recent weeks, drops many of the earlier conclusions and instead focuses on failures of lower-level commanders." ...

... CW: here's what happens when a state lets incompetent right-wing ideologues write their history & social studies books. Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post: historians have found "dozens of errors ... since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War. 'Our Virginia: Past and Present,' the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, 'Our America: To 1865.' A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation's most stringent."

Linda Milazzo in AlterNet: "Enough, CNN! Enough! Stop trivializing and dramatizing critical issues and pitting one hack against another.... Report the news. Report the truth and stop whoring your twisted wares in the name of journalism. This isn’t journalism..., CNN, MSNBC, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS and talk radio. This wretched corporate media cheered us into Iraq. It’s made downtown Manhattan the flash point for xenophobia and racism over the building of a community center intended to unify neighbors. It’s given a platform to birthers. It’s undermined global warming. It’s created the monster Sarah Palin and it craves creating more. It’s desecrating the living and it’s desecrating the dying."

AP: "Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of Delaware Republican Christine O'Donnell to determine if the former Senate candidate broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses...." ...

... Crackpot News

Jillian Rayfield of TPM: "The good news is that the right-wing isn't talking about President Obama being a secret Muslim right now. The bad news is that they're now concerned that he's going to use his honorary status as a Crow Tribe Indian to return the United States to Native Americans.... Last week, the 'Director of Issues Analysis' for the Christian conservative American Family Association, Brian Fischer, wrote a blog post claiming that 'President Obama wants to give the entire land mass of the United States of America back to the Indians. He wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords.'"

Because They Might Get Cooties. Brian Fitzpatrick of the right-wing World Net Daily: "Two of the nation's premier moral issues organizations, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are refusing to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in February because a homosexual activist group, GOProud, has been invited.... FRC and CWA join the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage in withdrawing from CPAC. In November, APP organized a boycott of CPAC over the participation of GOProud."

Leave it to Tucker Carlson to make you feel sorry for Michael Vick:

Local Politics

Karen Hawkins of the AP: "Congressman Danny Davis has a message for former President Bill Clinton: Don't take sides in the Chicago mayor's race - or else. Davis, a longtime friend of Clinton, warned the ex-president on Tuesday that he could jeopardize his 'long and fruitful relationship' with the black community if he campaigns for former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel instead of one of the two leading black candidates running - Davis or former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun."

Public Policy Polling: "It's a well known fact that Sarah Palin is the most unpopular major political figure in the country...one thing that may be less well known is that one of the states where voters have the dimmest view of her is her own home state of Alaska."

The Commentariat -- December 28

Greg Bluestein of the AP: "... so-called cluster killings of more than one officer helped make 2010 a particularly deadly year for law enforcement. Deaths in the line of duty jumped 37 percent to about 160 from 117 the year before." CW: brought to you by the NRA.

Juan Cole in Common Dreams: "Top Ten Myths about Afghanistan, 2010." Thanks to Kate M. for the link.

Mark Thompson of Time has a brief, thoroughly interesting post that begins, "So, you think we're going to start withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan this summer?"

** Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo: Congressional Republicans have "found is an obscure authority provided by a 1996 law called the Congressional Review Act. It provides Congress with an expedited process by which to evaluate executive branch regulations, and then give the President a chance to agree or disagree. House Republicans ... will be able to pass as many of these 'resolutions of disapproval' as they want.... A small minority in the Senate can force votes on them as well, and they require only simple-majority support to pass."

We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down. -- Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, after the NFL postponed Sunday night's Eagles-Vikings game because of snow

Nate Silver is one of those rare birds who makes statistics entertaining: "The political futures market Intrade puts Mr. Obama’s re-election chances at about 58 percent, which seems about as reasonable an assessment as any. Until we get a better sense for how the dynamics between Mr. Obama and the Republicans will play out — or in which direction the economy is headed — I would be skeptical of analyses that seem to express a significant amount of confidence on either side of that figure."

Peter Thal Larsen of the New York Times: "Global regulators are expected to reach an agreement that would make a select group of megabanks hold higher levels of capital. That requirement will make them safer, while removing some of the benefit they get from being big. But eliminating the taxpayer guarantee enjoyed by large lenders will require more fundamental measures, which will take years to achieve." CW: so perhaps where Dodd-Frank falls short, the international community will take up the slack. ...

... Amy Lee of the Huffington Post: "Nearly 100 banks previously rescued by the federal government are again poised to fail, despite billions of dollars of support from the American Treasury.... The banks in question have received $4.2 billion dollars in aid through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Most of the troubled institutions are relatively small." ...

... Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration has begun monitoring the high-level board meetings of nearly 20 banks that received emergency taxpayer assistance but repeatedly failed to pay the required dividends.... And it may soon install new directors on some of their boards. The moves come as the number of banks that failed to make at least one dividend payment to the government rose to 132 in the last quarter. These 'deadbeats,' as they are sometimes called, are virtually all community lenders and collectively received billions of dollars in taxpayer assistance."

Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "An early feature of the new health-care law that allows people who are already sick to get insurance to cover their medical costs isn't attracting as many customers as expected. In the meantime, in at least a few states, claims for medical care covered by the 'high-risk pools' are proving very costly, and it is an open question whether the $5 billion allotted by Congress to start up the plans will be sufficient." ...

... Huffington Post: "As the Great Recession has sown unemployment and downgraded work even for those people who have held on to their jobs, the number of Americans lacking healthcare has swelled beyond 50 million, according to a sobering new report from the Kaiser Foundation. Among the report's most troubling findings: The number of Americans without any health care coverage grew by more than four million in 2009. That left almost one-fifth of non-elderly people uninsured."

Frivolous News

Let Them Eat Cake. I can hardly believe I'm linking to a Fred Hiatt (Washington Post) column, but any time Fred comes out supporting Michelle Obama & knocking Sarah Palin, it's worth a link. ...

... Julien Pecquet of The Hill highlights (firewalled) Wall Street Journal criticism of Palin on the subject, & mentions Hiatt & other right-wing/Republican critics of Palin's pro-obesity position.

Okay, I guess this is important. Perry Bacon of the Washington Post reports that President Obama spoke to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie & in the course of the conversation, according to Lurie, "weighed in on the redemption of Michael Vick."

And I suppose this is news, too. Susan Page of USA Today on the results of a Gallup/USA Today popularity poll: "For the third year in a row, [President Obama] is by far the most-admired man. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton continues an even longer run, ranked in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll as the most-admired woman for the ninth straight year. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is second, as she was in 2009." The story includes the top ten results for both women & men.

The Commentariat -- December 27

** David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor & Kagan have shifted the debate during oral arguments to the left. ...

... Joan Biskupic of USA Today: Justice Sonia Sotomayor has become something of an advocate for prisoners, often protesting the Supreme Court's decisions not to hear prisoners' appeals. ...

     ... Update: Adam Liptak of the New York Times elaborates.

... Andrew Cohen, in The Atlantic, lists the year's top 10 must-reads in the law. I've linked to a number of them in the past; some I haven't read. With links. Cohen links to the text of David Souter's Harvard Commencement speech. Video of the speech is here.

** Jacob Weisberg of Slate: "... if [President] Obama has declared war on inequality, inequality seems to be winning." Weisberg lists the following major fails: (1) the tax-cut deal he made with Republicans; (2) outsized Wall Street & CEO compensation; (3) no increase in working-class wages; (4) more Americans without health insurance; (5) no improvement in education; (6) expansion of the estate tax deduction; 7 finally (7) there has been a real increase in income inequality. CW: Weisberg is wrong about one thing: he says, "income inequality never killed anybody." Yes, it does, according to statistical data gathered by Robert Wilkinson & Kate Pickett. ...

... Here's a pdf of Tim Noah's series on income inequality to which Weisberg refers. CW: I haven't read it yet, but I will. The abstract for Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker piece, which Weisberg also mentions, is here; the article is subscriber-only. ...

... Paul Krugman notes rising prices in the commodities market and attributes them to the fact that we're living in a finite world in which the U.S. is no longer the main player. ...

... James Surowiecki of the New Yorker states what should be -- but isn't -- the obvious: the rise in unemployment is the result of decreased demand. Surowiecki knocks down (as well as explains) the "structural" argument. He also says if we don't fix it, it will remain broke. ...

... The Editors of the New York Times again urge President Obama to stand up to Republicans, this time with regard to implementation of financial reform. "d expect Republicans to cut off financing for Dodd-Frank, adding that the law is a job killer. Could he be more wrong? Americans’ concern about financial reform is that it is too weak, not too strong. They are furious at the banks.... The Republicans’ intentions could not be clearer. What is unclear is the Democratic strategy — in Congress and the White House — for thwarting them."

Ashley Halsey of the Washington Post: "As the Obama administration works to harden domestic defenses against terrorism, some experts point to a potential vulnerability from thousands of flights that pass over the United States each week. Although the United States regulates overflights, the cargo aboard them is not screened to federal standards and passenger lists are not matched to names on the terrorist watch list maintained by the Transportation Security Administration."

Bill Carter & Brian Stelter of the New York Times compare Jon Stewart's advocacy for passage of the 9/11 responders bill with specific instances of reporting by Edward R. Murrow & Walter Cronkite.

Ben Smith & Byron Tau of Politico: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is living the high life at the expense of the poorest state in the nation. Many of his expenditures, especially his use of a Cessna jet to attend private & political functions, are highly questionable. CW: I don't think presidential hopeful Haley is going to enjoy seeing his sleazy shenanigans repeated laid out in the national media.

Oops, I missed this one: Karl Rove accidentally predicts President Obama will be re-elected in 2012. Via Ben Smith.

Your Goverment Screwing Crooks AND You. William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "An arm of the United States Marshals Service undervalued what could amount to untold millions of dollars in assets forfeited by white-collar criminals — including some from the family of Bernard L. Madoff — and sold them for far less than they were worth, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan." 

The Zombie Death Panel Brouhaha. Jay Solomon has a story in today's Wall Street Journal on the new Medicare guidelines that include end-of-life consultations, similar to the one by Robert Pear of the New York Times, to which we linked yesterday. Solomon includes a White House clarification/denial: "Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman, said it was incorrect to suggest the policy of reimbursing end-of-life discussions was new. 'The only thing new here is a regulation allowing the discussions … to happen in the context of the new annual wellness visit created by the Affordable Care Act.'"