The Commentariat -- June 6

Paul Krugman explains the difference between demagoguery and telling the truth to people who don't know the difference. ...

... I put up a Krugman page on Off Times Square, but you may comment on Douthat or anything else within reason. (Hmm. Did not mean to suggest here that Douthat was reasonable; he is not.)

CW: More later. Perhaps. I'm now living in a McDonald's somewhere in Pennsylvania. It's freezing and they're playing really loud music. BUT they have a WiFi hotspot AND an outlet to plug in my laptop. They will be throwing me out in a few hours. The lives of the unconnected are pitiful indeed.

Okay, here's more:

Dean Baker: "... Welcome to the Second Great Depression."

Sara Murray of the Wall Street Journal: "At least half the states have begun to rein in safety-net programs that swelled during the downturn, even as high unemployment and slow job growth persist. States offer a range of assistance programs such as tax credits for the working poor, unemployment benefits for the jobless and cash for low-income mothers and children. Governors from both parties have begun to make or propose cuts to these programs as they face another year of yawning budget gaps."

Thom Shanker of the New York Times: "President Obama’s national security team is contemplating troop reductions in Afghanistan that would be steeper than those discussed even a few weeks ago, with some officials arguing that such a change is justified by the rising cost of the war and the death of Osama bin Laden, which they called new 'strategic considerations.' These new considerations, along with a desire to find new ways to press the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to get more of his forces to take the lead, are combining to create a counterweight to an approach favored by the departing secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, and top military commanders in the field."

"Headwinds." Karen Garcia: President Obama has a new word & the court stenographers have got it down pat. She is having trouble distinguishing among Obama, Romney & Huntsman. Same policies: just different pretenses to shore up their bases..

Lisa Mascaro & Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times suggest Democrats & Republicans will kick the deficit debate down the road & "resolve" the debt ceiling standoff by essentially doing nothing till after the 2012 election. No kidding.

Nathan Schwartz of the New York Times: "Bank stocks took another tumble late last week after Moody’s, the credit rating firm, warned it might downgrade the debt of giants like Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo as the government eases back on support for the sector. Even as the market absorbed that news, reports that Goldman Sachs had been subpoenaed in an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney further unnerved investors, and sent that giant investment’s bank’s shares sinking."

Another Lesson from Alan Greenspan on How to Say, "I Fucked up," without Saying "I Fucked up." Phil Izzo of the Wall Street Journal: "Alan Greenspan, a high-profile proponent of President George W. Bush's tax cuts, now says the U.S.'s debt troubles have become so worrisome that he would support going back to Clinton-era tax rates. 'The fact that I'm in favor of going back to the Clinton tax structure is merely an indicator of how scared I am of this debt problem that has emerged and its order of magnitude,' said the former chairman of the Federal Reserve in an interview Friday on CNBC."

James Surowiecki of the New Yorker: Elizabeth Warren may be both the best loved & most hated person in Washington. "Given the intensely partisan nature of Washington these days, the demonization of Warren and the C.F.P.B. is all too predictable. But it’s profoundly misguided, because Warren is far from the anti-capitalist radical that her critics (and some of her supporters) suppose. Indeed, an empowered C.F.P.B. could actually be a boon to business."

John Burns of the New York Times: "... Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, returning from a brief visit to the rebel headquarters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, hinted at concern in Western capitals about what might come after the toppling of Colonel Qaddafi. Mr. Hague said he had pressed the rebel leaders to make early progress on a more detailed plan for a post-Qaddafi government that would include sharing power with some of Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists."

Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: "President Obama named some of the country’s most knowledgeable climate scientists to his Administration. But any hope that he might take the lead on global warming has faded."

Right Wing World *

Art by Boing Boing via Little Green Footballs.Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "Man, you’ve gotta almost admire the sheer blind dedication of Sarah Palin’s wingnut acolytes. Now they’re trying like crazy to edit the Wikipedia page for 'Paul Revere' to make it match Palin’s botched version of history." (Paul Revere artwork by Boing Boing is here.) CW: this is taking Right Wing World to a whole new dimension. ...

... Jeff Spross of Think Progress: in a Fox "News" Sunday appearance, Palin herself insists she got the Revere story right. Of course, she botches it again. With video of our Historian Laureate re-explaining history.

* Sorry, can't help it.

News Ledes

New York Times: "At a news conference in Midtown Monday afternoon, Representative Anthony D. Weiner tearfully confessed to sending a photo of himself in his underwear to a woman via Twitter and then lying about it. Mr. Weiner said the indiscretion was part of a pattern of sending inappropriate and at times explicit photos and messages to women he met over the Internet." CNN's print story is here. ...

     ... Update: the Times has a more expansive story here.

New York Times: "Peter A. Diamond said Monday he was withdrawing his name from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, issuing a sharply worded broadside that criticized Senate Republicans for blocking his nomination. Mr. Diamond, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel Prize laureate for his work on labor markets, had waited more than a year for a Senate vote, a step that Republicans refused to allow."

AP: "Five American troops serving as advisers to Iraqi security police in eastern Baghdad were killed Monday when rockets slammed into the compound where they lived. The deaths were the largest single-day loss of life for American forces in two years."

Reuters: "Israel accused Syria on Monday of orchestrating lethal confrontations on the once-quiet ceasefire line between the two countries as a distraction from Damascus's bloody crackdown on an 11-week-old revolt."

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, another Republican who will not be POTUS, says he'll run anyway. WashPo story here.

The Commentariat -- June 5

No Commentariat today, as I'm on the road. I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square, though, so you can do the weading today.

Well, okay, a teeny bit of Commentariat:

Economics Nobel Laureate Peter Diamond defends himself in a New York Times op-ed against the arrogant, stupid Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) who has blocked Diamond's appointment to the Federal Reserve because Shelby says Diamond doesn't know enough. CW: It appears Diamond is defending himself because Obama won't bother. What a revolting state of affairs.

Andrew Martin of the New York Times: "The Obama administration’s main program to keep distressed homeowners from falling into foreclosure has been aimed at those who took out subprime loans or other risky mortgages during the heady days of the housing boom. But these days, the primary cause of foreclosures is unemployment. As a result, there is a mismatch between the homeowner program’s design and the country’s economic realities — and a new round of finger-pointing about how best to fix it." ...

... Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: "Reversing the economic decline fueled by the housing bust is a paramount test for President Obama as he campaigns for reelection. The president’s challenge is particularly pressing in potential swing states such as Florida, Nevada and Arizona, where stubborn joblessness and the pain from the collapse in real estate is most acute. It is in these places where Obama will face pointed questions from voters who think the administration’s policies have done little to make things better." ...

... CW: what gripes me about the two stories above is that ultimately they're all about Washington politics -- how is Obama going to balance Republicans demands to do nothing for anybody? how is this double whammy going to affect Obama's chance for re-election? There is very little concern (less than none from those despicable, callous Republicans) for the actual victims of the economic crisis: people hit with a double whammy -- lost their jobs, losing their homes. ...

... CBS News reports on a bank foreclosure you'll actually like.

Howard Dean Poses Scariest Scenario Ever. Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who helped Democrats capture the White House in 2008, warns that Sarah Palin could defeat President Obama in 2012. Dean says his fellow Democrats should beware of inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom that Obama would crush Palin in a general-election contest next year."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Portugal’s Social Democrats unseated the governing Socialists with a resounding parliamentary election victory on Sunday, giving the next government a strong mandate to enact a tough austerity program in return for 78 billion euros, or about $114 billion, international bailout. Pedro Passos Coelho, the leader of the Social Democrats, is expected to become the next prime minister, at the helm of a center-right coalition government with the conservative Popular Party."

New York Times: "Israeli forces fired at pro-Palestinian protesters on the Syrian frontier on Sunday as they tried to breach the border for the second time in three weeks, reflecting a new mode of popular struggle and deadly confrontation fueled by turmoil in the Arab world and the vacuum of stalled peace talks."

New York Times: "Yemen’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, arrived in Saudi Arabia on Saturday for urgent medical treatment of wounds sustained in a bold attack on the presidential compound, Saudi officials said, abruptly shifting the political calculus that has allowed him to cling to power despite months of protest and violence." ...

... Washington Post: "Hours after the Yemen’s president flew to Saudi Arabia for treatment of wounds sustained in a rocket attack, thousands of demonstrators flocked to the streets of the capital Sunday to celebrate what they billed as the latest ouster of an Arab autocrat."

New York Times: "Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a troubleshooting diplomat and senior foreign policy adviser to presidents who served the country for more than 40 years, including 42 days as secretary of state at the close of President George Bush’s term, died on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va. He was 80."

The Commentariat -- June 4

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square.

The President's Weekly Address:

Charles Blow has a pretty good column on Republican policy: "... the modern doctrine of a compassion-free conservatism that’s using the fog of the fiscal crisis to push a program of perverse wealth inequality as sound economic policy: The only way to jump-start the economy is to slash taxes on the wealthy and on companies; the only way to compensate for the deficits that those tax cuts exacerbate is to slash benefits to the poor and vulnerable. It would be comical if it weren’t so callous."

Binyamin Appelbaum & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "Almost 25 million Americans could not find full-time work during May, but their plight has not spurred Washington into a collaborative response.... Neither party has suggested that the issue deserves the kind of urgent response that might require ideological compromises. The Federal Reserve, charged with minimizing unemployment, has indicated that it intends to stand back.... The central bank is immobilized by the same political forces as Congress, with conservative members of the Fed board and outside critics demanding that it withdraw the money it has pumped into the economy, and liberals arguing for additional aid."

I  meant to post this yesterday, but better late than never:

... In fact, it was Donald Trump who reminded me:

Representative [Eric] Cantor, who I like, said we don't want to give money to the tornado victims. And yet in Afghanistan we're spending $10 billion a month. But we don't want to help the people that got devastated by tornadoes? Wiped out, killed, maimed, injured -- we don't have money for them but we're spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan? -- Donald Trump

Paul Krugman writes a short & sweet comparison of Obamacare & Ryancare. I should make that "Ryan-'care.' There's not much "care" in Ryancare.

Mitt Romney Gets Real. Ross Krasny of Reuters: "Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change." Jerk. He probably thinks Lexington & Concord are in Massachusetts, too, & has no idea Paul Revere clanged some bells to warn the British that Americans had the right to bear arms.

"Paul Ryan for President? Forget It." Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "Nominating Ryan would make the election an argument over the GOP’s least popular policy proposal, instead of a referendum on the economy, which would be the GOP’s best chance of winning."

CW: sorry for all the Palin stories. I don't like to cover Palin because I think she's a sideshow, but when she's dominating the news, I must. A reader called her a moron the other day, and I thought that was a little harsh. Now that I've had to read a bunch of stories about her, I think the reader's comment was an insult to morons everywhere.

** "Hubris & Humility: Dana Milbank: "... Robert Gates, defense secretary to presidents George W. Bush and Obama..., set off on a tour of Asia and Europe, where he is receiving the gratitude of soldiers and the acclaim of allies.... The week’s dueling tours of Gates and Palin show the best and worst in American public life. Both call themselves Republicans, but he comes from the best tradition of service while she is a study in selfishness. He’s self-effacing; she’s self-aggrandizing. He harmonized American foreign policy; she put bull’s-eyes on Democratic congressional districts and then howled about 'blood libel.'” ...

... William Browning, writing a Yahoo! News commentary, makes an interesting point: "Sarah Palin must be running for president.... Her 'One Nation' bus tour ... is funded by Sarah Palin's political action committee. Political action committees are regulated by the Federal Election Commission.... Palin has to use this money to do either one of two things. She has to contribute all of her fundraising efforts to candidates in federal elections or run for a federal position herself."

Right Wing World *

Glenn Kessler, the WashPo fact-checker, fact-checks an interview Sarah Palin gave to Greta van Susteren while on her "One Nation I Know Nothing About" tour. Kessler writes, "Much of the interview consisted of fluffy stuff, but every so often van Susteren diverted into asking about policy issues." Kessler calls her answers "absolute whoppers." This of course has nothing to do with Palin's complete rewrite of Paul Revere's ride. See yesterday's Commentariat for that not-to-be missed history lesson from Right Wing World; using Kessler's standards, Palin could have got at least 16 Pinocchios out of a single paragraph (not to suggest Palin speaks in paragraphs; she doesn't even speak in sentences).

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

AP: "British Apache and French attack helicopters struck targets for the first time in NATO's campaign in Libya, hitting Moammar Gadhafi's troops early Saturday near a key coastal oil city, the alliance said."

Reuters: "Senior al Qaeda operative Ilyas Kashmiri, regarded as one of the most dangerous militants in the world, was killed by a U.S. drone aircraft missile strike in Pakistan, an intelligence official and local media said on Saturday."

New York Times: "Alabama has passed a sweeping bill to crack down on illegal immigrants that both supporters and opponents call the toughest of its kind in the country, going well beyond a law Arizona passed last year that caused a furor there."