The Commentariat -- December 31

The New York Times has 10 videos of different events of the year in review.

Francis Battista of Best Friends Animal Society: "Now that President Obama has jumped on the Michael Vick bandwagon with an official call to Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie to congratulate him for giving the quarterback another chance, all of us here at Best Friends are waiting for a call from the White House to congratulate us for giving Vick’s dogs a second chance. I’m quite sure that the other organizations that also took on some of the canine survivors of the football star’s dogfighting operation are similarly poised." Thanks to a progressive friend for the link; she signs herself "Sanctimonious Purrrrrist."

Sam Harris in Common Dreams suggests a New Year's resolution for the rich: let's sponsor a 21st-century Renaissance right here in the U.S.A. Thanks to Kate M. for the link.

Amy Lee of the Huffington Post: "For affluent Americans outraged by ... tax cuts ... [that were] extended for two more years, a trio of ... academics has furnished a way for them to put their money where their mouth is. Their new website, giveitbackforjobs.org, invites high-income Americans to calculate the value of their tax cut under the extension and then pledge to donate that money directly to charities.... The site doesn't accept contributions directly, but links users to the charities." CW Irony Alert: what Lee & other news writers on this story don't mention is that the rich who donate to these laudable charities will end up getting tax breaks for the donations; 100% of the donation will be deducted from their earned income & they won't have to pay taxes on it. It's a double tax cut!

** Jeffrey Sachs in the Guardian: "US politics, often decried for its 'partisanship', is all too bipartisan – in its deeply dysfunctional consensus on tax and wealth.... Obama swept to power on the promise of change. So far, there has been none. His administration is filled with Wall Street bankers. His top officials leave to join the banks, as his budget director Peter Orszag recently did. Obama is always ready to serve the interests of the rich and powerful, with no line in the sand, no limit to 'compromise'."

When $65 Million Is Not Enough. Miguel Helft of the New York Times: the Winklevoss twins fight on against Time's Man of the Year.

Washington Post: "There is an 'urgent need' for Senate Democrats and Republicans to put aside their bickering and fill federal judicial vacancies, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote Friday in his annual State of the Judiciary report."

AP: "Billy the Kid, the Old West outlaw who killed at least three lawmen and tried to cut a deal from jail with territorial authorities, won't be pardoned, Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday. The prospect of a pardon for the notorious frontier figure nearly 130 years after his death drew international attention to New Mexico, centering on whether Billy the Kid had been promised a pardon from New Mexico's territorial governor in return for testimony in killings he had witnessed. But the facts of the case didn't support a pardon, Richardson said Friday on ABC's 'Good Morning America.'" The ABC News story & interview of Gov. Richardson is here.

Marcus Baram of the Huffington Post: in his new epilogue to the paperback edition of The Promise, Jonathan Alter writes (according to Baram), that "the Obama administration's perceived failure to take laser-like aim at the unemployment crisis was partly due to the dysfunctional relationship between White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, top economic adviser Larry Summers and senior adviser David Axelrod, specifically the intransigence of Summers." ...

... "The New Voodoo." Paul Krugman is on hypocrisy patrol & he gives Congressional Republicans special dishonorable mention. ...

... Ezra Klein tries to define Obamanomics, & the best he can come up with is this: "... the Obama administration sought to support or improve private markets." Krugman & Wells, whom we linked yesterday, do a better job. But they would. ...

... On the stupidity of tea party demands to attach some Article of the Constitution to every House bill, Klein does a better job. ...

... Steve Benen adds, "... all of this is part of a larger, misguided push intended to show that conservatives are the Constitution's true champions. But ... it's crazy. We are, after all, talking about a House Republican caucus with leaders who support allowing states to overturn federal laws they don't like. In recent years, congressional Republicans ... have advocated constitutional concepts that were discredited generations ago."

John Broder of the New York Times: "With the federal government set to regulate climate-altering gases from factories and power plants for the first time beginning on Sunday, the Obama administration and the new Congress are headed for a clash that carries substantial risks for both sides."

CW: since I don't read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, naturally I missed this op-ed by famed First Amendment defender Floyd Abrams in which he trashes Julian Assange & WikiLeaks. Jack Shafer's answer to Abrams is mighty fine; Shafer makes it pretty clear that the uninformed Abrams has bought into some of those "smears & misconceptions" outlined below. CW: the trouble with having too many friends in high places is that you start to believe the high-placed friends.

Julianne Shepherd & Tana Ganeva in AlterNet: "8 Smears and Misconceptions about WikiLeaks Spread by the Media."

Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Partly because of its design but also because of confusion among its users, the [State Department] database [known as Net-Centric Diplomacy] became an inadvertent repository for a vast array of State Department cables.... Unfortunately for the department, the system lacked features to detect the unauthorized downloading by Pentagon employees and others of massive amounts of data.... The result was a disastrous setback for U.S. diplomatic efforts around the globe."

Bumping the TSA. Derek Kravitz of the Washington Post: "Some of the nation's biggest airports are responding to recent public outrage over security screening by weighing whether they should hire private firms ... to replace the Transportation Security Administration. Sixteen airports, including San Francisco and Kansas City International Airport, have made the switch since 2002." ...

... Meanwhile ... Ashley Halsey of the Washington Post: "The air traffic controllers in the Washington region, who direct more than 1.5 million flights, have made a record number of mistakes this year, triggering cockpit collision warning systems dozens of times."

Susan Jacoby, ever the realist, has a very fine op-ed in the New York Times about what to really expect from old age.

Ginger Thompson & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Since leaving the White House, [Lanny] Davis has built a client list that now includes coup supporters in Honduras, a dictator in Equatorial Guinea, for-profit colleges accused of exploiting students, and a company that dominates the manufacture of additives for infant formula. This month, he agreed to represent the Ivory Coast strongman whose claims to that country’s presidency have been condemned by the international community.... [Davis's] role in West Africa has stoked growing criticism that Mr. Davis has become a kind of front man for the dark side, willing to take on some of the world’s least noble companies and causes."

"Man with a Movie Camera" Redux

This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject. (1) Because of its wonderful quality. (2) Because of its role as homage. It is directly inspired by Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent classic 'Man With a Movie Camera.' (3) Because it represents an almost unbelievable technical proficiency. -- Roger Ebert, written without irony

Here's the Vertov film:

Not that this isn't an artistic classic:

The Commentariat -- December 30

** Paul Krugman & Robin Wells in the New York Review of Books: President Obama has totally fucked up the hoped-for economic recovery: "Democrats need to make it clear that if Obama isn’t going to be the leader of the Democratic agenda — and all indications are that he can’t or won’t — they will advance that agenda anyway, with or without his help. They have to be ready to delink their political fate from Obama, and make it clear that they won’t tolerate further undermining of their goals by deluded calls for bipartisanship."

** Revolving Door. Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "The president's recently departed budget director is joining Citigroup. The New York Federal Reserve Bank's derivatives expert is joining Goldman Sachs.... The vast overhaul of financial regulations and the renewed intensity of investigations into white-collar crime has been a boon for regulators, prosecutors and financial policymakers looking to cash in on their government experience and contacts. In recent months, prominent officials from the White House, Justice Department, SEC, banking regulators and other agencies, both federal and state, a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR2010122902721.html?hpid=topnews" target="_blank">have been walking through the proverbial revolving door to join Goldman, Citi, other financial companies and top law firms in Washington and New York." ...

... Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "The federal internship program that President Obama plans to shut down in March has been criticized by union leaders for 'abuses.' ... But what were abuses to some ... were to many managers a welcome system of recruiting the best talent to their agencies. And they say scrapping the program in favor of one geared solely to recent school graduates will leave them at a big disadvantage." ...

... ** Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: "As they return home to the worst labor market in generations, the veterans who are publicly venerated for their patriotism and service are also having a harder time than most finding work.... While their nonmilitary contemporaries were launching careers during the nearly 10 years the nation has been at war, troops were repeatedly deployed to desolate war zones. And on their return to civilian life, these veterans are forced to find their way in a bleak economy where the skills they learned at war have little value."

Pitchfork & Torches Time. Arthur Delaney & Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post: Glenn Beck advocates for the return of the 19th-century (& before) poorhouse. President Obama seems to like the idea. ...

... Paul Rosenberg elaborates in Open Left: "Barack Obama [is] sleepwalking us back to Grover Cleveland-land, as he articulates more and more of the age-old conservative Republican mindset."

Ruth Simon of the Wall Street Journal: "Some big U.S. banks are starting to increase their lending to businesses as demand for loans rises and healthier banks seek to grab customers from weaker rivals. After declining steadily for most of the past two years, the amount of commercial and industrial loans held by commercial banks inched upward during the past two months, according to the Federal Reserve.... An uptick in business lending is an optimistic sign for the economy...."

New York Times Editors: "... new Republican rules will gut pay-as-you-go because they require offsets only for entitlement increases, not for tax cuts. In effect, the new rules will codify the Republican fantasy that tax cuts do not deepen the deficit."

Tom Jackman of the Washington Post: "A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that noncitizens in criminal cases must be advised of the possible consequences of a conviction has sparked a flurry of appeals by defendants who claim that they didn't know that conviction would lead to deportation.... Judges and lawyers across the country have scrambled to deal with the ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Court's March ruling in Padilla v. Kentucky, which clarified a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel."

Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is expressing alarm over reports that thousands of political separatists and captured Taliban insurgents have disappeared into the hands of Pakistan’s police and security forces, and that some may have been tortured or killed.... The concern is over a steady stream of accounts from human rights groups that Pakistan’s security services have rounded up thousands of people over the past decade, mainly in Baluchistan, a vast and restive province...."

Carlotta Gall & Ruhullah Khapalwak of the New York Times: "The inauguration of a new [Afghan] Parliament in just weeks threatens to worsen ethnic tensions and instability and to drive an important part of President Hamid Karzai’s political base into the arms of the insurgency, Afghans and foreign officials warn."

David Barboza of the New York Times: why Shanghai students outperform students 65 other countries -- "discipline, rote learning and obsessive test preparation." ...

... BUT Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principal of Peking University High School, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the regimentation that produces high test scores also has meant that Chinese students "... cannot work independently, lack the social skills to work in a team and are too arrogant to learn new skills."

Behind the Scenes. President Obama signs repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell:

Crackpot News

David Catanese of Politico: "Former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell issued a remarkable statement Wednesday night, accusing both political parties in Delaware and the Vice President of the United States of trying to destroy her political career through charges she misused campaign funds." Catanese includes O'Donnell's complete statement. ...

Philip Rucker & Krissah Thompson of the Washington Post: House Republicans will institute new rules that (1) will require opening the Congressional session by reading the Constitution aloud. (2) "And then they will require that every new bill contain a statement by the lawmaker who wrote it citing the constitutional authority to enact the proposed legislation. Call it the tea party-ization of Congress." ...

... I think it's entirely cosmetic. This is the way the establishment handles grass-roots movements. They humor people who are not expert or not fully cognizant. And then once they've humored them and those people go away, it's right back to business as usual. It looks like this will be business as usual -- except for the half-hour or however long it takes to read the Constitution out loud. -- Prof. Kevin Gutzman, a conservative libertarian

... Related: Frivolous News

Republican Presidential Contenders Fight about Flab. Jason Horowitz & Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post: "Sarah Palin has taken to assailing Michelle Obama's anti-obesity initiative on her reality show and elsewhere, while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the Republican Party's resident authority on obesity and a potential Palin rival, has been defending it from Palin's salvos. Two other possible GOP presidential contenders, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), have also praised Obama's efforts.

Michael Shear of the New York Times recalls the most famous refudiations of their earlier positions made by politicians in 2010. P.S. Looks like Sarah Palin can't tell a "p" from a "d." Okay, a "p" is just an upside-down lower-case "d." CW: she's Ginger Rogers. She types upside-down. While wearing heels.