Top House Republicans throw cold water on health-care summit

By Michael D. Shear
WashPost

Leading House Republicans raised the prospect Monday night that they might refuse to participate in President Obama's proposed health care summit if the White House chooses not to scrap the existing reform bills and start over.

In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) expressed frustration at reports that Obama intends to put the Democratic bills on the table for discussion at the Feb. 25 summit.

"If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate," Boehner and Cantor wrote.

Obama proposed the half-day summit on national television Sunday, but in their letter, the two GOP leaders offer their suspicion that the president is not serious about opening a bipartisan negotiation on health care.

(More here.)

Sarah Palin's palm cheat-sheet steals her show

Garance Franke-Ruta
WashPost


Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin addresses attendees at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Feb. 6, 2010. (Ed Reinke/Associated Press)

Updated 2:37 p.m.
Has there been a more talked about stolen glance since George H.W. Bush looked at his wristwatch during a 1992 debate with Bill Clinton?

On Saturday, former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin glanced at her left palm during a question and answer session at the first National Tea Party Conference in Nashville. The topic: her thoughts on what the top three priorities for the GOP ought to be should the party regain control of Congress.

It quickly became apparent that Palin had been glancing at notes written on her palm. The Huffington Post produced a photographic close-up, which showed her hand contained the words "Energy", "Tax" and "Lift American Spirits." The phrase "Budget cuts" was also there, though the word "Budget" had been crossed out.

Much mockery has ensued -- from members of the press and liberal critics of Palin alike. Andrea Mitchell on Monday tweaked Palin's "cheat sheets" on MSNBC's Daily Rundown, saying she'd written notes on her own hand "just in case I didn't remember" the script.

The glance can be seen at 46 seconds into this video, produced and distributed by a liberal Washington advocacy group:


(Original here.)

Do colleges redline Asian-Americans?

By Kara Miller
Boston Globe
February 8, 2010

SAT SCORES aren’t everything. But they can tell some fascinating stories.

Take 1,623, for instance. That’s the average score of Asian-Americans, a group that Daniel Golden - editor at large of Bloomberg News and author of “The Price of Admission’’ - has labeled “The New Jews.’’ After all, much like Jews a century ago, Asian-Americans tend to earn good grades and high scores. And now they too face serious discrimination in the college admissions process.

Notably, 1,623 - out of a possible 2,400 - not only separates Asians from other minorities (Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on the SAT, respectively). The score also puts them ahead of Caucasians, who average 1,581. And the consequences of this are stark.

Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from 10 elite colleges, writes in “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal’’ that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points to compete with white students. In fact, according to Princeton lecturer Russell Nieli, there may be an “Asian ceiling’’ at Princeton, a number above which the admissions office refuses to venture.

Emily Aronson, a Princeton spokeswoman, insists “the university does not admit students in categories. In the admission process, no particular factor is assigned a fixed weight and there is no formula for weighing the various aspects of the application.’’

(More here.)

Making Sense of the Health Care Debate

Risks, and Perhaps Rewards, in Obama’s Health Summit
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
NYT

One big question about President Obama’s bipartisan health care summit, scheduled for Feb. 25, is whether American voters will really get a full and open competition of ideas and emerge with a clearer sense of whether they support or oppose the various proposals put forward by Republicans or Democrats.

Skeptics around Washington are already warning that the summit will be nothing more than Kabuki theater, allowing each side to grandstand on television while providing little in the way of substantive debate or additional understanding for the folks watching back home.

The first obstacle is that neither Democrats nor Republicans have united around specific, comprehensive legislative proposals.

Democrats, who enjoy substantial majorities in Congress, are slightly ahead of the Republicans in this regard. The House and Senate have each adopted comprehensive health care bills, and Congressional leaders were working to merge them when the Republican victory in a special Senate election in Massachusetts upended their efforts by making it clear that Democrats would not have the votes to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

(Continued here.)

Big Government's Big Shortfall

By Robert Samuelson
Newsweek

WASHINGTON -- In all the recent reports, speeches and news conferences concerning the federal budget outlook -- including the administration's proposed budget for 2011 -- hardly anyone has posed these crucial questions: what should the federal government do and why; and who should pay? We ought to go back to first principles of defining a desirable role for government and abandon the expedient of assuming that anyone receiving a federal benefit is morally entitled to it simply because it's been received before.

We have a massive candor gap, led by President Obama but also implicating most leaders of both parties. The annual budget necessarily involves a bewildering blizzard of numbers. But just a few figures capture the essence of our predicament.

First, from 2011 to 2020, the administration projects total federal spending of $45.8 trillion against taxes and receipts of $37.3 trillion. The $8.5 trillion deficit is almost a fifth of spending. In the last year (2020), the gap is $1 trillion, again approaching a fifth: spending is $5.7 trillion, taxes $4.7 trillion. All amounts assume a full economic recovery; all projections may be optimistic. The message: There's a huge mismatch between Americans' desire for low taxes and high government services.

Second, almost $20 trillion of the $45.8 trillion of spending involves three programs -- Social Security, Medicare (health insurance for those 65 and over) and Medicaid (health insurance for the poor -- two-thirds goes to the elderly and disabled). The message: The budget is mainly a vehicle for transferring income to retirees from workers, who pay most taxes. As more baby boomers retire in the 2020s, deficits would grow.

(More here.)

Sarah Palin is no Eve Harrington

Jonathan Capehart
WashPost

After former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin strode across the national political stage and chewed up the scenery with her bravura performance at the 2008 Republican convention, I wrote one PostPartisan after another comparing her to the talented, ambitious and fictional star Eve Harrington from the movie "All About Eve." Now that I've seen Palin's Saturday night address to the Tea Party convention in Nashville, I would like to extend my apologies to Harrington. She would never have given such a poor performance.

Sure, Palin brought the Tea Partiers in Nashville to their feet with belittling put-downs of President Obama, including calling him "a charismatic guy with a TelePrompTer." And as with any Palin speech, there was plenty of sarcasm. "When you're 0 for 3, you better stop lecturing and start listening," she zinged. "How's that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?," she snarked. But after having more than a year to learn the ins and outs of national and foreign policy, to fill in the considerable gaps in knowledge that were on display on the campaign trail, you'd think Palin would do more than lean on platitudes and talking points.

"The government that governs the least governs the best,"said the best-selling author and Fox News analyst who quit being governor after just 2 and a half years on the job. "The constitution provides the best road map towards a more perfect union," she noted. And she told the gathered that she wanted Washington to "adopt a pro-market agenda" that "lowers taxes for small business," "support[s] competition and innovation" and "reward[s] hard work."

To win the war on terror, Palin said, "We need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern." She slammed Obama's "misguided thinking that is seen throughout the administration's foreign policy decisions." Palin didn't like that the president "spent a year reaching out to hostile regimes; writing personal letters to dangerous dictators and apologizing for America." Then she said to mounting applause, "It's time for more than just tough talk. Gah, just like you, probably just so tired of hearing the talk, talk, talk. Tired of hearing the talk."

(More here.)

On health care: 'Finish the kitchen'

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
WashPost
Monday, February 8, 2010

If President Obama gets to sign a health-reform bill, as I believe he will, one reason may be Rep. Jay Inslee's difficult experience renovating his kitchen.

He told his kitchen story at a House Democratic caucus after Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts sent Inslee's colleagues into paroxysms of dismay, chaos and fear. Brown's triumph reduced the Democrats' majority in the Senate to "only" 59, and this led many in both houses to want to give up on health reform altogether. Even Obama was sounding an uncertain trumpet.

This made no sense to Inslee, a Democrat from Washington state. First elected to the House in 1992, he was swept out of office in the 1994 Republican landslide that followed the collapse of Bill Clinton's health-care efforts. Four years later, Inslee returned to Congress.

"I introduced myself as a fella who was defeated in 1994, the last time we didn't pass meaningful health-care reform," Inslee recalls saying. "I said it was a painful event, and I didn't want them to go through that pain." In politics, he told his colleagues, assuming the "fetal position" can be the most dangerous thing to do.

(More here.)

Al-Qaeda is a wounded but dangerous enemy

By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 8, 2010

In the past six weeks, Americans have witnessed two jarringly different -- but completely accurate -- views of al-Qaeda's terrorist network. One image was that of terrorist leaders being hunted down and killed by satellite-guided, pilotless aircraft. The other was of an agile foe slipping past U.S. defenses and increasingly intent on striking inside the United States.

New assessments of al-Qaeda by the top U.S. counterterrorism experts offer grounds for both optimism and concern a year after President Obama took office. Officials say al-Qaeda's ability to wage mass-casualty terrorism has been undercut by relentless U.S. attacks on the network's leadership, finances and training camps. But even in its weakened state, the group has shifted tactics to focus on small-scale operations that are far harder to detect and disrupt, analysts say.

The deadly November shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., and the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner -- both examples of the low-tech approach -- have raised the fear level in Washington and across the country. Some terrorism experts say the worst could be still to come as a wounded jihadist movement thrashes about in search of a victory.

"The noose is tightening, and al-Qaeda's leadership is accelerating efforts that were probably in place anyway," said Andy Johnson, former staff director of the Senate intelligence committee and now national security director for the Washington think tank Third Way.

(More here.)

America Is Not Yet Lost

By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

(More here.)

Our love-hate relationship with taxes

Fed up Protesters took to Boston Common last April to vent about taxes and government spending. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

The fight over taxes -- in Massachusetts and across the country -- is as furious as ever. But what is the battle really about?

By Charles P. Pierce
Boston Globe
February 7, 2010

It’s hard not to wonder about them, as they drive north to New Hampshire, blinded by plasma screens and home furnishings. As we are all painfully aware, Massachusetts -- “Taxachusetts” to political consultants and other public people on the dodge -- raised its sales tax to 6.25 percent back in May. This sent folks scattering northward, at $2.75 a gallon or more, mind you. People even told reporters that they were going to New Hampshire to shop for groceries, which are not taxed at all in Massachusetts, and apparel, which is not taxed here either until the purchase goes above $175. Nevertheless, they heard all the radio commercials asking them to come shop in “tax-free” New Hampshire, and they were on the road before they knew it. They were running away from ghosts.

Put simply, this state is fairly average when it comes to taxing its citizens. According to data from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, D.C., the state and local tax burden in Massachusetts is 9.5 percent, 0.2 points below the national average, placing Massachusetts 23d among the 50 states. The personal income tax system is the 29th highest. On the other hand, the data show that the state’s corporate tax structure ranks it fourth among those states that have corporate income taxes, and property taxes here are the eighth highest in the country. In short, by any empirical measure, calling this state “Taxachusetts” in 2010 is no more accurate than calling it “Massachusetts Bay.”

“That’s been the case since 1991,” says one veteran analyst who declined to be identified and who worked on the state’s tax structure under both Republican and Democratic administrations. “There’ve been about 50 tax reductions enacted by governors and the Legislature since then.”

Nevertheless, the cars still drive north, and the arguments continue, exacerbated over the past year by the national economic downturn and the angry, inchoate populist politics that resulted from both the downturn itself and the occasionally erratic attempts to solve it. The arguments were most clearly evident in the upset victory of Republican and former state senator Scott Brown in the race to replace the late US senator Ted Kennedy. Brown ran on the vague, but eminently salable, notion that he would lower our taxes, even though, as the member of a legislative minority with the least seniority, what he could actually do about them remained unclear. Indeed, some interviews with voters prior to the election led one to believe that people voted for Brown because he would somehow reduce all their taxes, state and federal.

(Continued here.)

On Palin's Hand

by Charles Lemos
MyDD
Sun Feb 07, 2010

By now I suspect many of you have seen the picture of Sarah Palin's left hand with her scribbled crib notes. I'd embed the picture but MyDD5 doesn't seem to allow that functionality but you can view the image over at Andrew Sullivan'sThe Daily Dish.

On her hand she scribbled four points: "Energy," "Budget [crossed out] Cuts," "Tax" and "Lift American spirits."

The fact that she wrote these points suggests that Q&A session with Judson Phillips was staged but that's not really the story here. The takeaway is that those notes were in response to the question on her three top legislative priorities.

Now think about that. It's not exactly a hard question and it's not like she was being asked policy specifics or hard facts. She was asked generalities.

(Continued here.)

Chris Wallace When Asked If Palin Would Be Sitting On His Lap During Interview: "One Can Only Hope"

By Nicole Belle
CrooksandLiars


(h/t Media Matters)

Just further proof that Sarah Palin's political career is entirely due to all these Republican men thinking with their GOPenises.

In an appearance on Imus in the Morning (now airing on the Fox Business Channel, which is why you probably didn't know it was back on the air), Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace** exposed a little more of his psyche than he probably should have:

WALLACE: We are going to have the first Sunday show interview ever with Governor Sarah Palin. We’ll be down in Nashville with her at the National Tea Party Convention and…I’m excited. First of all, I’m excited to finally meet and interview Sarah Palin. We’ve been chasing her like Captain Ahab and the great white whale for the last year and a half, so it’s going to be interesting to sit down with her and talk. And in addition, I’m interested in going down to the Tea Party convention and get a sense of other than seeing them on TV what they’re…what their platform is, what they’re interested in.

IMUS: When she…when you interview her, will she be sitting on your lap? [laughter]

WALLACE: One can only hope. [laughter]

Ewwww. The dirty old man chuckling made me more than a little nauseated. This is not the first such occasion where Wallace has made really inappropriate statements, as documented by our friends at Media Matters....

Mousetrapped!

Obama invites GOP to health-care summit
By Michael D. Shear
WashPost

President Obama made a dramatic attempt to jump-start the stalled health care debate Sunday, inviting Republicans in Congress to a half-day summit on the subject to be televised live later this month.

The president made the offer in an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric just hours before the Superbowl. Obama challenged Republicans to come to the discussion armed with their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system.

"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama told Couric. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table... I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

The invitation to join him later this month follows comments he made on Thursday during a speech at a Democratic fundraiser in which he said he wanted to sit with Republicans and "walk through the [health care plans] in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense."

(More here.)

GOP terror attack machine

Criticism of Obama is irrational, irresponsible and painfully partisan

BY Richard Clarke
NY Daily News

Sunday, February 7th 2010

In his State of the Union and his later meeting with House Republicans in Baltimore, President Obama has again asked to lower the partisan rhetoric and strive for solutions to the nation's problems. Nowhere is this more needed than in the national dialogue on terrorism.

Recent months have seen the party out of power picking fights over the conduct of our efforts against Al Qaeda, often with total disregard to the facts and frequently blowing issues totally out of proportion, while ignoring the more important challenges we face in defeating terrorists.

Just last Thursday, House Republican leader John Boehner engaged in a classic version of this attack, saying the White House is "putting the American people at risk" and taking a "pre-Sept. 11" approach to fighting terrorism.

(More here.)

Brennan: GOP was briefed on Xmas bomber arrest

By: Mike Allen and Eamon Javers
Politico.com
February 7, 2010

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan revealed Sunday that he briefed four Republican congressional leaders on Christmas night about the arrest and FBI handling of the suspect in the attempted airplane bombing. Miranda rights were not discussed, he said.

"None of those individuals raised any concerns with me, at that point," Brennan said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They didn't say, 'Is he going into military custody? Is he going to be Mirandized?' They were very appreciative of the information. We told them we'd keep them informed. And that's what we did."

The revelation could undermine Republican complaints about the decision to treat the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, as a civilian criminal.

But Brennan’s comment provoked sharp rebukes from the Republicans who received the briefings, who all stressed that the conversation did not include a discussion of Miranda rights, though none claimed to have asked about that issue.

(More here.)

Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor

By KEVIN SACK
NYT

KERMIT, Tex. — It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

When she was fingerprinted and photographed at the jail here last June, it felt as if she had entered a parallel universe, albeit one situated in this barren scrap of West Texas oil patch.

“It was surreal,” said Mrs. Mitchell, 52, the wife of an oil field mechanic and mother of a teenage son. “I said how can this be? You can’t go to prison for doing the right thing.”

But in what may be an unprecedented prosecution, Mrs. Mitchell is scheduled to stand trial in state court on Monday for “misuse of official information,” a third-degree felony in Texas.

(More here.)

Obama’s Other Deficit

The president needs to tell the truth on taxes, entitlements, and how to really reform health care—before it's too late.

By Evan Thomas
NEWSWEEK

Published Feb 5, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Feb 15, 2010

It has long been an unwritten rule of political professionals: Thou Shalt Not Demand Sacrifice of the Voters. Do not propose to raise taxes (remember what happened to Walter Mondale in 1984, when he won just one state and the District of Columbia against Ronald Reagan). Never sound gloomy about the future (remember Jimmy Carter and malaise). Always be upbeat (remember Ronald Reagan, again). And never, ever propose to cut the big entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare. Those senior citizens turn out to vote!

The pros—the advisers and well-paid political consultants—might permit their clients to say a few words about "hard choices" in their uplifting speeches about the greatness of the people. And when it comes time to propose a budget, the president's handlers will tolerate—or imagine—projected savings and revenues from unspecified sources. But that's all for the "out" years, as the lawmakers call them—a time of truly hard choices and real sacrifice that never seems to come.

But what happens when the time really does come? When the debt is piled too high, when the economy threatens to sink under the weight of accumulated obligations that have been put off too long? There are more than a few signs that those times are not so far away for the federal government, and that in some big (and big-spending) states, the day of reckoning is now.

President Obama's new federal budget proposal projects, with unusual clarity, that the trillion-dollar-plus federal deficits piling up during the current recession are not just a temporary condition necessitated by hard times, soon to be cured by a return to prosperity. Rather, the red ink threatens to drown us. For many years, federal spending remained about 20 percent of the overall economy. But under Obama it's now a quarter of the economy. The national debt has grown to more than 50 percent of GDP, and according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it could plausibly approach 100 percent of GDP by 2020—a figure not reached since World War II. Unless something drastic happens—like significant tax increases and cuts in those sacred entitlement programs—the cost of the government will continue to outrun revenue by staggering margins.

(More here.)

A fearsome foursome

By Edward Luce
Financial Times
London

Published: February 3 2010 20:09 | Last updated: February 3 2010

At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.”

Just over a year into his tenure, America’s 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington’s ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons – from Mr Obama’s decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president’s inability to convince voters he can “feel their [economic] pain”, to the apparent ungovernability of today’s Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis – and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington – most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office – each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people – Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

(Full article here.)

Hold Everything

Can Sen. Shelby really block Obama's nominees?
By Daniel Engber
Slate.com
Posted Friday, Feb. 5, 2010

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has placed a "blanket hold" on more than 70 presidential nominees, angering both the White House and Democratic lawmakers. In 2006, Daniel Engber reviewed the history of this legislative maneuver in all its forms, including the "secret hold," the "revolving hold," and the "rolling hold." That column is reprinted below.

Two senators who put "secret holds" on a government accountability bill at the beginning of August were outed this week. Alaska's Ted Stevens admitted to having used the parliamentary tactic on Wednesday, and West Virginia's Robert Byrd fessed up the following day. What's a secret hold?

An anonymous objection that's made before a bill hits the floor. The Byzantine rules of the Senate make it very easy for individual lawmakers to stall ongoing debates. Since anyone can slow down or halt the chamber's business, the Senate must rely on collegiality to keep business moving forward. To that end, the Senate majority leader sets an agenda using "unanimous consent agreements" on what will be discussed and for how long. (In the House of Representatives, the majority leader can more easily set and enforce ground rules for debate.)

The majority leader will try to make sure that no one's going to object to a unanimous consent agreement before it's raised on the floor. She'll consult with her own members ahead of time, and then check with counterparts from across the aisle. At this point, senators can tell party leaders in private that they object to that unanimous consent agreement—or that they would object to if it were brought to the floor. The majority leader takes this into consideration and in most cases holds the bill until the problems can be resolved. In principle, the only people who know the identity of the "holder" are the leader and secretary of his party. (Party leaders sometimes spill the beans to the relevant committee chairs or bill sponsors.)

Unanimous consent agreements have been around since the mid-19th century, and they became official and binding in 1914. But the hold has only been important since the 1960s. As the legislative workload grew, it became more important for the majority leader—then Democrat Mike Mansfield—to set a rigid schedule. To make things run smoothly, Mansfield began to set up a procedure to ensure that consent agreements would be approved ahead of time. Robert Byrd took over the scheduling a few years later and formalized the system of legislative holds.

(More here.)

When Mr. McCain Came to Washington

Inside the White House meeting where Obama called McCain's bluff: 'I could see Obama chuckling'

By HENRY M. PAULSON JR.
WSJ

With the stock market in freefall and the country headed for a crippling economic recession, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed the $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan to Congress on Friday, Sept. 19, 2008. By the following Monday, the Troubled Asset Relief Program was meeting resistance on all sides. Mr. Paulson's next few days, marked by little sleep and no exercise, were frantic with meetings and private phone calls on behalf of the legislation. The efforts to pass the stimulus legislation took a surprising twist on Wednesday, Sept. 24, while addressing the House Financial Services Committee, a member of Mr. Paulson's staff passed him a note telling him that Republican presidential candidate John McCain had suspended his campaign to come to Washington and focus on the financial crisis. The following is an adaptation from "On the Brink," Mr. Paulson's new memoir.

* * *

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and I were besieged with questions from all sides. There was no doubt about it — the session wasn't going well. To top that off, my communications adviser Michele Davis passed me a note that said in part, "If you get a question, just say that you know that both Senators McCain and Obama recognize the seriousness of the situation." I turned around and looked at her, stunned. This was crazy.

When the hearing recessed, I went into [Democratic Massachusetts Rep.] Barney Frank's office and called [White House Chief of Staff] Josh Bolten to tell him in no uncertain terms that I thought it was dangerous for McCain to return. Josh said the White House was equally frustrated. McCain wanted a meeting at the White House, and the president felt he had no choice but to accommodate him.

I called Obama right away. He said that he would try to be as constructive as possible but that the Democrats were doing their part and I had better keep in touch with McCain. The president was scheduled to give a major speech that evening making the case for TARP, but news of McCain's decision to suspend his campaign dominated the rest of the afternoon.

(Continued here.)

Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord

Rodolfo Gregorio, right, at a General Santos karaoke bar. Filipinos, who pride themselves on their singing, may have a lower tolerance for bad singers.

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

GENERAL SANTOS, the Philippines — After a day of barbering, Rodolfo Gregorio went to his neighborhood karaoke bar still smelling of talcum powder. Putting aside his glass of Red Horse Extra Strong beer, he grasped a microphone with a habitué’s self-assuredness and briefly stilled the room with the Platters’ “My Prayer.”

Next, he belted out crowd-pleasers by Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. But Mr. Gregorio, 63, a witness to countless fistfights and occasional stabbings erupting from disputes over karaoke singing, did not dare choose one beloved classic: Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way.”

“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

(Continued here.)

Painless Plasma Jets Could Replace Dental Drills

This could mean an end to fear and loathing at the dentist’s office. A new (allegedly) painless blowtorch-like device is being developed that uses a thin beam of plasma could kill oral bacteria in cavities. A plasma is an ionized gas—one in which some of the electrons are stripped away from their atoms.

The plasma kept the dentin, the fibrous bonelike material that makes up most of a tooth under the outer enamel layer, intact, while reducing bacteria 10,000-fold. This means that plasma jets could be used to wipe out the tooth-decaying bacteria in cavities–a procedure that normally requires the use of a painful dental drill to grind away the infected portion of tooth.

(Continued here.)

Bush, Cheney and the Great Escape

William Rivers Pitt
— from Truthout

With each passing day, it becomes more and more astonishing to encompass the fact that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their henchmen from the prior administration have managed thus far to escape any accounting whatsoever for the massive battery of criminal activity committed during their time in office. More than a year has passed since these men had their hands on the levers of power, and evidence of their myriad crimes and frauds is laying all over the countryside, yet nothing has come of it.

The British government has been running a wide-ranging inquiry into the manner in which the UK and United States were led to war in Iraq by then-President Bush and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. An astonishing amount of damning evidence and information has been uncovered and publicly aired, including the following statements delivered by a senior member of Parliament (MP) on Tuesday:

A senior Welsh MP said last night he knew "for certain" Tony Blair and George Bush struck a deal to invade Iraq at their notorious Crawford Ranch meeting in 2002 -- a year before war was declared. Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid Cymru's parliamentary leader, said he had seen a confidential memo to that effect, although he would not divulge its exact contents.

Critics of the military action in Iraq have long suspected Mr Blair and President Bush came to an agreement at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas in April 2002, a claim Mr Blair denied in evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry last week. Mr Llwyd said he had offered to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry himself, in private if necessary.

(Continued here.)

The Goldman Sachs Party

Progressive Ponderings by Joe Mayer

United States presidential campaigns today are extremely expensive. In the year 2000, all candidates combined spent $528 million; in 2004 it had risen to $889 million. By Sept. 21, 2008 Obama had spent $454 million and McCain $230 million. The 2008 total easily topped $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars).

While $1 billion is an extremely large amount of money, it pales when compared with the revenues and profits of major U.S. corporations. Profits for some major corporations in 2007 (before the recent recession) included Exxon-Mobil at $40.6 B., GE at $22.2 B., Chevron at $18.6 B., Walmart at $12.7 B., and AT&T at $11.9 B.

These profits, year after year, produce one of the more inequitable societies in history. As more and more Americans are left behind in our economic system – the middle class shrinking and the number of poor rising – the wealth at the top continues to multiply.

Forbes Magazine annually publishes a list of America’s richest citizens. The following names and net worth are from its Sept. 2009 issue: Wm. Gates - $50 B., Warren Buffet - $40 B., Lawrence Ellison - $27 B., four Walton (Walmart) families - $19 to $21.5 B. each.

On Jan. 29, 2010, Bill Moyers had as one of his guests Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham U. School of Law and a visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard’s Brennan Center for Justice. That night she stated: “Goldman Sachs is the smartest political party I know in this country.”

In one sentence she encapsulates the essence of wealth’s threat to our democracy. Some of our major corporations “earn” in a matter of weeks the equivalent of the cost of a major presidential campaign. Some of our wealthy citizens could pay for a major presidential campaign from the interest, dividends, and rents their investments earn in a year. Transferring these billions to Senatorial or Congressional campaigns allows them to control whole committees of the Senate and House.

Our financial elites were already purchasing favorable legislation before the latest Supreme Court decision allowing corporations and the wealthy unlimited influence on members of Congress. Unless citizens fight back with all the resources available, their access to the legislative process will be denied by the power of money.

This court decision, which sets the stage for the corporate takeover of our democracy, is NOT Constitutional law. It is a case of an ideological activist court whose decisions generate new laws. Indeed, a Goldman Sachs political party is sure to arise. Everything else in our nation is being given corporate names.

Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet

By FRANK RICH
NYT

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.

John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.

Many of his Republican colleagues said little or nothing. The right’s noise machine was on mute. The Fox News report on Mullen’s testimony was fair and balanced — and brief. The network dropped the subject entirely in the Hannity-O’Reilly hothouse of prime time that night. Only ratings-desperate CNN gave a fleeting platform to the old homophobic clichés. Michael O’Hanlon, an “expert” from the Brookings Institution, speculated that “18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden” soldiers who are “tough guys” might object to those practicing “alternative forms of lifestyle,” which he apparently views as weak and testosterone-deficient. His only prominent ally was the Family Research Council, which issued an inevitable “action alert” demanding a stop to “the sexualization of our military.”

The occasional outliers notwithstanding, why did such a hush greet Mullen on Capitol Hill? The answer begins with the simple fact that a large majority of voters — between 61 percent and 75 percent depending on the poll — now share his point of view. Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a “lifestyle” but an immutable identity, and that outlawing discrimination against gay people who want to serve their country is, as the admiral said, “the right thing to do.”

(More here.)

Postcard From Yemen

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT

Sana, Yemen

Yemen’s former prime minister, Abdul Karim al-Iryani, got right to the point when I arrived at his Sana home for dinner: “So, Thomas, did it take Abdulmutallab to finally get you here?” Yes, it is true, I admitted, because that young Nigerian, trained in Yemen by Al Qaeda, tried to blow up a Northwest jetliner on Christmas Day, I decided I had to see Yemen firsthand. I further confessed to Iryani: “I was a bit worried coming here. I half expected to be met at the bottom of the stairs from my Qatar Airways flight by Osama bin Laden himself.”

Fortunately, though, I found that Sana is not Kabul, and Yemen is not Afghanistan — not yet. The Walled Old City of Sana, a U.N. World Heritage site with its mud-brick buildings adorned with geometric shapes, was bustling with coffee shops at night and vendors by day. Walking through its streets with a Yemeni friend, we came upon four bearded, elderly Yemeni men — traditional daggers tucked into their belts — discussing a poster taped to a stone wall urging “fathers and mothers” to send their girls to school. When I asked what they thought of that idea, the oldest said he was “ready to give up part of a meal each day so that my girls can learn to read.” Moreover, he added, the poster had just fallen down and he had just taped it back up for others to see. Not what I expected.

Nor did I expect to find civil society organizations here staffed with young American volunteers — and, in the case of The Yemen Observer, an English-language newspaper, a whole newsroom full of them. All I could do was look around at these American college students and wonder: “Do your parents know you’re here?” They just laughed. Every shopkeeper I spoke to in Old Sana spat out the words “Al Qaeda,” which they blamed for killing tourism. Who knew Yemen had tourists? No, this is not Afghanistan.

But this ain’t Denmark, either.

(More here.)

NYT editorial: The Truth About the Deficit

When the White House released its new budget last week, including more spending to create desperately needed jobs, Republican leaders in Congress denounced President Obama for driving up the deficit and demanded that the Democrats halt their “reckless” ways.

The deficit numbers — a projected $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2011 alone — are breathtaking. What is even more breathtaking is the Republicans’ cynical refusal to acknowledge that the country would never have gotten into so deep a hole if President George W. Bush and the Republican-led Congress had not spent years slashing taxes — mainly on the wealthy — and spending with far too little restraint. Unfortunately, the problem does not stop there.

The Republican amnesia and posturing are playing well on the hustings, where Americans are deeply anxious about the economy and fearful of losing their jobs and homes. Far too many Democratic lawmakers are losing their nerve.

Americans should be anxious, for reasons including the huge deficit. But the cold economic truth is this: At a time of high unemployment and fragile growth, the last thing the government should do is to slash spending. That will only drive the economy into deeper trouble.

(More here.)

Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Precipice

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY
NYT

Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months.

A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer.

A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman — like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a storm to get a bigger insurance payment — had inflated the potential losses. Goldman countered that it was owed even more, while also resisting consulting with third parties to help estimate a value for the securities.

After more than an hour of debate, the two sides on the call signed off with nothing settled, according to internal A.I.G. documents and an audio recording reviewed by The New York Times.

(More here.)

James O'Keefe's race problem

James O'Keefe, photographed at a white nationalist conference by One People's Project

A photo of the righty stuntman at a white-nationalist confab illustrates a career marked by racial resentment

By Max Blumenthal
Salon.com

(This article has been corrected since publication.)

Many of the conservatives who gleefully promoted James O’Keefe’s past political stunts are feigning shock at his arrest on charges that he and three associates planned to tamper with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone lines. Once upon a time, right-wing pundits hailed the 25-year-old O’Keefe as a creative genius and model of journalistic ethics. Andrew Breitbart, who has paid O’Keefe, called him one of the all-time “great journalists” and said he deserved a Pulitzer for his undercover ACORN video. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly declared he should have earned a “congressional medal.”

His right-wing admirers don't seem to mind that O’Keefe's short but storied career has been defined by a series of political stunts shot through with racial resentment. Now an activist organization that monitors hate groups has produced a photo of O'Keefe at a 2006 conference on "Race and Conservatism" that featured leading white nationalists. The photo, first published Jan. 30 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People's Project, shows O’Keefe at the gathering, which was so controversial even the ultra-right Leadership Institute, which employed O'Keefe at the time, withdrew its backing. O'Keefe's fellow young conservative provocateur Marcus Epstein organized the event, which gave anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism an opportunity to share their grievances and plans to make inroads in the GOP.

One People's Project covered the event at the time, sending a freelance photographer to document the gathering. Project director Daryle Jenkins told O'Keefe manned a literature table filled with tracts from the white supremacist right, including two pseudo-academic publications that have called blacks and Latinos genetically inferior to whites: American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly. The leading speaker was Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. "We can say for certain that James O'Keefe was at the 2006 meeting with Jared Taylor. He has absolutely no way of denying that," Jenkins said. O'Keefe's attorney did not respond to a request for comment on his client's role in the conference.

(Continued here.)

Down With the People

Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis

By Jacob Weisberg
Slate.com

Updated Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010

In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation. These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.

Anybody who says you can't have it both ways clearly hasn't been spending much time reading opinion polls lately. One year ago, 59 percent of the American public liked the stimulus plan, according to Gallup. A few months later, with the economy still deeply mired in recession, a majority of the same size said Obama was spending too much money on it. There's nothing wrong with changing your mind, of course, but opinion polls over the last year reflect something altogether more troubling: a country that simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, climate change, and a whole host of other major problems. Sixty percent of Americans want stricter regulations of financial institutions. But nearly the same proportion says we're suffering from too much regulation on business. That kind of illogic—or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation—is what locks the status quo in place.

At the root of this kind of self-contradiction is our historical, nationally characterological ambivalence about government. We want Washington and the states to fix all of our problems now. At the same time, we want government to shrink, spend less, and reduce our taxes. We dislike government in the abstract: According to CNN, 67 percent of people favor balancing the budget even when the country is in a recession or a war, which is madness. But we love government in the particular: Even larger majorities oppose the kind of spending cuts that would reduce projected deficits, let alone eliminate them. Nearly half the public wants to cancel the Obama stimulus, and a strong majority doesn't want another round of it. But 80-plus percent of people want to extend unemployment benefits and to spend more money on roads and bridges. There's another term for that stuff: more stimulus spending.

(More here. The following is a hotlink in the above item:)

Con Artists

Oh, no! Scott Brown has incoherent and appalling economic ideas — just like almost all of his congressional Republican colleagues

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010

Political commentators will likely say that Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race proves that the United States is still a center-right nation and that Obama and the Democrats have to be more bipartisan. But Brown's victory says a lot more about the incoherence and contradictions of today's Republican Party when it comes to matters of economic and fiscal policy. The failure caucus has just added another member.

Since the recession and financial crisis started, Republicans have consistently voted against the stability and recovery efforts, dating back to the fall of 2008, when they still controlled the White House. John McCain broke off his campaign to blow up the first bailout bill. Once President Obama was elected, Washington Republicans went into opposition. Not a single Republican in the House voted for the stimulus bill, while only three Senate Republicans (including Arlen Specter) did so. Many of the Republicans who voted against the stimulus bill then rushed out to get earmarks for their districts and states. In the fall, only a single Republican voted for the health care bill. And in late December, only one Republican senator, George Voinovich, voted to increase the debt limit, a move needed to avoid default on government debt.

Throughout, there's been a consistent chorus: Deficits are too high, but we must cut taxes (a move that will increase the deficit), and we must not cut Medicare spending in any way, shape, or form (a move that will increase the deficit), and we must not raise taxes (a move that would narrow the deficit). The Bush-era Medicare prescription-drug benefit funded entirely by deficit spending is fine, but a broader package to expand health insurance coverage that generates long-term fiscal savings would be disastrous. The bailouts were wrong but so are proposals to recoup bailout funds through taxes on banks.

(Continued here.)

Assisted-Suicide Pioneer Stirs a Legal Backlash

By DEBORAH BALL And JULIA MENGEWEIN
WSJ

ZURICH—Daniel Gall, a French actor, was skeptical when his sister and her husband told him two years ago that they wanted to commit suicide. Genevieve Gall-Peninou was 81 and said she could no longer bear the Alzheimer's Disease she had suffered for several years. Yves Peninou, 86, didn't want to live without her.

"No doctor would ever help you," he told the couple. "Neither one of you is ill enough!"

But soon after, the Peninous, both doctors, contacted Dignitas, a Zurich-based organization that helps people end their lives. A Dignitas doctor in Zurich reviewed the Peninous' case and agreed to write a prescription for sodium pentobarbital, the lethal drug typically used for assisted suicides in Switzerland. They paid Dignitas its fee of 10,000 Swiss francs ($10,500).

When Mr. Gall accompanied the couple to Switzerland in January 2008 for the final act, his doubts intensified about their decision–and about Switzerland's legalized assisted-suicide movement.

(Continued here.)

Shelby to the U.S.: hold everything!

Harold Meyerson
WashPost

Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby has found a way to resurrect New Gingrich’s 1995 attempt to close down the federal government. He has placed a hold on all 70 pending nominations that President Obama has sent up to the Senate for confirmation.

A hold is one of those wondrous devices that enables individual senators to screw up the workings of government unless they get their way on a project that’s dear to them. In this case, Shelby is upset that the Pentagon isn’t convinced that a bid from Northrop-Grumman, a longtime Shelby campaign contributor, to build Air Force refueling tankers is the best offer it's received. If Northrop-Grumman got the contract, the company would probably hire up to 1,000 of Shelby’s fellow Alabamians in a shiny new tanker-building factory.

Since the Pentagon isn’t convinced, Shelby has decided to show them a thing or two. By putting a hold on a presidential nominee, a senator compels the Senate to drop its other business and devote four days of debate to the nominee’s confirmation, at which time it requires a 60-vote supermajority to ratify the nomination. Now, for the first time ever -- or at least in the memory of Senate historians -- a hold has now been placed on all of a president’s nominees.

Shelby’s ploy is simply the logical continuation of the Republicans’ legislative strategy, which is to obstruct every act, large or small, consequential or trivial, of the Obama administration and its Democratic legislative colleagues. This commitment to opposition transcends such ephemera as longtime Republican principles. Shelby, for instance, hails from a party that has yowled against earmarks for many years, yet it is precisely an earmark that he seeks for his home state. As yet, however, not one of his Republican colleagues has called him out for flouting Republican principles -- perhaps because the only principle to which the GOP currently adheres is to show that Obama and the Democrats are incapable of doing anything.

(More here.)

John McCain, no more the iconoclast

By Dana Milbank
NYT
Friday, February 5, 2010;

I miss John McCain.

I miss the McCain I sat with on a flight from San Diego to Phoenix back in 1999, when he defended his oft-ridiculed belief that campaign finance was the most important issue in America: because the corrupting influence of money in politics was preventing all other issues -- taxes, abortion, you name it -- from being solved.

"Until I draw my last breath, I will fight for it," he liked to say back then.

A couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that gutted the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation, essentially destroying the cause that had been so dear to McCain.

His response: Whatever.

(More here.)

No Holds Barred

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

Washington was immobilized by snow on Friday. This is highly unusual. Normally, Washington is immobilized by senators.

This time storm warnings came just as the Senate had hit a point of uncommon productivity. In a single week, it managed to not only confirm two U.S. marshals, but also to approve a couple of nominations to the Obama administration. Finally, we can sleep easy in the knowledge that the Labor Department has a No. 3 person.

Then Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama put a hold on the 70-odd other administration nominations that are still pending. Everything came to whatever you call a screeching halt when the vehicle in question was moving at the speed of the Senate.

This was a dramatic gesture, one Shelby must have felt was so important that he took time out from his normal duties blocking all progress on creating a consumer protection agency for financial products.

(More here.)

Time Is Running Out

By BOB HERBERT
NYT

Palo Alto, Calif.

We’ve now lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession, and a vast majority of them are gone for good. The politicians are clambering aboard the jobs bandwagon, belatedly, but very few are telling the truth about the structural employment problems in the U.S. and the extremely heavy lift that is necessary to halt our declining living standards and get us back to an economy that is self-sustaining.

We don’t hear a lot that is serious about the sorry state of the nation’s infrastructure or the trade policies that crippled so many American industries or our inability (or unwillingness) to compete effectively with China when it comes to the new world of energy for the 21st century or our abject failure to provide a quality public education for the next generation of American workers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.

Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems, the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade. A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

Neither the politicians nor much of the mainstream media are spelling out the severity of these enormous structural problems or the sense of urgency needed to address them. Living standards are sinking in the United States, and there is no coherent vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend over the long term.

(More here.)

Obama Gets His Groove Back

By CHARLES M. BLOW
NYT

Where has this Obama been?

Since the State of the Union address, the president has been bounding about, displaying a new sense of vigor and confidence and a fighter’s spirit. He almost looks like the president people thought that he would be — a paladin, not a pacifist.

Last week, he provided a fascinating bit of political theater by toying with House Republicans at their own retreat, dismantling their arguments and disarming their charges. It was impressive. When they asked if he had time for more questions, he responded: “You know, I’m having fun.” Score.

At his New Hampshire town hall on Tuesday, Obama connected with a more colloquial tone, chiding Republicans for voting against the recovery act while glomming onto the glories of the projects it produced: “They found a way to have their cake and vote against it, too.” Score again.

His new persona comes as a welcome reprieve from a year in which he toddled about as if someone had slipped him an Ambien, taking punches and not returning them.

(More here.)