The Commentariat -- September 23

Happy Autumnal Equinox. It falls at 5:04 am ET today.

By William Morris.In his column Paul Krugman fleshes out some numbers he's been reporting on in blogposts: "Detailed estimates from the Congressional Budget Office ... show that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That’s growth, but it’s slow, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II. Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent.... In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million. So do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?" CW Note: Krugman also gives Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren a plug for her remarks about "class warfare"; see video in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... I've posted a Krugman page on Off Times Square.

Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: "The improvised, on-the-fly financial system that replaced Bretton Woods after 1971 has failed. The great challenge facing the world leaders gathering for the annual World Bank-International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington this weekend is to figure out what will replace it. For the past 40 years, capital has moved freely around the globe, with currencies fluctuating according to market forces and countries intervening to affect those flows according to their domestic interests. It has all proved remarkably prone to financial crises.... This is no way to run a global economy. But it’s not clear whether there is enough political will to find a new framework, because it would require many countries to sacrifice something dear to them."

Tim Egan: Republican environmental policies are so anti-scientific & so bought-and-paid-for by polluters that they're going to kill us. But President Obama has been passive on environmental issues, & passive doesn't get you an energized base that helps win elections. Doom!

Obama Names Names! Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "President Obama publicly castigated House Speaker John Boehner [yesterday] at a rally in Ohio, singling him out by name four times for his opposition to passage of his $447 billion jobs bill.... In an email blast after the speech, Obama for America campaign manager Jim Messina urged supporters to call Boehner directly to let him know 'what Americans like you think.' ... But ... many Democrats have also publicly voiced reluctance to 'pass it right away....'” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ... says he might not consider bringing the jobs bill up for a vote until at least next month." Video of the speech is in yesterday's Ledes.

Brian Beutler of TPM: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- who's a close ally of three Democrats on the [deficit-reduction supercommittee] -- says they would be doing a disservice to advance deficit reducing legislation without knowing its impact on economic growth."

Steve Benen: "We’ve set the bar for success so low [for Congress], avoiding shutdowns is somehow deemed an accomplishment.... And so long as congressional Republicans remain radicalized, there’s no reason to think conditions will improve after this Congress, either. The public didn’t recognize or appreciate it, but 2009 and 2010 were pretty extraordinary for getting stuff done in Washington, despite Republican efforts to break the Senate.... Worst of all, this is what Americans said they wanted when they voted last year." BTW, we're set for a shutdown in exactly one week.

NEW. Eric Lipton & John Broder of the New York Times: "The government’s backing of [of the solar panel manufacturer] Solyndra, which could cost taxpayers more than a half-billion dollars, came as the politically well-connected business began an extensive lobbying campaign that appears to have blinded government officials to the company’s financial condition and the risks of the investment, according to a review of government documents and interviews with administration officials and industry analysts."

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "The Obama administration has to decide by Monday whether it wants to directly ask the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of its signature health reform legislation. Since the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the health law in August, the administration can either ask the full court to take another look at the case or ask the Supreme Court to review it and issue a final decision.... If it doesn’t file by Monday or get an extension, the Justice Department would have no other option than to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the 11th Circuit’s decision."

I don’t understand how she can be down 20 points one week and is now up 2. What is going on? -- Sen. Scott Brown, on a poll showing Elizabeth Warren beating him by two points in the Massachusetts senate race, overheard by a passing Hill staffer & reported in TPM

Tim Mak of Politico: "Former President Bill Clinton suggested Thursday that Texas Gov. Rick Perry was ideologically in line with 'militant subgroups in Israel' and was too willing to let the Jewish state do whatever it wants." ...

... Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: "Who's to blame for the continued failure of the Middle East peace process? Former President Bill Clinton said today that it is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- whose government moved the goalposts upon taking power, and whose rise represents a key reason there has been no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal."

CW: I'm hoping this is the last piece I'll ever link to about Ron Suskind's Confidence Men, his "insider" look at a "dysfunctional" Obama White House. Jacob Weisberg of Slate has a well-supported takedown of Suskind & his methodology. The title of his post: "Don't Believe Ron Suskind; His book about Obama is as spurious as the ones he wrote about Bush."

Right Wing World

CW: I know "incredulous" isn't a real word, but Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post is just incredulous at just how clueless the Republican presidential candidates were in last night's debate. ...

... Glenn Kessler fact-checks the debate. He doesn't actually end with a Four-Pinocchio condemnation, but he does note that he has quatri-pinocchio'd at least one of the same false claims earlier, and the candidates delivered many more outright inventions. ...

... Bill Adair at PolitiFact also reviews some of the candidates' statements, some of which he rates as true, but he also came up with a couple of "falses" & one "pants-on-fire" (the same Romney falsehood Kessler cited: "President Obama went around the world and apologized for America"). ...

... FactCheck.org: "The GOP presidential candidates debated for the second time in six days — tossing out a variety of false and misleading claims on everything from Social Security to vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases." The article goes on to enumerate some of the whoppers.

... The audience low point? Booing a gay soldier stationed in Iraq who is concerned Republican candidates might cut back on advances made for gays & lesbians in the military:

     Here's The Hill headline to a report by Cameron Joseph: "Gay soldier booed at GOP debate; candidates stay mum." ...

... Can't Any Texas Governor Complete a Sentence? (and this one was scripted; evidently, Gov. Garble forgot his line):

Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of -- against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it -- was before -- he was before the social programs from the standpoint of -- he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against first -- Roe v. Wade? I mean we'll wait until tomorrow to see which Mitt Romney we're really talking to tonight. -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in last night's debate ...

... Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic: "Mitt Romney subtly laid out a line of attack against Rick Perry last night that raised questions about the Texas governor's sometimes garbled syntax and increasingly apparent difficulty giving mid-length answers to policy questions.... No wonder Romney's attack strategy was to say over and over that you can't understand what Perry is trying to say -- as well as to argue with him on policy." ...

... "Texas Toast?" Jonathan Martin & James Hohmann of Politico: "... in his third debate in a month ... Perry gave a foreign policy answer that offered no indication he’s thought about how to respond to threats against America, twice bobbled attacks on Mitt Romney’s well-documented departures from conservative orthodoxy, called immigration hard-liners heartless and, in what was otherwise his best answer of the evening, stretched the truth in the course of delivering a well-rehearsed line about why he mandated pre-teen girls to be vaccinated against HPV." ...

... "Another Rick Perry Whopper." FactCheck.org: "Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes another wildly false claim in a new Web ad — saying that the U.S. poverty rate has hit an 'all-time high.' In fact, the rate is the highest since 1993, but 7.3 percentage points lower than it was in 1959, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent annual tally." Includes video of ad.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Shortly after President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority formally requested the Security Council to grant full United Nations membership on Friday, international powers reached an agreement on terms to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians, diplomats and Obama administration officials said."

New York Times: "An impasse between the House and Senate over a bill to keep the government open after Sept. 30 and provide financial aid to natural disaster victims got worse on Friday as the Senate easily shot down a House bill passed in the early hours of Friday morning."

New York Times: " The Obama administration, increasingly alarmed by the spillover effects of Europe’s financial crisis, has begun an intensive lobbying campaign to persuade Chancellor >Angela Merkel of Germany and other leaders to act decisively to stem any contagion from the Greece debt crisis."

Congress hasn't been able to fix this, so I will. -- Barack Obama

President Obama will allow states waivers of No Child Left Behind standards:

President Obama spoke about No Child Left Behind this morning.  New York Times: "President Obama on Friday will offer to waive central provisions of the No Child Left Behind law for states that embrace his educational agenda, essentially ending his predecessor’s signature accountability measure, which has defined public school life nationwide for nearly a decade." Video above.

Washington Post: "Washington lurched toward another potential government shutdown crisis Friday, as the House approved a Republican-authored short-term funding measure designed to keep government running through Nov. 18 that Democrats in the Senate immediately vowed to reject."

Washington Post: "State and federal officials on Friday were again to meet with representatives of the nation’s largest banks, trying to finalize a much-anticipated settlement over shoddy foreclosure practices that remains elusive a year after the abuses first garnered national attention.... New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ... has expressed concern that the pending settlement could release banks from liability for misdeeds that go beyond flawed and fraudulent foreclosure documents.... Schneiderman has insisted that he would not sign onto a deal he views as too lenient on the banks. Attorneys general from a handful of other states, including Delaware and Nevada, have expressed similar concerns."

New York Times: "U.S. EPA plans to enforce smog rules that were put in place under George W. Bush, now that President Obama has asked the agency to wait until 2013 to move on still-stricter air quality standards for ozone, Administrator Lisa Jackson told lawmakers on Capitol Hill [Thursday].... Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said turning to the 2008 standard is better than reverting to the 'outdated and nonprotective' standard that preceded it." CW: this is actually a pleasant surprise; the conventional wisdom was that the EPA would stick with the Clinton-era standards, which are worse than the Bush standards.

AP: "The world's major economic powers are pledging to launch a bold effort to deal with a chronic slowdown in growth and a European debt crisis threatening to push the global economy into another recession.... The statement by the Group of 20 major economies was issued late Thursday and pledged that the countries, which represent 85 percent of the global economy, would do what was necessary to restore financial stability...."

New York Times: "In their third debate in as many weeks, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas engaged in a sometimes heated back and forth over immigration, health care and entitlements, their rivalry dominating a stage that included seven other candidates struggling to catch up in the race for the Republican presidential nomination."

AP: "Nearly two decades after embarking on historic peace talks with Israel, Palestinians prepared to sidestep that troubled route on Friday to seek U.N. recognition of an independent state — hoping to leverage this dramatic move on the world stage to realize their dream of an independent homeland. Earlier in the week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rebuffed an intense, U.S.-led effort to sway him from the statehood bid, saying he would submit the application to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon as planned."

New York Times: "President Ali Abdullah Saleh made a dramatic and sudden return to Yemen on Friday after nearly four-months in Saudi Arabia, seeking to reinsert himself at the center of a slowly fracturing country mired in bloody clashes on the streets of its capital. His return, announced by state news agencies, appeared unlikely to immediately quell the fighting, which has left more than 70 people dead since Sunday in fierce street battles between government forces and soldiers who have sided with antigovernment protesters."

Space: "A decommissioned NASA satellite is expected to plummet to Earth today (Sept. 23), and agency officials are monitoring the dead spacecraft closely to try to narrow down when and where the debris will fall. According to NASA, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, will make its fiery descent through the atmosphere some time this afternoon or early evening (Eastern Daylight Time), but while it is still too soon to tell where pieces of the defunct satellite will land, scientists have been able to rule out North America from the potential impact zone. ...

     ... New York Times Update: "A wayward NASA satellite may yet fall to Earth in the United States. On Friday morning, the space agency issued an update about its defunct Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, which is dropping out of the sky more slowly than anticipated. 'Re-entry is expected late Friday, Sept. 23, or early Saturday, Sept. 24, Eastern Daylight Time,' NASA said."

AP: "A startling find at one of the world’s foremost laboratories that a subatomic particle seemed to move faster than the speed of light has scientists around the world rethinking Albert Einstein and one of the foundations of physics. Now they are planning to put the finding to further high-speed tests to see if a revolutionary shift in explaining the workings of the universe is needed — or if the European scientists made a mistake."

Live Science: "Many 9/11 conspiracy theories revolve around explosions that were seen and heard in the World Trade Center's Twin Towers prior to their collapse. Despite scientific investigations that have explained the processes that brought down the skyscrapers, some conspiracy theorists suggest the plane impacts were just red herrings, to distract from the fact that 9/11 was an 'inside job....' Now a materials scientist, [Christen Simensen of SINTEF], has come up with a more scientific explanation for the mystery booms, and says his model of the Twin Towers collapse leaves no room for conspiracies." CW: Aah, he's probably part of the vast conspiracy.