The Commentariat -- August 27

In his weekly address, President Obama pays tribute to the first responders who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks:

     ... The transcript is here. ...

     ... Reuters: "President Barack Obama urged Americans on Saturday to recall the spirit that united the country after the September 11 attacks and take part in a national day of service to mark the anniversary next month."

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square today. Karen Garcia & I have added comments.

I said to him, "Do not look at what is possible — look at what is necessary. If you only propose what you think they’ll accept, they control the agenda.” I urged him to propose what was necessary to solve the problem . . . and if he doesn’t and he falls into the nibbling around the edge, I think history will judge him and I think working people will judge him. We’re going in the wrong direction. There has to be some hope that we’re going to turn it around. That means there have to be some bold solutions and some risk taking. You need leadership with a sharp cutting edge to say, "This is what I stand for, this is what they stand for. ” Give them the narrative about why it will work, [rather than] more of the same of, "we’re muddling along."  -- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking about a recent meeting he had with President Obama  ...

... Citing a Pew "monster public opinion survey," Jonathan Chait of The New Republic writes, "People always want leaders to compromise. It's amazing that a plurality wants Obama to confront the GOP more strongly. Want to see something even more amazing? You're seeing non-trivial numbers of Republicans say that Obama should stand up to the Republicans." The Pew survey report is here.

New York Times Editor (CW: don't know which one!): "The real value in [Fed Chair Ben] Bernanke’s speech is that he explained what really ails the economy — and made the case for a better fiscal response to address those ills. 'Good, proactive housing policies' would speed recovery, he said, as would 'putting people back to work.'" The editor suggests ways to do that. ...

     ...  Here's the text of Bernanke's speech, provided by the Federal Reserve.

... Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post: Can the Fed increase inflation? And if he can, would that really spur economic growth? Reputable economists disagree. ...

... Paul Krugman: "... for what seems to me the first time [Bernanke] has more or less acknowledged that we are not, in any real sense, experiencing a recovery."

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) in a New York Times op-ed: "Despite decades of progress, this year’s Republican-backed wave of voting restrictions has demonstrated that the fundamental right to vote is still subject to partisan manipulation. The most common new requirement, that citizens obtain and display unexpired government-issued photo identification before entering the voting booth, was advanced in 35 states and passed by Republican legislatures in ... [12] states — despite the fact that as many as 25 percent of African-Americans lack acceptable identification.... They are poll taxes by another name."

Charles Blow highlights a litany of Stupid Republican Policies: "Now is when we need government to step up and be smart. This is exactly the wrong time to do what the Republicans would have us do."

Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker: "In its cynical decision to censor the memoir of former F.B.I. Special Agent Ali Soufan, the C.I.A. is seeking to punish a critic and to obscure history. The punitive nature of the savaging of Soufan’s book is ... an attempt to delete Soufan’s heroic and entirely humane interrogations of major Al Qaeda figures." In this brief post, Wright goes on to make the stunning but supportable charge that "The likelihood is that 9/11 could have been prevented if the C.I.A. had done what it was legally required to do; that is, to inform the bureau that terrorists were on American soil."

Tom Friedman knockoff columnist Joe Nocera tells us of his personal relationship with Steve Jobs (just the way Friedman always boasts about his friendships with the rich and famous) and explains "What Makes Steve Jobs Great" (just the way Friedman always touts the brilliance of his fancy personal acquaintances).

Ben Geman of The Hill: "Al Gore on Friday bashed the notion that climate scientists are manipulating data for financial gain, a charge levied by global warming skeptics, including GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry. 'This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money,' Gore said...." CW: You can watch the interview here. It runs an hour; the sound doesn't kick in till about 50 seconds in.

Andy Borowitz: "As Hurricane Irene prepared to batter the East Coast of the United States, federal disaster officials warned that Internet outages caused by the storm could force people to interact with other people for the first time in years. News of the possible interpersonal interactions created panic up and down the coast as residents braced themselves for the horror of awkward silences and unwanted eye contact."

Can you believe this? I’m the President of the whole fucking United States!-- President-Select George W. Bush, Christmas 2000

Right Wing World

CW: in yesterday's Commentariat, I wrote that Marco Rubio might have delivered the very first flat-out admission that Republican Tea Party policy is to take the U.S. all the way back to the Gilded Age. Well, maybe not. There's this from November 2010:

... And there's this, post-Rubio. As Hurricane Irene was about to take a swipe at perhaps 55 million Americans who live up and down the East Coast, Ron Paul says we don't need FEMA. Instead, "We should be like 1900":

     ... Steve Benen: "And to think, Ron Paul struggles to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.... On the list of things Americans can and should expect from the federal government, 'disaster relief' should be one of the few responsibilities that the left and right can endorse enthusiastically. It’s something people can’t do for themselves; it’s something states can’t afford to do; and struggling communities can’t wait for the invisible hand of the free market to lift them up." ...

... AND this from Benen on the GOP's new disaster aid policy: "Whereas Congress used to provide emergency funds after a disaster, without regard for budget caps or offsets, Republicans have said they will no longer accept such an approach — if Democrats want emergency assistance in the wake of a natural disaster, Republicans will insist on attaching some strings to the relief funds.... As [House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor’s spokesperson put it, GOP leaders expect 'additional funds for federal disaster relief' to be 'offset with spending cuts.' ... In the event of extensive damage [from Hurricane Irene], there’s a real possibility that the first question from congressional Republicans won’t be, 'How can we help?' but rather, 'What will Democrats give us in exchange for disaster aid?'”

Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal: Rick Perry completely abandons his libertarian moment in which he said that he was okay with New York's gay marriage law:

You know what? That’s New York, and that’s their business, and that’s fine with me. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business if you live in some other state or particularly if you’re the federal government.

     "On Friday, Mr. Perry, who has long opposed gay marriage ... signed the National Organization of Marriage’s anti-gay-marriage pledge.... Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) also signed the pledge."

Texas Taxes. Jay Root of the Texas Tribune, via the New York Times: "... at home, over a political career that reaches back to ... the 1980s, [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry has embraced billions of dollars worth of [taxes] — including a $528 million tax increase approved in 1990, after he defected to the Republican Party. The biggest tax increases came early in his career.... But a few weeks ago, Mr. Perry also signed into law an online sales tax measure that the state says will raise $60 million over the next five years. Grover Norquist’s influential organization, Americans for Tax Reform, calls the measure a dreaded 'new tax.' Mr. Perry opposed it as a stand-alone measure, but this summer it was tucked into a must-pass bill during a legislative session that otherwise saw deep budget cuts. The past votes and more recent tax legislation are sure to get a new look from opponents as Mr. Perry ... promotes his tax-cuttin’, budget-slashin’ ways as an antidote to the ailing economy and a president he attacks as recklessly profligate." CW: the sales tax, of course, is a regressive tax as the poor pay more sales tax as a percent-of-income than do the affluent.

Moderate conservative Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post: "The [Republican presidential] race of the moment concerns which candidate is the truest believer.... If you’re Romney, Perry is a nightmare that’s still there in the morning. If you’re Barack Obama, maybe not so much? ... We are yet again debating evolutionary theory and Earth’s origins — and ... candidates now have to declare where they stand on established science. "

News Ledes

President Obama chairs an emergency meetings on Hurricane Irene at FEMA HQ in Washington, D.C.:

     ... C-SPAN has an 8-minute video on the meeting here.

AFP: "US President Barack Obama warned the US east coast was in for a 'long 72 hours' as he led his government's response to Hurricane Irene at a disaster command center in Washington. Obama on Saturday chaired a meeting at the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) set up at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, which is marshaling federal and local hurricane-relief efforts."

AP: "Weaker but still menacing, Hurricane Irene knocked out power and piers in North Carolina, clobbered Virginia with wind and churned up the coast Saturday to confront cities more accustomed to snowstorms than tropical storms. New York City emptied its streets and subways and waited with an eerie quiet."

Raleigh (North Carolina) News & Observer: "The center of Hurricane Irene made landfall in North Carolina early this morning. The National Hurricane Center said the enormous Category 1 storm came ashore just after 7:30 a.m. Sustained winds were about 90 mph. It was moving at 14 mph, lumbering to the north-northeast. The end of the pier at Atlantic Beach in Carteret County has collapsed into heavy surf. Sustained winds of 80 mph are being felt on parts of the Crystal Coast." ...

... New York Times: "The eye wall of Hurricane Irene, now a category one storm, is within a couple of hours of making landfall in eastern North Carolina, the first stop in the mainland United States for a storm that is expected to scrape up the East Coast and bring flooding rains to a dozen states." CW Note: this story will likely be updated regularly throughout the day. Washington Post story here." ...

... The Washington Post's liveblog is here.

... Weather Channel: "Punishing rain bands [caused by Hurricane Irene] are lashing the Carolinas, southeast Virginia and the southern Delmarva Peninsual. The center of Irene is nearing Cape Lookout, North Carolina."

Washington Post: "Evidence emerged Friday that Col. Moammar Gaddafi’s retreating forces executed scores or even hundreds of political prisoners this week, even as victorious rebel fighters appear to have carried out their own abuses. Survivors of an attack by pro-Gaddafi troops said they had watched as fellow prisoners were mowed down by machine-gun fire, minutes after being told they were free. But Gaddafi loyalists were also targets of apparent extrajudicial killings. Those deaths have cast a dark shadow over Libya’s newfound freedom and call into question whether the rebels will break with Gaddafi’s blood-soaked style of governance or merely mimic it."

AP: "U.S. District Judge Larry Burns described Jared Lee Loughner's behavior to explain his refusal to overrule prison doctors who decided to resume forced medication July 18. The drugging, he said, 'seems entirely appropriate and reasonable to me.' Loughner's attorneys argued unsuccessfully that a court should review whether the forcible medications could resume."

The Commentariat -- August 26

I've put up a Krugman page on Off Times Square with lotsa links, including this one to today's column, titled "Bernanke's Perry Problem." Karen Garcia, Kate Madison & I have all posted comments. BTW, yesterday's thread was particularly good, my own contributions nothwithstanding: intelligent people sharing useful insights about difficult subjects. I highly recommend your reading it through. ...

     ... Update: it appears the Times moderators have again dumped Madison's and my comments on Brooks, so you'll have to read them on Off Times Square. Also, read some of the comments to Krugman's column; they're quite good.

... Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: The "Jackson Hole ... symposium, sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, occupies a unique place in the world of economic policy. It brings together most of the globe’s top central bankers and many of the planet’s smartest economists."But not Paul Krugman. See also today's Ledes for Ben Bernanke's effect on in ternational markets.

Via Ezra Klein.

Jennifer Agiesta & Laurie Kellman of the AP: "Americans are plenty angry at Congress in the aftermath of the debt crisis and Republicans could pay the greatest price, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests. The poll finds the tea party has lost support, Republican House Speaker John Boehner is increasingly unpopular and people are warming to the idea of not just cutting spending but also raising taxes — anathema to the GOP...."

Tim Egan of the New York Times: "As president, [Obama has] been a sober, cautious, tongue-shackled realist — a moderate Republican of the pre-crazy, pre-Tea Party era. Having failed to come up with a Big Idea to guide his presidency, he will sink or swim now on strengths that don’t lend themselves to large rallies or passionate enthusiasm. Sobriety and moderation, by definition, are boring."

Karen Garcia on "a scandal within a scandal": How Iowa AG Tom Miller and New York Fed member Kathryn Wylde are both stymying New York AG Eric Schneiderman's efforts to hold financial institutions accountable for the mortgage debacle.

Ezra Klein: "Most people think that the Obama administration 'owns' Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and so it can basically tell them to do whatever it wants. That’s not how it works. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the control of the newly created Federal Housing and Finance Authority. The FHFA is ... an independent agency, and right now it’s under the care of acting Director Edward DeMarco, a holdover from the Bush administration. Senate Republicans blocked the Obama administration’s nominee, Joe Smith, after he expressed some support for using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to heal the housing market. Any plan [to help underwater homeowners] would either need to go through him or through Congress. And both DeMarco and the Republicans in Congress seem mostly interested in limiting Fannie and Freddie’s short-term losses so they can be spun off from the government."

CW: Prof. Cornel West, in a New York Times op-ed, makes some good points about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., before he goes over-the-top, as he almost invariable does, and ends by warning us to be "coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle." (And you can bet the Times editors ratcheted down whatever was in West's first draft.) Here's one of West's more worthy observations:

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the [Obama] administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable. ...

... Roger Simon of Politico: "In the case of the King memorial, the controversy is whether the enormous statue of one of the greatest figures in American history should be stamped 'Made in China.' The 'Stone of Hope' statue of Dr. King was sculpted in China by a Chinese sculptor out of Chinese granite and shipped to the United States where it was assembled by Chinese workers. The Chinese workers were paid nothing -- which would seem to me to violate not only Dr. King’s principles but also U.S. anti-slavery laws -- though they were hoping to get paid something when they returned to China."

Greg Sargent has more on Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's "misguided ... crusade to get American business leaders to withhold political donations from all incumbents in Congress, to pressure them to produce a deficit reduction plan that deals with entitlements and revenues." Sargent writes, "As it turns out, Schultz is a big donor to the Democratic Party.... Democrats are far more in agreement with Schultz [on deficit control].... Punishing both parties equally for their current positions isn’t likely to produce the outcome Schultz wants." CW: or, I would wager, punishing Democrats much more than Republicans, etc.

Jennifer Huget of the Washington Post: "Based on trends, half of the adults in the United States will be obese by 2030..., according to a report released Thursday on the international obesity crisis in the British medical journal the Lancet. Those changes include making healthful foods cheaper and less-healthful foods more expensive largely through tax strategies.... A team of international public health experts argued that the global obesity crisis will continue to grow worse and add substantial burdens to health-care systems and economies unless governments, international agencies and other major institutions take action to monitor, prevent and control the problem. Changes over the past century in the way food is made and marketed have contributed to the creation of an 'obesogenic' environment in which personal willpower and efforts to maintain a healthful weight are largely impossible, the report noted." CW: you can read the reports, published in the Lancet, beginning here, but you have to create a Lancet account.

Will Wilkinson of The Economist: "[Steve] Jobs's wealth, like that of other billionaire barons of the information age, was built in no small part upon an intellectual-property regime that I and many others believe to retard progress while concentrating massive rewards upon a privileged few, generating unfair and unproductive inequality." Wilkinson then goes on to "forgive" Jobs his success, and his refusal to share it a la Gates & Buffett because of the "the elegance of the Apple devices ... [which] offered the mass market dazzling technical progress with the sort of tastefully luxurious sheen usually reserved for the seriously well-to-do."

Seth at Enik Rising: don't confuse correlation with causation: a case study. Via Jonathan Bernstein.

Right Wing World

What Not to Read. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times reviews Dick Cheney's memoir: "... the memoir — delivered in dry, often truculent prose — turns out to be mostly a predictable mix of spin, stonewalling, score settling and highly selective reminiscences. The book, written with his daughter Liz, reiterates Mr. Cheney’s aggressive approach to foreign policy and his hard-line views on national security, while sidestepping questions about many of the Bush administration’s more controversial decisions, either by cherry-picking information (much the way critics say the White House cherry-picked intelligence in making the case to go to war against Iraq) or by hopping and skipping over awkward subjects with loudly voiced assertions."

Welfare Queens, 2012 Edition. CW: here's something President Obama should put in his arsenal, but won't. Ed Kilgore of The New Republic: Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry & Michele Bachmann have been attacking what were Republican-(including Reagan!)-led programs to aid the working poor. "Work is no longer enough, it seems, to avoid the moral taint of being a 'welfare bum.' And the cruelest irony of all is that, for so many, the work’s not available anyway.

CW: I think this may be the very first flat-out admission that Republican Tea Party policy is to take the U.S. all the way back to the Gilded Age:

Except for the Reagan Administration, to be quite frank, both Republicans and Democrats established a role for government in America that said yes we will have a free economy, but we will also have a strong government, which through regulations and taxes will control the free economy, and through a series of government programs, will take care of those in our society who are falling behind. That was the vision crafted in the 20th Century by our leaders. These programs weakened us as a people. -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), in a speech at the Reagan Library

CW: Since Nancy Reagan was sitting in the front row, future Republican vice-presidential nominee Rubio could hardly diss her husband. Or, as Jonathan Chait notes,

Rubio hilariously excludes Reagan from the pattern of presidents who accepted a government role in the economy. Conservative mythology insists that Reagan must always be correct, so Rubio lauds him for rejecting the twentieth century model of government, even though Reagan very much accepted the broad contours of the post New Deal state. Indeed, Reagan liked to boast that he voted for Franklin Roosevelt....

Photo via Politico.... Maggie Haberman of Politico: "David Limbaugh, the conservative author and brother of Rush, tweets an image you're likely to see again.... Perry spokesman Mark Miner emailed this response: 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' As we reported recently, Perry himself also questioned on the stump the fact that Obama had never served in the military.... Obama was not actually 22 in that photo, he was in college." Haberman also links to this photo of Mitt Romney at around the same age:

That's Romney on the right. Photo via the Boston Globe.... This Globe caption accompanying the photo: "The main task of missionaries was to teach people about Mormonism, in the hope that they would choose to convert. The most common method of travel for the missionaries was the bicycle, and many of the missionaries in France rode motorized bikes."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The contenders in the GOP field appear to be spending most of their time with those they think could be the solution to the country’s economic hardship (business owners) rather than those who are most directly experiencing the hardship (people out of work)." CW: note that this is a straight news report, not an opinion piece; i.e., this is the way it is.

News Ledes

President Obama on Hurricane Irene:

     ... www.Ready.gov

New York Times: "The State Department gave a crucial green light on Friday to a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline that would carry heavy oil from oil sands in Canada across the Great Plains to terminals in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast."

New York Times: "An arson attack on a casino in northern Mexico on Thursday that left 52 people dead has thrown a spotlight on the growth of gambling houses throughout the country and their role in organized crime. In what President Felipe Calderón called an act of 'true terrorists,' armed men in four vehicles — a Mini Cooper leading sport utility vehicles and a pickup truck — calmly drove up to the Casino Royale in Monterrey at midafternoon, dashed inside, ordered people to get out and set it ablaze with a flammable liquid."

New York Times: "The hurricane warning that was put into effect in North Carolina on Thursday was extended by the National Hurricane Center to Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey on Friday morning, indicating that preparations for the storm should be completed as soon as possible."

New York Times: "President Obama will cut short his Martha’s Vineyard vacation because of Hurricane Irene and return Friday night, as he urged Americans along the Eastern Seaboard to take precautions against the potentially 'historic hurricane' making its way toward the coast this weekend." See his statement above. ...

... Weather Channel: "Hurricane Irene is likely to be the most impactful hurricane to hit the East Coast in at least several decades! The latest computer model guidance confirms this extraordinary threat and the first hurricane warnings and hurricane watches have been issued for the East Coast." ...

     ... Update: "As Hurricane Irene bears down on the U.S. East Coast, its inital rain bands are already rotating into the Carolinas bringing intense rain squalls complete with gusty winds." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Hurricane Irene was starting to spray the North Carolina coast early Friday afternoon as it headed for a destructive march up the Eastern Seaboard in an unusually broad path that could affect 55 million people."

AP: "A car laden with explosives detonated outside the United Nations' main office in Nigeria's capital Friday, flattening one wing of the building and killing an undetermined number of people."

Al Jazeera: "Rebel reinforcements have streamed into the Libyan capital, Tripoli, to join in the fight against Muammar Gaddafi loyalists, who are putting up strong resistance in some pockets of the city. Fighters from the port city of Misrata have joined fellow rebels who spearheaded the weekend assault that saw the Libyan capital swiftly overrun and Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound falling to the rebels." ...

... Al Jazeera's liveblog on Libya is here.

AP: "World stock markets were unsteady on Friday as jittery investors waited to see whether Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would promise new steps to help the U.S. economy ward off another recession. Bernanke is due to deliver a highly anticipated speech at a conference later Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming." CW Note: see Krugman's column, linked in the Commentariat, on Bernanke's anticipated speech. ...

     ... No Surprises, No Nothin'. New York Times Update: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Friday that the economy is recovering and the nation’s long-term prospects remained strong, an upbeat assessment that offered little indication of any plans for additional measures to boost short-term growth. ...

     ... Update: the Times story has a new lede: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Friday that the political battle this summer over the federal government’s borrowing and spending had disrupted financial markets 'and probably the economy as well.'”

     ... NEW. Here's the text of Bernanke's speech, provided by the Federal Reserve.

New York Times: "The National Labor Relations Board issued new regulations on Thursday that require companies to put posters on their bulletin boards that inform employees about their rights to unionize under federal law.... Noting that many workers are unaware of these rights, the board said the new regulations are aimed at making it easier for workers to exercise their rights....  under the National Labor Relations Act, which sets rules for unionization efforts.... Business groups were quick to criticize the new regulations, which they said were part of the board’s pro-union tilt under President Obama." CW: Does this sound to you like a rule a Republican-appointed NLRB would issue. It's another reason for progressives to vote for Obama.

New York Times: "In what amounts to a fight over who gets to write the history of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, the Central Intelligence Agency is demanding extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent [Ali Soufan] who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda.... Some of the scores of cuts demanded by the C.I.A. from Mr. Soufan’s book ... seem hard to explain on security grounds. Among them ... is a phrase from Mr. Soufan’s 2009 testimony at a Senate hearing, freely available both as video and transcript on the Web."

The Commentariat -- August 25

Sorry for the delays in posting, which were caused by major technical difficulties. Since I didn't look at anything for five or six hours last night, I posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square. ...

... Update: See the very fine post by FromTheHeartland in today's Off Times Square about cuts in Medicaid and other healthcare safety-net programs in, well, the Heartland. FTH also zeroes in on the media's sloppy reporting of data, in this case, misinterpreting and vastly underreporting the true reduction in healthcare services. Once again, commentary on Off Times Square beats what you'll find in mainstream media outlets.

E. J. Dionne: "... no good Obama deed goes unpunished." Especially if you've been critical of Obama's Libya policy, read this. (I've been --and still am -- critical of his refusal to ask for Congressional approval, tho not of the overall policy.)

A Worthy Campaign. Mike Allen of Politico: "President Barack Obama's reelection campaign on Thursday announced 'Project Vote,' a campaign-within-a-campaign that is aimed at increasing registration and participation among Democratic base constituencies — including young voters, seniors, African Americans and Hispanics, plus Native Americans and gay and lesbian voters."

Kevin Drum: "Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has gotten a lot of press for his campaign to get CEOs to halt all political contributions until politicians in Washington DC stop their insane bickering.... And for some reason they've decided that Republicans will cave in on this if they announce their intention to withhold all political contributions to both parties this year. Seriously? My guess is that the GOP leadership is laughing its ass off over this." CW: some while back, when one of the NYT lunkheads -- don't recall if it was Nocera or Friedman, but they're peas in a pod -- wrote a fawning column on this brilliant "plan," & I wrote a comment saying it was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard. The Times responded by refusing to publish my comment.

Rachel Maddow talks to Jared Bernstein about a jobs program that some Republicans -- like Tea Party darling Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) -- might buy:

Crazy Scott Brown Operative. Glen Johnson of the Boston Globe: "Eric Fehrnstrom -- a senior campaign adviser to US Senator Scott Brown" admitted he has been tweeting unflattering and racy remarks under the twitternym "CrazyKhazei, which he pretended were tweets by Brown Democratic opponent Alan Khazei." Fehrnstrom didn't volunteer that he had perpetrated a hoax; rather, spokesmen for the Massachusetts Democratic party discovered Fehrnstrom when he accidentally "sent out a 'CrazyKhazei’'-type tweet Tuesday from his Twitter account." Creep. ...

... Krugman, Master of Disaster. Dave Weigel of Slate: another fake Paul Krugman hoax, and the genius pundits on the right fall for it. No, Real Krugman did not tweet: "... we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage." Krugman responds on his own blog. Thanks to Bob M. for the link.

David Pogue of the New York Times on Steve Jobs' remarkable impact on "a stunning range of industries." ...

... Here's a New York Times interactive page on Jobs' patents. ...

... Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post on Jobs' resignation as Apple CEO.

It Depends on What the Meaning of "Power" Is. Forbes names "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women." Really? Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook is #5, entertainer Beyonce Knowles is #18, & Nancy Pelosi is #52? Really? No. 1 is German Chancellor Angela Merkel & #2 is Hillary Clinton, so they probably got those right.

If We Could Talk with the Animals. Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post: "Orangutans, gorillas, flamingos and red-ruffed lemurs [at Washington, D.C.'s National Zoo] acted strangely before humans detected the historic magnitude-5.8 earthquake. Now the question hovering over the zoo is: What did the animals know, and when did they know it?" CW: I used to have Nubian goats who knew a storm was coming before I did.

Right Wing World *

Teabaggers Bag the GOP. Dave Weigel of Slate: "Tea Party candidates won't win any [primary] elections next year because mainstream Republicans now spout the same ideas."

"Know-Nothings Opt for Scary New Frontrunner." Steve Stromberg of the Washington Post: "It’s official: Rick Perry is the 'frontrunner' for the Republican presidential nomination.... A new Gallup poll has the Texas governor with the support of 29 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared to only 17 percent for heretofore 'frontrunner' Mitt Romney. A Public Policy Polling survey also came in ... with similar results.... Gallup conducted the poll from August 17 to 21. The 17th was just four days into Perry’s campaign, but by then the candidate had already managed to suggest that Ben Bernanke ... was 'treasonous,' imply that President Obama doesn’t love America, and speculate that climate science was an elaborate, cynical fraud."

* Where Know-Nothings are the deciders.

News Ledes

Boston Globe: "Nearly 10 years after a worldwide clergy sexual abuse crisis erupted in the Boston Archdiocese, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley today released a long-awaited roster of 159 archdiocesan clerics who have been accused of sexually abusing children. But O’Malley’s action was immediately criticized by Attorney General Martha Coakley and advocates for clergy abuse victims because it lists only those priests who have already been publicly accused, and omits the names of dozens of accused priests from religious orders and other dioceses, as well as those who left the priesthood before accusations were leveled againt them."

New York Times: "The Security Council committee that monitors sanctions against Libya agreed on Thursday to unfreeze $1.5 billion in Libyan assets for emergency aid to the country, where rebel forces that have ousted Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi are confronting a humanitarian crisis as they attempt to establish security and form a new government."

New York Times: "Rebels intensified their hunt for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his sons on Thursday, engaging in an intense fight with loyalists in a neighborhood of apartment blocks near his former Tripoli fortress, as Western officials said NATO was actively helping in the effort to find the elusive leader. But in a new taunt, Colonel Qaddafi urged Libyans in a brief audio broadcast to cleanse Tripoli of the insurgents, whom he called 'rats, crusaders and unbelievers.'”

Buffett Bails out BoA. New York Times: "Warren E. Buffett comes to the rescue, again. On Thursday, Berkshire Hathaway, run by Mr. Buffett, announced plans to invest $5 billion in Bank of America, a vote of confidence for the beleaguered financial firm. The conglomerate has agreed to buy 50,000 preferred shares that will pay a 6 percent annual dividend. Bank of America has the option to buy back the shares at any time for a 5 percent premium."

New York Times: "The Obama administration is considering further actions to strengthen the housing market, but ... plans must help a broad swath of homeowners, stimulate the economy and cost next to nothing. One proposal would allow millions of homeowners with government-backed mortgages to refinance them at today’s lower interest rates, about 4 percent, according to two people briefed on the administration’s discussions who asked not to be identified because they were not allowed to talk about the information."

Al Jazeera: "Rebel reinforcements have streamed into the Libyan capital, Tripoli, to join in the fight against Muammar Gaddafi loyalists, who are putting up strong resistance in some pockets of the city." With video. ...

... Al Jazeera's liveblog on Libya is here. ...

New York Times: Former Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Mr. Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers — still stinging over 'the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction' — expressed misgivings.."

New York Times: Naoto Kan, the embattled Japanese prime minister, is likely to step down by early next week, a cabinet minister said on Tuesday, a long-expected resignation that will nevertheless bring uncertainty to a country still reeling in the aftermath of its natural and nuclear disasters.