The Commentariat -- September 23

Alex Pareene of Salon: "The Forbes Sexiest Plutocrat list is out! Big news in New York: Reasonable moderate centrist billionaire Republican mayor-for-life Michael Bloomberg lost his 'richest man in town' award to shadowy puppet-master far-right Randian climate change denialist front group-funding second-generation oil-and-gas billionaire David Koch.... Forbes says the richest are richer than ever. And the rest of Americans have had stagnant wages since the Nixon administration, basically."

Paul Krugman on the rumor that President Obama plans to replace Larry Summers with a CEO: "... the idea that business executives know what the economy needs is just wrong."

Still Crazy after All These Years. Glenn Greenwald on extremism within the Republican party:

President Clinton on "the Gift Newt Gingrich Gave America":

CBS News has the full text of the GOP's "Pledge to America." ...

It is a document with a clear theory of what has gone wrong -- debt, policy uncertainty, and too much government -- and a solid promise to make most of it worse. -- Ezra Klein, on Republicans' "Pledge to America"

... Plague on America. Ezra Klein: the GOP's so-called "Pledge to America" is "a set of hard promises that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, take health-care insurance away from tens of millions of people, create a level of policy uncertainty businesses have never previously known, and suck demand out of an economy that's already got too little of it." ...

... Economist Mark Thoma asks,

Why would we want to return to the policies that brought us a stagnant middle class even in the best of times, widening inequality, out of control financial markets, the biggest recession in recent memory, declining rates of health care coverage, threats to Social Security and to social insurance more generally, tax policies that reinforce trends in inequality and create big holes in the budget (amid false claims that tax cuts more than pay for themselves), and two wars whose total costs to the nation go far beyond the large budgetary costs that have brought programs such as Social Security and Medicare -- programs vital to middle and low income households -- under increasing financial pressure?

... Michael Crowley of Time points out more baloney (a pork product) in the GOP's "Pledge to America." ...

... Ben Adler of Newsweek finds some more nonsense in the GOP "plan." But he adds,

The bottom line is that any Republican attempt to adopt a coherent, forward-looking, and plausible platform is bound to be fraught with challenges and contradictions. Luckily for the GOP, it looks like it can win big this year without one.

I have never been in a tanning bed or used a tanning product.
-- John Boehner, via the Wall Street Journal

... Andy Barr of Politico: even a lot of right-wingers disparage the GOP "Pledge."

Lisa Mascaro in the Los Angeles Times: "As independent groups pour money into midterm election campaigns, Senate Democrats are trying again to advance a long-stalled bill that would require corporations to more fully disclose their political donations.... The effort is a direct response to a Supreme Court ruling in January that struck down century-old prohibitions against political spending by unions and corporations." ...

... David Axelrod in a Washington Post op-ed: there is a "... hidden factor is the audacious stealth campaign being mounted by powerful corporate special interests that are vying to put their Republican allies in control of Congress and turn back common-sense reforms that strengthen America's middle class. In Senate and House races across the country, industry-fueled front groups such as 'Americans for Job Security' have spent tens of millions of dollars on negative ads as misleading as their benign-sounding names -- aimed almost entirely at Democratic candidates."

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "A new book by Bob Woodward ... presents three generals in the White House and State Department as the military's toughest, most persistent and most skeptical critics.... The Woodward book, however, consistently shows the three officers - retired Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, retired Gen. James L. Jones and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute - embroiled in heated disputes with the brass."

Craig Whitlock & Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "The CIA has relied on ... a constellation of agency bases across Afghanistan ... to train and deploy a well-armed 3,000-member Afghan paramilitary force collectively known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. In addition to being used for surveillance, raids and combat operations in Afghanistan, the teams are crucial to the United States' secret war in Pakistan.... The existence of the teams is disclosed in "Obama's Wars" ... by ... Bob Woodward. But, more broadly, interviews with sources familiar with the CIA's operations, as well as a review of the database of 76,000 classified U.S. military field reports posted last month by the Web site WikiLeaks, reveal an agency that has a significantly larger covert paramilitary presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan than previously known."

Jon Stewart parries with Bill O'Reilly:

Kevin Sack of the New York Times: "On Thursday, the six-month anniversary of the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a number of its most central consumer protections take effect, just in time for the midterm elections." Los Angeles Times story here. ...

... A Case on Point: the children of Joe & Mary Thompson of Overland Park, Kansas, whom health insurance companies excluded from coverage because they are ill. ...

... Another Case on Point: Lacey McLear or Richmond, Virginia, who at age 23, cannot afford insurance but was excluded from her parents' policy. ...

... Yet Another Case on Point: Bill & Victoria Strong, whose daughter Gwendolyn was born with spinal muscular atrophy, which has required treatments so expensive the Strongs could soon reach a lifetime cap on their coverage. ...

... Constant Weader: still think it's a good idea to vote for the Republican's new "Plague on America" wherein GOP legislators promise to repeal the healthcare law?

"On the six-month anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama leads a backyard discussion on the Patient’s Bill of Rights and hears from real Americans who are already benefitting from health reform":

     ... Here's the transcript.

My friends thought this video was the epitome of hokey, but I'm a sucker & loved it. Good luck to Gail & Matt:

Jeffrey Kluger of Time on why it will be a national disaster if Republicans win even one House of Congress & are thus in a position to make cuts in or modifications to the Affordable Care Act.

Maureen Dowd interviews President Jimmy Carter on a range of issues, including comparisons between himself and President Obama. She writes, "In 1976, the former peanut farmer from Georgia exploded out of his shell, buoyed by the same sort of antiestablishment frenzy — or 'malaise,' as he puts it, recycling the word that caused him so many problems — that we see now."

The Constant Weader replies:

Let me make one thing perfectly clear, as another President used to say, Jimmy Carter did not use the word "malaise" in his inaptly-captioned "Malaise Speech." His speech was actually quite profound & sadly prophetic. Ostensibly about the energy crisis, what is remembered about the speech is Carter's premise that the American people were experiencing "a crisis of confidence":

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America, Carter said.

But Carter ended his speech on a hopeful note (& without that treacly "God Bless America," which future Presidents seemed to feel was somehow fitting for a nation built on a Constitution that never mentions god):

Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Of course, we did not have that rebirth. We got Ronald Reagan instead, the Great White Dope, whose vision for the nation seemed to be an oligarchy who would direct the end of communism (already dying in the Soviet Union) & rule the world by force of saber-rattling & Star Wars.

Another aspect of Carter's speech that is especially relevant today: in it, Carter emphasizes that he drew his conclusions about the national mood from listening to ordinary Americans:

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society -- business and labor, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you.

One can't become President of the United States without being an egotist, but President Obama seems to be over-the-top. His "town halls" are shows, where -- instead of listening to the questioners -- he patiently explains to them why they're wrong. The purpose of the Obama town halls is not to learn but to teach. He does not acknowledge he has anything to learn. Frankly, an Obama town hall reminds me of the Gospels, where lawyers, scribes, Pharisees, the disciples & ordinary people challenge Jesus. Jesus always has the right answer, & his questioners are always wrong. As in the Gospels, in an Obama town hall meeting, there are no follow-up questions. I don't know Jesus, but I'd say Barack Obama is no Jesus.

As for all of us Obama supporters who aren't invited to the town halls, we seem to be of no interest whatsoever to him. As Paul Krugman noted yesterday, "the [Obama] administration seems to go out of its way to alienate its supporters."

Until President Obama learns from Presidents Carter & Clinton to "feel the pain" of the American people -- especially the pain of those of us inclined to support him & other Democratic candidates -- & to adjust his policies to accommodate us, no matter whether he is a one- or a two-term President, he will not be remembered as a good one. Maybe a tall man needs a high horse, but really, Obama should climb down off his.

In the video below, the President appeals to his base to get behind Democratic candidates. This self-justification is ideal as campaign rhetoric, but it is pretty useless as an answer to a constituent's question about her specific situation. Unfortunately, the President's appeal here is almost indistinguishable from the sort of "answers" he employs to respond to public questions from town hall participants: