The Commentariat -- September 5

President Obama speaks about jobs at an AFL-CIO Labor Day rally in Detroit:

     ... Here's a transcript of the President's remarks. New York Times: "President Barack Obama said Monday that congressional Republicans must put their country ahead of their party and vote to create new jobs as he used a boisterous Labor Day rally to aim a partisan barb at the GOP."

Utah Phillips sings Joe Hill's "There Is Power in a Union":

I've posted a Krugman comments page on Off Times Square. Karen Garcia & I have commented. The Times has again held back our comments, so you'll have to read them here. ...

... "Fatal Distraction." Paul Krugman, in his regular column: "... by obsessing over a nonexistent threat [the deficit], Washington has been making the real problem — mass unemployment, which is eating away at the foundations of our nation — much worse. Although you’d never know it listening to the ranters, the past year has actually been a pretty good test of the theory that slashing government spending actually creates jobs. The deficit obsession has blocked a much-needed second round of federal stimulus, and with stimulus spending, such as it was, fading out, we’re experiencing de facto fiscal austerity. State and local governments, in particular, faced with the loss of federal aid, have been sharply cutting many programs, and have been laying off a lot of workers, mostly schoolteachers. And somehow the private sector hasn’t responded to these layoffs by rejoicing at the sight of a shrinking government, and embarking on a hiring spree." ...

... Paul Krugman recommends this article by Kevin Hall of McClatchy news: "Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.... None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath." ...

... But, Krugman notes the facts have no impact on the punditocracy, as economic expert Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) pontificated on ABC's "This Week" about ruinous business regulation & the NLRB, and actual (right-wing) economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin repeated his oft-told tale of doom, "We're about to be Greece!"

NEW. Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute writing in Salon, argues that Democrats should mount a primary challenge to President Obama, whom Stoller considers a disaster who has "ruined the Democratic party.... His failures have come precisely because Obama has not listened to Democratic Party voters. He continued idiotic wars, bailed out banks, ignored luminaries like Paul Krugman, and generally did whatever he could to repudiate the New Deal. The Democratic Party should be the party of pay raises and homes, but under Obama it has become the party of pay cuts and foreclosures. Getting rid of Obama as the head of the party is the first step in reverting to form."

Bob Reich in TruthOut: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday no jobs were created in August. Zero. Nada.... In reality, worse than zero. We need 125,000 a month merely to keep up with population growth. So the hole continues to deepen.... If this doesn’t prompt President Obama to unveil a bold jobs plan next Thursday, I don’t know what will. The problem is on the demand side. Consumers (whose spending is 70 percent of the economy) can’t boost the economy on their own. They’re still too burdened by debt, especially on homes that are worth less than their mortgages. Their jobs are disappearinig, their pay is dropping, their medical bills are soaring. And businesses won’t hire without more sales. So we’re in a vicous cycle."

Mikoto Rich & John Broder of the New York Times review actual data on whether or not environmental regulations kill jobs and whether or not offsetting factors -- gosh, like not killing people -- outweigh any loss of jobs.

To See Ourselves as Others See Us. "America's Self-Inflicted Decline." Former Australian PM Malcolm Fraser in Al Jazeera: "If the broad post-World War II prosperity that has endured for six decades comes to an end, both the United States and Europe will be responsible. With rare exceptions, politics has become a discredited profession throughout the West. Tomorrow is always treated as more important than next week, and next week prevails over next year, with no one seeking to secure the long-term future. Now the West is paying the price. President Barack Obama’s instincts may be an exception here, but he is fighting powerful hidebound forces in the United States, as well as a demagogic populism, in the form of the Tea Party, that is far worse -- and that might defeat him in 2012, seriously damaging the United States in the process." ...

... John Lanchester in the London Review of Books: "The discipline of macro-economics was born out of the study of the Great Depression, in an attempt to understand what had happened and avoid a repetition. That’s why it’s so depressing to see the developed world not just sleepwalking towards another recession, but actively embracing policies which make it more likely. Governments can’t all simultaneously cut spending while also continuing to grow their economies: it just defies common sense to think they can." CW: this is a longish essay, & longish essays on fiscal policy can be mindnumbing to many of us, but Lanchester -- a journalist & novelist -- keeps it lively. His thesis, which I presume is only partially tongue-in-cheek, is that the West would be way better off if we were all more like Belgium, which has been without a government for 15 months and therefore without a goverment like all the other Western governments that have initiated brilliant "belt-tightening" policies to strangle economic growth. Via Brad Plumer of the Washington Post, who adds a few yeah-buts, but generally supports Lanchester's thesis.

The End of the U.S. Postal Service? Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.... [Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe, has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts. The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs."

Prof. Harold Pollack on why the downwardly mobile in Chicago have tuned out politics. "But President Obama and others can lay the foundation for an angry but civil liberal populism to provide an alternative to passivity and the Tea Party." CW: as if.

Green Shoot. CW: Old news, but news to me: Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, made a statement expressing "disappointment" in President Obama's decision to table new clean-air ozone limits, and said, in a press release, "This decision leaves me with more questions than answers. To that end, I intend to hold a hearing in the Clean Air Subcommittee with White House officials to explain these actions and the possible ramifications."

A little essay from Driftglass: "From Birtherism to Death Panels, the Modern Conservative agenda in the Age of Obama has been nothing but reckless swine and calculating traitors grabbing whatever heavy object they could lay their hands on and heaving it into traffic, hoping to cause a wreck. In other words, a relentless, national program of premeditated sabotage at a time of war and national economic emergency. And don't even get me started on their fucking governors."

Right Wing World *

** Veteran Republican Congressional Staffer Mike Lofgren in TruthOut on why he retired. CW: This is perhaps the most insightful & important bit of prose written by a Republican since Dwight Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. Lofgren doesn't have kind words for Democrats or the both-sides-do-it media phonies, but he uses his insider knowledge to expose the GOP's rotten core. Truly a must-read. Many thanks to Walt W. for the link.

Politico Live: "Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann on Sunday shifted her explanation for her poorly received campaign trail riff about a deadly hurricane and the Virginia earthquake being divine efforts to get Washington politicians to cut spending." It was "a joke"; now it's "a metaphor."

* So bad even some Republicans can't stand it.

News Ledes

AP: "While [Tropical Storm] Lee's winds have lost some of their punch, forecasters warn that its slow-moving rain clouds pose a worse flooding threat to inland areas with hills or mountains in the coming days. Flash flood watches and warnings were in effect across a swath of the Southeast early Monday, stretching from the lower Mississippi Valley, eastward to the Florida Panhandle and the southern Appalachians, according to the Hydrometeorological Predication Center."

New York Times: "Global stocks ... [are] posting steep declines [today] amid worries about the health of the U.S. economy and Europe’s sovereign debt woes."

AP: "Rebel reinforcements arrived outside one of Moammar Gadhafi's last strongholds in Libya on Monday, even as the forces arrayed against the toppled dictator gave the town a chance to surrender and avoid a fight. Thousands of rebels have converged on Bani Walid, a desert town some 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli. Gadhafi has been on the run since losing his capital last month."

Al Jazeera: "Scuffles broke out inside and outside the courtroom as the trial of Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, resumed in Cairo with police witnesses expected to reveal details about a crackdown on protesters that left hundreds dead. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros said that court proceedings were halted just 40 minutes into Monday's session as lawyers for the prosecution and the defence had to be separated by police.At least 12 people were arrested outside the army academy where the trial is taking place as pro- and anti-Mubarak groups clashed, and some threw stones at riot police."

The Commentariat -- September 4

Maureen Dowd: "Just as Obama miscalculated in 2009 when Democrats had total control of Congress, holding out hope that G.O.P. lawmakers would come around on health care after all but three senators had refused to vote for the stimulus bill; just as he misread John Boehner this summer, clinging like a scorned lover to a dream that the speaker would drop his demanding new inamorata, the Tea Party, to strike a 'grand' budget bargain, so the president once more set a trap for himself and gave Boehner the opportunity to dis him on the timing of his jobs speech this week."

Frank Bruni: "Who's smarter? Barack Obama or Rick Perry? "Instead of talking about how smart politicians are or aren’t, we should have an infinitely more useful, meaningful conversation about whether we share and respect their values and whether they have shown themselves to be effective. Someone who rates high on both counts is someone to rally unreservedly around. Right now, neither Perry nor Obama fits that double bill."

** I've posted a Dowd-Bruni comments page on Off Times Square, but if you want to comment on something else, feel free.

** Economist Bob Reich, who was Labor Secretary during the Clinton Administration, writes a very good short history of American fiscal policy in a New York Times op-ed: "During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats." ...

... The New York Times Editorial Board outlines what President Obama should say in his jobs speech. CW: fat chance. ...

The DeLong Confession. Economist Brad DeLong tells of giving top Obama Administration officials a talking-to in early 2010 -- you know, explaining Econ 101 to them -- and they didn't get it. DeLong admits, "... I think of my confidence in December 2008 and January 2009 that the Obama administration understood that you needed not economic policies that sounded good and polled good but economic policies that actually worked, and I wince." CW: this is a very readable post. Apparently Krugman has had the same conversation with some of these same usual suspects, with the same results. They -- and the President -- as I've said before, are not all that bright.

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "The Republican field is entering a pivotal stage as candidates increasingly move beyond criticizing President Obama and start to run against one another. The outcome of three debates in the next three weeks — starting Wednesday night, the first time Mr. Perry, Mr. Romney and Mrs. Bachmann will face each other — will influence fund-raising, shape strategy and set perceptions as the candidates hurtle toward the start of voting early next year. In both parties, there is now a sense that the president’s political frailty, underscored by the report on Friday that showed zero net job creation in August and new projections that unemployment will remain elevated until Election Day, is even greater than it appeared at the start of the summer, injecting additional energy and urgency to the Republican primary race."

"What Was He Thinking?" Juliet Eilperin & Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "President Obama’s controversial decision last week to suspend new anti-smog standards offered hints — but not the full road map — of how the White House will navigate politically explosive battles with congressional Republicans over which industry regulations to sacrifice and which ones to fight for this fall.... Most notable in the smog decision was that Obama made it himself — undercutting his own Environmental Protection Agency leadership and siding with industry officials.... And yet ... advocates on both sides are left wondering what broader strategy may be guiding the White House...." ...

... Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times: "... representatives of ... environmental groups saw the president’s actions [to drop new ozone pollution standards] as brazen political sellouts to business interests and the Republican Party, which regards environmental regulations as job killers and a brick wall to economic recovery. The question for environmentalists became, what to do next?" John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group based in New York, said "his group would resume a smog lawsuit against the government that it had dropped because it had been lulled into believing that this administration would enact tougher regulations without being forced to do so by the courts.” ...

... AND Steve Benen asks, "... even if West Wing officials sincerely believed these ozone standards would be bad the job market, why not keep this realization close to their chest, and then trade it to Republicans in exchange for something else? Why not use the rules as a bargaining chip?

Brent Budowsky, writing in The Hill, plays "If Al Gore Had Been Inaugurated": "A recent poll by '60 Minutes' and Vanity Fair found that a majority of Americans, and a majority of Democrats, do not believe things would have changed much if Al Gore had been inaugurated president in January 2001.... The Gore v. Bush poll is breathtaking." After Budowsky compils a laundry list of stuff Gore would have done differently from Bush, he writes, "It is a sad commentary about Democrats today, especially but not only President Obama, that Democrats feel so depressed and let down that they cannot tell the difference between eight years of President George W. Bush and eight years of President Gore." CW: An interesting commentary; in other words, Obama has tarnished the reputations of all elected Democrats, including Al Gore.

Oh, Great. Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "At least one in seven Afghan soldiers walked off the job during the first six months of this year, according to statistics compiled by NATO that show an increase in desertion.... At one point this summer, the pace of desertions climbed to an annualized rate of 35 percent, though it has since declined.... Afghan and U.S. military officials also said poor leadership is a main reason soldiers desert the ranks."

A New Twist in the Strange Case of Abdel-Hakim Belhadj. Patrick McDonnell & Ken Dilanian of the Los Angeles Times: "A few years ago, documents show, Belhadj was a wanted Islamic militant whom the CIA handed over for 'debriefing' to the government of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, then an ally in the fight against terrorism. Today, Belhadj is a top military commander in the provisional Libyan government and Kadafi is on the run, his government toppled, in part, by U.S. and allied airstrikes."

Right Wing World

Kevin Sack of the New York Times: "The three most prominent current or former governors running for president — Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr. — are firmly united in their commitment to repealing President Obama’s health care law. But that unanimity masks a broad divergence in their approaches to the issue while in office, spanning the spectrum of Republican positioning.... Each of the governors has vulnerabilities, and they have sought thus far to credential themselves less by their own past records than by their current opposition to what is officially known as the Affordable Care Act."

Local News

What's Wrong with This Picture: Jennifer Gollan & Sydney Lupkin of the Bay Citizen: California has been spending more and more on prisons & less and less on higher education. The result: the state now spends more on prisons than on university education. The picture:

Graphic by Bay Citizen.

News Ledes

President Obama visits New Jersey, where power still has not been reconnected since Hurricane Irene, & flood damage is rife:

... New York Times: in Paterson, New Jersey, "President Obama, surveying some of the most crippling flood damage from Tropical Storm Irene, vowed on Sunday that budgetary wrangling in Washington would not delay federal aid to stricken communities."

AP (via the NYT): "The center of Tropical Storm Lee lurched across Louisiana's Gulf Coast early Sunday, dumping torrential rains that threatened flooding in low-lying communities in a foreshadowing of what cities further inland could face in coming days." The Times-Picayune is carrying this story by the National Weather Service; includes related links. Here's the Weather Channel's main story.

New York Times: "The Obama administration has initiated a last-ditch diplomatic campaign to avert a confrontation this month over a plan by Palestinians to seek recognition as a state at the United Nations, but it may already be too late, according to senior American officials and foreign diplomats."

Al Jazeera: "Libyan fighters outside Bani Walid, a key city still controlled by supporters of toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi, have told Al Jazeera that efforts to negotiate a peaceful handover have ended. An official for the National Transitional Council (NTC) said fighters were preparing to take the town by force after talks ended on Sunday." With video. AP story here. ...

    ... New York Times Update: "Rebel forces in Libya said Sunday that they were on the verge of winning a peaceful surrender of Bani Walid, one of Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s last remaining strongholds, as thousands of rebel fighters converged on the town."

Guardian: "Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Saturday night in Israel's biggest ever demonstration to demand social justice, a lower cost of living and a clear government response to the concerns of an increasingly squeezed middle class. About 430,000 people took part in marches and rallies across the country, according to police. The biggest march was in Tel Aviv, where up to 300,000 took part." Haaretz story here.

New York Times: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and onetime hopeful for the French presidency, returned to his native land early on Sunday morning, in a low-key coda to the international furor that erupted when he was arrested in mid-May and charged with sexually assaulting a New York hotel housekeeper."

The Commentariat -- September 3

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square.

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... Here's the transcript. It's about jobs. Funny, no mention of how killing the new ozone standards will create lots of jobs for the healthcare industry. ...

... Obama the Ozone Liar. Brad Plumer of the Washington Post on the big double-cross behind Obama's directive to halt ozone standards. To make a long story shortish, the Administration played environmentalists the way the Boner plays Obama. The current standards in place are from 1997, & scientists agree that these standards are so low that people are dying from the resulting pollutants. The Bush Administration proposed stronger standards in 2008, but not strong enough for environmentalists who sued to force higher standards. Now for the Obama double-cross: the Obama EPA told the plaintiffs they agreed with them & would be issuing stronger standards by August 2010, so please hold back on the suit. Ha ha. The EPA slipped its deadline again and again, and now it's slipping it all the way to 2013 (when there might be a Perry Administration). The worst part -- had the Obama EPA not got environmentalists to drop their suit, the Bush standards, which were more rigid than the 1997 Clinton standards, would have been put in place, or -- if the plaintiffs had prevailed in their suit -- exceeded. So hack cough, piss me off. ...

... New York Times Editors: "President Obama’s decision not to proceed with stronger air-quality standards governing ozone is a setback for public health and the environment and a victory for industry and its Republican friends in Congress.... There is still no excuse for compromising on public health and allowing politics to trump science." ...

... Karen Garcia: "You're in the O-Zone.... Just hold on, try to breathe the ozone until 2013, and he'll look at reducing pollution levels then. After the campaign, after those same businesses [that lobbied against the new regs] have donated about a billion into his war chest. I guess Malia and Sasha don't have asthma." ...

... Keith Olbermann & Brian Beutler of TPM on President O-Zone:

     ... Here's Beutler's post on Obama's directive: "The development most likely means smog standards in many states will remain lower than they would have been if President George W. Bush's lax policy had been fully pursued." ...

... NEW. Paul Krugman: "... tighter ozone regulation would actually have created jobs: it would have forced firms to spend on upgrading or replacing equipment, helping to boost demand. Yes, it would have cost money — but that’s the point! And with corporations sitting on lots of idle cash, the money spent would not, to any significant extent, come at the expense of other investment.... So, a lousy decision all around. Are you surprised?"

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... it took the Republican National Committee exactly 94 minutes to coin a new, demeaning title for Barack Obama: President Zero. In an e-mail to reporters, the committee took note of the worst jobs report in nearly a year, saying that there has been 'two and a half years of Obamanomics and nothing to show for it.'” ...

... Yeah, But: "The Conservative Recovery" Fizzles. Matt Yglesias: "... we had 17,000 thousand new private sector jobs in August, which were 100 percent offset by 17,000 lost jobs in the public sector.... This has been the trend all year. The public sector has been steadily shrinking. According to the conservative theory of the economy, when the public sector shrinks that should super-charge the private sector.... Conservatives complain about the results because the President is a Democrat.... But the policy result is what conservatives say they want." CW: as Paul Krugman & many other economists have written repeatedly, cutting government spending does not create jobs. Period. ...

** Ari Berman of Rolling Stone: "Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots.... In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process."

William Cohan, whom you may remember from the New York Times op-ed and business pages, is now at Bloomberg News. He writes that it's time to get rid of the corrupt SEC and start all over with a new regulatory agency free of conflict-of-interest. He presents some compelling evidence. ...

... Compelling evidence that Cohan got from this long piece by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, who has a singular ability to make financial stories interesting reading (not that his ethically-challenged subjects don't help): "For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG."

Brady Dennis, et al., of the Washington Post: "Federal regulators launched a broad legal assault on big banks Friday, claiming they sold nearly $200 billion in fraudulent mortgage investments to housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to massive losses during the financial crisis. The suits, brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, name 17 domestic and foreign banks as defendants." The article reports some of the implications of the suits.

We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen. -- Navy SEAL ...

... Dana Priest & William Arkin of the Washington Post: "... the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC..., has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into America’s secret army. When members of this elite force killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, JSOC leaders celebrated not just the success of the mission but also how few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed. This article, adapted from a chapter of the newly released 'Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State,' by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, chronicles JSOC’s spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before. Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria."

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "... more than 12,000 Iraqis have been killed in at least 1,000 suicide attacks since the American-led invasion," their usage largely a tactic of sectarian warfare.

Right Wing World

The level of ignorance among some of the Republican presidential candidates about monetary policy is stunning. Mr. Perry has been taken to task for his choice of language, but not for the substance of his remarks, which is outrageous. -- Economics Prof. Mark Gertler ...

It must be exciting to accuse him of things he hasn’t done. -- Conservative Econ. Prof. Robert Hall

... James Stewart of the New York Times: "... our political leaders and those who aspire to replace them should be debating the fiscal policies that will put Americans to work in the short term and reduce the deficit in the long term — not bashing the Fed.... Many voters seem determined to find a scapegoat for the financial crisis and its aftermath, and some candidates are only too willing to pander by serving up [Fed Chair Ben] Bernanke." CW Reminder: Bernanke is a Republican.

The Perry Oeuvre. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... blunt assertions ... in two books [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry wrote ... have drawn new scrutiny now that Mr. Perry, a Republican, is running for president." CW: this article is kind of a fun read because it lists some of Perry's greatest hits and demonstrates anew what a dangerous whacko he is.

News Ledes

New York Times: "In a strong rebuke to the Irish government, the Vatican said Saturday that it had never discouraged Irish bishops from reporting the sexual abuse of minors to the police and dismissed claims that it had undermined efforts to investigate abuse as 'unfounded.' The statement was the latest salvo in a tense diplomatic standoff since the Irish government released a report in July accusing the Vatican of encouraging bishops to ignore guidelines requiring them to report abuse cases to civil authorities." Irish Times story here. The text of the Vatican statement is here (pdf).

The Hill: "Public health advocates slammed the White House on Friday for abandoning tougher ozone regulations, and vowed to fight the Obama administration in court. The American Lung Association called the decision 'outrageous' and said it would 'severely jeopardize public health.' The association said it would restart litigation that had been put on hold following the administration's promises to strengthen standards set under then-President George W. Bush.... The EPA has estimated that the new standards could have prevented 12,000 premature deaths and 58,000 asthma attacks a year." (Emphasis added.)

Times-Picayune: "Tropical Storm Lee continues its slow, 2 mph drift onto the southeastern Louisiana coastline Saturday morning, with its ill-defined center expected to cross the coast near Morgan City sometime this afternoon, bringing maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. More than 5 inches of rain had fallen in some parts of the New Orleans area overnight, and forecasters said Lee remained a major flooding threat, predicting a minimum 15 inches of rain will fall over much of the New Orleans area before the storm makes its exit on Tuesday. It's likely some locations could receive 20 inches of rain or more." The Weather Channel report here, with links to related content.

New York Times: "Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture."