The Commentariat -- November 28

Illustration by David G. Klein for the New York Times.It's All Relative. In a New York Times essay, economics Prof. Robert Frank explains why the rich & near-rich won't suffer if their taxes go up. We know why the rich won't suffer -- they've got way more money than they'll ever spend. But the merely well-to-do won't hurt much either, even if they have to cut back a bit, because "recent psychological research suggests that if all in that group spent less in unison, their perceptions of their standard of living would remain essentially unchanged."

** Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "In a detailed, candid and critical essay to be published this week in The New York Review of Books, [Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, ret.] wrote that personnel changes on the court, coupled with 'regrettable judicial activism,' had created a system of capital punishment that is shot through with racism, skewed toward conviction, infected with politics and tinged with hysteria.... He will be on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night."

Glenn Greenwald on the Portland, Oregon accused terrorist kid Mohamed Osman Mohamud: "... it may ... be the case that the FBI -- as they've done many times in the past -- found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a 'Terrorist plot' which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI's own concoction." CW: I've been waiting for someone to make this point, & Greenwald does a fine job. In the accounts I've read, the only thing Mohamud did was try to detonate the dud; federal agents, by their own account, seem to have done everything else.

White House photo.Elizabeth Drew in the New York Review of Books: President "Obama’s biggest failure was not to be the leader that so many expected him to be. The jubilation that surrounded his swearing-in may have gone to his head.... Obama was, apparently in his own estimation, so smart and so adored that he seems to have felt no need to explain — and explain again — to the country what he was doing and to take the country along with him."

"Still the Best Congress Money Can Buy." Frank Rich: "America needs ... a leader or two or three — to restore not just honor or sanity to its citizens but governance that’s not auctioned off to the highest bidder." ...

... Read Karen Garcia's comment on Rich's column -- a tiny masterpiece that, even though it was buried near the bottom of Page 2 (#45), is one of the most recommended comments. Add your recommendation. ...

... Kim Geiger & Matea Gold in the Los Angeles Times: "Anti-incumbent anger and 'tea party' conservatives may have set the tone for this year's midterm elections, but it was mostly experienced political operatives — not fervent newcomers — who managed the money.... An analysis of campaign finance records and data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics found that 15 firms raked in more than $400 million just from the candidates, party committees and outside groups that advertised in federal elections."

Ezra Klein: "... in our efforts to solve our deficit and economic problems, we must be careful not to make our retirement problem worse."

Banksters Beware. Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "... one question at the heart of the foreclosure mess refuses to go away: whether institutions trying to take back a property can prove they even have the right to foreclose at all.... The United States Trustee Program, the unit of the Justice Department charged with overseeing the integrity of the nation’s bankruptcy courts..., is stepping up its scrutiny of the veracity of banks’ claims against borrowers." ...

... Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr told members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council ... that federal investigators looking into problems with mortgage foreclosures throughout the country have found widespread and 'inexcusable' breakdowns in basic controls in the foreclosure process."

If Dick Lugar, having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption. I’m glad Lugar’s there [in the Senate] and I’m not. -- John Danforth, former Missouri Republican Senator ...

... Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times profiles Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar who is going it alone among his Republican colleagues in supporting the no-brainer New START treaty. ...

... Walter Pincus & Mary Beth Sheridan of the Washington Post: "While trying to satisfy a lawmaker's concerns, the Obama administration is working around Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in an attempt to gather the nine Republican votes needed to pass the ratification resolution for the strategic arms treaty with Russia this year."

Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "Much of America may have moved on, but Joe Miller has not. More than a week after the last vote was counted in Alaska's closely watched U.S. Senate race, the Republican nominee continues to press his case in court in hopes of grabbing back a victory that once seemed inevitable."

Ron Moreau of Newsweek: the Taliban are tuckered out.

Donald McNeil in the New York Times: "Last week, a clinical trial showed that taking Truvada, a pill combining two drugs, once a day would greatly reduce a gay man’s chances of getting infected with [AIDS].... Although confirmatory studies are still needed, the practice — called 'pre-exposure prophylaxis' or 'prep' — will, in theory, also protect ... anyone else at risk.... Truvada has been sold since 2004." McNeil explains why it has taken so long for it to be tested as a "prep."

The (Toronto) Star: "... Former British prime minister Tony Blair and author, skeptic and professional oppositionist Christopher Hitchens debated the question: is religion a force for good in the world? Blair, who wrote in his recent memoir that he has always been more interested in religion than politics, took the view that it is a force for good. Hitchens, who has advanced esophageal cancer and scheduled his chemotherapy around Friday’s debate, not surprisingly, argued otherwise." The Guardian story here. The New Statesman has the full transcript of the debate. Here's a short clip:

     ... To watch the whole debate, go to this Daily Hitchens YouTube page & call up Part 2/9. The debate begins about 4:55 min. into Part 2. (Part 1 is some other guys talking). The following segments do not load automatically, so you'll have to click on them. The debate goes on through Part 9. (Or, for $2.99, you can download the whole thing at the Munk Debates site.)

The Commentariat -- November 27

In a short post, Ken Layne of Wonkette assesses the decline & fall of the American era.

Dahlia Lithwick & Dave Weigel in Slate: when Russ Feingold leaves the Senate in a few weeks, who will stand up for civil liberties?

Kevin Sack & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "As the Obama administration presses ahead with the health care law, officials are bracing for the possibility that a federal judge in Virginia will soon reject its central provision as unconstitutional and, in the worst case for the White House, halt its enforcement until higher courts can rule. The judge, Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance...."

"Soft Dollars." Jenny Strasburg & Michael Rothfeld of the Wall Street Journal: "A sweeping insider-trading investigation is raising questions about how hedge funds and other big investors dole out a common, and controversial, currency that flows freely across Wall Street. The currency is known as soft dollars. Stock brokerages award soft dollars to investors much like an airline doles out frequent-flier miles, giving the most clout to the biggest traders. The clients then use the soft dollars in a variety of ways, but largely spend them on investment research."

A Second Exodus. John Leland of the New York Times: "Since the American invasion [of Iraq] in 2003, refugees have been a measure of the country’s precarious condition, flooding outward during periods of violence and trickling back as Iraq seemed to stabilize." A new exodus "shows how far the nation remains from being stable and secure."

"The 'Vanity Fair' of Al Qaeda." Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times: "An offshoot group in Yemen is producing Inspire magazine, an online propaganda periodical with color photos and interviews with celebrity jihadists. Experts say the target audience appears to be disaffected Muslims in the English-speaking world.... " ...

Tobin Harshaw of the New York Times has a nice roundup of opinions on the farcial Afghan Peace Talks with a Stranger. CW: can we leave now?

Peter Finn of the Washington Post: "On St. Patrick's Day 2009, the government stripped the Irish-born [John] Dullahan's security clearance and fired him from his job at the Defense Intelligence Agency in a manner that has no precedent at the Pentagon - invoking a national security clause that states that it would harm the interests of the United States to inform him of the accusations against him. As a result, Dullahan, a Vietnam veteran who served at military posts around the world and as a U.N. weapons inspector in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, cannot appeal to a board of senior agency officials, as others in his position might. He is, in effect, stranded."

With not much going on in poli-stats, Nate Silver takes a break to cover a really important electoral scandal: "the controversy over the performance of Bristol Palin and her partner, Mark Ballas — who survived until the final week of ["Dancing with the Stars"] in spite of frequently receiving among the lowest marks from the judges — has been too much about Tea Party politics and not enough about the show’s flawed scoring system, a system which Silver explains gives the audience much more say than the judges.

Stupid, or Sly as a Fox? Tim Molloy of The Wrap: Fox Nation, a subsidiary of "... Fox News, post[ed] a fake Onion story about President Obama alongside its real news stories. The satirical story, with the headline "The Onion: Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail," appeared in the Nation section of the site Friday.... The original Obama headline didn't mention The Onion, and the only clue for readers was a link to the satirical site after the first two paragraphs of the story.... The fake news of the president's novel-length missive remained on the site for several hours, even after Mediaite pointed it out -- and after Fox News updated its site with breaking news that the president needed 12 stitches for a basketball injury."

We Have Met the Enemy ... and It Is Us the "Elites"

Bob Herbert cites Mayor Michael Bloomberg's choice for New York City schools chancellor Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, a well-to-do corporate executive with "absolutely no background in education," as an example of the "vast disconnect between the fortunes of the American elite and those of the struggling masses."

My comment once again received the old heave-ho, so here it is:

Mayor Bloomberg's choice of Ms. Black was just his way of thumbing his billionaire's nose at the rest of us. I'm sure he tells himself that "living well is the best revenge," then sleeps like a baby.

Yet it is people like Bloomberg who are largely responsible for the popularity of pseudo-populist demagogues like Sarah Palin. It isn't just Bloomberg, of course. It's most of the political class. George W. Bush resented having come down from the heights of the White House to a Dallas morning walking the dog & picking up puppy-poop. And his aristocratic mom said Sarah Palin should stay in Alaska. Palin's retort? -- something about "the blue-bloods who want to pick and choose their winners instead of allowing competition."

In fact, the right's most effective argument against President Obama -- who although he shares ancestors with the Bushes, does not share their unbroken aristocratic line -- is that he is, by virtue of his education & his richy-rich friends, a member of the "East Coast elite establishment." His detractors have a point, even if they miss the mark. They accuse Obama of bowing to foreign dignitaries, but that's nothing. It's his metaphorical kowtowing to Wall Street that is the real problem. If the President had lived up to his campaign rhetoric instead of "palling around with tycoons," the House would still be under Democratic control come January. As California Rep. Lynn Woolsey said the other day, "... if he'd done less compromising in the last two years, there's a good chance we'd have had a jobs bill that would have created real jobs, and then we wouldn't even be worrying about having lost elections."

There are leaders like Woolsey & Speaker Pelosi who will work for the people instead of the plutocrats, but until the media give these true populists their due, instead of making fun of them, or pretending to "balance" their reporting with right-wing talking points, the loudest mouths on the right will continue to dominate the conversation. Can you name me one half-governor on the left who gets the same media attention Sarah Palin does? Can you name one Speaker of the House who gets the same positive attention John Boehner does? Not Nancy Pelosi, that's for sure. She was the first woman Speaker of the House, but she didn't get her picture on the cover of popular news magazines. John Boehner did. So did Newt Gingrich. The disgraced Newt still dominates the news. When Newt speaks, the media listen. And report. Why, even former Minority Leader Tom DeLay, recently convicted of money laundering, enjoyed many press kudos last year for his performances on "Dancing with the Stars," & I saw him on at least one MSNBC show where he was treated as a serious political commentator.

We are all complicit in the sad situation in which we find ourselves, but the Lords of Wall Street, our government leaders and many in the main stream media are primarily responsible. You're a breath of fresh air, Mr. Herbert, but much of what I read in the MSM leaves a fetid odor.