The Commentariat -- October 6

Gail Collins can't stand "to spend the next 13 months watching Mitt Romney run against Barack Obama," so she's looking for alternative Republican candidates. She lingers on Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho because she likes his name, on former New York Gov. George Pataki for the same reason (another president named George!), but she finally settles on Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota, whose state suffers from a labor shortage because of a hydrofracked oil boomlet. An environmentalist Collins interviewed, though horrified by the oil companies' waste of millions of cubic feet of natural gas daily, says North Dakota is "not as bad as Kazakhstan," which Collins thinks is a catchy phrase. ...

... On today's Off Times Square, you can name your own Republican candidate for president. Oh, there are so many choices.

Occupy Wall Street

Cara Buckley of the New York Times: "The Occupy Wall Street gathering, now midway through its third week in a Lower Manhattan park, was hatched by a Canadian magazine, Adbusters, and is heavily populated by youthful out-of-towners. But it has also become a magnet for scores of New Yorkers who said they had rarely if ever attended a protest before." ...

... CW: This video of NYPD white shirts swinging billy clubs at Occupy Wall Street protesters is so violent I had to sign in to YouTube to view it. The Daily News story, linked just above Wedneday's Ledes, has been updated to report the violence:

... Now comes this gem from a New York Times story by Steven Greenhouse & Buckley:

[There was] ... a disturbance about 8 p.m. Wednesday as the march was breaking up. The police said they arrested eight protesters around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, after people rushed barriers and began spilling into the street. While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that one officer 'possibly' used it.

      ... CW: Browne is he same genius who said the NYPD used pepper spray "appropriately" two weeks ago when Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed women who were respecting police barricades. The gist of the Times' underlying story is that unions, though wary of "the protesters' hostility to the authorities," have decided to join Occupy Wall Street anyway. Watch the video above & decide for yourself where the "hostility" lies. ...

... AND this from Fox 5 New York: "While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer's baton." This is shocking video:

... The Guardian's liveblog of yesterday's events is pretty good. It includes this note: "Despite the march having a permit, and the roads being closed, police funnelled protesters onto the sidewarks and into tightly-penned areas." CW: Explain that, Mayor von Bloomberg. ...

... Alicia Cohn of The Hill: "Several liberal House lawmakers endorsed the protests Wednesday, and the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said they had been inspired by demonstrators who have been arrested and pepper sprayed during altercations with police." ...

... Oh, AND here's Herman Cain with the Republican response: (a) Occupy Wall Street is an Obama plot; (b) unemployment is the fault of the unemployed. Think Progress has video:

I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! -- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain ...

... More from Fox "News" & other corporate media, again via Think Progress:

... AND the Chicago Board of Trade responds to Occupy Chicago:

Photo by an Occupy Chicago protester, via the Chicagoist.     ... The Chicagoist reports the message was taped to the 8th floor of the Board of Trade Building & adds, "If only someone could hurl rocks that high." ...

... Charles Pierce of Esquire writes an excellent, ascerbic post contrasting Occupy Wall Street & the Tea Party AND the media coverage of both:

The national media largely have blown off the protests because none of the people on their speed-dials have had anything to do with it.... We get snotty New Republic reporters on play dates among the hippies, and insufferable Chaunceys from the conservative press exercising the half of the wit they have, and Erin Burnett, who's never met a hedge fund she didn't adore, launching her new CNN show with video of a longhaired guy with funny glasses. And everybody else gets on the bus to drive around New Hampshire, mourning the loss of the transformational figure that is Chris Christie.

** Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council.... Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."

Let the Class Warfare Begin. Steven Dennis of Roll Call: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved quickly to shore up support in his Democratic caucus for President Barack Obama's jobs bill Wednesday, announcing it would come to the Senate floor shortly and be paid for by a surtax on millionaires. Reid's decision ... gives Democrats a poll-tested package that most can run on for the next year — even though the surtax itself is dead on arrival with Republicans. Indeed, Reid appears to be setting the stage for a major floor battle that will raise the specter of 'class warfare' and Obama recently called himself a 'warrior for the middle class.' ... Recent polls ... have shown that two-thirds or more of Americans believe millionaires should pay more into federal coffers." ...

... Vicki Needham, et al., of The Hill: "The Senate Banking Committee will vote [today] on whether [Richard Cordray,] President Obama's selection to head the new agency should win the gig, but the vote will likely be the latest round in what has been a knock-down, drag-out partisan fight over the agency and how it should operate. While it's expected the former Ohio attorney general will advance on a party-line vote, Cordray's nomination could get stuck...."

Carol Leonnig & Joe Stephens of the Washington Post: "Newly released e-mails show the Obama administration’s Energy Department was poised to give Solyndra a second taxpayer loan of $469 million last year, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire. The department was still considering providing the second loan guarantee to the solar-panel manufacturer in April and May 2010, at a time when Solyndra’s auditors were already warning that the company was in danger of collapsing.... The agency didn’t drop plans for a second loan until October 2010.... That was the month Solyndra executives and investors first warned the government that the company faced the threat of liquidation.... Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Wednesday that OMB staffers were wrong in describing the agency as actively pushing to provide the second loan."

Shaila Dewan of the New York Times: although there are multiple efforts to forgive portions of the debts owned by homeowners whose morgages are underwater, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac refuse to participate. "The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration do not allow principal reduction on their loans either.... Fannie and Freddie’s rejection of principal reduction may simply be postponing losses that will occur anyway." CW: in short, the government isn't helping the problem (Fannie & Freddie are now essentially taxpayer-owned; and it is probably hurting it -- and the homeowners).

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "Voters in the early presidential nominating states will soon be bombarded with millions of dollars in advertising from independent political organizations whose donors can remain secret until after the first five primaries and caucuses are held. That is the unintended result of decisions in recent days by state Republican officials to move up several key early contests, putting them ahead of the Jan. 31 financial disclosure deadline for super-sized fundraising committees."

El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar in a New York Times op-ed: "Many Republican politicians — and not a few Democrats, too — use the bogeyman of border violence to justify exorbitant security measures, like the ever-lengthening border fence that costs $2.8 million per mile (for a total of $6.5 billion, including maintenance, over the 20-year lifetime of the fence). [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry’s brainchild, security cameras, have so far cost $4 million to put in place and maintain.... During their first two years in operation, Mr. Perry’s cameras led to the arrest of a whopping 26 people — that’s $154,000 per arrest. And once undocumented immigrants are apprehended, costs continue to mount: in this fiscal year alone, the federal government is budgeting $2 billion just for detention."

New York Times Editors: "By a 6-to-6 vote last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit cleared the way for a legal challenge against a dubious legacy of the George W. Bush administration: the wiretapping of Americans’ international communications without a warrant or adequate judicial supervision in antiterrorism investigations. The tie decision, which allowed an earlier ruling to stand, was a well-deserved setback to the Justice Department’s accountability avoidance strategy.... We hope the Obama administration does not appeal to the Supreme Court, and allows the legal challenge to go forward. Given its dismal record on this matter, we are not holding our breath."

Supreme Court Justices Breyer & Scalia testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Former Justice John Paul Stevens on cameras in the Supreme Court:

     ... CW: the excuses for not airing Supreme Court hearings are so lame as to defy credulity. They would not hold up in -- court.

Chris Hayes of The Nation & Ta-Nehisi Coats of The Atlantic: No, racism is not just an American "historical" anomaly:

Sen. Scott Brown [R-Mass.] Gives a Lesson on How to Belittle Half of the Electorate:

The State Column: "In response to a question about how the candidates paid for tuition bills, [Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth] Warren said 'I kept my clothes on.' Warren’s response was a reference to Brown’s nude photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine while in law school." ...

Thank God! -- Scott Brown, in response to Warren's quip

Right Wing World *

I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings. -- Roger Ailes of Fox "News," an EEOC-compliant employer

But don't worry, Megyn Kelly! He hired you because he respects your journalistic talents. -- Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine

The idea of a mentally ill vice president who suffers in complete isolation was obviously sparked by the behaviors I witnessed by Sarah Palin. -- Nicolle Wallace, former McCain-Palin aide, on her new novel which "explores what would happen if a woman were plucked from relative obscurity and elected Vice President of the United States — only to find herself completely unprepared for the job" ...

AND. There certainly were discussions — not for long because of the arc the campaign took — but certainly there were discussions about whether, if they were to win, it would be appropriate for [Palin] to be sworn in. -- Nicolle Wallace ...

... This certainly is a shocking admission, in no small part because the Constitution does not provide any process short of impeachment to remove a vice president. -- Tanya Somanader of Think Progress

* Where news & commentary is only delivered by hot babes & crusty male curmudgeons.

News Ledes

The Hill: "In a shocking development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely used procedural option informally called the 'nuclear option' to change the Senate rules. Reid and 50 members of his caucus voted to change Senate rules unilaterally to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on uncomfortable amendments after the chamber has voted to move to final passage of a bill.... The surprise move stunned Republicans." For more on Reid's strategic move, see Brian Beutler of TPM.

Washington Post: Jonathan Silver, "the head of the Energy Department’s controversial loan guarantee program has decided to step down.... While DOE made the initial loan to Solyndra before Silver took the program’s helm — a point he made repeatedly during his congressional testimony last month — he remained the administration’s point person for the embattled initiative."

President Obama held a press conference this morning. New York Times report here. Washington Post report here.

AP: "Unions lent their muscle to the long-running protest against Wall Street and economic inequality Wednesday.... Thousands of protesters, including many in union T-shirts, filled lower Manhattan's Foley Square on Wednesday and then marched to Zuccotti Park, where the protesters have been camping since Sept. 17. Labor leaders say they will continue to support the protests, both with manpower and donations of goods and services." Los Angeles Times story here. See today's Commentariat & yesterday's Ledes for other news, commentary & video on yesterday's events. ...

... Washington Post: "The Occupy Wall Street protest movement is trying to build momentum in Washington, with Occupy D.C. demonstrators planning to gather Thursday at Freedom Plaza." With Video. The Post's Annie Gowen will be tweeting developments from this page. The Occupy DC Website is here. ...

     ... Update: the Washington Post report on the peaceful "occupation" is here.

NBC News: "Nevada will hold its presidential nominating contest Jan. 14.... The primary calendar continues to take shape, moving into early January. Florida started the chain reaction, when it defied Republican National Committee rules and set its primary for Jan. 31. Following that, South Carolina moved its primary to Jan. 21."

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. -- Barack Obama ...

... The New York Times obituary for Steve Jobs, which we also linked in yesterday's Ledes, has links to related stories & multimedia-format information about Jobs.

New York Times: "Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who worked to expose the persistence of racism in America through his books and articles and his provocative career moves — he gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s hiring practices — died on Wednesday in New York. He was 80."

AP: "The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded Thursday to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II."

AP: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords [D-Ariz.] is scheduled to attend her husband's retirement ceremony in Washington. The Arizona congresswoman ... is set to join her husband, Navy Capt. Mark Kelly, at an event Thursday that will be presided over by Vice President Joe Biden."

AP: First Lady "Michelle Obama ... paid a visit to Secret Service headquarters on Wednesday to thank workers at the agency that, among its many duties, protects the first family."

AP: Entergy, "the operator of an aging nuclear power plant near New York City, has hired former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to vouch for its safety in a new ad campaign.... The operator is seeking to renew its licenses for its two reactors. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for the plant to be shut down due to safety concerns."