The Commentariat -- November 27

In a short post, Ken Layne of Wonkette assesses the decline & fall of the American era.

Dahlia Lithwick & Dave Weigel in Slate: when Russ Feingold leaves the Senate in a few weeks, who will stand up for civil liberties?

Kevin Sack & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "As the Obama administration presses ahead with the health care law, officials are bracing for the possibility that a federal judge in Virginia will soon reject its central provision as unconstitutional and, in the worst case for the White House, halt its enforcement until higher courts can rule. The judge, Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance...."

"Soft Dollars." Jenny Strasburg & Michael Rothfeld of the Wall Street Journal: "A sweeping insider-trading investigation is raising questions about how hedge funds and other big investors dole out a common, and controversial, currency that flows freely across Wall Street. The currency is known as soft dollars. Stock brokerages award soft dollars to investors much like an airline doles out frequent-flier miles, giving the most clout to the biggest traders. The clients then use the soft dollars in a variety of ways, but largely spend them on investment research."

A Second Exodus. John Leland of the New York Times: "Since the American invasion [of Iraq] in 2003, refugees have been a measure of the country’s precarious condition, flooding outward during periods of violence and trickling back as Iraq seemed to stabilize." A new exodus "shows how far the nation remains from being stable and secure."

"The 'Vanity Fair' of Al Qaeda." Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times: "An offshoot group in Yemen is producing Inspire magazine, an online propaganda periodical with color photos and interviews with celebrity jihadists. Experts say the target audience appears to be disaffected Muslims in the English-speaking world.... " ...

Tobin Harshaw of the New York Times has a nice roundup of opinions on the farcial Afghan Peace Talks with a Stranger. CW: can we leave now?

Peter Finn of the Washington Post: "On St. Patrick's Day 2009, the government stripped the Irish-born [John] Dullahan's security clearance and fired him from his job at the Defense Intelligence Agency in a manner that has no precedent at the Pentagon - invoking a national security clause that states that it would harm the interests of the United States to inform him of the accusations against him. As a result, Dullahan, a Vietnam veteran who served at military posts around the world and as a U.N. weapons inspector in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, cannot appeal to a board of senior agency officials, as others in his position might. He is, in effect, stranded."

With not much going on in poli-stats, Nate Silver takes a break to cover a really important electoral scandal: "the controversy over the performance of Bristol Palin and her partner, Mark Ballas — who survived until the final week of ["Dancing with the Stars"] in spite of frequently receiving among the lowest marks from the judges — has been too much about Tea Party politics and not enough about the show’s flawed scoring system, a system which Silver explains gives the audience much more say than the judges.

Stupid, or Sly as a Fox? Tim Molloy of The Wrap: Fox Nation, a subsidiary of "... Fox News, post[ed] a fake Onion story about President Obama alongside its real news stories. The satirical story, with the headline "The Onion: Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail," appeared in the Nation section of the site Friday.... The original Obama headline didn't mention The Onion, and the only clue for readers was a link to the satirical site after the first two paragraphs of the story.... The fake news of the president's novel-length missive remained on the site for several hours, even after Mediaite pointed it out -- and after Fox News updated its site with breaking news that the president needed 12 stitches for a basketball injury."

We Have Met the Enemy ... and It Is Us the "Elites"

Bob Herbert cites Mayor Michael Bloomberg's choice for New York City schools chancellor Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, a well-to-do corporate executive with "absolutely no background in education," as an example of the "vast disconnect between the fortunes of the American elite and those of the struggling masses."

My comment once again received the old heave-ho, so here it is:

Mayor Bloomberg's choice of Ms. Black was just his way of thumbing his billionaire's nose at the rest of us. I'm sure he tells himself that "living well is the best revenge," then sleeps like a baby.

Yet it is people like Bloomberg who are largely responsible for the popularity of pseudo-populist demagogues like Sarah Palin. It isn't just Bloomberg, of course. It's most of the political class. George W. Bush resented having come down from the heights of the White House to a Dallas morning walking the dog & picking up puppy-poop. And his aristocratic mom said Sarah Palin should stay in Alaska. Palin's retort? -- something about "the blue-bloods who want to pick and choose their winners instead of allowing competition."

In fact, the right's most effective argument against President Obama -- who although he shares ancestors with the Bushes, does not share their unbroken aristocratic line -- is that he is, by virtue of his education & his richy-rich friends, a member of the "East Coast elite establishment." His detractors have a point, even if they miss the mark. They accuse Obama of bowing to foreign dignitaries, but that's nothing. It's his metaphorical kowtowing to Wall Street that is the real problem. If the President had lived up to his campaign rhetoric instead of "palling around with tycoons," the House would still be under Democratic control come January. As California Rep. Lynn Woolsey said the other day, "... if he'd done less compromising in the last two years, there's a good chance we'd have had a jobs bill that would have created real jobs, and then we wouldn't even be worrying about having lost elections."

There are leaders like Woolsey & Speaker Pelosi who will work for the people instead of the plutocrats, but until the media give these true populists their due, instead of making fun of them, or pretending to "balance" their reporting with right-wing talking points, the loudest mouths on the right will continue to dominate the conversation. Can you name me one half-governor on the left who gets the same media attention Sarah Palin does? Can you name one Speaker of the House who gets the same positive attention John Boehner does? Not Nancy Pelosi, that's for sure. She was the first woman Speaker of the House, but she didn't get her picture on the cover of popular news magazines. John Boehner did. So did Newt Gingrich. The disgraced Newt still dominates the news. When Newt speaks, the media listen. And report. Why, even former Minority Leader Tom DeLay, recently convicted of money laundering, enjoyed many press kudos last year for his performances on "Dancing with the Stars," & I saw him on at least one MSNBC show where he was treated as a serious political commentator.

We are all complicit in the sad situation in which we find ourselves, but the Lords of Wall Street, our government leaders and many in the main stream media are primarily responsible. You're a breath of fresh air, Mr. Herbert, but much of what I read in the MSM leaves a fetid odor.

The Commentariat -- November 26

Roger Cohen of the New York Times: "The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen." ...

... You Will Be Smeared. Glenn Greenwald writes an "anatomy of a journalistic smear job" -- The Nation publishes a story questioning, without evidence, the independence of John Tyner, the private citizen whose "Don't Tough My Junk" video went viral.

Paul Krugman: "... Ireland is now in its third year of austerity, and confidence just keeps draining away. And you have to wonder what it will take for serious people to realize that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake."

In an exposé that will disgust you, Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post "shows one way federal agencies, [in this case, the Army,] have increasingly avoided contracting competitions.... And it underscores how a small [Alaska native corporation] (ANC) subsidiaries run by nonnatives have benefitted from an unprecedented surge of outsourcing by the military at a time of war. Army officials acknowledged using [an ANC] firm to avoid competition, saying they did not have enough time or contracting workers to seek other bids."

Tony Karon of Time: "On Saturday Nov. 27, the United States and its allies will reach a grim milestone: they will have been in Afghanistan a day longer than the Soviet Union had been when it completed its 1989 withdrawal."

"Hack Thirty." Alex Pareene of Salon lists his "least favorite political commentators, newspaper columnists and constant cable news presences, ranked roughly (but only roughly) in order of awfulness and then described rudely. Criteria for inclusion included writing the same column every week for 30 years, warmongering, joyless repetition of conventional wisdom, and making bad puns." Click back to see the whole list. CW: my friends & are disappointed that Pareene placed David Brooks at #30; we thought he should have made the first page.

We think if he'd done less compromising in the last two years, there's a good chance we'd have had a jobs bill that would have created real jobs, and then we wouldn't even be worrying about having lost elections. -- Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), on President Obama

... Oops! Missed This One. Julie David of the AP: "Behind Democrats' decision to keep [Speaker] Pelosi as their leader after historic losses lies intense concern among liberals who dominate the party's ranks on Capitol Hill: They fear [President] Obama will go too far in accommodating the GOP in the new era of divided government, and they see Pelosi as a counterweight."

Amy Wilenz in a New York Times op-ed: Sunday's elections in Haiti "are unlikely to produce a president who can address the country’s multiple woes."

We gotta stand with our North Korean allies. -- Sarah Palin

... Huma Kahn of ABC News: "Palin's gaffe immediately caught fire on the blogosphere. Liberals jumped to show her response as evidence of Palin's lack of foreign policy expertise." ...

... Class Act. The Lede Is All You Need. Shira Toeplitz of Politico: "Sarah Palin took the media and even President Barack Obama to task Thursday in a Thanksgiving message posted online."

"There are hardly any decision points at all." Sorry, one last review of Dubya's Decision Points, this one by George Packer of The New Yorker: "Though Bush credits no collaborator, his memoirs read as if they were written by an admiring sidekick who is familiar with every story Bush ever told but never got to know the President well enough to convey his inner life. Very few of its four hundred and ninety-three pages are not self-serving.... The steady drip of these elisions and falsifications suggests a deeper necessity than the ordinary touch-ups of personal history."

Here's your presidential promo of the week. I like these for the behind-the-scenes clips. Watch for Vice President Biden's comment on the press: