The Commentariat -- January 2, 2012

My column in today's in the New York Times eXaminer is Part 2 of a grim retrospective of 2011: "The Year You Lost Your Civil Rights." Part 1 is here. The NYTX front page is here. Also, please consider donating to NYTX. You can do so here.

"Nobody Understands Debt." Elaborating on his blogposts and discussing what we have been writing about at the New York Times eXaminer and on Off Times Square, Paul Krugman explains the meaning of debt to us -- and to David Brooks. (For the fullest discussion of Krugman's previous posts & for links to all of them, see my NYTX column on the subject.)

Prof. Thomas Edsell in a New York Times op-ed: there's a reason Washington politicians think poverty is "a black thing." Edsell explains. And he demonstrates that the politicians' view is just plain wrong.

Right Wing World

Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "GOP officials in Washington are quietly and methodically finishing what operatives are calling 'the book' — 500 pages of Obama quotes and video links that will form the backbone of the party’s attack strategy against the president leading up to Election Day 2012. The document ... lays out how GOP officials plan to use Obama’s words and voice as they build an argument for his defeat: that he made specific promises and entered office with lofty expectations and has failed to deliver on both." ...

... Greg Sargent: "Of course, Obama had barely been sworn into office before the national Republican leadership mounted a concerted and determined effort to prevent any of Obama’s solutions to our severe national problems from passing, even as they openly declared they were doing so only to destroy him politically. Republicans have admitted on the record that deliberately denying Obama any bipartisan support for, well, anything at all was absolutely crucial to prevent voters from concluding that Obama had successfully forged ideological common ground over the way out of the myriad disasters Obama inherited from them."

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: Mitt Romney, the "moderate" GOP presidential candidate, says he would veto the Dream Act if Congress passed it while he was president. The act "would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who were brought into the country at a young age and then went on to attend college." ...

... Steve Benen: "... the DREAM Act is arguably the least controversial, bipartisan immigration reform measure. The proposal is just humane. But Romney doesn’t care. He’s running for the Republican presidential nomination, for Pete’s sake."

Oh, Santorum. Alex Altman of Time: "It took about 375 events, but Rick Santorum is finally Iowa’s man of the moment. A candidate who once seemed permanently relegated to campaign footnotes is commanding crowds befitting a front-runner...."

Ron Paul tells Jake Tapper of ABC News that his line of questioning is "off the wall":

... But Is It? Chris Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "Ron Paul’s angry denials should be weighed against his regular appearances on the Alex Jones radio show, since Jones is one of the loudest, most deranged 9/11 Truthers in America. If a journalist ever wanted to follow up on this, they could also ask Ron Paul about his association with antisemitic 9/11 Truther James Jaeger."

Kelefa Sannah of the New Yorker has another profile of Frontrunner for a Week (That Has Passed) Newt Gingrich.

"America's 'Iron Lady'"?:

AND Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker lists the top five electoral outcomes journalists are secretly rooting for. He isn't kidding, but it's a funny post.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Iran announced on Monday that it had successfully test fired a cruise missile during naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz that have heightened tensions in a diplomatic standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions."

Los Angeles Times: "Los Angeles police this morning have detained and are questioning a 'person of interest' in the spate of arson fires around the city since Friday. The suspect, believed to be the man in a video police released Sunday, was detained near Sunset Boulevard this morning, said an LAPD source familiar with the investigation into the case. However, in a statement, a Los Angeles fire official said 'it is too early to speculate if this person responsible for the spree arson fires.'”

New York Times: "The Coast Guard in December formally put into effect rules requiring certain passenger vessels to comply with its new Assumed Average Weight per Person. That new weight, 185 pounds, is a full 25 pounds more than the previous average, 160, a figure put in place about half a century ago...."

Washington Post: "Saying the Korean Peninsula was 'at a turning point,' South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Monday offered North Korea a 'window of opportunity' to improve relations but warned of a powerful retaliation if Pyongyang launches another military strike."

The Corn Won't Produce So Much Green in Iowa. New York Times: "A federal tax credit for ethanol expired on Saturday, ending an era in which the federal government provided more than $20 billion in subsidies for use of the product. The tax break, created more than 30 years ago, had long seemed untouchable. But in the last year, during which Congress was preoccupied with deficits and debt..., fiscal conservatives joined liberal environmentalists to kill it, with help from a diverse coalition of outside groups. In the United States, most ethanol is produced from corn. The demise of the subsidy is all the more remarkable because it comes at the peak of the political season in Iowa, where corn is king."

The Commentariat -- January 1, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is Part 1 of a grim retrospective of 2011: "The Year You Lost Your Civil Rights." The NYTX front page is here. Also, please consider donating to NYTX, which I think is a really worthwhile publication. You can do so here.

CLICK ON THE CARTOON TO GO TO BARRY'S REVIEW. Art by Drew Friedman for the Washington Post.... It was the kind of year that made a person look back fondly on the gulf oil spill. -- Dave Barry

Here's a pdf of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert's full "Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary." The New York Times story by Adam Liptak is here.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, in a New York Times op-ed, on the "unknown knowns": bad stuff that's going on which people in authority choose not to acknowledge. 

Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "Medicines to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are in such short supply that hundreds of patients complain daily to the Food and Drug Administration that they are unable to find a pharmacy with enough pills to fill their prescriptions. The shortages are a result of a troubled partnership between drug manufacturers and the Drug Enforcement Administration, with companies trying to maximize their profits and drug enforcement agents trying to minimize abuse by people, many of them college students, who use the medications to get high or to stay up all night."

"Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!" For friends with small children -- Alexandra Horowitz & Ammon Shea, in a New York Times op-ed, debunk a few anthropomorphic children's stories. (It might be best if you don't tell the kids.)

Right Wing World

** Frank Rich of New York magazine: "What Republican aristocrats in denial like Karl Rove can’t bring themselves to recognize is that 'the most unpredictable, rapidly shifting, and often downright inexplicable primary race' they’ve ever seen is not just a conservative revolution but one that has them in its sights."

Maureen Dowd: Mrs. Willard, Mrs. Newt & Mrs. The Donald tell their husbands only they can save the country. Obviously, at least two three of the wives are wrong.

Frank Bruni: "The run-up to the Iowa caucuses, like the rest of the primary season thus far, has underscored just how much general nuttiness and moral extremism the party has come to accommodate, with Iowa serving as a theater of the conservative absurd."

When You Think They Can't Get Worse, Think Again. Pema Levy & Benjy Sarlin of TPM: Ron "Paul’s Iowa chair, Drew Ivers, recently touted the endorsement of Rev. Phillip G. Kayser, a pastor at the Dominion Covenant Church in Nebraska who also draws members from Iowa.... Kayser’s views on homosexuality go way beyond the bounds of typical anti-gay evangelical politics and into the violent fringe: he recently authored a paper arguing for criminalizing homosexuality and even advocated imposing the death penalty against offenders based on his reading of Biblical law." ...

... John Heilemann of New York magazine: even if the crazy coot bigoted conspiracy theorist bombs in Republican primaries, don't count him out of Election 2012: there's always the Third Party Option, and Ron Paul defintiely hasn't ruled it out.

News Ledes

Here's what you had the wisdom to miss last night while doing something better with your time:

New York Daily News: "Protesters occupied New Year’s Eve inside Zuccotti Park late Saturday, creating a steel mountain of NYPD barricades in its plaza as thousands of cops were busy protecting Times Square. Scuffles erupted between demonstrators and police, with one protester busted after an officer was slightly injured with a pair of scissors, police said." ...

... New York Times: "Occupy Iowa protesters had a successful day -- of arrests -- yesterday."

Des Moines Register: "The Des Moines Register’s latest Iowa Poll shows a surprise three-way match-up in contention to win the Iowa Republican caucuses: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Santorum, who has been largely invisible in the polls throughout the campaign season, is now beating the other evangelical choices and has a clear shot at victory Tuesday night." ...

... "Ghost from Romney's Past." CNN: "Democrats aren't missing a chance to take aim at their favorite target: Republican presidential frontrunner and former Bain Capital executive Mitt Romney. Randy Johnson, a worker laid off when Bain bought American Pad and Paper Company, will arrive in Des Moines on Sunday to hold a press conference, according to the Democratic National Committee.... The DNC said that along with a press conference, Johnson will talk to reporters and travel throughout Iowa 'to discuss Romney's decades long record of putting profits before people.'"

AP: "Iranian scientists have produced the nation’s first nuclear fuel rod, a feat of engineering the West has doubted Tehran capable of, the country’s nuclear agency said Sunday."

Washington Post: "The Vatican is set to launch a structure Monday that will allow Anglican parishes in the United States — and their married priests — to join the Catholic Church in a small but symbolically potent effort to reunite Protestants and Catholics, who split almost 500 years ago. More than 1,300 Anglicans, including 100 Anglican priests, have applied to be part of the new body, essentially a diocese."

The Commentariat -- December 31

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

Bill Maher's New Rules for 2012, in the New York Times Sunday Review.

Time magazine's Top Political Gaffes of 2011. Must-see video.

The White House Year in Photos. Photos by White House photographer Pete Souza. Pundits often complain that President Obama is "cool," "distant" or "aloof." That's not my impression:

"The President greets a woman following a ceremony to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa. The President and First Lady greeted virtually every family member that attended the ceremony." -- Pete Souza, White House photographer

New York Times Editors: "After they took power in January, the hard-line Republicans who dominate the House reached for a radical overhaul of American government, hoping to unravel the social safety net, cut taxes further for the wealthy and strip away regulation of business. Fortunately, thanks to defensive tactics by Democrats, they failed to achieve most of their agenda. But they still did significant damage in 2011 to many of the most important functions of government, and particularly to investments in education, training and transportation that the country will need for a sound economic recovery."

Nullification -- When One Senator Can Shut Down a Federal Agency on a Whim. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "Republicans are refusing to allow votes on President Obama's nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and on his nominees to fill vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board. In both cases, the Republican refusal is explicity aimed at shutting down these agencies.... Republicans make no bones about why they're doing this.... Since, in practice, a single senator can place a hold on a nominee, this means that a single senator is now able to shut down an entire agency of the federal government simply out of dislike for what it's doing." ...

... For Example. Peter Landers of the Wall Street Journal: "The Obama administration's confirmation troubles have come to this: It can't get the Senate to accept its nominee for public printer of the United States."

If you're a college sports fan, or even if you're not, read Joe Nocera's column on the N.C.A.A. cartel. "How can the labor force that generates so much money for everyone else be kept in shackles by the N.C.A.A.?" That "labor force" is, of course, the athletes themselves.

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (R/D-Penn.) does stand-up comedy at a Philadelphia club. Kinda corny, definitely blue, and pretty amazing. Via The Hill:

Right Wing World

Mitt Romney -- Poster Boy for the Buffett Rule. Josh Marshall of TPM: Willard won't release his taxes because "It seems virtually impossible that Mitt Romney doesn’t pay the sort of effective tax rate that would make people’s eyes pop when compared to middle income and even relatively wealthy (by normal standards) people who pay considerably higher rate.... Issues of income inequality and particularly tax policy are right at the top of the political agenda in 2012." ...

... Mitt's son Matt isn't helping any:

This is how the Romney campaign thinks it's going to win the Republican primary: by pandering to the dead-ender fringe of extremists who still question where the president was born. -- Jim Messina, Obama for America campaign manager

Boo-hoo. Molly Ball of The Atlantic: Frank Luntz makes Republicans sad and blue. CW: have you ever seen a Republican shed tears for anyone other than himself?

When Is a Gynecologist a Misogynist? When He's Ron Paul: Employee rights are said to be valid when employers pressure employees into sexual activity. Why don't they quit once the so-called harassment starts? Obviously the morals of the harasser cannot be defended, but how can the harassee escape some responsibility for the problem? Seeking protection under civil rights legislation is hardly acceptable. -- Ron Paul, in Freedom Under Seige, 1987, reissued 2008 ...

... Pete Hamby of CNN: "In his 1987 manifesto 'Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution after 200-Plus Years,' [Ron] Paul wrote that AIDS patients were victims of their own lifestyle, questioned the rights of minorities and argued that people who are sexually harassed at work should quit their jobs."

... More New York Times op-ed art is here.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. defended his colleagues as 'jurists of exceptional integrity and experience' and said Saturday that it was a misconception that Supreme Court justices do not follow the same set of ethical principles as other judges."

The New York Times story I posted on the shortlife of a Verizon fee doesn't mention Change.org, but this story from Wireless & Mobile News does: "Verizon will not be charging 'convenience' fees for one-time bill payments made online and customers have Change.org to thank.  After a petition to stop the fee gained support, Verizon dropped the charge."

New York Times: "President Obama, after objecting to provisions of a military spending bill that would have forced him to try terrorism suspects in military courts and impose strict sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, signed the bill on Saturday. He said that although he did not support all of it, changes made by Congress after negotiations with the White House had satisfied most of his concerns and had given him enough latitude to manage counterterrorism and foreign policy in keeping with administration principles."

Los Angeles Times: "Authorities across Southern California were beefing up patrols Saturday night, hoping to catch the person or persons responsible for more than 35 fires over the last two days. Los Angeles police and fire officials were trying to determine whether the fires were the work of one arsonist or several."

New York Times: 'A pair of NASA spacecraft are slipping into orbit around the Moon this weekend to try to answer persistent questions about Earth’s celestial companion."

Reuters: "Boeing Co beat out Lockheed Martin to retain its position as the prime contractor for the U.S. long-range missile shield, the Pentagon said on Friday.The U.S. Defense Department said it was awarding Boeing a $3.48 billion, seven-year contract to develop, test, engineer and manufacture missile defense systems."

Reuters: "Iran delayed promised long-range missile tests in the Gulf on Saturday and Tehran signaled it was ready for fresh talks on its disputed nuclear program. Iran's state media initially reported early on Saturday that long-range missiles had been launched during naval exercises, a move that may irk the West concerned over threats by Tehran to close off a vital oil shipping route in the Gulf. But Deputy Navy Commander Mahmoud Mousavi later went on the English language Press TV channel to deny the missiles had in fact been fired."

Al Jazeera: "An Arab League observer has said he saw snipers in the Syrian city of Deraa, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad erupted across the country on Friday. 'We saw snipers in the town, we saw them with our own eyes,' the observer told residents in a conversation filmed and posted online.... Activists said hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across the country after noon Muslim prayers on Friday."

Reuters: "China's central bank governor argued in comments published on Saturday that Beijing does not control the yuan's flow across borders as tightly as some think and that it is natural for the currency's trading band to be widened over time. Zhou Xiaochuan said in an interview ... that China did not fare badly on an International Monetary Fund measure of currencies' convertibility under the capital account. But he stopped short of calling for a fully convertible currency."

Guardian: "Los Angeles police are seeking a serial arsonist suspected of starting 21 fires in Hollywood in just four hours on Friday night, damaging buildings and cars throughout the area. An arsonist is thought to have started the fires by setting vehicles alight. The flames then spread to nearby houses, including one in Hollywood Hills once occupied by the Doors singer Jim Morrison, which inspired the song Love Street."