The Commentariat -- December 14

You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan. -- Richard Holbrooke's last words*

* But the Obama Administration says he was only kidding.

... ** Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy on Holbrooke's last words. ...

Richard Holbrooke, March 2010. AP photo.

** New York Times: "Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2009 and a diplomatic troubleshooter in Asia, Europe and the Middle East who worked for every Democratic president since the late 1960s, died on Monday evening in Washington. He was 69 and lived in Manhattan."

... George Packer of the New Yorker profiled Richard Holbrooke in September 2009. ...

... Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times writes a remembrance of diplomat Richard Holbrooke. ...

... Susan Glasser of Foreign Policy remembers Richard Holbrooke, who edited FP in the 1970s. ...

... Massimo Calabresi writes Richard Holbrooke's obituary for Time. ...

... Slobodan Lekic of the AP: "World leaders on Tuesday praised Richard Holbrooke as the 'Bulldozer' diplomat who engineered the end of Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II and sought to bring stability to war-torn Afghanistan." ...

... Statements from Presidents Obama & Clinton, Vice President Biden, Secretary Clinton & others. ...

... Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "The death of Richard C. Holbrooke, who directed the civilian side of the war in Afghanistan, leaves a major void in what has always been the most difficult and vulnerable aspect of President Obama's strategy."

Bad News for Buckley T. Ratchford:

Writer James Ledbetter, in a New York Times op-ed, on President Eisenhower's famous farewell speech. in which he warned about "the military-industrial complex." Sam Roberts of the Times has a story on the release of documents related to & earlier drafts of the speech. You can read those documents here, and watch the speech here.

So, first you read this:

I don't think there's a sense that I've been successful. I think people still feel that over all, Washington is about a lot of politics and special interests and big money, but that ordinary people's voices too often aren't represented, and so my hope is that we're going to continue rebuilding a trust in government. -- Barack Obama ...

... THEN, on the same page, you read this:

President Obama met with the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Gates's wife, Melinda, in the Oval Office on Tuesday to discuss their pledge to give away most of their money to charity. 'During the visit, they also discussed ideas for growing the economy and making America more competitive including investment in education to better prepare the next generation and investing in innovative areas with opportunity for growth,' a White House official said in an e-mail to reporters."

In a Bloomberg poll..., just 7% [of respondents] said [Wall Street bonuses] should remain an incentive. To put that 7% figure in perspective, 6% of Americans believe the moon landings were a hoax; 7% believe Elvis lives; 24% believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim; 41% believe in ESP; and 48% believe in creationism. Americans will believe anything, it seems — except the idea that incentivizing bankers at systemically-important institutions to take big risks makes any sense at all. Now all we need to do is find one or two people in the Obama administration who are aligned with the 88% rather than the 7%. I’m not holding my breath. -- Felix Salmon of Bloomberg ...

... "Welcome to the World of the Temporary Tax Code." John McKinnon, et al. of the Wall Street Journal: if the Obama tax-cut deal passes, as expected, "the U.S. will have no permanent regime governing levies on salaries, capital gains and dividends, the Social Security tax, as well as a slew of targeted breaks for families, students and other groups. This on top of dozens of corporate-tax provisions that already were subject to annual renewal. The level of uncertainty, unusual for developed nations, complicates planning and discourages hiring and investment, many economists and corporate executives say." ...

... AP: "The struggle over tax cuts is seriously straining President Barack Obama's relationship with House Democrats, who have backed him on key issues even when it cost them politically. Expressing hurt and bewilderment, Democratic lawmakers say Obama ignored them at crucial negotiating moments, misled them about his intentions and made needless concessions to Republicans."

Two analyses of the ruling against the Affordable Care Law from the New York Times:

     ... Sheryl Gay Stolberg: "Judge Henry E. Hudson’s decision leaves the White House playing defense for the foreseeable future on an issue it once thought would secure Mr. Obama’s legacy." ...

     ... Kevin Sack: "Judge Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond wrote with conviction that the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance goes 'beyond the historical reach' of Supreme Court cases that limit federal regulation of commercial activity. During the last two months, however, two other federal judges ruled with equal force that the provision fell squarely within the authority Congress was granted under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution." ...

... Orin Kerr in the Volokh Conspiracy writes that Judge Hudson completely misunderstands the Necessary & Proper Clause of the Constitution & has no idea of its history of interpretation from John Marshall forward. ...

... Eric Holder & Kathleen Sebelius in a Washington Post op-ed, decry Hudson's ruling & opponents of the law who are trying to block it: "... these attacks are wrong on the law, and if allowed to succeed, they would have devastating consequences for everyone with health insurance." ...

... AND Joe Weisenthal of the Business Insider reminds us, "The health insurance companies ... are up in knee-jerk fashion on the news that a judge has struck down the individual mandate aspect of Obamacare. Investors should wake up: If this were ultimately upheld, it would be horrible news for the insurers." ...

... BUT Ezra Klein, who is a real wonk on the healthcare debate, goes into some detail on the implications of Judge Hudson's ruling & concludes:

If Republicans succeed in taking it off the table, they may sign the death warrant for private insurers in America: Eventually, rising cost pressures will force more aggressive reforms than even Obama has proposed, and if conservative judges have made the private market unfixable by removing the most effective way to deal with adverse selection problems, the only alternative will be the very constitutional, but decidedly non-conservative, single-payer path. ...

... President Obama on Hudson's ruling. Sam Stein has a portion of the transcript:

M. J. Lee of Politico: "... The Obama administration’s loan modification program will prevent 700,000 foreclosures, a fraction of the 8 to 13 million that was initially expected, by 2012," according to a report by the Congressional Oversight Panel. Former Sen. Ted Kaufman, who headed the panel, said, “'Many of the problems now plaguing HAMP are inherent in its design and cannot be fixed at this late date.'” Kaufmann urged the Treasury Department to take the necessary steps to keep home owners in their homes, such as carefully monitoring and intervening in cases where borrowers are falling behind on their payments and preventing re-defaults." CW: no kidding. This program was so fucking bank-friendly that there was no chance it was ever going to work for those in need of assistance. There's a pdf of the report here.

The collapsed roof of the Metrodome is shown in this aerial view in Minneapolis on Sunday, December 12. AP photo.Andy Borowitz: "In a move that took many political observers by surprise, the Democratic National Committee decided today to move its 2012 nominating convention to the Minneapolis Metrodome. Insiders questioned the wisdom of choosing a venue which collapsed over the weekend, but Obama political adviser David Axelrod told reporters, 'Quite frankly, we can’t think of a more appropriate site.'”

Rep. Ron Paul on the WikiLeaks dumps & our foreign policy. He speaks for me:

... AP: "A British judge granted bail to Julian Assange on Tuesday under strict monitoring conditions but the WikiLeaks founder remained in custody pending a possible appeal by Sweden. Swedish authorities had two hours to lodge an appeal against the bail decision and their lawyer, Gemma Lindfield, said it was likely she would. An appeal would have to be heard by Britain's High Court within 48 hours." New York Times story here. ...

 ... Michael Moore takes the same tack as Paul, & Moore puts his money where his mouth is; he's contributed $20,000 to Assange's bail.

Rod Norland of the New York Times: "At least 100 relief workers in Afghanistan have been killed so far this year, far more than in any previous year, prompting a debate within humanitarian organizations about whether American military strategy is putting them and the Afghans they serve at unnecessary risk. Most of the victims worked for aid contractors employed by NATO countries, with fewer victims among traditional nonprofit aid groups."

AP: "America's neighborhoods became more integrated last year than during any time in at least a century as a rising black middle class moved into fast-growing white areas in the South and West. Still, ethnic segregation in many parts of the U.S. persisted, particularly for Hispanics."

President Obama speaks at a reception for the foreign diplomatic corps, and honors Richard Holbrooke, at the United States Department of State:

The President and members of the Los Angeles Lakers work with children at a Boys and Girls Club in Washington, D.C. to send holiday greetings and care packages to service men and women:

Fats Putin

I looked the man in the eye & I was able to get a sense of his soul, brother.

... Mike Krumboltz of Yahoo! News: "The Internet is full of bizarre videos. But with all due respect to kittens who climb Christmas trees and babies who dance to Beyoncé, this clip from Vladimir Putin is a whole other level of weird."

The Commentariat -- December 13

AP photo.CW: this story by John Bresnahan & Jake Sherman of Politico so peeved me that I'm linking it & posting the article's accompanying photo (above). In the pic, the President looks like a high-school boy talking to his girlfriend. Bernahan & Sherman's lede: "House Republicans don’t take power for another three weeks, but the White House is already engaged in a behind-the-scenes charm offensive designed to build relationships with incoming committee chairmen before they become powerful adversaries." ...

... BUT. Jake Sherman: "John Boehner ... is also still smarting over the president's claim that he took taxpayers hostage to secure a tax break for the rich. In an interview with Leslie Stahl of '60 Minutes'..., Boehner said Obama showed him 'disrespect' by calling him a hostage-taker." You can watch the interview here.

Washington Post: "A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation's sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama's signature domestic initiative. U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance." The opinion is here. ...

... Ryan Reilly of TPM: "Federal judge Henry E. Hudson's ownership of a stake worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in a GOP political consulting firm that worked against health care reform -- the very law against which he ruled today -- raises some ethics questions for some of the nation's top judicial ethics experts." Thanks to Jeanne B. for pointing me to the story.

Fox "News": "If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended Sunday. Appearing on 'Fox News Sunday,' Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court's decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case 'D.C. v. Heller.'" Here's the full interview, and well worth watching:

     ... You can read the Court's majority opinion as well as Justice Breyer's & Justice Stevens' dissents in D.C. v. Heller here (pdf). Justice Breyer's dissent begins on page 114; Justice Stevens' dissent on page 68.

Paul Krugman writes two superb short posts which demonstrate how the media, in this case the ever-laughable Washington Post op-ed writers, invent ahistorical narratives to fit their own fantasies. This post is on David Broder's assertion that Obama's odious tax deal marks the beginning of his resurgence and this one is on Dana Milbank's similar claim based on his pretense that the long, drawn-out healthcare debate was all the fault of libruls insiting on the public option. "So look at how the Village constructs its mythology.... The worst of it is that I suspect Obama’s memory has gone down the same hole." Krugman writes. ...

... In his column, Krugman writes: "The root of our current troubles lies in the debt American families ran up during the Bush-era housing bubble. Twenty years ago, the average American household’s debt was 83 percent of its income; by a decade ago, that had crept up to 92 percent; but by late 2007, debts were 130 percent of income." He reiterates his opposition to the Obama tax-cut deal. ...

... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times on the Obama tax deal: "... a hefty portion of the $858 billion tax package will benefit middle- and upper-middle-income Americans — precisely the demographic that felt neglected the last two years as the White House and Congress focused on the major health care law and on helping the unemployed and people facing foreclosure." ...

... CW: compare Krugman's take in his column with Austan Goolsbee's rationale described in Herszenhorn's report. One of the two is wrong. Only time will tell which one.

"Mañana Economics." Fareed Zakaria: "What Washington is trying to do is reignite the consumption bubble - hoping to get Americans to spend money and take out loans. This plan, presidential adviser Lawrence Summers tells us, will get the economy to 'escape velocity.' ... If Americans keep spending money, using their credit cards, and buying houses, this will trigger the next technological and economic revolution. China has a different theory of how to get long-term, sustained growth. The Chinese have doubled their spending on education - with stunning results - and continue to build the world's best infrastructure." CW: which approach seems sounder?

** CW: we just can't repeat this often enough. Michael J. Moore of Bloomberg: "Wall Street’s biggest banks, rebounding after a government bailout, are set to complete their best two years in investment banking and trading, buoyed by 2010 results likely to be the second-highest ever.... The surge has come after the five banks took a combined $135 billion from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program and borrowed billions more from the Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending facilities in late 2008 and early 2009 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Since then, the firms have benefited from low interest rates and the Fed’s purchases of fixed-income securities."

CW: I don't much care for polls, but... Steven Thomma of McClatchy News: "President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. The biggest reason for Obama's fall: a sharp drop in approval among Democrats and liberals.... At the same time, he's gained nothing among independents."

Scott Brown, Standard-Issue Sellout. Donovan Slack of the Boston Globe: "From mid-June until the Fourth of July..., the [Brown] took in $140,000 from banks and investment firms and their executives.... That is 400 percent more than the $28,000 received on average by all Republican senators during the same three weeks. As the money poured in, Brown and his Senate staff were working both publicly and behind the scenes to scuttle $19 billion in fees on the financial industry that would have paid for part of the regulatory overhaul, and to weaken a provision intended to curb certain types of investment activities by banks and insurance companies. Both efforts were successful and were adopted as part of the final bill...."

Kate Zernike of the New York Times profiles Rep. Ron Paul, whom fellow-Republicans have shunned but are now recognizing for his tea party bona fides -- and singular ideas.

** Caleb Crain for The New Yorker on the original Tea Party: "... over the past two years the history of America’s first insurgency has taken on a new pertinence, as the Tea Party movement has laid claim to its anti-tax and pro-liberty principles — and has inadvertently reproduced its penchant for conspiracy theory, misinformation, demagoguery, and even threats of violence. Furthermore, in much the way that journalists have begun to ask whether shadowy corporate interests may be sponsoring today’s Tea Party, historians have long speculated that merchants may have instigated early unrest to protect smuggling profits from British regulators—that the start of the Revolution may have been Astroturfed." CW: this is a long piece, a fine diversion for a cold winter's day. ...

... Less fun is Raffi Khatchadourian's long New Yorker piece on Julian Assange & the WikiLeaks organization. Khatchadourian obviously obviously got up close & personal with Assange & the operation.

James Grimaldi & Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "As an unprecedented number of American guns flows to the murderous drug cartels across the border [to Mexico], the identities of U.S. dealers that sell guns seized at Mexican crime scenes remain confidential under a law passed by Congress in 2003. A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has cracked that secrecy and uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico in the past two years." The Post has traced the biggest culprit as Texas, & within Texas, Houston, and within Houston, a gun deal named Bill Carter.

David Carr of the New York Times: "... with each successive release, WikiLeaks has become more strategic and has been rewarded with deeper, more extensive coverage of its revelations."

Appearing on Fox "News," Sen. John McCain got a good laugh out of Obama's reversal on tax cuts for the rich. But Faiz Shakir Think Progress demonstrates that McCain, who supports the Obama deal, also crusaded against tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.