The Commentariat -- October 7

Paul Krugman: "It may have taken a while to gain respect, but Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point." ...

Dana Milbank, writing on the Occupy DC & Take Make the American Dream rallies in Washington, concludes, "... liberals should by now know that a nuanced president cannot be a movement’s mouthpiece." ...

... I've posted a page on Krugman's column for today's Off Times Square. See also videos & links to stories below on Occupy Wall Street & related protests.

Is the Hostage Crisis Over? David Corn of Mother Jones: in his press conference (yesterday), President Obama once again signaled he was through "negotiating" with Hill Republicans who won't take "yes" for an answer. Still, inquiring reporters wanted to know, "Mr. President, why aren't you bending over backward to negotiate with a political opposition that threatened economic default in order to get its way?" (Corn's translation.) ...

... Yesterday, the Republican Majority Leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now he won’t even let this jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives. This is what he said. Won’t even let it be debated. Won’t even give it a chance to be debated on the floor of the House of Representatives. Think about that. I mean, what’s the problem? Do they not have the time? They just had a week off. Is it inconvenient? -- Barack Obama, Tuesday, October 4 ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "A new ABC-Washington Post poll suggests that, so far, Obama's campaign is working. The public still think that the president, like Congress, is doing a lousy job overall. But public support for the elements of his jobs bill is high. And, more important, Obama has opened up a substantial gap with the Republicans over which party voters trust more to handle 'job creation.'" The efforts of the Senate leadership to get ConservaDems on board may not be enough to get a filibuster-proof majority, but if Senate Democrats get more than 50 votes for the American Jobs Acts -- which they should be able to do -- "then the obstacle to enactment won’t be Democrats."

Oh, Look. Scott Brown wants a jobs bill. He urges Senate Leaders Reid & McConnell to "set aside politically driven legislation and focus on a jobs bill that can pass both chambers of Congress and be signed into law." Thank you, Elizabeth Warren. Via Greg Sargent. ...

... M. J. Lee of Politico: "Two words uttered in seeming jest by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) about Elizabeth Warren on Thursday have infuriated women’s rights groups, with some even calling for the senator to drop his reelection bid. In an interview with WZLX radio, Brown had laughed and said, “Thank God,” in response to Warren’s recent comment in which she said she didn’t have to take her clothes off to pay for law school — a reference to Brown having posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine in his 20s." ...

... Here's more from Noah Bierman of the Boston Globe. CW: see also yesterday's Commentariat. Glad to see I'm hardly standing alone on this. ...

... AND, not that it matters, but here's Warren in a photo taken when she was probably in her 40s or 50s. If you don't think she looked great at 20, Scott Brown, with or without clothes, you're an even bigger idiot than your remark would suggest:

Elizabeth Warren. Harvard U. photo.

Diane McWhorter has a fine tribute in the New York Times to the Rev. Fred Shuttleworth, a rough-edged civil rights leader who prodded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to get with the program.

Occupy ...

     ... Related Al Jazeera story here.

... Prof. Anne-Marie Slaughter, in a New York Times op-ed: "... the twin drivers of America’s nascent protest movement against the financial sector are injustice and invisibility, the very grievances that drove the Arab Spring.... People abroad with long experience of disenfranchisement and trampling of their dignity may in fact understand the fissures in our society better than we do ourselves." ...

... If one of your know-it-all friends tells you Occupy Wall Street is "just like" the Tea Party ...

Occupy Wall Street sign.

     (... And another kudo to the signmaker for learning from Rick Perry how to cover over objectionable material so as not to offend. ...)

     ... You might suggest there is some difference:

Tea Party sign.

... FINALLY, Don't Worry. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Is Ready for the Joker. John Hudson of The Atlantic: "... Kelly has had to walk back even further his eye-opening claim on 60 Minutes last month that the NYPD has the authority and technology to shoot down an aircraft in the event of an emergency." In explaining his latest position to the New York City Council Thursday, Kelly said,

What we didn't want to be is totally helpless, at 2 o'clock in the morning, [with] a small plane disseminating anthrax over Manhattan and waiting for somebody to come from an Air Force base in Massachusetts.

      ... which, as Hudson notes, is the plot of Batman 4. From the Comics.org synopsis: "... the Joker mounts a crop duster plane to spread poisonous gas over Gotham Square" on New Years Eve. ...

... ** On a Related Note: "Charging Debit Card Fees Is Robbery." Lloyd Constantine in a New York Times op-ed: "The [decades-long] practice of deceiving stores and forcing them to accept overpriced debit transactions was challenged in a 1996 antitrust lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, in which I was the lead attorney for the plaintiffs." Under the Dodd-Franks Act, the Fed, "after initially deciding that debit interchange fees should be lowered from 44 cents to 7 to 12 cents..., in yet another huge handout to big banks, revised the fee range to 21 to 24 cents. That is the change ... which Bank of America cites as it attempts to begin charging a large new fee to its debit cardholders.... Retail customers of Bank of America and of any other banks that follows its lead should swiftly move their business." Read the whole essay; it isn't long, and it's a fascinating look at one tiny piece of robber-baron sleight-of-hand.

Ben Smith & Maggie Haberman of Politico have a story about how Chelsea Clinton is working toward a Ph.D. in public policy, raising speculation that the nation's most guarded First Daughter will step into the political spotlight on her own. CW: sorry, but little Miss Chelsea's first career decision was to become a hedge fund manager, which was one more reason I didn't vote for her mom in 2008. I won't be voting for Chelsea O-Is-for-Opportunist Clinton for anything, ever.

Right Wing World *

I’m hoping that the ‘ living’ Constitution will die. -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Dim Shafts of Light Threaten to Penetrate Right Wing World. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "On Tuesday, Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, took to the House floor for a rare excoriation of the anti-tax activist Grover G. Norquist and his strictly worded pledge, which has been signed by almost the entire Republican caucus as well as a few Democrats.... Anti-tax pledges are beginning to worry lawmakers, fund-raisers and others because of fears that they hamstring efforts to rewrite the nation’s tax code.... To be sure, the majority of Republican lawmakers are not running away from Mr. Norquist. All the Republican presidential candidates other than Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, have gotten on board."

* Where 1789 was a very good year. And it still is.

News Ledes

The protests that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city aren't productive.... What they're trying to do is take away the jobs of people working in the city, take away the tax base that we have.... We're not going to have money to pay our municipal employees or anything else. -- NYC Mayor Michael von Bloomberg ...

... Village Voice: "Mayor Bloomberg fired a warning shot Friday at the city unions who have backed the Occupied Wall Street protests...."

AP: "The federal government asked an appeals court on Friday to halt an Alabama immigration law considered by many as the toughest in the United States, saying it invites discrimination against foreign-born citizens and legal immigrants. The federal government filed the challenge to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. It claimed Alabama's new law 'is highly likely to expose persons lawfully in the United States, including school children, to new difficulties in routine dealings.'"

The AP reports that the U.S. added 103,000 jobs in September, & the unemployment rate remains at 9.1 percent. No link. Update: the Bloomberg News story is here. ...

... Yahoo! News: "The average unemployed American has now been out of work for a longer period than at any time since records began being kept more than 60 years ago -- more evidence, as if any were needed, that the jobs crisis is in reality a crisis of long-term unemployment."

Leymah Gbowee, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, & Tawakul Karman. Photos by the New York Times, AFP & Reuters, respectively.New York Times: "The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three campaigning women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner."

NEW. TPM: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) threw her weight behind the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations Thursday, showering praise on a movement that has so far spread to dozens of cities, including Washington, D.C."

Occupy Wall Street -- A First-Hand Account

Regular Off Times Square commenter Meredith joined the Occupy Wall Street protest yesterday. Here is her story:

Re: Krugman blog on the Wall Street protest yesterday:

Thanks, Paul. Seems that if journalists take this movement too seriously, and don’t mention the required dismissive phrases, they might get scorned by their fellow journalist/pundits? In all of it’s articles the Times has included at least a few of the required words of condescension. When will it end, and proper respect be paid?

I marched yesterday for 1st time in decades, now as a retiree, from non union corporation job. I was neither exquisitely tailored or oddly dressed. I looked quite nice thank you, in casual clothes, not business attire. But I wore my beautiful red beads with a red shirt, navy pants and t shirt. My hair was nicely styled and I wore makeup. I think I looked very acceptable to any society. No one would take me for a slovenly hippie radical, or for one of the top 1 percent!

I was in the MIDDLE. And that’s the key—there were thousands of people their from the MIDDLE. Sociologically, financially, philosophically and sartorially.

There were many like me, middle aged or older, middle class/working class people with no tattoos or outlandish costumes. I saw no one take off any clothes. We were almost sedate, as we slowly walked, sometimes listening to the terrific bands from the musicians union.—so enjoyable. Also enjoyable were very nice conversations with many intelligent people—teachers, union people, retirees, an Israeli journalist living in Brooklyn, an ex bank employee, a worried father of an adult child who may lose job, on and on. All amiable and intelligent.

Mainly, the sight of that huge crowd of many thousands spread out and filling all of Foley Square, was tremendously impressive. I was thrilled when I saw it. They also filled the streets running in spokes out of the square and filled the huge staircase of the govt building.

The dismissive attitude here is actually ridiculed in the rest of the world. In Europe the middle class join demonstrations about govt policies, with people of all ages and occupations. They are respected and taken seriously by the press. They wonder what has taken Americans so long to even start putting pressure on our govt to be responsive to them. They think we are stupid for NOT marching. Our govt doesn’t even know what real pressure is, so they keep doing whatever they want. I urge anyone to come out and enjoy participating in future demonstrations. I got at least some satisfaction in doing something besides writing comments to newspapers. I added to the big crowd that will be shown on TV. The financial security of all of us is directly involved.

The Commentariat -- October 6

Gail Collins can't stand "to spend the next 13 months watching Mitt Romney run against Barack Obama," so she's looking for alternative Republican candidates. She lingers on Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho because she likes his name, on former New York Gov. George Pataki for the same reason (another president named George!), but she finally settles on Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota, whose state suffers from a labor shortage because of a hydrofracked oil boomlet. An environmentalist Collins interviewed, though horrified by the oil companies' waste of millions of cubic feet of natural gas daily, says North Dakota is "not as bad as Kazakhstan," which Collins thinks is a catchy phrase. ...

... On today's Off Times Square, you can name your own Republican candidate for president. Oh, there are so many choices.

Occupy Wall Street

Cara Buckley of the New York Times: "The Occupy Wall Street gathering, now midway through its third week in a Lower Manhattan park, was hatched by a Canadian magazine, Adbusters, and is heavily populated by youthful out-of-towners. But it has also become a magnet for scores of New Yorkers who said they had rarely if ever attended a protest before." ...

... CW: This video of NYPD white shirts swinging billy clubs at Occupy Wall Street protesters is so violent I had to sign in to YouTube to view it. The Daily News story, linked just above Wedneday's Ledes, has been updated to report the violence:

... Now comes this gem from a New York Times story by Steven Greenhouse & Buckley:

[There was] ... a disturbance about 8 p.m. Wednesday as the march was breaking up. The police said they arrested eight protesters around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, after people rushed barriers and began spilling into the street. While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that one officer 'possibly' used it.

      ... CW: Browne is he same genius who said the NYPD used pepper spray "appropriately" two weeks ago when Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed women who were respecting police barricades. The gist of the Times' underlying story is that unions, though wary of "the protesters' hostility to the authorities," have decided to join Occupy Wall Street anyway. Watch the video above & decide for yourself where the "hostility" lies. ...

... AND this from Fox 5 New York: "While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer's baton." This is shocking video:

... The Guardian's liveblog of yesterday's events is pretty good. It includes this note: "Despite the march having a permit, and the roads being closed, police funnelled protesters onto the sidewarks and into tightly-penned areas." CW: Explain that, Mayor von Bloomberg. ...

... Alicia Cohn of The Hill: "Several liberal House lawmakers endorsed the protests Wednesday, and the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said they had been inspired by demonstrators who have been arrested and pepper sprayed during altercations with police." ...

... Oh, AND here's Herman Cain with the Republican response: (a) Occupy Wall Street is an Obama plot; (b) unemployment is the fault of the unemployed. Think Progress has video:

I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! -- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain ...

... More from Fox "News" & other corporate media, again via Think Progress:

... AND the Chicago Board of Trade responds to Occupy Chicago:

Photo by an Occupy Chicago protester, via the Chicagoist.     ... The Chicagoist reports the message was taped to the 8th floor of the Board of Trade Building & adds, "If only someone could hurl rocks that high." ...

... Charles Pierce of Esquire writes an excellent, ascerbic post contrasting Occupy Wall Street & the Tea Party AND the media coverage of both:

The national media largely have blown off the protests because none of the people on their speed-dials have had anything to do with it.... We get snotty New Republic reporters on play dates among the hippies, and insufferable Chaunceys from the conservative press exercising the half of the wit they have, and Erin Burnett, who's never met a hedge fund she didn't adore, launching her new CNN show with video of a longhaired guy with funny glasses. And everybody else gets on the bus to drive around New Hampshire, mourning the loss of the transformational figure that is Chris Christie.

** Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council.... Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."

Let the Class Warfare Begin. Steven Dennis of Roll Call: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved quickly to shore up support in his Democratic caucus for President Barack Obama's jobs bill Wednesday, announcing it would come to the Senate floor shortly and be paid for by a surtax on millionaires. Reid's decision ... gives Democrats a poll-tested package that most can run on for the next year — even though the surtax itself is dead on arrival with Republicans. Indeed, Reid appears to be setting the stage for a major floor battle that will raise the specter of 'class warfare' and Obama recently called himself a 'warrior for the middle class.' ... Recent polls ... have shown that two-thirds or more of Americans believe millionaires should pay more into federal coffers." ...

... Vicki Needham, et al., of The Hill: "The Senate Banking Committee will vote [today] on whether [Richard Cordray,] President Obama's selection to head the new agency should win the gig, but the vote will likely be the latest round in what has been a knock-down, drag-out partisan fight over the agency and how it should operate. While it's expected the former Ohio attorney general will advance on a party-line vote, Cordray's nomination could get stuck...."

Carol Leonnig & Joe Stephens of the Washington Post: "Newly released e-mails show the Obama administration’s Energy Department was poised to give Solyndra a second taxpayer loan of $469 million last year, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire. The department was still considering providing the second loan guarantee to the solar-panel manufacturer in April and May 2010, at a time when Solyndra’s auditors were already warning that the company was in danger of collapsing.... The agency didn’t drop plans for a second loan until October 2010.... That was the month Solyndra executives and investors first warned the government that the company faced the threat of liquidation.... Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Wednesday that OMB staffers were wrong in describing the agency as actively pushing to provide the second loan."

Shaila Dewan of the New York Times: although there are multiple efforts to forgive portions of the debts owned by homeowners whose morgages are underwater, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac refuse to participate. "The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration do not allow principal reduction on their loans either.... Fannie and Freddie’s rejection of principal reduction may simply be postponing losses that will occur anyway." CW: in short, the government isn't helping the problem (Fannie & Freddie are now essentially taxpayer-owned; and it is probably hurting it -- and the homeowners).

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "Voters in the early presidential nominating states will soon be bombarded with millions of dollars in advertising from independent political organizations whose donors can remain secret until after the first five primaries and caucuses are held. That is the unintended result of decisions in recent days by state Republican officials to move up several key early contests, putting them ahead of the Jan. 31 financial disclosure deadline for super-sized fundraising committees."

El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar in a New York Times op-ed: "Many Republican politicians — and not a few Democrats, too — use the bogeyman of border violence to justify exorbitant security measures, like the ever-lengthening border fence that costs $2.8 million per mile (for a total of $6.5 billion, including maintenance, over the 20-year lifetime of the fence). [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry’s brainchild, security cameras, have so far cost $4 million to put in place and maintain.... During their first two years in operation, Mr. Perry’s cameras led to the arrest of a whopping 26 people — that’s $154,000 per arrest. And once undocumented immigrants are apprehended, costs continue to mount: in this fiscal year alone, the federal government is budgeting $2 billion just for detention."

New York Times Editors: "By a 6-to-6 vote last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit cleared the way for a legal challenge against a dubious legacy of the George W. Bush administration: the wiretapping of Americans’ international communications without a warrant or adequate judicial supervision in antiterrorism investigations. The tie decision, which allowed an earlier ruling to stand, was a well-deserved setback to the Justice Department’s accountability avoidance strategy.... We hope the Obama administration does not appeal to the Supreme Court, and allows the legal challenge to go forward. Given its dismal record on this matter, we are not holding our breath."

Supreme Court Justices Breyer & Scalia testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Former Justice John Paul Stevens on cameras in the Supreme Court:

     ... CW: the excuses for not airing Supreme Court hearings are so lame as to defy credulity. They would not hold up in -- court.

Chris Hayes of The Nation & Ta-Nehisi Coats of The Atlantic: No, racism is not just an American "historical" anomaly:

Sen. Scott Brown [R-Mass.] Gives a Lesson on How to Belittle Half of the Electorate:

The State Column: "In response to a question about how the candidates paid for tuition bills, [Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth] Warren said 'I kept my clothes on.' Warren’s response was a reference to Brown’s nude photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine while in law school." ...

Thank God! -- Scott Brown, in response to Warren's quip

Right Wing World *

I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings. -- Roger Ailes of Fox "News," an EEOC-compliant employer

But don't worry, Megyn Kelly! He hired you because he respects your journalistic talents. -- Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine

The idea of a mentally ill vice president who suffers in complete isolation was obviously sparked by the behaviors I witnessed by Sarah Palin. -- Nicolle Wallace, former McCain-Palin aide, on her new novel which "explores what would happen if a woman were plucked from relative obscurity and elected Vice President of the United States — only to find herself completely unprepared for the job" ...

AND. There certainly were discussions — not for long because of the arc the campaign took — but certainly there were discussions about whether, if they were to win, it would be appropriate for [Palin] to be sworn in. -- Nicolle Wallace ...

... This certainly is a shocking admission, in no small part because the Constitution does not provide any process short of impeachment to remove a vice president. -- Tanya Somanader of Think Progress

* Where news & commentary is only delivered by hot babes & crusty male curmudgeons.

News Ledes

The Hill: "In a shocking development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely used procedural option informally called the 'nuclear option' to change the Senate rules. Reid and 50 members of his caucus voted to change Senate rules unilaterally to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on uncomfortable amendments after the chamber has voted to move to final passage of a bill.... The surprise move stunned Republicans." For more on Reid's strategic move, see Brian Beutler of TPM.

Washington Post: Jonathan Silver, "the head of the Energy Department’s controversial loan guarantee program has decided to step down.... While DOE made the initial loan to Solyndra before Silver took the program’s helm — a point he made repeatedly during his congressional testimony last month — he remained the administration’s point person for the embattled initiative."

President Obama held a press conference this morning. New York Times report here. Washington Post report here.

AP: "Unions lent their muscle to the long-running protest against Wall Street and economic inequality Wednesday.... Thousands of protesters, including many in union T-shirts, filled lower Manhattan's Foley Square on Wednesday and then marched to Zuccotti Park, where the protesters have been camping since Sept. 17. Labor leaders say they will continue to support the protests, both with manpower and donations of goods and services." Los Angeles Times story here. See today's Commentariat & yesterday's Ledes for other news, commentary & video on yesterday's events. ...

... Washington Post: "The Occupy Wall Street protest movement is trying to build momentum in Washington, with Occupy D.C. demonstrators planning to gather Thursday at Freedom Plaza." With Video. The Post's Annie Gowen will be tweeting developments from this page. The Occupy DC Website is here. ...

     ... Update: the Washington Post report on the peaceful "occupation" is here.

NBC News: "Nevada will hold its presidential nominating contest Jan. 14.... The primary calendar continues to take shape, moving into early January. Florida started the chain reaction, when it defied Republican National Committee rules and set its primary for Jan. 31. Following that, South Carolina moved its primary to Jan. 21."

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. -- Barack Obama ...

... The New York Times obituary for Steve Jobs, which we also linked in yesterday's Ledes, has links to related stories & multimedia-format information about Jobs.

New York Times: "Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who worked to expose the persistence of racism in America through his books and articles and his provocative career moves — he gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s hiring practices — died on Wednesday in New York. He was 80."

AP: "The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded Thursday to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II."

AP: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords [D-Ariz.] is scheduled to attend her husband's retirement ceremony in Washington. The Arizona congresswoman ... is set to join her husband, Navy Capt. Mark Kelly, at an event Thursday that will be presided over by Vice President Joe Biden."

AP: First Lady "Michelle Obama ... paid a visit to Secret Service headquarters on Wednesday to thank workers at the agency that, among its many duties, protects the first family."

AP: Entergy, "the operator of an aging nuclear power plant near New York City, has hired former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to vouch for its safety in a new ad campaign.... The operator is seeking to renew its licenses for its two reactors. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for the plant to be shut down due to safety concerns."