The Commentariat -- April 19

Ben Bradlee & Bob Woodward at the Nixon Library Museum. AP photo.

Barry Goldwater was a tremendously useful source. No one thought that Barry Goldwater would have a friend at The Washington Post, but he was my wife’s mother’s — should I say it? — boyfriend. We saw a lot of Barry Goldwater. -- Ben Bradlee, legendary Washington Post editor, speaking at the Nixon Library

** "Watergate's Last Chapter." James Hohmann of Politico. "When the museum at Richard Nixon’s library opened in 1990, the only American to resign the presidency was still alive, and his loyalists were still fighting the battles of the early 1970s. The museum’s display on Watergate quoted a book accusing Bob Woodward of 'offering bribes' to get scoops. The library director made his own views plain: 'I don’t think we’d ever open the doors to Bob Woodward. He’s not a responsible journalist.' On Monday evening, the library did indeed open its doors to Woodward and his old boss, former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee.... A crowd of almost 1,000 welcomed Woodward and Bradlee with a standing ovation...."

President Obama tells off Texas newsman Brad Watson of WFAA. Via Michael Scherer of Time:

     ... Too bad President Obama didn't do this with Bill O'Reilly, who during his Super Bowl interview confrontation, interrupted the President 48 times, by this count:

Democrats are already running against Paul Ryan & his nasty budget plan:

CW: This story is firewalled, so the link is useless for nonsubscribers, but the lede is enough. Dave Wessel of the Wall Street Journal: "U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy. The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad." CW: I guess we'll have to ask GE CEO Jeff Immelt, President Obama's top outside advisor on jobs creation, what to do. Update: thanks to reader Barbara S. who found this link to the full article, which is good for a limited time. ...

... A reader suggests this post from David Sirota on Ikea's "race to the bottom": Ikea opened a plant in Danville, Virginia, to build the same products Ikea makes in its home country of Sweden because the Danville plant pays less than half the minimum wage & benefits paid in Sweden. Don't kid yourself that the U.S. "won" by paying its workers a pittance compared to European standards. "... workers in Danville have lost ground in the overall transaction — just as workers in the rest of America and around the world are losing ground in what has become a destructive wage-cutting race to the bottom." Here's the underlying story by Nathaniel Popper of the Los Angeles Times.

Fracking Joe Nocera of the New York Times has dropped his advocacy for natural gas drilling to get back to something he knows something about: "the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ... is a coddler, a protector, an outright enabler of the [financial] institutions it oversees." Comments are here.

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Income for the Obama household continued to slip in 2010, tax returns show, as proceeds from President Obama’s best-selling books tapered off. But just as he has said, his income is easily high enough to make the family eligible for a tax increase under his own deficit-reduction proposals." ...

... Also from Calmes: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on May 5 will host the first meeting on deficit reduction with members of Congress since President Obama last week called for a bipartisan group to start negotiating an austerity plan, the White House announced late on Monday. One problem, though: The Republican House and Senate leaders have not named their negotiators and show little inclination to do so. The Democratic leaders were hardly more enthusiastic in announcing their designees over the weekend." ...

... Adam Sorensen of Time: "When political debate grinds to a standstill and all hope for compromise seems lost, there’s nothing quite as cathartic as getting everyone together in a room and… restating irreconcilable differences in front of the cameras. President Obama’s deficit reduction proposal and Paul Ryan’s “Path” are miles apart, and there’s limited enthusiasm on both sides about a yet-to-be-detailed plan from the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Six. But all those parties will likely be represented at a May 5 Blair House summit just announced by the White House."

Jay Newton-Small of Time: "... everyone is still playing politics with the debt ceiling. This shouldn’t be that surprising: we’re months away from a deal and now is the time to draw lines in the sand. But the S&P’s bleak outlook should serve as a warning: The next two months of public negotiations could have real repercussions on the markets." ...

... Brian Beutler of TPM: "... House Democrats are coalescing around the view that the debt limit should be hiked without major concessions to the GOP attached to it.... If House Democrats hold to that position, they'll force House Republicans to pass a debt limit hike with only Republican votes.... There's a high likelihood [Republican Tea Party members] would reach way too far, and be a non-starter in the Senate and with the White House.... [Speaker] Boehner ...knows the debt limit needs to be lifted. He knows that to get a debt limit bill through the Senate, he needs Democratic buy in. And if [Minority Leader] Pelosi and her leadership team keep Democrats aligned, he knows that means ditching just about all the concessions Republicans want."

Bill Saparito of Time: "It's been an interesting couple of days in the place where money and gambling intersects, otherwise known as Wall Street. Over the weekend, the Internet gambling sites PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker got taken down by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which among other things covers lower Manhattan, where the NYSE lives. On Monday, the stock market got taken down by Standard & Poors.... This is hypocrisy doubled down. The connection between the two events is that Wall Streeters absolutely love poker.... Hasn't Bharara now charged more people (11) for running poker sites that people like and that have harmed few, than he has for causing the financial collapse that has harmed all of us?"

Greg Sargent: Texas Democrats are pushing retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to run for the Senate in 2012. Because of Sanchez' culpability in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, for which "Senate Dems excoriated Sanchez, if Sanchez does enter the race, we could very well see a full and public airing of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Could get very interesting."

David Ingram of the Legal Times: "House Republicans have hired former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clement to lead their defense of the ban on federal recognition of same-sex marriage, giving lawmakers the benefit of one of the nation's best-recognized appellate lawyers." ...

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Speaker John Boehner’s (R) office announced that American taxpayers would pay former Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. Clement, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, is widely viewed as one of nation’s leading appellate attorneys. He is also one of the most expensive."

House-Hunters International. Missed this one. David Sanger & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has begun seeking a country, most likely in Africa, that might be willing to provide shelter to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi if he were forced out of Libya, even as a new wave of intelligence reports suggest that no rebel leader has emerged as a credible successor to the Libyan dictator."

NEW. The Tea Party, Finnish Edition. Karl Ritter & Matti Huuhtanen of the AP: "They call themselves the True Finns: down-to-earth, hardworking people who love their country but feel neglected by its political elite. They're tired of bailing out southern Europeans who lived beyond their means. And wary of Somali, Iraqi and other immigrants who are slowly reshaping the homogenous nation of their forefathers — the tenacious Finns who halted the advance of the mighty Red Army during World War II. Overnight they've redrawn the political map of this Nordic country and caused a major headache for European countries negotiating a bailout package for debt-ridden Portugal."

Right Wing World *

A Downside to Constantly Lying to Your Base? -- Donald Trump. Adam Serwer: in the Washington Post: "Trump’s candidacy is largely a problem of the GOP’s own making. It’s a symptom of circumstances Republicans have spent the last two years tacitly cultivating as an asset. Republican leaders have at best refused to tamp down the most outlandish right-wing conspiracy-mongering about the president and at worst have actively enabled it. The result: A substantial portion of their base believes a complete myth about the president’s birth certificate, and Republicans are stuck with a candidate shameless enough to exploit the issue without resorting to the usual euphemisms more respectable Republicans tend to employ when hinting at the president’s supposed cultural otherness." ...

... After running down some of Donald Trump's "qualifications," Gene Robinson says, in view of the lackluster field of Republican presidential candidates, "If he now has decided to take himself seriously, I’m afraid we’re going to have to follow suit."

Susan Page of USA Today: All of the GOP candidates for president are "fatally flawed," & each is trying out different methods of hiding or getting around their "afflictions." "As the Republican presidential field begins to form for 2012, the major contenders have been trying different strategies — apologies, explanations, rebuttals and more — to try to deal with flaws that could be fatal in the eyes of GOP primary voters. (P.S. Luckily, John McCain is ready with some good advice for them.)

Right Wing World's favorite "intellectual" magazine, the National Review, proves one thing: a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Roger Ailes Is Nuts. John Cook & Hamilton Nolan of Gawker: "The small-town newspapers in New York's Hudson Valley that Fox News chief Roger Ailes owns with his wife Elizabeth are in a staff revolt after employees caught Ailes spying on them with News Corp. security goons." The Ailes, who own a large retirement home in the area, bought two local papers which Elizabeth "manages." "Ailes ... has run the papers with the singularly paranoid and abusive management style he brings to all his projects, resulting in the defection of his hand-picked editor and two top reporters earlier this month after Ailes told them he'd had them followed, and their private conversations surveilled, to catch them saying mean things about him. The spying followed years of intense weirdness between the editor and the Aileses, who once asked him to personally stop a break-in at their home and who implied that, after Roger's death, he'd be expected to replace him in their marriage." And the beat goes on.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

President Obama held a townhall meeting at Northern Virginia Community College this morning:

Washington Post: "A White House plane carrying Michelle Obama came dangerously close to a 200-ton military cargo jet and had to abort its landing at Joint Base Andrews on Monday as the result of an air traffic controller’s mistake, according to federal officials familiar with the incident. Ultimately controllers at Andrews feared the cargo jet would not clear the runway in time, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for their agencies."

New York Times: "Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking classified government documents to the Web site WikiLeaks, will be moved from near-solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va., to another prison under conditions that may be less restrictive.... Last week, a United Nations torture investigator said that he had been denied an unmonitored visit to Private Manning , while Amnesty International has said that his treatment may violate his rights."

Pioneer Press: "More than enough signatures have been collected in an effort to recall Republican Wisconsin state Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, organizers announced Monday. Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zielinski said a petition will be filed with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board on Tuesday.... Across the state petitions to recall three other senators — Luther Olsen, R-Ripon; Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac; and Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse —already have been filed with the Government Accountability Board."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The state's top election watchdog agency has satisfied itself that results certified by Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus for the April 5 election are consistent with totals reported by municipalities, though 'a few anomalies' were found in a four-day investigation."

The Hill: "Despite long odds against immigration reform, President Obama on Tuesday urged a wide range of activists and officials to keep pushing the issue. The president told the group, which included Rev. Al Sharpton, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that for Congress to act, they will have to put pressure on Capitol Hill."

Los Angeles Times: "At least three people were killed and a large number were arrested early Tuesday after Syrian security forces opened fire on peaceful protesters in Homs, the country's third-largest city, said a resident who participated in the demonstration." With horrifying AP video.

AP: "The storms that chugged across the South last week killed at least 44 people in six states, but the worst devastation came over about four hours Saturday in North Carolina.... Statewide, costs will likely be at least in the tens of millions because the weather raged through densely populated cities, trashing homes, businesses and public buildings."

Michelle Obama on White House laundry duty:

Re: New York Times Content -- II

As always, what's going on with the Times is a matter of speculation, and I still await a definitive answer from them on links to content via Reality Chex. However, based on feedback from many readers, I am guessing what may be happening is this: the Times counts each time a non-subscriber links through Reality Chex, but after the non-subscriber has reached 20 hits for the month, the Times allows her to continue to link through. That, at least, seems to be what is happening.

Here are a few helpful hints on other Times-sanctioned ways to jumpt the paywall:

Reader Bill C. writes, "If you subscribe to NYT e-mail updates, then you can use those links for free (i.e. they do count toward the 20, but there's zero penalty for going over 20).  So, if you get 'Today's Headlines' and 'Opinion Today,' you've got all the top stories already." This seems to be an excellent way to jump the paywall without raising the hackles of Mr. Sulzberger. It is, after all, his own program.

You can customize & subscribe to Times e-mail alerts. Log-in to the Times site (or register) at the link which appears at the top right of the home page (and other pages). Once you're logged in, click on your name at the top right corner of the page, where it says "Welcome: [Your Name]." This should bring up the "My Account" page. Scroll down & click on "Sign up for E-mail newsletter." This will bring up a page titled "E-mail Subscription." Scroll down to "Today's Headlines" and check off the types of stories that interest you. then click on "Subscribe." Easy, right?

I tried this several times, & each time the prompts seemed to move me through a slightly different sequence, so you may have to noodle around a little to get to that "E-mail Subscription" page. And you'll have to enter your password a number of times. I haven't received my first Times e-mail newsletter yet, so I don't know what kind of lagtime there is between the time a story goes up online and the e-mail arrives. But it may be worth a try.

Bill also writes, "Krugman has an RSS feed (feed://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/feed/) that gives you free (in the same sense as above) access to all his blog posts.  (Also, Krugman himself noted that his Twitter feed will do the same thing.)" Here's Krugman's post on the Twitter feed. Links to the RSS & Twitter feeds are in the right column of his blogpost page.

Thanks to everyone for your input, & especially to Bill C. I hope this helps. I'll update you if & when I have any new info. -- Constant Weader

Update: I got my first Times headlines e-mail at 7:06 am ET, & it's pretty comprehensive, so this looks like a very good way for non-subscribers to go as long as the Times continues to allow unlimited links via these e-mails.

The Commentariat -- April 18

The Attorney General should resign if he can't bring this case [against Goldman Sachs executives]. -- Elliot Spitzer

Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi & Anderson Cooper discuss Goldman Sachs banksters. Via Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars, who has a good comment to accompany the video:

     ... ** "Too Big to Prosecute." Madrak also recommends this article by William Greider in The Nation on "how Wall Street crooks get out of jail free." CW: so do I.

Paul Krugman offers a defense of Democratic values as expressed in President Obama's budget speech. In so doing, he eviscerates the Heritage Foundation, which provided Paul Ryan with his fake budget numbers. Krugman also takes down Republican claims that the 2010 election was a mandate:

But last year the G.O.P. ran against what it called the 'massive Medicare cuts' contained in the health reform law. How, then, can the election have provided a mandate for a plan that not only would preserve all of those cuts, but would go on, over time, to dismantle Medicare completely?

     ... Krugman's most important point is his disdain for what is being hyped as a "bipartisan solution":

... right now 'bipartisan' is usually code for assembling some conservative Democrats and ultraconservative Republicans — all of them with close ties to the wealthy, and many who are wealthy themselves — and having them proclaim that low taxes on high incomes and drastic cuts in social insurance are the only possible solution. ...

     ... Comments on Krugman's column are here.

... Steve Benen on the same subject: "By all appearances, Democrats in [the Gang of Six] are prepared to effective[ly] give up any hopes of progressive governance for a generation and give in to entitlement cuts, in exchange for tax increases that sane Republicans should consider a no-brainer anyway." ...

... But conserv-o-bot Ross Douthat of the New York Times says, really, the middle class must suffer. The comments are here. ...

     ... Joan Walsh of Salon: Ross Douthat, like so many conservatives, is afraid of "brown and beige" people. (See also Karen Garcia [#2] on this in the comments to Douthat's disgusting little column).

George Packer of the New Yorker on a few reasons Republicans win all the battles with President Obama: "... they’re willing to deploy legislative terrorism — threatening to shut down the government and to allow the United States to default on its debt — to get their way. In politics, the side with a fixed notion of ends and an unscrupulous approach to means always has the advantage."

The effective rate for the top 400 taxpayers has gone from 30 cents on the dollar in 1993 to 22 cents at the end of the Clinton years to 16.6 cents under Bush. So their effective rate has gone down more than 40 percent [CW: since 1993!]. The overarching drive right now is to push the burden of government, of taxes, down the income ladder. -- David Cay Johnston, tax expert ...

... Adieu, Noblesse Oblige. E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "If the ruling class were as worried about the deficit as it claims to be, it would accept that the wealthiest people in society have a duty to pony up more for the very government whose police power and military protect them, their property and their wealth."

Zachary Goldfarb & Perry Bacon, Jr., of the Washington Post: "President Obama will hit the road this week and forcibly deliver his message that a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich is necessary to rein in the nation’s rocketing debt — a high-stakes effort to rally public support ahead of a series of contentious budget battles in Congress.

From Yesterday's Ledes: The Hill: "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boldly predicted that Congress will vote to raise the debt ceiling next month, warning that failure to do so would bring 'catastrophic' consequences for the U.S. and global economies. Geithner, appearing on ABC's 'This Week,' said that if House Republicans were to push the vote to the brink or fail to raise the limit, it would 'make the last [financial] crisis look like a tame, modest crisis.'" ...

... Greg Sargent points out the money quote (literally) from Geithner's ABC News "This Week" interview:

They [the Republican leadership] recognize it, and they told the president that on Wednesday in the White House. And I sat there with them, and they said, we recognize we have to do this. And we’re not going to play around with it. -- Tim Geithner. Here's the video:

     ... Sargent supplies a response from Speaker Boehner's spokesman:

Boehner has been very clear: the American people demand that any increase in the debt ceiling be accompanied by spending cuts, and real reforms so we can keep cutting. They won’t accept another increase in the federal government’s credit card limit without action to address the underlying problem of runaway government spending. ...

... Meanwhile, Philip Rucker of the Washington Post reports that "Financial industry executives, business leaders and Treasury Department officials are visiting the [Tea Party] freshmen in their offices, briefing them in small groups and even cornering them at dinner parties. It’s all part of a behind-the-scenes campaign to school congressional newcomers in the economic stakes of Washington’s next big fiscal fight: over the debt ceiling.

On my watch, controllers will not be paid to take naps. We're not going to allow that. -- Ray LaHood, Transportation Secretary ...

... Joan Lowy of the AP: "Air traffic controllers will get an extra hour off between shifts so they don't doze off at work, but officials have rejected another proposed remedy: on-the-job napping....That's exactly the opposite of what scientists and the Federal Aviation Administration's own fatigue working group said was needed even before the five cases of sleeping controllers that have been disclosed since late March." CW: Ray LaHood is a Republican. Did you really expect him to believe scientists?

Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "For the past four years, the foreign companies that control the global Internet poker industry have helped bankroll an elaborate lobbying campaign here, seeking to keep the United States from shutting their American operations down. Former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, has been the public face of the effort, which has included ... hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to a disparate assortment of lawmakers, including Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada.... But late last week, the United States Department of Justice ... indicted top executives at PokerStars, FullTilt Poker and Absolute Poker, accusing them of fraud and money laundering. In doing so the government has taken on a politically powerful industry that for a while seemed like it might transform gambling around the world."

Right Wing World *

When Republicans are so fact-free that even Fred Hiatt -- the right-wing, warmongering editor of the Washington Post -- turns against them: Hiatt writes, "  The Republican self-deception that draws the most attention is the refusal to believe that Barack Obama is American-born. But there are Republican doctrinal fantasies that may be more dangerous: the conviction that taxes can always go down, but never up, for example, and the gathering consensus among Republican leaders that human-caused climate change does not exist."

In Right Wing World, Double-Talk Is Best, but Stonewalling Works, too. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: at a Tea Party event in New Hampshire, "exploring" Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty says he "generally" supports the Ryan budget plan, but he won't say whether he supports the Medicare cuts -- which are a central, defining element to the Ryan plan. Here's video of the Q & Not-A:

"Paul Ryan Shrugged." Karen Garcia examines the hypocrisies of Ayn Rand & of her political acolytes who have turned her inane novels into disastrous government policies & proposals: "Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan, the Brangelina of nihilistic free market capitalism, are both having career surges this weekend -- she with a movie premiere and he with another gala performance of 'Killing Medicare' on the Sunday morning talk show circuit.  So what if one of them is physically dead, and the other is an intellectual flat-liner?" ...

... In an op-ed comment (#7), Garcia noted that "Ryan" is an anagram for "Ayn R." But for a real Rand (not named for Ayn, which he can't even pronounce [see video in the April 13 Commentariat]), you might want to check out Rand Paul's appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" where he says a budget compromise is necessary. Here's Paul's idea of a compromise:

But the compromise is not to raise taxes.... The compromise is for conservatives to admit that the military budget’s going to have to be cut.... Liberals will have to compromise and will have to cut domestic welfare.... The compromise is where we cut, not where we raise taxes. The problem is if you give them more money in Washington, they're not to be trusted.

Donald Trump's Humility Tour, Con'd.:

I'm a much bigger business man and have (a) much, much bigger net worth. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney. I built a very big net worth and I’d like to put that ability ... to work for this country. -- Donald Trump, on CNN, the new go-to network for Republicans. With video.

... Andrew Leonard of Salon: How rich is Donald Trump, really? But "The more interesting question is just how good a businessman Trump is. His career has been full of wild swings and bankruptcies and desperate corporate restructurings." ...

... AND the Donald picks the "Worst President Ever." Again and again: Bush II, Carter, Obama, whoever.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

** Wow! Tucson Sentinel: "Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill Monday that would have required presidential candidates to provide their birth certificates to appear on the ballot, and another that would have allowed guns to be carried on school grounds. Brewer also vetoed a bill that would have directed the governor to set up an alliance with other states to regulate health care, in a challenge to the federal government."

Washington Post: President "Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported a gross income of $1,728,096 in 2010, according to their federal tax returns, which the White House released Monday. President Obama collects a $400,000 salary as commander in chief, but received the vast majority of his income from sales of his three non-fiction books: 'The Audacity of Hope,' 'Dreams From My Father' and 'Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.' The Obamas paid $453,770 in federal taxes. The First Family donated $245,075, about 14 percent of their income, to 36 different charities. The largest gift was a $131,075 donation to Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit that builds homes near military hospitals where family members can temporarily stay free of charge while a wounded service member recovers." You can link to pdfs of the Obamas' and Bidens' tax returns & tax receipts here (pdf's).

Washington Post: "A Cleveland air traffic controller and a manager were suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration this week after a movie soundtrack was heard playing over a radio frequency by the pilot of a military aircraft, the FAA said Monday night."

Wall Street Journal: "A blunt warning Monday from a credit rating firm about the U.S. government's mounting debt pushed stock markets lower and intensified political divisions in Washington about how best to tackle growing deficits. Both the Obama administration and House Republicans scrambled to gain leverage from Standard & Poor's changing its outlook on U.S. Treasury securities to 'negative' from 'stable.'" New York Times story here.