The Commentariat -- November 27

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on "Ross Douthat's Mythbuster Fail." Boomer Alert: Douthat thinks you're delusional. And Kennedy was either a "mediocre" or a "disastrous" president; you get only those two choices. The NYTX front page is here.

The Hope poster is kind of faded and a little dog-eared. -- Barack Obama ...

... Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "... with unemployment stubbornly at 9 percent and consumer confidence at or near record lows, [Obama campaign operatives] are settling on a strategy that incorporates the combativeness of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1936 drive, the anti-Congress zeal of Harry S. Truman’s 1948 campaign and the disciplined focus of George W. Bush’s 2004 blitz against Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The result is not your college-age daughter’s Obama campaign of hopeful, transcendent politics." ...

... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Nearly a year before Election Day, Republican presidential candidates and conservative action groups are already spending heavily on television advertising aimed at casting [President] Obama as a failure. Their tactics, the aggressive and sometimes misleading kind not typically used until much further along in a campaign season, have led to a spat with Democrats in what is shaping up to be the most costly election advertising war yet."

Finally, Someone Speaks up for the One Percent. John Kenney of the New Yorker: "We come from near and far, by any means necessary, some on private jets, others on extremely large private jets.... Our numbers may be smaller than those demonstrating in New York and other cities, but we are still a movement, coalesced around a cause, sleeping two and sometimes three people to a villa.... We’re angry. We’re angry at something we’re calling 'imagined frustration.' By this we mean that, except for Congress, the White House, banks, major lobbyists, and the editorial boards of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, no one is listening to us. And we’re tired of it." ...

... the tax code shouldn’t allow the wealthy the kind of loopholes that let them, essentially, force other taxpayers to underwrite donations to their pet causes. -- Scott Klinger of Business for Shared Prosperity ...

... How to Make Millions without Paying Taxes. David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: "From offshore havens to a tax-sheltering stock deal so audacious that Congress later enacted a law forbidding the tactic, [Ronald] Lauder has for decades aggressively taken advantage of tax breaks that are useful only for the most affluent.... 'There’s real truth to the idea that the tax code for the 1 percent is different from the tax code for the 99 percent,' said Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of Colorado...."

The political environment in the Republican primary ... basically means you can’t be authentic unless you’ve got a single-digit I.Q. -- Bill Clinton

Nicholas Kristof: "Obama has done better than many critics on the left or the right give him credit for."

Paul Krugman writes two blogposts refuting David Brooks' nonfactual (a/k/a big fat lying) assertion that taxing the rich won't make a dent in the deficit (here's Brooks, and BTW, here is James Kwak of Baseline Scenario also debunking Brooks' claim). In his first post on the topic, Krugman begins,

I’ve been getting the predictable hysterical reactions to today’s column. And it’s true — I’m a Sharia Jewish atheist Marxist who hates America! Bwahahaha!

But one thing actually worth reacting to is the assertion I keep getting that this is all a distraction, that even if we seized all the money of the top 0.1% it would make no difference to the fiscal outlook. Here’s a piece of advice nobody will take: before you make assertions about numbers, look at the numbers.

      ... Krugman goes on to, well, look at the numbers. What a concept! In his follow-up post published late Saturday afternoon, Krugman uses a recent analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center to bolster his point:

Seriously, the notion that denying health care to the near-poor is a serious deficit-reduction policy, but raising taxes on the very rich is not, is not something you can justify at all on the basis of the actual numbers. Anyone [CW: like, say, Brooks] who says different is practicing, well, class warfare.

CW: Columnist as Self-Parodist. If you want to read how a columnist writes speculation and distortions to demonstrate that "both sides do it," read Frank Bruni's column, which ostensibly is about how politicians use speculation and distortions to misrepresent their opponents' positions. When Bruni can't find anything negative to say about Obama's campaign, he just speculates -- based on a speculative Politico story -- that Obama will use speculations and distortions to discredit his opponent. Undeterred by lack of evidence, Bruni also disparages an accurate remark Obama made in 2008. He throws in Democrats and Republicans on the Super Committee too in service of his false equivalency.

WalMart Rules. Will Evans of California Watch: "In a push to expand across California without interference, Wal-Mart is increasingly taking advantage of the state’s initiative system to threaten elected officials with costly special elections and to avoid environmental lawsuits. The Arkansas-based retailer has hired paid signature gatherers to circulate petitions to build new superstores or repeal local restrictions on big-box stores. Once 15 percent of eligible voters sign the petitions, state election law [forces]... City councils [to] either approve the Wal-Mart-drafted measure without changes or put it to a special election." Thanks to a reader for the link. ...

... Chris Hawley of the AP: "As reports of shopping-related violence rolled in this week from Los Angeles to New York, experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels. With stores opening earlier, bargain-obsessed shoppers often are sleep-deprived and short-tempered. Arriving in darkness, they also find themselves vulnerable to savvy parking-lot muggers."

Right Wing World

Newt, Inc. Karen Tumulty & Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "Former House speaker Newt Gingrich transfigured himself from a political flameout into a thriving business conglomerate. The power of the Gingrich brand fueled a for-profit collection of enterprises that generated close to $100 million in revenue over the past decade...."

News Ledes

AP: "A record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting on Thanksgiving Day, up from 212 million last year, according to early estimates by The National Retail Federation released on Sunday. Americans spent more, too: The average holiday shopper spent $398.62 over the weekend, up from $365.34 a year ago."

Reuters: " France and Germany are planning a quick new pact on budget discipline that might persuade the European Central Bank to ramp up its government bond purchases...."

New York Times: "In center city Philadelphia, hundreds gathered outside City Hall in a show of solidarity ahead of a city-imposed Sunday evening deadline to clear a campsite there. The protesters braced for a police sweep, but it did not take place immediately after the 5 p.m. deadline, surprising few."

AP: "Bernie Fine was fired Sunday by Syracuse University after a third man accused the assistant basketball coach of molesting him nine years ago.... Zach Tomaselli, 23, of Lewiston, Maine, said Sunday that he told police that Fine molested him in 2002 in a Pittsburgh hotel room.... Tomaselli, who faces sexual assault charges in Maine involving a 14-year-old boy, said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he signed an affidavit accusing Fine following a meeting with Syracuse police last week in Albany. Tomaselli's father, meanwhile, maintains his son is lying."

Al Jazeera: "The Arab League has approved sanctions against Syria, which could include halting co-operation with the nation's central bank and stopping flights to the country. The 22-nation body voted 19-3 to impose the sanctions on the recommendations at its headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, on Sunday."

AP: "The [CW: extreme right-wing] New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in Sunday editions, signaling that rival Mitt Romney isn't the universal favorite and that the state's largest newspaper could reset the contest there with six weeks to go before voters cast their ballots." You can read the Union Leader's endorsement here.