The Commentariat -- November 15

Candorville by Darrin Bell at Candorville.com. Via my old friend John L. Click on cartoon to see larger image.** "The Establishment President." David Bromwich in the London Review of Books assesses Barack Obama's presidency: "Obama acted on the assumption that the establishment is one and irreplaceable, and must be served in roughly its present form."

Paul Krugman: the odds are not good that the President will find it within himself to take a stand against the GOP, China & other bad actors in the international community.

Jackie Calmes & David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: President Obama returns from Japan to the kabuki theater of the lame duck session. Oh, how will it all end? Not with a bang but a quack.

Ha! Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is stepping down from the conservative organization she founded last year. Ms. Thomas plans to resign as CEO of Liberty Central, a group designed to be a clearinghouse for conservative activists and the Tea Party movement...." CW: judicial ethics are so annoying.

Kilroy Was Here. Sam Stein: "A coalition of progressive lawmakers, labor unions, and soon-to-be-former members of Congress [like Mary Jo Kilroy {D-Ohio}] are demanding that the Democratic Party hold an up or down vote on a tax cut package that extends rates for the middle class while letting those for the wealthy expire.... Even as the White House is signaling its willingness to cut a deal extending the top brackets for an additional few years, progressive lawmakers and the AFL-CIO have begun imploring the party to partake in a veritable game of chicken. Make Republicans vote against a package that included just tax cuts for the middle class as the deadline for all rates to be reverted closes in."

New York Times: "The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a longtime defender of the Congressional authority over federal spending, said on Monday that he would support a proposed ban on earmarks, the lawmaker-directed spending items, in the next Congress." ...

... Jay Newton-Small of Time comments on Mitch McConnell's reversal & capitulation on earmarks. CW I've commented on Newton-Small's post.

Dana Milbank: Eric Cantor walks back his treasonous remarks without walking back his treasonous remarks. You people just got it wrong! (See Milbank's update down the page.)

He Was against It before He Was (Secretly) for It: Lee Fang of Think Progress: though Sen. John Ensign vehemently opposed the Affordable Healthcare Act & has refashioned himself as a teabagger, he wasn't above soliciting (& receiving) a near-$1 million grant under the act for the University of Nevada School of Medicine. CW: wonder if he sent a thank-you note. Plus, how come Fang had to go to the trouble to obtain documentation though an FOIA request? Letters from Senators concerning the expenditure of federal funds should all be on-the-record.

Noam Levey in the Los Angeles Times: "With their eyes on the 2012 election, Republicans are preparing to maximize conflict with Democrats over healthcare in the new Congress and minimize potential compromises, according to GOP strategists, lawmakers and lobbyists.... Republican leaders and strategists think a renewed battle over healthcare will help the party expand its electoral gains and drive President Obama from the White House."

Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker: "House Republicans and their Tea Party allies reject even the idea of concern. Not content merely to ignore the science, they have decided to go after the scientists."

Roxana Tiron of The Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) may not be able to secure enough votes to pass the [defense authorization] bill because of language repealing the ban on gays in the military.... But abandoning the effort to repeal the 'Don’t ask, don’t tell' policy would be a political disaster for President Obama...." ...

... Here's an update from Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog. ...

... The Human Rights Campaign urges you to call your Senators & ask them to repeal DADT NOW.

... NEW. Three Amigos Disagree on DADT. Joe Lieberman "strongly" favors repeal.

Secretaries Hillary Clinton & Robert Gates in a Washington Post op-ed: "Before this session of Congress ends, we urge senators to approve an arms control treaty that would again allow U.S. inspectors access to Russian strategic sites and reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by both nations to a level not seen since the 1950s."

The Wall Street Journal identifies the year's ten highest-paid CEOs. The top-paid CEO, Gregory Maffei of Liberty Media Corp. pulled down $87.1 million. CW: Liberty Media owns QVC, Expedia, Starz,  the Discovery Channel & a bunch of other stuff, including large chunks of enterprises like Time Warner Cable & Sirius XM Radio. Remember, Republicans think these CEOs should get a tax break.

James Surowiecki of The New Yorker on "greedy geezers": in the midterm elections, seniors, especially older seniors, voted heavily Republican. mostly apparently because of their opposition to health reform. "There’s a colossal irony here: the very people who currently enjoy the benefits of a subsidized, government-run insurance system are intent on keeping others from getting the same treatment.... In hard times voters get more selfish."

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones debunks the "uncertainty meme" -- the notion popular among pundits that the reason businesses aren't growing is that they don't know what the future holds. BTW, the "PPACA" that Drum refers to is the Affordable Care Act a/k/a the healthcare reform act. ...

... Steve Benen remarks that "uncertainty" is a Republican cover invented because "they can't blame the economy on tax increases, since taxes have gone down not up, and they can't blame the recession on Bush since they still support his economic policies..., so 'uncertainty' becomes a convenient catch-all. But it's still ridiculous. Businesses have been reluctant to hire because they need more customers. It's really not a mystery."

American "Justice" -- Just Another Wall Street Scam. Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "Large banks, hedge funds and private investors hungry for new and lucrative opportunities are bankrolling other people’s lawsuits, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into medical malpractice claims, divorce battles and class actions against corporations — all in the hope of sharing in the potential winnings." ...

... The New York Times provides a timeline that describes "the legal path to lawsuit lending," which indeed used to be illegal.

Steven Mufson of the Washington Post profiles my hero, Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: "After two years of investigations and political recriminations, [Rep. Charlie] Rangel [D-NY] is scheduled to appear before a hearing of the House Ethics Committee on Monday to formally rebut charges that his fund-raising and personal finances violated Congressional rules." ...

... Ashley Parker of the New York Times profiles R. Blake Chisam, the staff lawyer who will present the cases against Rangel & Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cal.).

After learning that George W. Bush plagiarized chunks of Decision Points, Andy Borowitz asked his readers to "come up with the best plagiarized first line[s] for the book." Here are a couple:

They were betterer times, they were worserer times.

My momma always said life was like a jar of fetus.

[Bill] Clinton and I are buddies. -- George W. Bush. Clip & extended transcript are here. If you really want to, you can watch more of Candy Crowley's interview of George W. & Jeb Bush here.

Zaid Jilani of Think Progress: despicable hit man James O'Keefe smears an exemplary teacher this time; Republican Gov. Chris Christie, untroubled by a complete distortion, piles on.

It's Always Something. Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times: "Reports have trickled in about reusable [grocery] bags, mostly made in China, that contained potentially unsafe levels of lead.

Constant Weader -- I get a lot of supportive letters from readers, and some hilarious pans, too, but this post in the Democratic Underground is really something:

Marie Burns has built a cult following and a blog based on her trenchant comments on New York Times op-ed pieces. Today she adds another dimension to Paul Krugman's piece, "The World As He Finds It."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/opinion/15krugman.htm...

Marie's take:

-edit-

"... we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems."

This of course the pose that made Obama famous in his 2004 convention speech: "... there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America...." I'm not much of an historian, so I'm not sure any other single speech has ever created a President, but it could be argued that this one did. Even though I live in Republicanland, the day after the 2004 election, when I was totally down in the dumps, a car passed me by sporting a bumper sticker that read "Obama 2008." Cheered me right up.

We all want to believe the sentiments of the 2004 speech. But adults with clear views of the political landscape know better. I expect Obama, who has borne the brunt of the untruthiness of his inspiring fantasy, knows better, too. But. But. It is the pose that made him, and he seems incapable of escaping it. In fact, even a casual observer can now see Obama has no interest in trying to escape the illusion of kumbaya America.

However, we err in believing Obama "just doesn't get it"; that his waffling and repeated capitulations to Republicans, to China, to whatever counterforce he meets -- are the result of his naivete or inexperience or lack of a skill set. I think Obama knows just what he is doing. He believes in the correctness of the elite establishment. He is a David Brooks dream President. "The world as he finds it" is messy, and this is a guy who picks up his socks. He prefers the neat platitudes of the ruling class he has been invited to join. He admires those "smart businessmen" on Wall Street who financed his campaign. He likes to chat with "respectable" establishment newsmen like John Harwood & Steve Kroft (how many interviews has Obama given "60 Minutes"?). He enjoys the company of long-time lobbyists like Tom Daschle. The President of the United States likes smooth operators. It is his intention to be one of them.

The smooth operators are not inclined to cede any of their power to the riffraff that is the rest of us. They have, once again, a friend in the White House, and they're happy with that. If Mitch McConnell & John Boehner are not exactly la creme de la creme, they too do the bidding for the elite. They do it for the cash, if not for the cachet.

The President returned to Washington from Japan yesterday, and today his ostensible friends & foes in the Congress will be back to bicker. Obama may have missed the kabuki theater in Japan, but he'll be right at home in Washington where he will star once again in a very familiar kabuki dance. We in the hinterlands are the captive audience of this stylized drama, a form of theater that holds few surprises and inevitably ends tragically for us. (All emphases D/U.)

For a better comment on Krugman's column, check out Karen Garcia's (#10) masterpiece. And recommend it!

We, the People -- Are Screwed

Art by Crockett Johnson.Frank Rich: "It’s the very top earners, not your garden variety, entrepreneurial multimillionaires, who will be by far the biggest beneficiaries if there’s an extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for income over $200,000 a year (for individuals) and $250,000 (for couples). The resurgent G.O.P. has vowed to fight to the end to award this bonanza, but that may hardly be necessary given the timid opposition of President Obama and the lame-duck Democratic Congress."

The New York Times moderators again found my comment too -- something. So here it was:

The President has been hinting for weeks that he will roll on tax cuts for the wealthy. His faint, equivocal denials are merely a redeployment of the tactic he used during the healthcare debate on provisions like the public option. Every remark he has made is a signal to Republicans that he'll go along with them. Political observers should stop pretending that the President really opposes tax cuts for the super-rich, & he would let them expire if it weren't for those darned Republicans. Everybody in Washington knows what s/he's doing, and everybody will play his or her role in seeing that the oligarchy remains intact and continues to prosper at the expense of the rest of us.

What will happen is this: Democrats will get almost enough Congressional votes to let tax cuts for the rich be decoupled from those for the rest of us. But, gosh, they'll just fall short. A few "villains" like Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson or a disgruntled Arlen Specter or a nothing-to-lose Blanche du Arquansau will hold out. The President will sigh audibly & repeat a slightly-more eloquent version of David Axelrod's "We have to deal with the world as we find it." Then he will quietly sign the bill extending tax cuts to all. Everyone in Washington will have played his part and most partisans from both sides will be none the wiser. That, Mr. Axelrod, is "the world as we find it." It's pretty disgusting. And so are you, for playing your role so well.

If that scenario sounds familiar to you, it's because you've witnessed it before: on the public option drama, on the plan to allow those 55 and older to buy into Medicare, on curbs to derivatives trading. The Congress proposes, the Congress disposes. Somehow they just can't quite pass legislation that helps us commoners.

There is a way out of the tax cuts impasse. It won't succeed, but it's a darned good backup plan. It's the suggestion of Sen. Mark Warner, a brilliant businessman & politician himself. Warner suggests a Republican-friendly compromise that has eluded All the President's Men: scrap the tax cuts for the rich & put the cuts, at least temporarily, into growth businesses that will create jobs for middle-class Americans. Let's see how far Warner's reasonable compromise goes. Enjoy the idea while you can. You may never hear of it again.

Who will stand up to the rich? Nobody in Washington. It's pitchfork time. You will find me among the angry mob.