The Commentariat -- Scary Stories, Plus

CBS reporters are on tape saying, 'Let’s find a child molester in the crowd that supports Miller.... Those are corrupt bastards. -- Sarah Palin, keeping it classy on Fox "News" this morning

      ... Here's the video:

... Famous tape editor & ABC News "election analyst" Andrew Breitbart posts the purported tape & transcript. ...

     ... Update. Breitbart Punks Palin, et al. David Edwards & Daniel Tencer of the Raw Story: Fox "News" reporting undercuts Palin's, Breitbart's claims. With video. ...

     ... Greg Sargent: "Breitbart's Big Journalism site is making an incendiary accusation: That reporters at the Anchorage CBS affiliate KTVA were caught conspiring to damage Tea Party Senate candidate Joe Miller.... But it's unclear from the recording precisely what, if anything, was being plotted. And now the station is adamantly denying the charges." Here's the full statement from KTVA General Manager Jerry Bever. ...

     ... Update: David Brock of Media Matters: release the tapes, Gov. Palin.

... Even Palin's Tweets Are Getting Loonier. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo reports on one she probably wishes she (or her ghostwriter) hadn't sent.

Scary but True. Neela Banerjee of the Los Angeles Times: "If the GOP wins control of the House next week, senior congressional Republicans plan to launch a blistering attack on the Obama administration's environmental policies, as well as on scientists who link air pollution to climate change."

Scary if True. David Broder, the Washington Post 's warmonger in chief & amateur economist extraordinaire, says President Obama will win re-election because he will ratchet up for war with Iran, which will boost the economy. Besides, Americans will rally around a war President, as we always do. ...

        ... Dean Baker, an actual economist, responds:

If spending on war can provide jobs and lift the economy then so can spending on roads, weatherizing homes, or educating our kids. Yes, that's right, all the forms of stimulus spending that Broder derided so much because they add to the deficit will increase GDP and generate jobs just like the war that Broder is advocating (which will also add to the deficit). So, we have two routes to prosperity. We can either build up our phsyical infrastructure and improve the skills and education of our workers or we can go kill Iranians. Broder has made it clear where he stands. Via Matt Duss of Think Progress

        ... Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy, who wonders if Broder has lost his mind, adds more:

... this is crazy for a number of reasons. One is that markets don't like tensions, and certainly not the kind that jack up oil prices. Second, World War II brought the United States out of the Great Depression because it was a massive economic stimulus program that mobilized entire sectors of society. Today's American military has all the tools it needs to fight Iran, and there isn't going to be any sort of buildup.

Frank Rich makes the case that the rank-and-file tea party members have neither the numbers nor the financial clout to have any real effect on legislation. Even if some of their candidates win, they'll be more useful to Democrats who will characterize them as typical Republican extremists than to Republicans, who will sideline them.

Maureen Dowd on President Obama: "In 2008, the message was him. The promise was him. And that’s why 2010 is a referendum on him. With his coalition and governing majority shattering around him, President Obama will have to summon political skills — starting Wednesday — that he has not yet shown he has." ...

... Nicholas Kristof, by contrast, thinks we should give President Obama a break, that he's a victim of the bad economy & that he's done some great things nobody noticed.

CW: this essay is a month old, but it isn't stale. Michael Tomasky in the New York Review of Books: the Democrats continue to have a messaging problem that many thought Obama had the talent to solve. "Republican themes, like 'liberty,' are popular, while Republican policies often are not; and Democratic themes ('community,' 'compassion,' 'justice') are less popular, while many specific Democratic programs—Social Security, Medicare, even (in many polls) putting a price on carbon emissions—have majority support."

Prof. Tyler Cowen in the New York Times: "... continuing arrival of immigrants to American shores is encouraging business activity here, thereby producing more jobs, according to a new study. Its authors argue that the easier it is to find cheap immigrant labor at home, the less likely that production will relocate offshore." CW translation: oppressed workers in the U.S. take jobs away from oppressed workers in other countries, & that has side benefits.

This is a terrific ten-minute discussion of gerrymandering produced by the libertarian Reason Foundation. Chances are you'll learn something you didn't know. I did:

They Loved It before They Hated It*

Yesterday I commented on Maureen Dowd's column on President Obama's failure to employ his political skills during his time in office. The moderators at the Times liked my comment so much they highlighted it as being "one of the most interesting and thoughtful comments." Admittedly, this doesn't mean much, as they often highlight some pretty stupid shit, but it implies they had read my comment. A few hours later a friend wrote to tell me the commenters had removed my "interesting and thoughtful comment" because it was off-topic or abusive. So here's the comment. You decide:

The problem is that the President has been anything but audacious. Jon Stewart aptly characterized those "big accomplishments" the President touts as "timid." Obama has taken such middle-of-the-road or right-leaning positions on everything that he appears to have done nothing brave or forward-looking at all. He hired most of Bill Clinton's old staff, & he proceeded to govern as if he were Clinton without the Charisma. One of the effects of growing up in situations where he was best off not to offend is that he seems to see both inoffensiveness and standoffishness as desirable styles of governance.

Though he has governed in much the way either Clinton would have, Obama seems more like Bush Pere than like the Clintons. The aloof, cerebral elitism we saw in Bush I is little different from what we see in Obama. President Reagan famously said of George I, "He doesn't really stand for anything." The same can be said for Obama. He hobnobs with the same gang of special interests, he appears indifferent to the atrocities he has perpetuated in Afghanistan, and his social policies are even more conservative than were those of George I. The Americans with Disability Act was expensive, but it had teeth. In just about every town in the country, we see evidence that it is working. Just step off a curb -- oh, wait, you don't have to because the curb now eases gently to the pavement for wheelchair access.

By contrast, Obama's healthcare & financial reform laws appear to be having little positive affect on people's lives. We see that in Obama's example of how well they're working. Again and again, he has trotted out the same New England woman who was able to get healthcare coverage when she couldn't before. I'm darned happy for that woman, but in a country of three million people, many of them still without health insurance and the rest seeing their healthcare costs continuing to rise, the good fortune of one woman who was able to capitalize on some sliver of the massive Affordable Care Law is cold comfort. Meanwhile, the Administration is giving waivers to companies like McDonalds, which pay their workers peanuts, but who still recoil at the weak mandate to provide healthcare coverage (at employee expense, of course).

Similarly, New York County, a/k/a Manhattan, is the U.S. county where incomes have risen the most. Why? Because Wall Street is in New York County. If you want a pay raise, get a job on Wall Street. I find Obama's assurances that he knows "we haven't done enough" infuriating. He's done enough for bankers and financiers. I was heartened to read that at least TARP turned out to be a pretty good deal, till the next week I read that the Secretary Geithner was cooking the books, underestimating the costs of deals like the one with AIG. Meanwhile, banks have been able to get away with foreclosing on homeowners without any paperwork except an affidavit telling the courts that really, they have that paperwork somewhere, at the same time the same banks are telling homeowners they can't refinance because their paperwork isn't in order. Not a peep from Obama about that! And as far as I can tell, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, which hasn't done anything yet, will do nothing more than give people another piece of paper that supposedly tells them what all the other pieces of paper mean. How helpful is that?

Don't get me started on human rights. There, we do see some audacity. Unfortunately, it's of the same type we recognize from Bush-Cheney. Left-leaning observers report audacious incident after audacious incident of "detainees" being deprived of basic rights. Even when "secret" documents & occurrences are known to the public, the Obama Administration invokes the state secrets doctrine. On the home front, we're still living under DADT & DOMA. The President told Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog last week that his position on gay marriage was "evolving." Let's hope that means it's "evolving" back to what it was in 2003, when he favored gay marriage. In the meantime, gay people with families and children who are growing up wondering why their parents don't get married like everybody else, just be patient!

As Obama says, change takes time. But there is little evidence that any change will ever take place. The Senate is sitting on some 500 bills the House passed, and there's no reason to think most of those bills will ever find their ways to the President's desk. Even if they do, they will be so watered down, like the bills that did get through, that they will do little to "change" anything.

It was a lot easier for Obama to sell that hopey-changey thing before he had to deliver on it than it now when we know he did not stand and deliver. Nowadays, sensible observers are just way short on hope that things are gonna change.

* Update: after a couple of hours, they loved it again & reposted my comment.

The Commentariat -- October 30

The Washington Post has a whole page of stories & info about Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear. ...

... Here's a post-event AP story. ...

... Sanity More Popular than Insanity. CBS News: "An estimated 215,000 people attended [the] rally..., according to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News." CBS commissioned the same company, AiRPhotoLive.com, to estimate the crowd size at the Stewart-Colbert rally & a'at Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' rally in August. That rally was estimated to have attracted 87,000 people." ...

... Canadian TV: "In an impassioned 15-minute speech, Stewart told a crowd estimated to number at least 250,000, that their presence has restored his sanity. 'We live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies,' [Jon] Stewart said. 'But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country's 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems. But its existence makes solving them that much harder.' Stewart's speech was capped off with a short rendition of 'America the Beautiful' by Tony Bennett before the show's many entertainers sent the crowd home with The Staple Singers' "I'll Take You There," led by Mavis Staples." ...

... The New York Times' liveblog is pretty good. ...

... AND for some fair & balance coverage, here's Fox "News"' headline: "Stewart's Rally for 'Sanity' Draws Insane Crowd."

... Stewart's final remarks:

... C-SPAN has video of the entire three-hour-plus rally here. ...

... Christian Science Monitor: "Comedy Central has provided no details about the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert 'Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.' But the park service permit lays out the schedule minute-by-minute." Performers include Jeff Tweedy & Mavis Staple, Sheryl Crow & the Roots. ...

... Mike Isaac of Forbes has an interesting story about how the rally was conceived & how the idea took hold -- on the Internet. ...

... James Burnett of Rolling Stone: according to scientific analysis! of Internets chatter, the Stewart-Colbert rally was already working prior to the event.

... In the New York Times, Tobin Harshaw reprises some of the print media's commentary on the rally. ...

... Alex Parker of US News: Democrats & progressives hope to capitalize on the rally. ...

... CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews sat down with Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" correspondent John Oliver the day before Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity" on the National Mall. With video. ...

... It would be wrong to ignore the Fear side of this equation, so here is Stephen Colbert, bravely sitting down with five men who scare the crap out of him:

Dana Milbank: "The [Republican] party is sorely in need of grown-ups.... There are weak leaders who, frightened by the Tea Party radicals, have become unquestioning followers of a radical approach.... There are no authority figures to say 'no' to the angry, the rude and the violent. With a House leader determined not to compromise, and a Senate leader whose top national priority is the defeat of the president, things won't get any better after Tuesday."

Think the negative campaign ads this year are "the worst ever"?"Attack ads are as American as apple pie." Produced by ReasonTV:

Peter Wallsten of the Wall Street Journal: "Florida independent Senate candidate Charlie Crist personally lobbied Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek to exit the race this week, offering him a cross that had been a gift from his sister, Mr. Meek said Friday." And yes, the story gets weirder from there.

Talk about Voter Intimidation. Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: the owner of a McDonald’s restaurant in Canton, Ohio, inserted a political pamphlet, printed on McDonald's letterhead, into workers' pay envelopes "urging them to vote for the Republican candidates for governor, Senate and Congress, or possibly face financial repercussions.... A spokesman for McDonald’s USA, the parent company, said: 'It was an unfortunately lapse in judgment on [the franchise owner's] part...'" & did not represent McDonald's policy. The owner appears to have violated an "Ohio statute that prohibits political material from being attached to wage envelopes."

Washington Post: "Native-born Americans lost more than a million jobs while foreign-born workers gained hundreds of thousands of jobs as the country emerged from a painful recession, according to a new analysis of economic trends.... The report does not explain why foreign-born workers are doing so much better than native-born workers."

Doug J. at Balloon Juice: "Jonah Goldberg calls for Julian Assange’s murder.... If you don’t think that the right is serious about using violence to take power, you’re not paying attention." ...

... Alex Pareene's take (Salon): Jonah Goldberg wonders why real life can't be more like the movies. Jason Bourne should have killed Julian Assange by now.

Japan Redux. Martin Fackler & Steve Lohr of the New York Times: "... in the current political climate, with Republicans ... preaching fiscal austerity, the prospect of more federal stimulus spending seems remote, and it is unclear if monetary policy alone will be enough to restore healthy growth.... Partly as a result, some economists now predict that it could take years or even a decade for the American economy to regain the levels of employment and vigor achieved before the 2008 crisis. The growing political pressure for cuts in federal spending — along with plunging consumer confidence and companies that seem more intent on cutting costs and hoarding cash than investing in new growth — have led economists to talk of the United States’ entering a grim new era of austerity."

Robert Worth of the New York Times: Yemen has become a base for attacks on the U.S. & has been using an English-language Website & magazine to recruit Americans:

These are people with both access to explosives and knowledge of how the United States works. And in Yemen, you can walk into a local branch of FedEx and mail something to the U.S. You can’t do that in Somalia or in rural Afghanistan. -- Princeton Prof. Bernard Haykel

Air Cargo -- a Security Weak Spot. Mike Brunker of MSNBC: "U.S. authorities on Friday said they were tightening screening of air cargo in the wake of incidents in which packages from Yemen containing explosives triggered a worldwide security scare. But aviation insiders say that even with the additional measures, only a small percentage of the air freight originating overseas is likely to be examined before it arrives at U.S airports." Related AP story here.

Andrew Pollack of the New York Times: "Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry."