The Commentariat -- September 30
Classy! As your governor, you're going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page, saying 'Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.'
-- Paul LePage, Maine's Republican gubernatorial nominee
E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: President Obama "returned to his community-organizer roots to try to salvage an election" at his campaign rally in Wisconsin after disdaining "a mobilizing strategy for his first year and a half in office.... If Obama succeeds, will he continue to keep his supporters engaged and 'fired up' ...? Or will he go back to an insider strategy that helped bring him to the brink of this precipice?" ...
... Meanwhile, ConservaDems help Republicans, pretend to be Republicans, & Arianna Huffington says President Obama isn't much better:
... Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal writes that if ConservaDems running against their own party win, even if Democrats maintain a House majority, they "almost certainly won't have a functioning liberal majority."
New York Times Editorial Board: "Despite President Obama’s promises of reform [the overuse of the state secrets doctrine], the public still cannot reliably distinguish between legitimate and self-serving uses of the national security claims. Worse, some of the administration’s claims clearly have fallen on the darker side of that line."
In the absence of a draft, for a growing number of Americans, service in the military, no matter how laudable, has become something for other people to do. -- Robert Gates
Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times: "The United States is at risk of developing a cadre of military leaders who are cut off politically, culturally and geographically from the population they are sworn to protect, Defense Secretary told an audience at on Wednesday night." CW: no kidding. ...
... Mark Thompson of Time: Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicts that the number of military suicides will keep rising.
Dana Milbank: NOW President Terry O'Neill confronts Alan Simpson in the Catfood Commission meeting room, urging him to resign. Simpson changes the subject to trashing former labor leader Andy Stern. Let's go to the videotape:
Unhinged. Maggie Haberman of Politic, September 29: "New York Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino alleged Tuesday that Democrat Andrew Cuomo was unfaithful to his ex-wife years ago.... Paladino offered no proof of his claim, despite requests for substantiation, and he made it minutes after angrily declaring his 10-year-old daughter—a child from his own affair 10 years ago—off limits to the press." ...
... Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "Hours after the phone interview [with Politico] was conducted, Mr. Paladino nearly came to blows with a New York Post reporter who confronted him about the comments." Here's the videotape:
... Update: Oh, goody! The Atlantic has made the corniest possible animated version of the confrontation between Paladino & reporter Dicker. Where is Taiwan when we need them? ...
... See more about Paladino on the Campaign 2010 New York page.
Constantly Creepy. CNN: Andrew Breitbart protege James O'Keefe, "a conservative activist known for making undercover videos, plotted to embarrass ... CNN correspondent [Abbie Boudreau] by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating 'palace of pleasure' and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show."
... Here is part of the outline O'Keefe prepared. Take a look at page 3, which details his props for the "seduction." They include, "a condom jar, dildos..., lube, ceiling mirror...." It goes on. Breitbart & O'Keefe -- the Woodward & Bernstein of the right.
Barton Gellman writes the cover story for Time on the "twisted patriotism" of right-wing militias.
Jonathan Martin & Keach Hagey of Politico: "With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office.... The matter is of no small consequence, since it’s uncertain how other news organizations can cover the early stages of the presidential race when some of the main GOP contenders are contractually forbidden to appear on any TV network besides Fox."
Ryan Reilly & Rachel Slajda of Talking Points Memo describe a right-wing conspiracy theory gone mainstream Republican that non-whites are lolling around welfare offices cooking up voter fraud schemes. These allegations are so offensive in content & tone I can't bring myself to type them. Oh, and they're untrue.
Tim Egan of the New York Times talks to his old friend Jeff Dowd, the model for the Dude in the film "The Big Lebowski," about California's Prop 19, a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana.
CW: something I missed in the Pew religious knowledge survey: 41 percent of Americans can't name the Vice President of the United States.
Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post: the Federal Trade Commission has instituted new rules to rein in scams & shady practices of many debt settlement companies, companies that claim to help consumers manager & reduce their outstanding debts.
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