The Commentariat -- October 5

Susan Crabtree of The Hill: John Boehner has warned some male members of the House to avoid the appearance of impropriety by not drinking with female lobbyists or meeting with women behind closed doors. "But female lobbyists are raising new concerns that access to male Republican lawmakers has been further hampered...."

The Party of No Ideas. Five minutes of Republicans claiming they're going to cut spending, then being unable to come up with a single program they would cut. Thanks to Think Progress:

This commentary by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Daily, is a week old, but the Rabbi's remarks on the President's failure to understand liberal disappointment in his Administration are still current:

It’s easier for [Democrats] to believe that their liberal and progressive base is naïve than to acknowledge that we are not alienated for their failure to pass appropriate legislation, but for their failure to fight for such legislation. And our upset with Obama is not that he didn’t accomplish what he couldn’t accomplish, but that he didn’t do the one thing he could do: consistently speak the truth, tell us and the country what was really happening in the corridors of power and what the constraints are that he was facing.

Noam Levey in the Los Angeles Times: "The insurance industry is pouring money into Republican campaign coffers in hopes of scaling back wide-ranging regulations in the new healthcare law but preserving the mandate that Americans buy coverage." ...

... David Lightman of McClatchy News: "Half a billion dollars from independent groups with strong but unofficial connections to Republicans and Democrats is flooding into congressional campaigns across the country this year.... The Center for Public Integrity found that Republican-allied groups are likely to outspend their Democratic-oriented rivals by 3 to 2, and maybe even by 2 to 1.... While big money in politics is hardly new, there never have been sums of this magnitude in midterm elections." ...

... Secret Donors. Ken Vogel of Politico: "A massive $4.2 million ad buy announced Tuesday by American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS erases any doubts that the groups, conceived by veteran GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, have the cash to be major players in next month's election. And with nearly 75 percent of the buy paid for by undisclosed donors, the expenditure highlights a trend that has shaped the midterm campaigns and could have far-reaching consequences in American politics: the shift to anonymous political activity." ...

     ... This news item bears on Vogel's story. Washington Post: "Two campaign-finance watchdogs [Democracy 21 & the Campaign Legal Center] asked the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday to investigate Crossroads GPS, the big-spending conservative group supported by Republican guru Karl Rove, for allegedly violating U.S. tax laws limiting the political activities of nonprofit groups."

... Lee Fang of Think Progress: a significant amount of the anti-Obama Chamber of Commerce financing comes from outside the U.S.

Ben Pershing of the Washington Post: "For all the fanfare and publicity that accompanied the release of the pledge, relatively few Republican candidates across the country appear to be adopting it as a guiding vision, much less incorporating it into their campaigns. That stands in stark contrast to the document the pledge is most often compared to, the 1994 'Contract With America.' ..."

David A. Fahrenthold & Kimberly Kindy of the Washington Post: "... nine men ... have died inside U.S. coal mines in the six months since the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia, in which 29 men were killed on April 5. This string of accidents has revealed key shortfalls in a push by the Obama administration to improve mine safety."

We’ll probably get all our money back. -- Jim Millstein ...

... Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times: last week Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced a complicated plan for the government to divest itself of its interest in insurance giant AIG, a deal in which he & Jim Millstein, Treasury's chief restructuring officer, believe the taxpayer will break even. Sorkin explains the math (CW: which is over my head).

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times: Sunday Rahm Emanuel announced that he was preparing to run for mayor of Chicago, but legal experts say he does not meet the residency requirement that he live in the city for a year prior to the election. ...

     ... Ben Smith: as if to highlight his Chicago residency problem, Emanuel taped his "glad to be home" video for Chicagoans -- in Washington, D.C. Includes video. CW: I'm really not going to cover the Chicago mayoral race unless it remains hilarious. So far, it's pretty funny.

CW: last week one of the Democrats' biggest losers - Michael Dukakis -- went to the White House to give President Obama campaign strategy advice. Now another huge Democratic loser -- Walter Mondale -- has more advice for Obama on how to punch up his speaking style. (With video.)  Is this really helpful?

Billboard by Stinque.com.Second-String Bozo. Mark Leibovich of the New York Times: after writing in a profile of the candidate that Christine O'Donnell's father Daniel played Bozo the Clown on the teevee, a reader questioned Leibovich's assertion & the quality of his research. Stinque.com writes, “Anybody who would lie about a cherished childhood icon is unqualified to serve in the United States Senate. Really. It’s in the Constitution. Look it up.” In a conversation with Daniel O'Donnell, Leibovich learns that he sometimes filled in for the "real" Philadelphia Bozo on out-of-town gigs....

... More on the daughter of the second-string Bozo on the Delaware page.

The Commentariat -- October 4

AP: "Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware said in a 2006 debate that China was plotting to take over America and claimed to have classified information about the country that she couldn't divulge." CW: later O'Donnell revealed that the CIA sends her classified information via coded radio transmissions which her teeth pick up. (Perhaps I made that last bit up.) ...

     ... the ever-so-level-headed Jim Fallows of The Atlantic: "... the 'privy to classified information' riff ..., to anyone who knows anything about the world of politics, instantly signals, 'I am completely insane.'" ...

     ... Steve Benen: "even for a Senate candidate who's lied repeatedly about her educational background, is suspected of campaign embezzlement, is suspected of tax fraud, rejects modern science, hates gays, has crusaded against masturbation, has talked about stopping Americans from having sex, and embraces a hysterically extreme political worldview, this is pretty extraordinary." More on O'Donnell on the Delaware page.

** Robbing from the Bereaved & the Taxpayer to Give to -- Prudential. David Evans of the Washington Post: "... Prudential [Financial] is investing - and profiting from - death benefits owed to service members' families, using money provided by the government.... The government has paid Prudential $1.7 billion for these benefits since 2003, when the war in Iraq began." Prudential holds & invests money due to survivors, setting them up with "quasi-checking accounts" while Prudential retains profits on the remaining balance for itself rather than for the survivors. 

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) writes a great op-ed in USA Today: "... rage on the right should not be confused with populism. The far right attacks government regulation as it feeds Wall Street and the insurance companies. It rails against government spending for the least privileged as it lavishes tax cuts favoring the most privileged." Read it all. ...

... ** Paul Krugman writes a terrific column about how Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News" & the billionaires club have co-opted the Republican party for their own gain. ...

... "A Spending Frenzy Conducted Largely in the Shadows." T. W. Farnam & Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from. The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks. The wave of spending is made possible in part by a series of Supreme Court rulings...." ...

... AND Ben Smith found out why Rupert Murdoch sent $1 million each to the Republican Governors' Association & the anti-Obama Chamber of Commerce, thus putting the last nail in the coffin of the "fair & balanced" pretense:

A person close to News Corp. told me this week the company didn't realize its $1 million to the RGA would become public. And the $1 million to Chamber of Commerce was supposed to be secret as well.

Philosopher J. M. Bernstein applies a Hegelian model to the Wall Street fiasco. Hegel explained why Dodd-Frank should have been a lot stronger. Fairly easy-to-follow.

In his New Yorker Commentary, Steve Coll reads Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars & paints a portrait of a President who brings "realism & intelligence" to the Afghan-Pakistan conundrum. ...

... Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post: "Obama has chosen a sensible middle course in Afghanistan, trying to devote significant time and resources to that country, degrading the Taliban but also letting the U.S. military know that this is not an unlimited engagement and that America has other interests in the world.... Americans are chronically disappointed by the way their wars end. This is because while waging wars, Americans refuse to think through the political and military tradeoffs needed to get to a reasonable outcome."

Richard E. Cohen of Politico: "In an unprecedented letter to all congressional candidates in both parties, more than 130 former members of Congress" urged the current crop ... "to find common ground to solve problems” & show some "decency and respect toward opponents."

Kathleen Hennessey in the Los Angeles Times: Democrats are throwing some Republican candidates off-message, "Rarely has a set of candidates given opponents so much to work with."

The Republicans have lost their standards, they’ve lost their principles.... Really that’s why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me.... They have never really gone along with lower taxes and less government. -- Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle, in a closed-door meeting with a tea party opponent

Scoop! Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun obtained a tape of a meeting among Sharron Angle, her Tea Party of Nevada opponent Scott Ashjian, & their minions. Pretty raw stuff. Includes audio of the meeting. ...

     ... Update from Shira Toeplitz of Politico: "Nevada Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian admitted Sunday that he secretly recorded a conversation with Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle, at a meeting in which she asks him to get out of the race, and that he leaked the tape to a journalist." The recording, according to a Harvard Law professor, was illegal. ...

     ... Update: or maybe Ashjian isn't a teabagger at all. Here's an  the Tea Party Express produced:

     ... AND Christiana Bellantoni of Talking Points Memo adds, "Cleta Mitchell, a top Republican lawyer representing Sharron Angle's Senate bid in Nevada, told TPM ... that the meeting [with Ashjian] ... was 'a setup.'" See more on the Nevada senatorial race on the Nevada page.

Barry Friedman & Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: how the Roberts Court has used deft magicians' tricks to shove the law to the right without the public's noticing it. ...

... Half-Time Justice. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: Elena "Kagan's old job as solicitor general - the '10th justice' - is initially making it hard to do her new job as the ninth justice. Kagan, 50, has recused herself from 25 of the 51 cases the court has accepted so far this term, all as a result of her 14-month tenure as solicitor general, the government's chief legal representative in the Supreme Court and the nation's lower appellate courts."

** Here's the Huff Post's sign-up sheet for bus rides from New York City to Washington, D.C. for Jon Stewart's "Sanity Rally." The deadline for sign-up is this Friday, October 8.

News You Can Use (Maybe):

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "As some of the nation’s largest lenders have conceded that their foreclosure procedures might have been improperly handled, lawsuits have revealed myriad missteps in crucial documents." ...

... Ylan Mui of the Washington Post: 675 colleges & a pricey credit card company collaborate to fleece students in a deal that falls outside reform legislation. ...

... Candice Choi of the AP: "... a federal study last year found that about one in four U.S. households skirts banks and relies on services such as check-cashing and payday loans. Many of these households bring in less than $30,000 a year." Choi, who tried living in the non-bank world herself, found it to be both costly & fustrating.

The Commentariat -- October 3

It’s virtually impossible for participants in the current political system to enact any significant change without first seeking and gaining permission from the largest commercial interests who are most affected by the proposed change. -- Al Gore

Frank Rich: Christine O'Donnell provides cover for Republicans -- she's one of a very few true non-elites in the Republican stable:

By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans.

Idle Rich: Millionaires Claim Jobless Benefits. Ryan Donmoyer of Bloomberg: "According to U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, 2,840 households reporting at least $1 million in income on their tax returns that year also collected a total of $18.6 million in jobless aid. They included 806 taxpayers with incomes over $2 million and 17 with incomes in excess of $10 million. In all, multimillionaires reported receiving $5.2 million in jobless benefits." ...

... Idle Poor. Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "The nation's welfare system of cash assistance, for decades the core of help for mothers and children in financial distress, has become a shrunken piece of the U.S. social safety net. The welfare rolls have absorbed relatively few of the Americans who have tumbled lately into poverty or unemployment.... Three out of 10 children were poor last year.... State by state, welfare programs are a patchwork, with little connection between the condition of a state's economy and the number of people who have gone onto welfare. Welfare's role will be further diminished after Thursday, when emergency funds Congress began providing early last year to help states cope with hard economic times run out."

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, which is part of the Affordable Care Act, "started this summer [but] isn't living up to expectations. Enrollment lags in many parts of the country. People who could benefit may not be able to afford the premiums. Some state officials who run their own 'high-risk pools' have pointed out potential problems."

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "With ... [TARP]’s expiration on Sunday, we can expect to hear lots of claims from the folks at the Treasury that it was a great success.... But ... proclamations emanating from the Washington spin machine must be taken with an extra-hefty grain of salt.... The Dodd-Frank financial reform act ... has created a new set of institutions that will almost certainly be deemed too important to fail if they ever get into trouble. And that means there won’t really be an effective way to keep those firms from taking big, profitable, short-term risks that are dumped on the taxpayers when the bets fail...."

Jeff Zeleny & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "... the fight for control of Congress is more fluid than it seemed at Labor Day, with Democrats mounting strong resistance in some parts of the country as they try to hold off a potential Republican wave in November."

Here's a fun little game: the Supreme Court justices are seated according to seniority. See if you can seat the Supremes. Click on the image to go to the interactive page:

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The new Supreme Court term, which begins Monday, includes cases on some of the most contested issues of the day, including protests at military funerals, illegal immigration, support for religious schools, violent video games, DNA evidence and prosecutorial misconduct." Take a look at the cases to watch; Justice Kagan has recused herself on three of them.

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court begins its new term Monday with unprecedented diversity among its members but also the potential for a split that would for the first time in decades reflect the partisan ideologies of the presidents who appointed them."

Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker has a deep-in-the-weeds analysis of why the climate bill failed. Funniest bit: John McCain yelling at Lindsey Graham for stealing McCain's "maverick" label; McCain later denied he had ever considered himself a maverick, even though he had repeatedly called himself a maverick.

According to the rough plans, the upper floors would include space for art exhibitions and interfaith programs. There would also be a 9/11 memorial and a space open to people of “all faiths and of no faith” for prayer, contemplation and meditation. Art by SOMA Architects, via the New York Times.Anne Barnard of the New York Times reviews "the tentative architectural renderings that the planners of the [proposed Islamic] center, called Park51."

Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars: "Without the benefit of months and months of advertising and promotion on Fox News Channel (in fact, I'm only aware of Ed Schultz on MSNBC doing any kind of TV promotion), the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington DC has gathered more supporters than Glenn Beck's much ballyhooed rally, which I will lovingly refer to as 'Whitestock'." With video.

Richard Escow of Curbing Wall Street: "... the banking industry covertly uses payday lenders as a 'front,' a way to prey on minority neighborhoods without getting their hands dirty."

Here in Florida.... Robert Trigaux of the St. Petersburg Times: "Even the tepid rebound of Florida's economy may face crippling delays in resolving hundreds of thousands of foreclosures in the Sunshine State.... Title insurance companies may be scared away from offering 'clear title' guarantees on foreclosed homes.... A study that found errors in about 75 percent of court filings tied to home repossessions.... Four [foreclosure law] firms are already under investigation by the Florida Attorney General's office." ...

... USA Today: "Old Republic National Title Insurance, among the nation's largest title insurance companies, will no longer write new policies for homes foreclosed upon by J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage unit –– a sign that concerns about faulty foreclosure paperwork could now endanger new sales of foreclosed homes."

     ... The Backstory from Friday's New York Times: "Bank of America, the country’s largest mortgage lender by assets, said on Friday that it was reviewing documents in all of its pending foreclosure cases to evaluate if there were errors made. It is the third major lender in the last two weeks that has said it was freezing foreclosures in the 23 states where the process is controlled by courts." The other two are JP Morgan Chase & GMAC Mortgage.