Last month, the Star Tribune reported that "North Dakota and some of the state's major energy interests [had] filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn a 2007 Minnesota law that restricts power companies from importing electricity from new coal-fired power plants in other states." At issue is the Bakken oil shale formation -- which contains a promising supply of obtainable energy -- as well as other substantial deposits of lignite coal. North Dakota wants to release the Bakken, frack the bejeezus out of the formation, mine the lignite, and sell as much job-creating energy to neighboring states as possible. Minnesota's laws dampen those prospects, and in turn, present an impediment to job growth in North Dakota. (Let's recall that like Texas, the Roughrider State is touted with having an energy industry-related "jobs miracle.")
It's a story with layers, and over at the Awl, Abe Sauer goes into great detail describing the extent to which this interstate conflict now "exemplifies how North Dakota is slowly becoming a proxy petrostate base of operations for the energy industry to launch a war against federal regulation." He kicks things off by noting an interesting irony between the way this energy lawsuit is being framed and the way North Dakota's conservative attorney general is going after the Affordable Care Act:
North Dakota is suing Minnesota, alleging the Land of 10,000 Lakes is discriminating against it because it is black. Lignite black. Lignite coal black. The lawsuit contends that the Next Generation Energy Act—a law signed in 2007 by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, which limits the amount of power Minnesota utilities can acquire from new fossil-fuel plants—violates the commerce clause of the Constitution. The federal rules, the suit argues, should force Minnesota to buy more of North Dakota's coal-fired power. The EPA, the suit argues, is the only authority whose regulations should matter.
Most experts have scoffed at the suit. But it's made all the more bizarre by the fact that participant North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem is also currently party to the legal challenge to "Obamacare," which accuses the feds of attempting to "usurp the general police power reserved to the States."
It's almost as if powerful, moneyed interests can get partisan attorneys general arguing out of both sides of their mouths, or something?
But this is just the beginning of a deeper exploration of this issue. Want to know what the Bakken formation looks like from space? Spoiler alert: it sort of looks like Minneapolis! But the most fascinating part of the story is the extent to which the PR effort taking place in North Dakota on behalf of the energy industry reminds you of how soldiers in Iraq tried to win the "hearts and minds" of locals by giving them candy and gifts. Per Sauer:
Just a month ago at an oil conference in Houston, one presenter called pushback against the industry "an insurgency." He went on to recommend that PR experts in the industry make it a top priority to download the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual, as "there are a lot of good lessons in there."
Will the live-tweets of our demise be hashtagged "#bang" or "#whimper?" Will Thomas Friedman have enough time to pen one more lamentation about our leaders' inability to come together ("All President Obama had to do to secure the votes to make Torchwood operational was agree to a series of tax cuts on job creators, but in the end, his leadership was lacking."). And should he live to see the Sunday after the cataclysm, will John McCain get booked on "Meet (What's Left Of) The Press?"
These were the kinds of questions discussed during "Reporting the End of the World," a panel assembled by Andrew Fitzgerald, senior producer of Al Jazeera's "The Stream." Fitzgerald describes the project, which sought to determine how journalists will function in the event of calamity, in detail at his blog.
The panel he put together settled on and gamed out two scenarios: alien invasion and global pandemic. I'm willing to take the latter scenario rather seriously, actually! Still, it seems that the alien invasion will be more "fun," in an "I'm really enjoying all of this abject terror" sort of way.
Both scenarios provide great opportunities to do public service journalism, “news-you-use” like “what looks like an alien’s claw-hand is actually its mouth-tube, be careful not to approach it with your delicious human guts.” A lot of reporting on aliens would be informing the public of the areas of conflict to avoid. A lot of reporting on global pandemic would be widely disseminating information about the disease.
[...]
In the pandemic scenario, how do you reporting on raging disease if you can’t go outside? We talked about building a self-reporting platform where a network around the globe could send in information about the spread of disease. Google already has a leg up on us with Global Flu Trends.
Based upon the panel's discussion, I volunteer to remain inside in either scenario:
All of us have trained for reporting in non-conflict zones. But in an alien invasion, all zones became conflict zones. As David Carr pointed out, “In conflict journalism, it’s the symmetries of war that keep reporters safe.” But there is no symmetry in our war with our would-be destroyers.
Ultimately, a fictionalized version of these possible events would be superior to what would actually happen. If the 2011 Acelastan Earthquake is any guide, when the alien invasion comes, reporters will probably just check into "Alienapocalypse" on Foursquare and get incinerated in a fusillade of death rays.
Good morning everybody and welcome once again to your Sunday Morning Liveblog of spoken-word political blither-skittles that happens every week to America at this time. My name is Jason, and I hope everyone had a fun a restful Thanksgiving Holiday that did not involve trampling your fellow citizens over a great deal on a juicemaker at Target. Today is something of a special occasion, as it is the four-year anniversary of this here liveblog. I still have no idea, exactly, what we were going with when we called it "TV SoundOff: Sunday Talking Heads." And I think that I actually used to get this done by noon, back when we started this. But wow, four years! That makes this one of the longest exercises in futility on the internet, I think!
But thanks are in order to all of you, for making this possible. And thanks to the good people of TiVo, who allow me to stop this stuff every once in a while so I can take breaks. And thanks to the copyeditors, whose lives I make very difficult with my fast typings. Okay! Let's have some thoughts about politics! As always, feel free to drop me a line, leave a comment, or follow me on Twitter.
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
Today, Chris Wallace gets to talk to Michele Bachmann again, about presidenty stuff. Plus Tom Coburn and Kent Conrad are here, to drown us in charisma, and also fret about the debt.
But first, Herman Cain: he is dunzo! His candidacy was a "gift" to America, but now it is suspended and we're left with just another website. Hopefully, Cain salvaged enough credibility to continue to have the book tours and celebrity career that he was actually angling for by pretending to run for president. Speaking of: the other guy pretending to run for President, Newt Gingrich, is now the front runner in Iowa! (And Ron Paul is in second place, y'all.) Rick Perry is tied with Rick Santorum. Jon Huntsman, naturally, continues to be liked by no one who is planning to vote in a GOP primary.
"But things can still change," says Wallace, which is, I guess the pretext for having Michele Bachmann on, today?
She is, of course, first asked about Cain, and she says all sorts of nice things about what he brought to the race and how intriguing he was as a candidate and how the election process was better for having him in it. As for the theory that Cain supporters will go to Gingrich, Bachmann says that she's getting plenty of calls from Cain supporters, who "recognize that I'm the real deal" and the "true Tea Party candidate in the race."
But she's held all sorts of events in Iowa, so Wallace wants to know what the "problem" is. Bachmann says there is no problem and that Iowa is a "political Wall Street" where candidates' fortunes go "up and down" and eventually they get greedy and the economy collapses and we mewl and cry for a while before eventually blaming firefighters for everything that's gone wrong and we steal their pensions. Or something like that!
Bachmann says people are looking for a candidate with no surprises and she is the only candidate in the race with a website that is called "No Surprises." I guess she is also angling for Radiohead's endorsement:
It's a tough call! Radiohead also has a song called "Airbag," so they could lean toward Rick Perry!
"Well...you make a convincing argument." Does she, Chris? Does she? You honestly don't seem that convinced. (The "tell" is the way you set up your question with "Well, you make a convincing argument, but..." It's sort of like, "No disrespect, but your mother's a whore.")
He points out that Iowa evangelicals have been unable to come up with a single endorsement, but they have narrowed it down to Bachmann and Santorum. Bachmann says that in Iowa, caucus-goers don't care much about endorsements. I don't think that's true, but at the moment, she's probably been sufficiently endorsed. If Santorum doesn't end up getting some "moment," those voters could all come home to Bachmann just through the caucus mechanics.
Newt Gingrich says he "feels sorry" for Bachmann because she's so "factually challenged." Bachmann says, "Well, professors don't like to be challenged," but Gingrich put his name on support of amnesty and the DREAM act, which Bachmann opposes. She will build a fence! And she'll make English "the official language of the United States government." She will also make oxygen the official respirant of the American people! And she'll endorse gravity as "the official thing keeping us on the ground!"
Bachmann also calls him "as establishment as you get," and then runs down a litany of, frankly, awesome criticisms of Gingrich's lobbyist/influence peddling past. (She calls K Street the "Rodeo Drive of Washington." LOVE.) "You don't need to be a lobbyist within the letter of the law to influence the outcome of legislation," she says, and that is 100% true, by the way. "Special interests aren't paying him $100 million for nothing," she adds. Honestly, her discussion of lobbying is pretty tight, she's getting briefed by someone who is sound on that issue.
Wallace asks if by opposing the extension of the payroll tax cut, she's breaking the pledge to not raise taxes. She says, "Not at all," because she opposed lowering it already. "It's Barack Obama's idea," she says, which probably is enough to qualify it for opposition. Wallace points out that the argument Democrats would make here is that she supports taking money back from the middle class, who've gotten a break with that payroll tax cut, while at the same time supporting "extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy." (Roger Ailes probably hates to hear the phrase "Bush tax cuts for the wealthy" on his network, ha ha.)
Bachmann says that she voted the payroll tax holiday, and she supports lowering taxes on the rich, because they "create jobs." Eventually! Any day now, they will create some jobs.
Businesses, she says, currently do not have all the money that they need to create jobs.
U.S. corporate profits hit an all-time high at the end of 2010, with financial firms showing some of the biggest gains, data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis show. Corporations reported an annualized $1.68 trillion in profit in the fourth quarter. The previous record, without being adjusted for inflation, was $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006.
Many of the nation's preeminent companies have posted massive increases in profits this year. General Electric posted worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, while profits at JPMorgan Chase were up 47 percent to $4.8 billion.
Corporate profits steadily increased last year as companies continued holding onto record amounts of cash and other liquid assets while cutting costs, laying off workers and wringing more productivity -- defined as the amount of output that comes from an hour of work -- from remaining staff, even as the recession eased.
To put that in perspective, said Lynn Reaser, the chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, it's important to note that companies were able to bring production back up to pre-recession levels without hiring any more workers.
Bachmann recently got into a discussion with high school students about marriage equality, in which she said that gay men could marry women and gay women could marry men and that was fine with her and okay, hold on, stop -- I thought that the argument here was about sanctity and not about the accommodations the law makes. Wallace, however, points out that in Iowa, same-sex marriage is accommodated by the law as well. "No, I don't believe that it is." No, you can look it up. In Iowa, she says, it was "judges that made the decision, not the legislature." Oh, I hope she gets asked about the state of New York, then!
She doesn't.
What happens if she doesn't finish first or second in Iowa? She will answer that when the time comes. "The underdog has a very good chance of winning...ultimately, people are going to come back home on January 3rd." Also she'll repeal the Obama administration and probably most of the past forty years.
Tom Coburn and Kent Conrad are here now, to yammer about what's going on in the Senate, an august legislative body where elected officials clean each other's pelts for ticks and lice. Tom Coburn voted against the payroll tax holiday, because why not! At this point, is there a point? Coburn says that he'll be happy to change the tax code and stop playing "gotcha" games and all the discussions that are being had a "playing games," and "America saw right through it," apparently, but won't they notice their paychecks getting lighter? Actually, probably not! The problem the Obama administration had with most of their tax breaks was that they were so stealthy hardly anyone knew that they were happening.
Conrad's considerations -- and he's for extending the payroll tax cuts -- are all short term: eliminate it and you'll reduce growth further and cost America about a million jobs. Conrad says that the Democratic version is paid for by a surtax on the wealthy. "But you know that's not going to pass," Wallace says, "That is a political stunt." Conrad says it's a serious proposal. "I'm not saying it's not a serious proposal," Wallace allows, "But it has no chance of passing." Conrad says that there's a compromise version coming tomorrow.
I'd prefer, I think, to hear about a plan to get jobs added to the economy on a regular basis that kept up with increases to the labor force, but then, I've been looking forward to hearing that plan since the year 2000!
Oh! It shouldn't go unmentioned that Tom Coburn's beard is back!
Coburn says that probably, both the payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits will be extended, but blah blah Washington has no backbone, what's up with always suggesting that revenue be raised to pay for things?
Oh, and there's going to be another debt ceiling showdown this year, at some point, which is great! Coburn says that the "big lie" is that "we haven't cut a penny of spending" in the deal that was made in the Budget Control Act, and the "sequestration" is also a "game." (Though Leon Panetta seems pretty worried about it!)
Conrad doesn't largely agree, except for the fact that like Coburn, he's fretful about the debt and during their time on Simpson-Bowles, they found a way to "cut $4 trillion." (They could also both endorse the Obama administration's balanced proposal to cut $4 trillion, raise $1 trillion in new revenue, and adjust the Medicare eligibility age -- it's VERY similar to Bowles-Simpson.)
Conrad touts the fact that the Bowles-Simpson plan had the backing of 11 of the 18 members. Unfortunately, it required a supermajority. Why didn't they think of that? Because all of these various committees are designed with one goal in mind -- placing the blame for overall failure on someone or something else: the other side, the process, the "system," the lack of leadership! Right now, Congresscritters criticize "kicking the can down the road" so often that it's now a key tactic in the overall strategy to keep kicking the can down the road. "I really need to quit meth, man!"
Wallace asks about a statement Coburn made about Gingrich being a good president -- he'd previously suggested that his "harsh manner" made it hard to imagine he'd be a good president. Today, Coburn says, "There's a lot of candidates out there...I'm not inclined to be a supporter of Newt Gingrich's having served under his leadership...because I found it lacking, oftentimes." Wallace presses on that, somewhat, and Coburn says, "I just found his leadership lacking and I'm not going to go into greater detail."
Clapping their booty for America on today's panel we have Byron York and Mara Liasson and Kirsten Powers and Ed Gillespie.
What happens to all of Cain's supporters? Gillespie says that Gingrich will be the main beneficiary, but there will also maybe be a "Santorum boomlet." Though Santorum will probably say, "Boomlet! We don't allow boomlets in these parts. Boomlets are the devil's work!" And it will be up to Kevin Bacon to inspire Santorum to learn to love boomlets. York says that the support is already gone, to Gingrich, especially in South Carolina.
Liasson says that it's way early for Gingrich to be declaring himself the nominee, and that it's that inflated sense of grandiosity that's a big reason why he eventually, likely, won't. But the Gingrich/Romney showdown is afoot, and Gingrich right now had the best chance of consolidating all of the "anti-Romney" support, given the time that's remaining before voting begins. (It's probably useful to think of that Manchester Union-Leader endorsement of Gingrich less of something that's going to kill Romney -- that newspaper hates Romney like grim death, anyway -- and more of a thing that will hurt the campaigns of Bachmann, Perry, and Santorum.)
Powers points out that perceived electability creates tension, because Romney does better in head-to-head matchups with Obama in places like Florida than Gingrich does. (The White House is said to be "silently cheering" a Gingrich nomination.)
Gillespie and Wallace both agree that they were "struck by" Coburn's criticism of Gingrich, and Gillespie says that voters will evaluate whether Gingrich has "the discipline" and whether Romney has "the fire," and that maybe "Newt Gingrich needs to be more like Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney needs to be more like Newt Gingrich." OOOH, could we please have the movie "FACE/OFF," with Newt and Mitt, in lieu of more debates? Or maybe we can build a Mewt Romrich, out of each man's parts!
Speaking of Mitt Romney, he "got a little testy" with Bret Baier this week. Byron York says that he was once riding around in a car with Mitt Romney and he got testy with York, too. But maybe Byron York is just a bad driver? Anyway, Byron York owns and operates a vehicle. He and Liasson note the "downward trend" for Romney, but add that Romney has the infrastructure to mount a long campaign, and Newt does not.
Wallace acknowledges that the primary is set up to be a drag-out fight. He and Powers debate whether or not Gingrich can add on to his organization. Wallace suggests that Gingrich will draw more money, now that he's a frontrunner, but Powers says it's not enough to just have money, you need to sort out a ground game and get it staffed and there's not a whole lot of time to get that done. Wallace also notes that Gingrich missed a filing deadline for the Missouri Primary, but as I explained a while ago, the Missouri Primary is not important and awards no delegates, so who cares?
How about the whole battle over the payroll tax cut? Gillespie, shockingly, does not think that supporting it is a political winner for Democrats. (He accidentally mistakes Michelle Obama for Michele Bachmann, too.) Powers says that the Democrats have "had a simple message for once," and so she shockingly thinks it's effective. York gets to "break the tie" and he says, "you have a vote on a tax cut and Republicans are divided, so I think that's a big victory for Democrats."
Liasson says both the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits will both get extended and they aren't that expensive anyway. "This is one of those rare times the Democrats have the advantage in the tax debate." Gillespie says "this is not a growth policy." Powers points out that the Democrats have also succeeded in shifting the debate to income inequality.
Unemployment dropped to 8.6%, which sounds good. There were adjustments in the past two months -- revised in a positive direction, which also sounds good. But 315,000 people stopped looking for work and we only added 120,000 jobs, which is 20,000 jobs short of just keeping up with the labor force population. So: a mixed bag. The White House probably gets a break with the fact that the ordinal number in that rate is an 8. But that's still a lot of people out of work.
York notes: "It's good news for the White House, because it's no longer 9%." But, York says, it's dipped before, and if it goes over 9% again this summer, it will be awful news.
Wallace and Liasson points out that the game of perception cuts both ways: an 8.6 rate may convince people that it's a good time to start looking for jobs. And maybe it is! But now you're adding back those discouraged job seekers. That create a situation where next month, you can add 140,000 new jobs, and yet the rate goes back to 8.8% or 9%. Liasson says, forget the rate: are people feeling better about the economy and their future, or are they fearful?
Gillespie says that "shrinking the labor force" is a loser for Obama, but I'll point out that the only sector of the labor force that's shrunk is the public sector labor force, and it sure seems like the GOP is doing their all to urge that along.
Today's "Power Player" is the guy behind "Americans Elect," which is a complete joke.
THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW
Oh hai, Andrea Mitchell is going to be Chris Matthews for the day, paneling it up with Joe Klein, Gillian Tett, John Heilemann, and Helene Cooper.
So, what does everyone think about Newt Gingrich? Is he like Barry Goldwater? Here's a clip of Barry Goldwater, from Chris Matthews YouTube channel.
Klein says that Romney is an "obvious flip-floppers," but he also apparently talked to "several farmers" at a "Rick Santorum event" that drew "seven people," so...what, FIVE of them were farmers? Anyway, these farmers told Joe Klein, "HA WE ARE A LOT TALLER THAN YOU!" Ha, kidding! That's not what they said, that's what they were thinking! So, they got Klein a few telephone books to stand on and they said, "Romney is a big corporate guy," and the GOP has gotten a lot more populist. Also, there's a "passion gap." And that's what a few Iowa farmers told Joe Klein!
By the way, there is probably a strip club called the Passion Gap located conveniently near the Tampa, Florida site of the Republican convention.
Heilemann says the Joe's answers "are good answers," so those five farmers in Iowa are now the most influential people in politics. Also, Heilemann says, the GOP is looking for "someone who can beat Obama." That's such a shock to hear, obviously.
"Why is Donald Trump popular?" asks Heilemann, "because he got in the President's face." John, stop telling people that's true. Trump was never that popular, he bombed out early, there was no one in the race, really, at the time he was flirting with running, and Trump's decline BEGAN the moment he got in the President's face, and his candidacy ended when Obama roasted him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Surely everyone in the world -- the President, his GOP opponents, your viewers -- deserve to be treated with better respect.
Cooper says that the White House is still going about their day with the assumption that Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee, but they LOVE the fact that Gingrich is doing so well. (In fact, Herman Cain dropping out of the race should be considered a serious setback for the Democrats.) Tett says that Romney is the pick of everyone who likes bloodless technocracy, but not the guy that the bloody-shirt wavers want to vote for.
Romney doesn't like being called a flip-flopper! Klein says that "he's pretending to be more conservative" than he is, and that he's "never run as the person that he is," and has "changed his position on absolutely everything."
Mitchell reads Heilemann's latest piece, in which he reports that "Team Romney" is going to "speed" along Gingrich's demise by "bringing down a ten-ton ****hammer on his head." I don't want to know what the "****" is standing in for...I just want to IMAGINE what it might be. If you could only see the things that are falling on Newt Gingrich's head right now in my mind's eye! (I am also reminded right now that Tom DeLay's "Dancing With The Stars" nickname was "The Velvet Hammer." Look that up on the Urban Dictionary, if you have some free time!)
Heilemann says that the Romney campaign has always known that they would have to "slay a dragon" on the way to the nomination, and so Gingrich is a dragon. But, he was, Romney will get ****hammered, but good, if he goes on to lose three of the first four primary contests.
Helene Cooper says that Romney going all out in Iowa carries a risk, because previously, if he'd lost Iowa, he could always say he didn't try. Klein says that the "problem with Newt is that he's referring to himself as 'Newt' and 'we.'" Tett and Heilemann believe Romney will eventually prevail, Cooper says Newt will win.
Andrea Mitchell now pays tribute to Chris Farley's Newt Gingrich impersonation, which is probably something Chris Matthews put her up to.
Okay, somehow we've stretched a remembrance of Pearl Harbor into a discussion of Iran policy. Okay! Whatever! Cooper says that Obama is pressured to influence Iran, but that involves getting Russia and China involved in the pressuring, and they are not wont to do so, so what's to be done? "Bomb them, always," say the neo-cons!
Gillian Tett, who actually looks somewhat horrified at the suggestion of central bank sanctions on Iran, says that there are a lot of complications. It would, for example, create impediments to Japan getting oil at a moment where they need oil rather desperately. "The Iranian regime is not monolithic at all," she points out, and becomes the latest reasonable person to suggest boxing Ahmadinejad into a corner might bring all of the forces arrayed against him in his own country flocking to his side.
Any question of military action? Klein says "it's a big debate in the administration." Tett, who still sounds a little horrified, says it's "incredibly problematic" to launch military action against Iran. Cooper says it's the last thing the Obama administration wants to be involved with, that it was the last thing the Bush administration wanted to be involved in, but the extant concern is that an Israeli strike on Iran could get us into a conflict with Iran. In which case, I guess you better hope Ron Paul is President!
Here are things that Andrea Mitchell, standing in for Chris Matthews, doesn't know. Klein says that the reason Obama has not been apologizing for the recent deaths of Pakistani civilians is because Pakistan fired on American troops first. Tett says that 44 million Americans are receiving food assistance, but Americans are throwing away food at an all time high, and so there's this "new craze" (in Seattle!), called "dumpster diving," to "pull out the food that's still actually edible." It's not a new craze, actually, but we welcome the broadcast of this information anyway, and wonder why it is that only female British reporters on these panel shows seem to show some affinity with poor people.
Cooper says that the Obama administration is discussing whether or not to take a trip to Israel next year, and whether it would become a whole big thing, politically. "A shot of Obama standing at the Western Wall would boost the Jewish Democratic vote," she says. Heilemann says it might be a "miscalculation" on the part of Team Obama Re-Elect to hope Gingrich becomes the nominee because the "chances of a third party candidate go up to about 80%."
That's apparently this week's big question: is this the right environment for a third party candidate? Klein says that the libertarians will run a third party challenger and it will help Obama. Tett says that there's a "howl of protest" going on against politics, and the world is in economic crisis, so maybe. Cooper says that "any kind of third party candidate" hurts Obama. Heilemann thinks that Ron Paul might run, and Americans Elect might run Evan Bayh -- which would be perfect, since Americans Elect is essentially a "party" that represents that point of view of clapped-out lobbyist/hedge-fund manager scum, and Bayh is just the sort of person to be their Golden Calf. But don't count out Harold Ford, Jr! Really, anyone who shows up on a Meet The Press panel would be perfect.
Oh, hey, great segue!
MEET THE PRESS
Apparently I never actually published this, this morning, and I've been typing typing typing words without allowing anyone to read them. SORRY ABOUT THAT, EVERYONE! We now join the liveblog, already in progress.
Today on Meet The Press, "David Axelrod and Reince Priebus debate the Obama presidency." I mean, PERFECT. I'm sure both men will have stunningly surprising takes on the matter. I am already not regretting having to watch this show at all. And, terrific: they are going to sit right next to each other and yammer expletives at one another, hopefully.
What's the deal with jobs? David Axelrod thinks Obama is doing awesome on jobs. The Obama administration has never hung their hats on one jobs number, and there are challenges ahead but they've created millions of private sector jobs and, hey, in case you hadn't heard, job growth was terrible when they came into office, and the President has an "American Jobs Act" with a "payroll tax cut" that the GOP does not want to extend, because what are they, MONSTERS? MONSTERS NAMES REINCE PRIEBUS MAYBE?
Wont voters look at the economy and say, "This is terrible, this economy!" and then go on to say, "BOO, NO MORE OBAMA, THE ECONOMY IS TERRIBLE?" Axelrod says there's no doubt the economy is terrible but voters will recognize the progress that's been made and think, "Who will make it better still?" and it won't be the Republicans, who want to let "Wall Street write their own rules." (PSSST: PLEASE KEEP FUNDING THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN, "WALL STREET.") Also, Obama is better on education and manufacturing and "vision having."
But the super-committee, it failed and kittens died and hopes were dashed and David Gregory has a twenty minute preamble to a question that he never ends up asking, so Axelrod says that Obama has made difficult decisions and he saved the auto industry.
But what about the debt commissions that failed. Axelrod says Obama was awesome on the debt and the Simpson-Bowles "plan" ended up "animating discussions" with Boehner and they had actually "locked arms" on the plan I mentioned earlier ($4 trillion in cuts, $1 trillion in revenue, Medicate reform) but Boehner could not get his caucus to buy in so it died.
Erskine Bowles -- who has a shiny, shiny head -- I mean, they keep him out of fields because otherwise planes would always be landing on him, says that a "cabal" of advisors in the White House...the "Chicago" people convinced him "to wait and let Paul Ryan go first so that Obama would look like the most sensible." Someone will have to tell me what is wrong with that, strategically, actually! But Axelrod says that everyone did "what they felt was in the best interest of getting" the best result, and if they'd just offered up Simpson-Bowles it would have been "savaged and torn apart."
Did the President miss an opportunity to lead? David Axelrod doesn't think so! Hope you didn't place a big bet on David Axelrod saying otherwise.
Now they are talking about Herman Cain, for some reason. Axelrod does not think the GOP contenders have said many smart things at their debates, shockingly!
Various Democrats who seem to think Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee, and they keep saying negative things about Romney, and this surprised Gregory for some reason, so he asks David Axelrod to explain this phenomenon where the political opponents of the guy who may end up being nominated to run against their incumbent say mean things about him. Axelrod says that he is not saying anything different about Mitt Romney than any of his GOP opponents. (Gregory seems to think that saying Romney has "no moral core" is a slag on Mormonism, when it really seems to be a slag on Mitt Romney.)
Gregory says that Republicans will attack the Obama Re-Elect team for making these kinds of criticisms, and point out that they always do this, and I'm wondering: did David Gregory just return from the Pollyanna parallel universe? "What?! Are you guys going to be negative about Mitt Romney? That seems crazy and unprecedented!" There was a whole 2008 campaign where people were gleefully critical of Mitt Romney!
Newsflash! Barack Obama is a negative campaigner! That's not a criticism, just a fact. Well...it's a criticism of David Gregory, who seems shocked by the fact that the Democrats have been saying that Mitt Romney lacks conviction. I mean...huh?
As for Gingrich, Axelrod says he has thoughts and idea and he doesn't know how he'll attack him, yet, but the GOP is also attacking Obama, and the two parties have differences and the Democrats will "challenge the GOP" when they think they are wrong and there will be a big debate.
And that's fifteen minutes of the show, spent on a discussion of election year banalities. CAN YOU HANDLE SOME MORE, THOUGH? Because here's Reince Priebus, and I have a funny feeling that he will come down on the opposite side of David Axelrod!
Priebus says that the race will come down to the promises that Obama made that he didn't fulfill about the debt and Obamacare and jobs. But the bigger problem is that "people don't think the President is real," because he failed to "bring everyone together."
Priebus does not think Obama has done a good job managing the economy, shockingly! Gregory wonders if the Democrats can't argue that the last month of unemployment news was "good news." Furthermore, Gregory wonders that if good news continues, won't the Democrats be able to argue that it's good news? These are some tough, tough questions, that a potted plant might struggle to answer. I think that Priebus will reject the premise!
"Barack Obama's poll numbers are worse than Jimmy Carter's poll numbers for the first time in history," says Priebus, who fails to disclose that there is a socio-historical reason for this statistical anomaly. But this proves my point, which I hope is not too controversial, that the GOP will say good news is bad, and Obama will say bad news is good, and this is all pretty ho-hum, and I can't believe we've spent twenty minutes on Sunday literally asking the flacks from either side if they intend to keep flacking.
Sometimes, when a flack says the good news is bad, they have a good point! The unemployment numbers, as Priebus points out, are seemingly better because thousands of people gave up looking for work. But even when things aren't true, that's no impediment! Priebus says the Obama wishes he could have Carter's numbers, but Carter's numbers arose because of the beginning of the Iranian hostage crisis.
"The reality is, everything this President has touched has gotten worse," says Priebus. "The President has been a disaster." But David Axelrod just said the president was awesome? I mean, who's right?
Right now, if David Gregory yelled, "BALLOON MUMBLECORE SPATULA GIGGLEPOPS!" at Axelrod and Priebus, Axelrod would calmly explain why balloon mumblecore spatula gigglepops favor Obama's re-election, and Priebus would respond by saying that balloon mumblecore spatula gigglepops have suffered under Obama's leadership.
Priebus is all, "HERMAN CAIN, WHATEVER." He provided a "big voice" but his "numbers were falling" and he wasn't raising money, so, whatever. So Gregory shows him a clip of Cain's speech yesterday and asks him to respond to the idea that the press or the Democrats wanted him out of the race. "I don't know," he says, sounding rightfully annoyed. By the way, the Democrats wanted Herman Cain to stay in the race forever and the media LOVED him, because he was so bizarre.
Does Priebus worry that Newt Gingrich is too undisciplined to run? Does the GOP think poor children are shiftless turds? Does he want to end child labor laws? Priebus says he's not going to play referee, and he's not going to dissect footage of Gingrich, but Obama is awful and terrible.
Should GOP candidates decline the invitation to debate with Donald Trump? Priebus does everything he can to say yes, without saying yes. But he insults NBC News along the way!
REINCE PRIEBUS:
You know, we-- we've had a lot of debates. And, as you know, some of them have been sanctioned by the Republican National Committee and some of them haven't. I mean we've had debates with MSNBC as well. But-- you know, listen, I think that these are-- programs that each of these candidates have to decide for themselves whether they're gonna compete in. There's-- strategy involved, whether-- competing and not competing, those are things that those candidates--
DAVID GREGORY:
I'm not quite--
REINCE PRIEBUS:
--need to decision.
DAVID GREGORY:
--sure what-- when you say you've with MSNBC. You've had with NBC News where it aired on MSNBC. Are you--
REINCE PRIEBUS:
Right.
DAVID GREGORY:
--equating that to-- to--
REINCE PRIEBUS:
Well, I mean--
DAVID GREGORY:
--the (UNINTEL) debate with--
REINCE PRIEBUS:
--having--
DAVID GREGORY:
--Donald Trump?
REINCE PRIEBUS:
--Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, you know, discussing the debate afterwards for two hours isn't exactly ideal. But we-- but these candidates decide for themselves what arenas they want to--
DAVID GREGORY:
But do you think--
REINCE PRIEBUS:
--participate in.
DAVID GREGORY:
--it detracts from the seriousness of the debate to have Donald Trump moderating a debate with the presidential candidates?
REINCE PRIEBUS:
It's up to the candidates. I mean it's-- I-- I don't make those decisions. What-- the decisions I make are making sure that we have a functional operation--
DAVID GREGORY:
You're the chairman--
(OVERTALK)
DAVID GREGORY:
--of the party. You must have an opinion.
REINCE PRIEBUS:
Yeah, but I don't-- but-- but I don't-- but as-- my personal opinion doesn't matter.
For the record, it is of crucial importance to Mitt Romney that he finds some way of getting out of that Trump debate. Just about everyone else who hasn't already declined (Huntsman and Paul have declined) has a brand in politics that won't be damaged by close proximity to Donald Trump. But Romney, if we recall, took great pains to avoid being photographed with Trump.
So, okay, bottom line: Reince Priebus thinks that the GOP will do well and Obama is terrible. David Axelrod thinks the opposite! We've learned so much today, about politics!
Okay, so there's a panel now, between Katty Kay and Mark Halperin and Harold Ford and Joe McQuaid of the Newt-endorsing Manchester Union-Leader, so let's get on with it.
Herman Cain! He dropped out of the race this weekend! Game changer! Katty Kay says he was defiant and there was nothing to the allegations, but it was "interesting" that his wife was on stage with him...but "to be honest was he going to get anywhere?...Even those who supported him didn't think he'd win."
Halperin says that "It matters because Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee unless someone consolidates the conservative wing, the anti-Romney wing of the party, against him." That could have been Cain, but it could also be Gingrich. But, GAMECHANGE: Romney will be the nominee, unless someone else is the nominee. There's your political science from Mark Halperin.
McQuaid suggests that Cain was a joke and he treated his newspaper like a joke and he's just got this funny feeling that Newt Gingrich, the candidate he likes and endorsed, will do great.
Ford says that it's "interesting how Gingrich has emerged as the alternative to Romney," because he got an endorsement, and is a "serious thinker." This is all stuff that Harold Ford finds "interesting."
Halperin says that Gingrich will do well, "because people want a figure like Churchill." (Churchill, to Halperin's estimation, was well-loved because he was an egotistical git.)
Gregory suggests that you could say that Gingrich is not a Washington outsider at all, and Kay gently reminds him that this is the central part of Romney's strategy. She goes on to point out that actual GOP insiders are full of worry that a Gingrich nomination will cost the GOP the White House and downticket.
Naturally, Joe McQuaid, who likes and endorses Newt Gingrich, disagrees.
David Gregory calls the whole notion of poor kids needing to become janitors a "grotesque distortion" of what's "going on out there." Good for him.
Katty Kay: "It seems that in the country the sort of general zeitgeist has shifted from a real loathing of big government to, to some extent, fears about the middle class being squeezed and problems of inequality. And I think in that context, Newt Gingrich's comments about the working poor and poor kids who can only find work if it's illegal come across as the wrong tone in the country at the moment."
Female British reporters for the win, today!
Mark Halperin says that Mitt Romney is being "characterized as an unpopular flip-flopper" this week. He is characterized as an unprincipled flip-flopper ALL weeks, but this week in particular, it is TIME magazine's cover story. (Angelina Jolie, for reasons I could not possibly comprehend, is on the cover of NEWSWEEK.)
Joe McQuaid says that Romney is an unprincipled flip-flopper. His newspaper made a cartoon about it! The Bret Baier interview, he says, was a "killer." That interview with Romney is definitely the moment that every liberal in the world joined as one with every conservative in the world not currently on the Romney payroll, to fall in love with Bret Baier!
David Gregory, on Romney's shifting approach on immigration, asks, "The question for everybody. Is he not consistent?" Again, this is MITT ROMNEY we are talking about.
Harold Ford says that sometimes you learn about an issue and you change your mind, like, say, HAROLD FORD does! (He used to be opposed to marriage equality and now he isn't. He used to be pro-choice and now he isn't.) For Romney, "his fundamental problem is that it looks as if it's all motivated by politics." (That is also Ford's problem...so...)
We end today with David Gregory reporting that he interviewed David Axelrod, and Axelrod said Obama was awesome. Also, people are talking about things on Twitter. And the economy is terrible.
Kay says, "It's not on your trend tracker, David, but if Europe falls apart there will be a major impact on markets, on confidence. There'll be a big impact on American banks and there will be an impact on American exporters to Europe. This is something that is outside of the White House's control, but it threatens to seriously impact the 2012 election campaign. They're sending Tim Geithner to Europe this week to try and talk tough to European leaders, but coming from a country that isn't actually able to get much done politically itself, it's kind of hoard to say to Europeans, "You've gotta get your political house in order."
I think that she felt obligated to point out it will affect the horserace, because otherwise how would you convince Betsy Fischer that the economy is important?
"All right, we'll be watching that," says Gregory. Betcha they don't!
Okay, well, that's that! Sorry to everyone for not actually pushing the "publish" button until noon today, leading many of you to think that I wasn't liveblogging. One would think that after four years of doing this, I would remember such things, but I guess one would be wrong about that! Anyway, everyone have a safe and happy week.
The U.S. Senate hasn't enjoyed much acclaim of late. Mired in gridlock and saddled with record-low approval ratings, Senators need to demonstrate that they are capable of doing something that won't disintegrate into a dust cloud of rancor and incompetence. But what can they do? Well, the holiday season is upon us -- should they maybe try doing one of those "Secret Santa" things that epitomize Yuletide-forced fun? Sure, why not. But will it fix everything? Shockingly, it may not!
According to this Reuters report, Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) are trying to set up a "Secret Santa" gift exchange with the members of their august body, and while "no one predicts" the effort "will unleash unprecedented bipartisan tidings of comfort and joy," it's still seen as a "political test" of whether senators can do anything at all that does not end in everyone setting fire to one another. So far, Franken and Johanns have signed up 58 members, so this is still two votes short of cloture.
This may be one of the only pieces of political reporting you'll read all year that doesn't hang mostly on the "on background" remarks of anonymous sources, so that's nice. You'll therefore learn that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) is "cynical" about this, and that Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), "at first," was worried that the effort was "too gimmicky." But my favorite part of the story, by far, is this section:
Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University, does not expect much from the initiative.
"This conflict between the two parties is not just a misunderstanding that can be solved by them getting to know each other a little better," he said.
Wonderful. Typically, political reporters pore over every insignificant twitch in every insignificant poll as if they were ancient practitioners of augury, make blithe assertions (such as: negative campaign ads turn off independent voters) that are not founded in fact, and chase down every little bit of speculative befuddlement at the constant expense of basic electoral fundamentals -- all of which demonstrates a basic level of contempt for political science. But when it comes to finding out whether a Christmas gift exchange might be the key to alleviating all of Congress' problems, now we've got to get a political scientist on the phone!
At any rate, I wish our senators all the best in their attempt to manufacture Christmas cheer, but what I'd really like to know is how I can get hooked up with the Federal Reserve's "Secret Santa" exchange, which seems much, much cooler.
Thank you, Fox News' Ed Henry, for the scoop that Thomas Friedman is at the White House today, and for pointing out that he may, at this minute, finally be in possession of the very deficit proposals that the White House made months ago. Theseproposals, widely available on this thing called "the internet," have eluded Friedman for quite some time, if hisrecentcolumns can be used as a guide.
Here's a fun story with a happy ending. Donovan Slack is an eight-year veteran of the Boston Globe who, during that time, moved from covering City Hall to the White House. Two months ago, she published a story for the Globe detailing the way an aide to Mitt Romney named Spencer Zwick had used Romney's political connections for personal enrichment. The morning her story ran, Politico's Mike Allen -- probably playing Gunga Din for one of his "hott" political contacts -- took a cheap shot at her in his Playbook, characterizing Slack as a "young reporter" without seasoning. Given the quality of her story and her career trajectory, the critique didn't make sense. And Allen's bosses at Politico clearly thought so as well, because yesterday, she was announced as their new hire; she will cover the White House with Byron Tau.
Slack's got some dirt on her shoulder, could you brush it off for her, Mike Allen?
As you know by now, longtime Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank will be retiring from the House of Representatives, opting to forego a post-redistricting reelection run next year for a career in writing and public policy advocacy. He'll leave behind a long legacy of legislating, obviously, but he'll also leave an equally impressive legacy of quips and zingers, which he deployed at will to ridicule reporters, belittle political opponents and, on one memorable occasion, compare the LaRouchie version of Ani DiFranco to a "dining room table."
Our own Ryan Grim remembers how he "bore the brunt of more tirades than he can count -- many of them deserved, no doubt, and all of them enjoyable, but only in hindsight." The ability to enjoy being cut down by Frank in hindsight is something that others have found difficult to master. Karl Rove, for one, sounded off on Frank's retirement by saying the Democratic legislator "is incapable of feeling shame, regret or a sense of personal responsibility." (As Alex Balk observes, Rove probably practiced that line in front of a mirror.)
Our own Ben Craw provides the definitive highlight reel of Barney Frank cold-stickin' it to people. Enjoy (in hindsight at the very least)!
Over at the Atlantic, Derek Thompson has a fun piece up titled "When Good Companies Have Bad Ideas." Riffing on the magazine's recent "Killer Ideas" issue, it includes a slideshow of some of the most celebrated examples of product innovations that crashed and burned upon entry to the marketplace. (Anyone remember Coors Water? Actually, you are probably reminded of it painfully every time you have the misfortune to drink Coors "Beer.")
Of course, no compendium of bad ideas is complete without New Coke, and Thompson does not disappoint:
As Malcolm Gladwell recounted in his book Blink, Coca-Cola responded to Pepsi's eponymous "challenge" by trying to make a sweeter soft drink that could actually win the Pepsi Challenge. This turned out to be a wild misreading of its own strengths. In retrospect, Pepsi was probably winning the taste-test battle for the same reason that Coke was winning the soda war. Coke's milder, prune-y flavor goes better with a steak over dinner. At the end of the day, the only people drinking soda in shots were the handful of young people filmed playing the Pepsi Challenge.
By pure coincidence, the recent inability of the so-called 'super committee' to come to an accord about what to do about curbing the federal deficit has had me thinking about the 'New Coke' debacle quite a bit. See, as the super committee deliberated throughout the fall, I feel like the media got us locked into this notion that if they were unable to come up with a plan that all of its members could agree to, this constituted a "failure," while an approved-by-super-committee strategy for curbing the debt constituted a "success."
The problem with that thinking is that there was never any indication -- or even a shred of evidence -- that suggested the super committee was in any way poised to deliver a competent plan, let alone an intelligent one. So it's difficult to understand why anyone was actually looking forward to the product they might have produced with optimism, or imagined for even one minute that those 12 members of Congress had the capacity to alter our longterm budget trajectory in some sort of optimal way. What's been deemed a "failure," for all anyone really knows, may have actually been a dodged bullet.
The New Coke comparison is useful in this situation because while the product that the Coca-Cola Company produced in 1985 is now considered to have been an unalloyed failure, there was a hot minute or two when the folks that conceived and executed the idea were thought of as geniuses and company saviors, and the product was deemed a self-evident success. As Mark Prendergast documents in his book, "For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company that Makes It," when CEO Roberto Goizueta was asked if he'd be changing up Diet Coke's formula "assuming [New Coke] is a success," he replied, "No. And I didn't assume that this is a success. This is a success." Sounds to me like a guy who got himself prematurely locked into a concept of "success."
Of course, Coca-Cola's course correction was to reintroduce the old formula (sort of -- cane sugar was swapped out for high-fructose corn syrup) to the marketplace. That move, by contrast, was deemed a success -- so much so that it wasn't uncommon to hear people theorize that this marketing debacle was actually a genius bit of misdirection. Whether you believe those conspiracies or not, the simple fact of the matter is that it sure was a complicated way of succeeding by changing nothing at all.
Happily, here is another useful super committee comparison, because at the moment, changing nothing at all remains a superior policy option than anything the super committee would have likely devised. So, I suggest we all celebrate their inability to do something as a pause that refreshes, and get down to the business of doing nothing about the deficit.
An email tipster points me to this article on the Washington Post's website from Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, who argues that "[w]e need to start taking student loan debt seriously." Very true! As she points out, outstanding student debt could exceed $1 trillion this year, a grim situation in a job market that has, for a long while, failed to keep up with the number of job seekers entering the workforce, and that currently features five job seekers for every job opening.
But the most intriguing part of Thistlethwaite's piece is that she forcefully argues for the forgiveness of student loan debt. I call this "intriguing" because only two days ago, the paper's paymasters managed to wring a tiny bit of faint praise for the very for-profit college debtscams -- which drive the Washington Post Company's most profitable division -- from a long-time critic of the same, education correspondent Jay Mathews. (As I noted yesterday, Mathews seems to have penned his piece with something of a bayonet at his back.)
So how did this happen? Probably because Thistlethwaite's piece was placed in the paper's "On Faith" blog. And indeed, that seems a pretty appropriate place for it, seeing as her advocacy is rooted in the Christian ethos of debt forgiveness, commonly referred to as "jubilee," which Forbes' E.D. Kain and Salon's Alex Pareene have touched on before:
Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." (Matthew 6:12) Forgiving debt is a moral issue. Forgiving some of the worst of this student debt is crucial literally to save this American generation.
President Obama has recently taken steps to ease student loan debt burdens. But the problem is too big. Some of this student debt needs actual legislation to deal with the whole system of the debt as Robert Applebaum calls for on his Web site, ForgiveStudentLoanDebt.com.
Applebaum contends that executive orders can only do so much. It will take legislation that covers predatory practices as well as other changes to the way student loans are structured such as how interest is compounded. Applebaum also argues persuasively that forgiving student loan debt will stimulate the economy.
The kind of moral equality that Jesus asks us to pray for in the Lord's Prayer can be seen in Applebaum's argument. Jesus calls on us to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Forgive and be forgiven. Americans are tied together in this student debt debacle, and debt forgiveness will help the forgivers as well as those forgiven.
Thistlethwaite's faith-based appeal is only one of the valuable things she writes about in the article, by the way. She also manages to tie the student loan debt crisis with some of the stories being told by members of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. She also provides a critique of the OWS plan to stage a massive strategic default on student loan debt, which may carry consequences that the demonstrators fail to appreciate.
But, okay, if forgiving student loan debt is what Jesus would do, how can we go about doing it? Well, one thing that the Washington Postcould do is end their involvement in the subprime student loan grift game in which they currently participate, but I feel there's a good chance that Kaplan CEO Andrew S. Rosen wouldn't like that one bit. So, another way of forgiving student loan debt could come in the form of the financial industry, who in August still owed U.S. taxpayers $1.5 trillion for the bailouts anyway, could make an investment in the next generation of productive Americans and just pay off the whole nut themselves. Maybe everyone could call it even.
The Daily Caller has an "exclusive" report Tuesday that sounds an awful lot like an "exclusive" report from many, many years ago, but here goes: President Barack Obama wrote a book called "The Audacity of Hope," and the title comes from a sermon given by a preacher named Jeremiah Wright, who is something of a controversial figure. And there's a video of Obama confirming all of this. (I gather that the video is the "exclusive" here, not the information.)
So all we need now is to build a time machine and travel back to 2007, and this news might be some sort of election-year game-changer, right? (NOTE: This news actually ended up being not much of an election-year game-changer in 2007.)
Video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller shows Illinois Senator Barack Obama, then campaigning for Democrats before the 2006 midterm elections, praising Reverend Jeremiah Wright and telling an audience that he "stole" the title of his book "The Audacity of Hope" from Wright's sermon of the same name, which he "loved." Obama also referred to Wright as "my pastor."
"I'm not plugging the book, but the title of it, 'The Audacity of Hope.' Some people have noticed that I actually used that line in the speech that I gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention," Obama said on November 4, 2006 in Bristol, Pa., at a rally in support of Patrick Murphy, who went on to serve two terms in Congress. "But I tell you what: I'm confessing to all of you here today -- it's a big crowd, 2,000 people -- I'm confessing in front of the TV cameras: I actually stole this line from my pastor, Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr."
I'll tell you right now: This video actually catches Obama fibbing! He did not actually "steal" the phrase "the audacity of hope." He actually borrowed the phrase "the audacity to hope" from Wright's sermon and changed one of the words for his 2004 convention keynote and the aforementioned book. Outside of that, there's not much here that you didn't already know -- Obama wrote a book, he had a pastor, he and that pastor have since had a falling-out, Patrick Murphy was a guy who served in Congress, etc. Wright's sermon containing that phrase has been on YouTube for many years.
Big Government breaks the news that Bill Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama; well, this was broken by Ben Smith in 2007, but still.
Heck, I'm somewhat nostalgic for the year 2007, too! The Simpsons movie came out, Rihanna released "Umbrella," the economy hadn't yet gone ass-over-teapot ... good times, relatively speaking.
It's pretty normal to see Washington Post contributors loosening their thought bowels to evangelize in favor of for-profit colleges. After all, one of the few reliably profitable divisions of The Washington Post Company is Kaplan, Inc., which runs for-profit colleges itself. But Alex Pareene points to an example of the Post's typical glorifying of the for-profit college industry that reads like a man valorously attempting to fight off Stockholm Syndrome.
That man is Jay Mathews, who writes the "Class Struggle" blog and who serves as the Post's education columnist. Yesterday, he wrote a piece titled "5 reasons for-profit colleges will survive." Mathews is typically a skeptic of these ventures, and before we get to his reasons why they will "survive" -- "survivability" being a complimentary trait of things like malaria, and zombies -- we are treated to three paragraphs of Mathews explaining his skepticism, and a very quiet disclosure that suggests that he was confronted with Kaplan CEO Andrew S. Rosen's new book, and maybe it was time to kiss the hand that feeds him.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to read the book or write about it. As a 40-year employee of The Post, anything bad I say might seem too little too late, and anything good would be taken as trying to protect the company. I was glad Rosen agreed his company had messed up. He did not shake my feeling that profits and teaching are a bad mix, but I did learn things I needed to know.
As Pareene points out, what Mathews "needed to know" was more or less very conveniently contained in this press release. This gets spun into Mathews' "five reasons," many of which are odd. We learn, for example, that "for-profit schools are less of a drain on tax dollars than non-profit or public schools," and that the for-profits are doing marginally better at graduating "students with two or more key risk factors."
U.S. Education Department data show students with two or more key risk factors, such as delayed enrollment, no high school diploma or full-time job, have only a 17 percent chance overall of getting a two-year or four-year degree. Their chances are 24 percent at for-profit schools. That’s not a big improvement, but they are doing it with fewer tax dollars.
Hard to mount much of a hallelujah chorus for a 24 percent graduation rate, but let's give credit where it's due. That said, let's also recall that these institutions are still playing with house money -- so how's the return on investment for taxpayers?
Critics have questioned the quality, cost and tactics of some for-profit schools. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, led an investigation last year that found that nearly one-fourth of students from for-profit colleges default on their loans within three years of leaving school, most without a degree. The senator's report: "Debt without a Diploma."
Nearly half of all federal student loan defaults occur at for-profit schools, although the schools have only 10% of higher education students, Harkin found. (A default is a loan at least nine months behind in payments.) The Government Accountability Office also issued a report this year challenging how the schools recruited students.
Just as the subprime mortgage bubble was giving way to a bust that would help trigger a devastating financial crisis, Goldman Sachs, a firm that had been at the center of Wall Street's rampant mortgage speculation, found its way to a new area of explosive growth: In claiming what would eventually become a 41 percent stake in Education Management Corp., Goldman secured itself a means of tapping into the boom in for-profit higher education. The federal government was boosting aid to college students nationwide, just as a declining economy prompted millions of Americans to seek refuge in higher education, leading to dramatically expanding enrollments at many institutions.
But unlike in the mortgage markets, where some unwise or unlucky investor got saddled with the bad loans after the festivities ended and home prices fell, this new market in higher education boasted seemingly unlimited growth potential at virtually zero risk. The burden of college loan repayment falls entirely on students' backs, shielding corporations from the consequences of default. The colleges essentially receive all their revenues upfront, primarily through federal government loans and grants for tuition, regardless of whether students are able to gain employment and pay back their loans.
Students at "for-profit" colleges like Kaplan University and the University of Phoenix are promised an easy, convenient way to earn a college degree. Instead, many students are drowning in debt with nothing to show for it. The University of Phoenix's graduation rate is just nine percent, the Education Trust reports. For-profit students make up almost half of those who default on their student loans.
Once they're enrolled, students discover loans they never signed up for and bills for classes they never took. They find themselves harassed on the phone (one prospective student was called 180 times in one month) and dogged by creditors at their door.
Even though explosive investigations from media outlets and government agencies have exposed industry-wide fraud, heads of for-profit colleges defend their schools as valuable ways for nontraditional students to earn degrees. What they don't admit is that in many cases, for-profit colleges are simply sinkholes for federal student aid dollars. For-profits siphoned off 4.3 billion in federal student aid money in 2008-2009.
Okay, then! There go two of the reasons for-profits may survive. The remaining three are ... well, let's be charitable and say "less compelling." One of the reasons is that the for-profits won't be spending money on "luxury dorms, restaurants and athletic facilities which don’t produce more learning or more graduates." (They won't be spending money on repositories of learning known as "libraries," either!) Also, the "rap against land-grant colleges and community colleges when they were created" was that they were "labeled as wasteful, low-quality, hucksters cheating our youth." (However, those institutions "survived" by proving they weren't such things, as opposed to living up to those criticisms.)
But this is the oddest reason Mathews provides:
In other industries, the rise of for-profits has sparked great controversy, but not for long. In the 1980s hospitals began to shift from publicly funded or non-profit to privately funded, with much criticism. Today, most of us don’t know or care how the hospitals we visit are financed.
Really, anyone who needs proof of the way money (some of which came from taxpayers!) has influenced this debate need only remind themselves that this article under Jay Mathews' byline exists.
But it's hard to blame Mathews. Honestly, the whole piece reads as something from a man who's just hoping he can close an assignment he didn't want as quickly as possible and get on with his life, hoping that the taint of writing this won't outlive the rest of his work. And in the comment streams, after readers give his post a good reaming, Mathews emerges to offer: "thanks guys. You are proving my point, but happy to have your input. I agree with you, mostly." Hostage negotiators can stand down for the time being, apparently.
Were you aware that we recently won a major battle in the "War On Christmas?" Because over at Fox Nation, it seems that we are "winning the war on Christmas," due to a decision that was recently made by Walgreens, a retailer that specializes in -- wait...were you not aware there was even a "war on Christmas?" Sorry, let me back up.
Yes, if you are a traditional adherent of Christianity, you are probably hearing the words "war on Christmas" and wondering if you happened to miss some big news story. I can understand your confusion. For most mainstream Christians, the Yuletide season is one in which enormous accommodations are made to those who practice the Christian faith. You get time off from work, and schools get out so your kids can visit family, and on every block, there is an illuminated reminder that Christmas has arrived. You've probably noticed that this began about mid-October.
No holiday is as well accommodated in America as Christmas. It is perhaps one of the best celebrated religious holidays in the history of mankind. You have to go back to antiquity to find more lavish celebrations -- like, say, the inaugural games of the Roman Colosseum, which lasted 100 days because the Romans wanted to pull out all the stops to appease the gods they literally believed wanted to kill them all with plagues and volcanoes.
In fact, many Christians -- myself included -- register a basic level of annoyance at the way the Christmas season now stretches back into October, because we don't really need a basic reminder of how to properly celebrate the birth of Christ or His divinity on account of the fact that there is this basic concept called "faith" that we keep in our hearts, and which suffers no impediment from the way the nice people at the grocery store thank us for our custom. But there are another group of Christians who are incapable of holding onto their faith unless it is repetitively validated in the utterances of people who work at major American retailers. And it is on this front that the "war on Christmas" has historically been fought.
And yet, there's a "war"? Yes, apparently, there is, and my recitation of the explanation of the "war on Christmas" is, for long-time readers, becoming as heralded a tradition as the yearly airing of Linus Van Pelt's recitation of the Gospel of Luke on national network television!
Why the "war?" Well, as near as I can tell, being the top-dog, religion-wise, just isn't good enough for some people. There apparently exist adherents who are so feckless and inconstant in their faith, that nothing short of constant validation will do. So when one of these lesser lights walks into Walgreens and hears "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas And Praise Be To You Who Were Smart Enough To Practice The Best Religion Ever!" something inside these adherents' psyches snaps, breaks, and they come to develop an insane persecution complex.
It's pretty ironic that many years ago I selected "Walgreens" at random as my stand-in for a typical, American retailer, because per the Houston Chronicle, here's this year's major victory:
Walgreens is the latest store to return to explicit references to Christmas, switching its position a day after some Christian groups threatened to boycott over its generic holiday wording.
The American Family Association and the Liberty Counsel--Christian groups that maintain lists of "naughty" and "nice" retailers based on which stores reference Christmas--applauded Walgreens' switch, along with several other big stores who are coming off the naughty list for the first time in years.
For the American Family Association, which is best known for issuing a fatwa against the Gap for not using the term "Christmas" when it actually was, it's a hard-won concession. For the rest of us, we won't even notice this, because all Walgreens has decided to do is "use the word 'Christmas' to describe items [they] are selling for Christmas decorations and gifts." So, expect things like "Christmas tree ornaments" to be labeled "Christmas tree ornaments" at Walgreens, thus ending the confusion that must have been keenly felt by zero people.
Meanwhile, the continuing use of the term "war on Christmas" to describe the reaction of people who do not receive full validation of their religious beliefs from cashiers 100 percent of the time is still a grievous insult to people around the world who are legitimately persecuted for expressing their religious faith, and who look to the way religious freedom is accommodated in America with envy.
As most of you no doubt already know, the new iPhone 4S includes a new feature -- a loyal digital assistant named "Siri," who has a comforting voice and will make it so you never have to actually enter search terms in Google or use the maps app ever again. Eventually, humanity will stop evolving and lose the Dolphin Wars of 2031, but until then, Siri is available to answer all of your hard-hitting questions. So, I decided to put Siri to the test and ask her all of the questions that Jadakiss asks in his 2004 single, "Why?"
The song, which Wikipedia calls a "protest song" -- whatever, we'll go with it! -- featured Jadakiss asking a series of questions that are primarily about contemporary life and issues that concern both the music industry and the African-American community. But Jadakiss presses beyond those borders, seeking some enlightenment on issues of his own identity ("Why is Jadakiss as hard as it gets?") as well as some larger, philosophical concerns ("Why are you even alive?").
As you can see in the video, the unanswerability of these questions had a particular salience back in 2004, at which time ordinary people on the streets did not have the smartphone technology that they do today. (Also, apparently many people still had televisions from the 1970s.) Bridging the gap between the uncertainty of the immediate moment and a state of clarity is one of the challenges that Siri was designed to address. Though, it should be said that surely Jadakiss has, in the intervening time, gotten an answer to many of these inquiries. For example: "Why at the bar you ain't take straight shots instead of poppin Crist'?" Study your Jay-Z, Jadakiss: "I used to drink Cristal, muthaf-----s racist, so I switched Gold Bottles on to that spade sh-t."
Nevertheless, Jadakiss asks many questions that still matter in 2011. And Siri...well, she did her best. It should be noted that at times, Siri took to this task like a duck takes to a hot river of tar. I did what I could to pose the question in a way that Siri could understand, and it wasn't always simple to do.
But for the most part, this experiment yielded some positive results. It's clear that Jadakiss would find Siri quite useful -- especially in the service of locating various services that are in his area. In fact, Siri takes a holistic approach to providing her services -- she'll point you in the direction of an area bar one minute, and attempt to divine the location of an addiction treatment center the next. And she'll do so without judgment.
In fact, it seems pretty clear that Siri would be a good friend and companion to Jadakiss. We occasionally just need someone to tell us that sometimes there are no easy answers to many of life's questions, but if there's one certain thing we can cling to, as we scrabble through our lives, seeking out what meaning we can as we fill the numerous empty days until we are returned to the dust from whence we came, it's that there's probably a restaurant serving wrap sandwiches just a few blocks away. We'll get there together, somehow.
What follows is the loose transcript between Jadakiss and Siri, with me acting as an interpreter. Special thanks to HuffPost's researcher/office manager extraordinaire Brad Shannon, who lent me the use of his phone. Brad, I'm very sorry that your phone now thinks that you wanted to engage the services of a prostitute.
Good morning everyone, and thanks for taking time out of your busy TWILIGHT-watching weekend to join me, and this semi-live blog, chronicling our Sunday Morning chit-chat about our dumb politics, which have made pizza a vegetable, hooray! I mean, how is the "Super" Committee going to compete with that? They should just give up, now. (Actually, since they'll probably fail at their job this week, they should maybe just admit it and start their Thanksgiving break early.)
Anyway, my name is Jason, I am back from Baltimore, sorry I couldn't watch these shows with you last weekend. ("Sorry I couldn't watch these shows" is obviously a lie, but it's one of those white lies we tell in polite company, right?) You guys know all the various pre-game suggestions! Feel free to send an email, or say hello to one another in the comments. You may also follow me on Twitter, if you like.
From time to time, you may have to wait a few minutes for more liveblog to appear. While you're waiting, why not check out Willy Staley's "A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage," which I forgot to share with you back when it came out.
Okay, well! Let's begin.
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
There are three days until the Super Committee's deadline to save the world. So why are two of them, Jeb Hensarling and Xavier Becerra, doing on a teevee show? Shouldn't they be working? The answers to both questions is "LOL," I suspect? Maybe Hensarling and Becerra are just the two people on the Super Committee that nobody likes, and while they are away, everyone else will finally figure everything out, and when Hensarling and Beccera return, they'll be like, "Aw, darn, we really wanted to be here to help," and the other Super Committee members are all, "No, no! You guys totally helped! You brought doughnuts back and stuff! Big help!" Meanwhile Patty Murray is mouthing the words, "These guys totally suck!" to Dave Camp, who's like, "OMG I KNOW WANNA MAKE OUT?"
Anyway, Hensarling is up first. He says, "Nobody wants to give up hope!" So: give up hope. He says that everyone on the Super Committee is really swell and nice and all, but it's a daunting challenge. He then says, "We're not going to give up hope" about a million times. He says that the Democrats haven't done enough to solve the problem of Medicare and that Jim Clyburn was right last week when he said that the Democrats hadn't "coalesced around a position." He says, "there are multiple frameworks out there that could work" and there is some "common ground on tax reform" but then he says, "We haven't given up hope" again.
You should give up hope, because the Supercommittee members are on Sunday Morning Teevee, complaining about one another, not to each other's faces, like sadsacks. This is very "high school sophomore visits the principal's office." The only way this is distinguishable from "Glee" is that no one's attempted to sing an Adele song yet.
"I'm not saying it's anybody's fault," Hensarling says, suggesting that it's the Democrats' fault. "It's not a matter of blame," he says, while blaming the other side. Maybe there will be a last ditch idea to cut the deficit using passive-aggression!
Wallace suggests that the GOP members have just been averse to raising taxes on the rich. Hensarling says that he disagrees. He also notes that "all the bipartisan" plans seem to want to do that, for some reason he can't understand.
How will this end? Hensarling says that he doesn't know. "Nobody wants to give up hope." Wallace wants to know if they'll hold some formal session where each side votes the other down, and Hensarling won't say whether having a formalized session of abject failure is a good idea.
Hensarling regrets that they are going to pass on an opportunity to do something significant about the debt. But the good news is that passing on opportunities to do something about the debt is actually a great way to do something about the debt!
Literally, the best thing Congress could do right now is dedicate post offices to their friends and keep trying to turn pizza into things that pizza is not.
What about the chances that the Pentagon trigger ends up getting changed? Hensarling says that he hopes it will be changed. The whole point though, is that was supposed to be the thing that encouraged the Super Committee to compromise.
Hensarling says that he doesn't think that the markets will react badly to the Super Committee's failure because the triggers will still bring about the promised reduction in the debt. He says he's sad that the committee might miss an opportunity to do something better. Hensarling could, of course, put his name on the "This Is What I Think We Should Do Bill Of 2011," but that would require political courage, and if anyone had that, we wouldn't have a Super Committee. But remember, the good news is doing nothing at all is a great option. Hooray for failure! We're all failing upwards. It's not just Newt Gingrich!
Xavier Becerra is here now, and he says that "we're deep into the fourth quarter" but there's still time on the clock. He also says that the Committee could meet until Wednesday, but Wallace points out that there was a promise to give the CBO two days to score it and allow public scrutiny for forty-eight hours. I think that what Becerra is suggesting is that the outline of whatever they have is good enough to go forward, and leave two more days of negotiating. But it's hard to say. Part of me just suspects that he didn't know the answer to that question.
Becerra says that "the smart way" to solve the problem is to make a deal and avoid the triggers. He says that the "elements of a deal" are still there, and he's not ready to "assume failure." That's too bad, because assuming failure is the best thing you can do right now.
Have the Democrats rejected an increase in the Medicare eligibility age? Becerra says it's "on the table" and would be a part of a deal if the Democrats felt it was part of a "balanced deal." Have they rejected a reduction in the cost-of-living adjustment in Social Security? Basically, the same answer, though he adds that he would "fight like the dickens to take it off." Off the "table." Always the table!
"Every plan that the Democrats have put forward has included cuts to entitlements," Becerra says. "Why should the wealthy escape participation," is the question, he suggests. Wallace asks him about a million times, "Why couldn't you make a deal?" and Becerra just keeps saying that he hasn't given up.
"I think it's a wimpy way out to change the triggers," after a series of votes established them as part of the carrot-stick mechanism. "Even if you think the triggers are dumb?" Wallace asks. But the whole Super Committee is dumb!
Anyway, Becerra and Hensarling are both free to return to the Super Committee and maybe everyone can lay in a puddle and cry.
Mark Zandi is here to mansplain how the world is going to change after the Super Committee fails. Wallace asks him to adjust his forecast after hearing from Hensarling and Becerra, and Zandi says, "sounds like no deal." He says that we need both spending cuts and tax increases, and why is this so controversial? Mark Zandi just doesn't understand anymore. He just wants to find a nice, shady, clover-covered glen to lie down in and sleep for months and months.
"Investor expectations in the committee are very, very low," he says, pointing out that in this way, "investors" are like all human beings. He says that "going into next year" it remains unclear if Congress will have the "fortitude" to follow through on what they've already agreed to, and that's where the markets could react badly. What is wrong with the "markets" that they think there's a possibility that lawmakers have "fortitude?"
Zandi says that he doesn't expect the ratings agencies to react to the Super Committee failing, and he points out that the "do nothing" plan brings in lots of revenue. (He reminds me, of course, that the big impediment to the "do nothing" plan is that eventually, you get to the UI benefit extension in early 2012, and that's when someone in Congress will get the big idea to "do something" to make the "do nothing" plan no good anymore.)
Now it's time for paneling with Brit Hume and A.B. Stoddard and Bill Kristol and Juan Williams. What's the deal with Newt Gingrich, anyway? Brit Hume says, "well, it was his turn," and now he gets to be the "non-Romney" candidate, and "everyone who's occupied that spot has begun a slide." Hume says that Gingrich "has vulnerabilities and a long track record and books" and a variety of positions that aren't popular with conservatives. And the Freddie Mac lobbying is the thing everyone will be talking about, beginning with Chris Wallace and Stoddard, who says that Gingrich has been "disingenuous" with his answers and is flip-flopping like Mittens does.
"There's a lot of Newt bashing on the panel today," says Wallace, who's set up ten minutes of Newt-bashing with his questions.
Kristol says that Gingrich is, at the very least, a former leader of the Republican Party, and so there will be a flocking to Gingrich in reaction to Romney. "I think he can defend his record in contrast with Romney," he says. Juan Williams compares Gingrich to the Macy's balloons -- his past is a bunch of balloons and at any moment, "one of those trees might poke it" and pop it. But how often do balloons in the Macy's parade pop because of trees? Has that ever happened?
Hume says the Gingrich was a "poster child for Republican excess" after he was driven from the House by his colleagues, and is crazy vulnerable to attack ads from the Obama campaign. It's pretty clear that it costs a lot less money to run against Newt than it does to run against Romney, doesn't it?
So, what about the Super Committee, guys? Stoddard says that the members have pre-scored their proposals and so it's fair for the members to say that their work can go right to the midnight hour, but the larger point is that the Super Committee was designed to fail, destined to fail, and there are no consequences for failure because there will be thirteen months before the triggers go into effect. She says that next December, the triggers will be rescinded in the lame duck session of Congress. Essentially, someone slipped Damocles a pair of scissors.
Over the next year, she says we can look forward to a fight over the Bush tax cuts, and a political food fight over changing the Pentagon trigger to some other trigger, which will go away next December.
What's the political fallout of failure? Kristol doesn't know, but he figures that it will "increase the sense that 2012 is a very big election." Also increasing that sense: everyone in the media who covers that election and can't go to sleep at night without being able to believe that they are doing the most important work in the universe.
Williams and Wallace fight over Occupy Wall Street a little bit: because Williams thinks their issues have salience and might inform voters, and Wallace thinks that they are violent, in the way they have damaged the business ends of thousands of police truncheons. (I think Williams original point was that over the long haul, voters would come to identify the GOP as the party of the "super-rich." Which means the Democrats are the party of the rich who don't feel quite as super? Don't know how OWS got mixed up in that -- they seem to want to be considered apart from a campaign horse-race, and they are smart to think like that!)
FACE THE NATION
Ron Paul is here to talk to Bob Schieffer about to campaign, and maybe they will touch on other business that concerns their home land of Rivendell, west of the Misty Mountains. Oh, and I CAN HAZ Super Committee losers? YES, CAN HAZ: Pat Toomey! And also, Joe Manchin is here, hopefully to discuss his awesome legislative technique of running home to attend Christmas parties to avoid having to cast controversial votes on things. (Though, if everyone were as cowardly as Manchin, the "do nothing" plan would succeed!)
But first, Ron Paul! He's "among the frontrunners," so it's time to ask him questions! Like, say, "did 9-11 happen because of actions that the United States took?" Oh boy! Here we go. Paul says that there's a "connection" not a causality, and that the 9-11 Commission and the CIA agree with that standpoint, and we removed a controversial base in Saudi Arabia as a result, and so, isn't that a tacit admission of this? "It's not a full explanation, but our policies have definitely had an influence," he says, pointing out that people don't like being bombed and occupied.
"But what you're saying is that it's America's fault," says Schieffer. "I think that's a misconstruing of what I'm saying," responds Paul, who adds, "We didn't cause it, the average American didn't cause it...our policies had an influence...that's a far cry from blaming America." Schieffer won't let it go: "But what you are saying is that it's the government's fault." "I'm saying the policymakers contributed to it, contributed to it." Oh, no! Everyone's fighting! "I'll take the ring to Mordor!" yells Frodo. "No, Frodo, the free market will sort it out!" says Paul.
Is Paul's policy to solve the Iran problem by being nicer to them? Paul says that he just wants to use diplomacy. "The biggest danger we face is the possibility we'll overreact," he says. Schieffer says that no one's proposing that we bomb Iran, that the only thing anyone's talking about are the sanctions that Paul opposes. Paul says he opposes the sanctions because they lead to war.
"But if you say that no one is suggesting [that we bomb Iran], why don't you listen to some of the debates?" Paul asks.
"May I correct you? I have been listening to the debates. I know some candidates have suggested it. The United States government has not said we're going to bomb Iran," retorts Schieffer.
"Well OBVIOUSLY they haven't said it, but the implication is that 'nothing is off the table.' You've heard those statements," says Paul.
"Well, yes," says Schieffer. Everyone is so mad!
Does Paul believe that we should have troops stationed anywhere? He says no, except for submarines, which Paul believes is a "worthwhile weapon." "Besides, we're bankrupt, we can't afford it anymore." So Paul would bring troops home from Japan and South Korea.
Moving on to Paul's plan to cut most of the government. "What do you do to all the things that those agencies run or supervise or develop?" asks Schieffer, who uses the example of national parks. Paul says that there's a transition period to shift these responsibilities baked into these plans.
And that's it? That was a ridiculously short interview. And Schieffer just basically says, "Okay, bye now" and the last thing you hear is Paul croaking out his goodbye and he's cut off halfway through. I guess that's what you get, Jesse Benton, for shaming CBS News for only giving Ron Paul 90 seconds to speak: you get an angry Bob Schieffer running at all of your candidate's most vulnerable positions.
Now Pat Toomey is suddenly here. What's it like being a Super Committee loser, Schieffer asks. KIDDING. But he does say that all the Super Committee has amounted to is "business as usual" and in the context of Congress, "business as usual" refers to "loudly siphoning from a reservoir of Pure Suck through an old rubber tube, constantly."
Toomey says, "Well, I will acknowledge that time is short." BUT WE WORKED SO HARD, REALLY WE DID.
Schieffer is basically like, "LOOK AT YOU. WHAT IS THE POINT OF YOU?" Yeah, kidding, but really, that's the overall tenor of this segment. You had one simple thing to do, Super Committee! And that was figure out a way to absolve everyone in Congress of decades of neglect and incompetence! And you couldn't even do that!
"As I've said, we had twelve good people who worked hard on this," says Toomey, who says that the Democrats can get behind the GOPs proposal or make a countering offer that he promises to look at and take seriously.
"Well if the dog hadn't stopped to make a phone call, he would have caught the rabbit," says Schieffer. But maybe the dog was just using his new iPhone to say, "Screw this rabbit chasing! Siri, is there a good place where I can go to have tapas this afternoon?"
Schieffer basically says that Grover Norquist is terrible and is to blame for everything that's gone wrong. And now he's making Toomey watch Steve Kroft's interview with Norquist, as punishment. Schieffer asks Toomey why he put revenue on the table knowing that Norquist was going to punch him in the nuts. He says that it was pointless to even participate in the Super Committee without considering revenue increases.
Toomey says that the "silver lining" for him is that "we're going to get the cuts anyway." BUT! He says that the triggered cuts need to be reconfigured, so that the entire Pentagon trigger that was sort of the thing that was supposed to goose the GOP into doing something in the first place, goes away.
Joe Manchin will now tell us all of his exciting ideas. "We can't fail, we can't allow people to fail." Awesome. He says that he "stood tall" and encouraged everyone to "go big," and if the Super Committee fails he will try to get something like the "gang of six" plan through Congress. Go bold and go big, he says, over and over. Go bold and go big, unless it's a vote on ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, and then it's go home and drink egg nog!
Manchin says that we need to put a plan on the table and we need leadership and Obama is the leader and we need someone to "step forward" and "put their politics aside" and "be a good American" and this is "not the blame game" and it's "not about the next election it's about the next generation" and man, if cliches sold for a trillion dollars each Joe Manchin would be the mayor of Surplus City!
Joe Manchin wants to see leaders be leaders, and everyone who is "serving" doesn't want to be associated with failure. But would Manchin have Obama campaign for him? "This is not a team sport," he says. So what's the deal, Joe? Is this everyone work together, let's not play the blame game? Or is it "this is not a team sport," because taken as a whole, this whole Sunday show appearance seems to be a long, whining monologue about how everyone is ruining Joe Manchin's life, and he didn't come to Congress to be associated with a body with a 9% approval rating, and so everyone had better start doing more for Joe Manchin's reputation and happiness right now. In turn, he will be the 100th guy in the room to support the controversial stance of "not failing and stuff, you guys."
Schieffer points out that ten years ago, 65% of Americans actually liked Congress, and now people like Paris Hilton and BP are actually better-liked, and remember how last week CBS ran a story about how they were all getting rich off insider trading? "You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords." JUST KIDDING, that's a line from Serenity, but it's basically Schieffer's subtext today.
THIS WEEK WITH CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR
So, today, we'll have Marco Rubio and Chris Coons try to set themselves apart from the Super Committee losers in their midst, and the roundtable panel will jibber about Newt Gingrich. And Rahm Emanuel is here, for some reason. Maybe he's here to lend perspective as to what one gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Freddie Mac to do, exactly.
But first, let me get coffee, during Jonathan Karl's Montage For Rock-Bound Recluses. Though, as I'm listening, I can't help but notice that Karl implies that the $54B that Freddie received in the bailout was larger than any of the banks. I take this to mean, "larger than any one bank." Obviously, $54B is but a tiny part of the $700B TARP, which in turn, is just a tiny part of the $4.7 trillion bailout. There was a $138 billion "wind down loan" made to Lehman, though, as a part of the bailout. So, I think that this part of the Karl-tage is just wrong, perhaps because of oversimplification, perhaps because almost no one in the media understands the bailout beyond TARP.
Rahm Emanuel was a dinner, and GET THIS, he praised Obama and criticized Romney! How did this happen? We will get to the bottom of it!
Emanuel says that all of the GOP nominees are "espousing the same policies" that they were espousing back when Obama was elected. I don't know, dude! The 9-9-9 plan is new, Rick Perry's let's cut everyone's pay plan is new, Michele Bachmann probably wants FEMA to "cure" homosexuality, Jon Huntsman has some daughters that use Twitter...there's a lot of exciting new things that don't make much sense to me.
Amanpour points out that Obama promised to "unlock the gridlock" and change politics and make Washington a super-fun place for functional adults instead of a place where grown-ups make pizza a vegetable because it contains an ingredient that's a fruit. Lesson learned: DON'T MAKE THIS PROMISE. Instead, promise people that as President, you will contend every day with idiots but refrain from actually hitting them, repeatedly, with fists. Voters will say, "Wow. You are amazing. Because I really want to puch those guys, you know?" HA, BUT CONGRESS JUST TURNED YOUR FISTS INTO PIZZA BY LAW AND NOW YOUR PUNCHES ARE DELICIOUS.
Rahm says that the President came with a plan and the GOP brought their ideology. And it is correct, that Obama offered a Grand Bargain, but as long as Thomas Friedman isn't aware of it, then it doesn't count.
But the Super Committee was Obama's idea and it's a failure so...Rahm says, no, this is what Congress wanted and they had triggers to serve as an insurance policy. And he's back to pointing out that the plan Obama offered was one that contained items that are typically painful for Democrats to swallow. (At some point, wouldn't their "ideology" rear up as well? Probably not, because the Democratic Party's ideology is "Please like us! Just like us, okay?")
Is Amanpour surprised that Rahm Emanuel is essentially an Obama campaign surrogate? I don't understand this interview, at all. It's like she expected to trip Rahm up or something. "Craps, you got me Christiane! Yeah, I just think the Republicans are super-okay people!" She seems surprised that he's passionately defending Obama. "You're passionately defending Obama," she says. Also, this grass is green.
Emanuel says that "elections are about choices" and that if America chooses Mitt Romney, then the Oval Office will be full of "fog." People will be mad bumping around into the ottomans and whatnot!
As a Mayor of a city that has an #Occupy movement, Emanuel says that he will uphold First Amendment rights and the law, and somewhere in the middle there the amount, by liters, of pepper spray drenched on the faces of people, will be determined. People have "angst" he says, that he cannot turn a blind eye to. He pronounces "angst" in a strange way, though, because at first I think he's saying "eggs" or "aints." (I rewind the TiVo again when it sounds like he's saying "You can't be callous about homos." He actually said "homeowners.")
I think what we learned from that is that Rahm Emanuel supports Obama, or something, for re-election.
Suddenly it's panel time! Why? All we've learned so far today is that Rahm Emanuel is going to support the President's re-election. Sigh. We'll have Matt Dowd and George Will and Peggy Noonan and Paul Krugman expand on this. (LOL -- who is the "centrist" on this panel? Noonan?)
Amanpour: "You saw in Rahm's speech that this was not just a defense of Obama, but taking on Romney. Is that the strategy?"
What? Uhm...yeah. See, as a political ally of the incumbent President, Rahm will say nice things about the president, and criticize the President's opponent. That's the strategy. It is pretty arcane, you know, how this works.
Will says yes. This is the strategy. Noonan says that the election will be a "demolition derby" where everyone tears everyone down. Krugman points out that the reason the Obama administration is preparing to contend with Romney is because every other candidate is really pretty easy to defeat. Dowd says that the Non-Romney's haven't shown sufficient stick-to-itiveness to capture the voters yet, but one could come clear in Iowa.
Krugman offers a hypothesis: "You have a republican ideology, which Mitt Romney doesn't believe in. He just oozes insincerity, that's just so obvious. But all of the others are fools and clowns. There's a question here -- maybe this is an ideology only fools and clowns can believe in. That's the Republican problem."
George Will says, "That's not uncharacteristically severe on Paul's part."
He then goes on to say that Gingrich is "the classic rental politician."
Gingrich is an amazingly efficient candidacy in that it embodies everything that is disagreeable about modern Washington. He's the classic rental politician...People think that his problem is his colorful personal life. He'll hope that people concentrate on that rather than, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich. Iindustrial policy of the sort that got us Solyndra, he's all for it. Freddie Mac, he says, hired him as a historian. He's not a historian."
Will Gingrich's attempts at damage control work? "Ohhhhhhuuggghhhhhhooohhhh, I don't know," says Noonan, who says that the coming GOP tide is a desire to fundamentally change Washington, which sounds to me like Perry's number will eventually come up again, because Romney is the guy who'll "tinker" with the system but not change it, and Gingrich is the guy that no one believes really wants to change anything.
Dowd agrees with Noonan: "The problem we have is Newt Gingrich, is a symptom of a Washington problem. He said 'I don't lobby.' But he's paid lots of money not to lobby but to influence people. He left Congress, sort of a middle-class politician income, he became a multimillionaire over the course of the last ten years. Does the part of the party that wants an anti-Washington, antiestablishment, anti-candidate, want someone who became millionaire basically by selling his influence?"
Will says, "I didn't even finish my list" of things he hates about Gingrich. "And on top of this is the absurd rhetorical grandiosity." This is pretty hilarious, if you are anyone other than Gingrich. Krugman's just laying back in the cut.
Matt Dowd predicts that Ron Paul will win the Iowa Caucus and disrupt Romney in New Hampshire. Blam! There it is. Love having Dowd on a panel show, because he's just, "Whatever, I'm gonna get BOOMTOWN on you."
Noonan says that on the plus side for Newt, the base knows that the establishment hates him, and that's good, because EFF THE ESTABLISHMENT #OCCUPY THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, or something? Also, Newt's debate style is "fresh" because he refused to fight with the other candidates and yelled at the media instead. Word, Peggy. That is so fresh. So dope!
Will says Herman Cain is "out and done" and that Ron Paul will probably run as a third party candidate and tip over some states. Noonan says that under that scenario, Obama wins. Of course, Ron Paul has said HE DOES NOT WANT TO RUN AS A THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE. And besides, if Dowd's right, we have something even more awesome to look forward to -- a convention fight in Florida. Hold steady, Ybor City! Don't print the wrong name on balloons and confetti!
Now Marco Rubio and Chris Coons are here because they made a pony that is some sort of modest jobs bill, maybe someone wants to vote on it? No? Want to turn pizzas into more things? Pizzas are puppy dogs now? Great. Thanks guys.
Rubio says that he's not making any big claims about the numbers of jobs it will create, he just wants to sort of demonstrate that Congress can maybe do one thing, and give people hope that they aren't just a bunch of idiots. Coons says that their bill draws from a variety of sources and from all sides, and he really doesn't see what there is to object to...hey, remember when people like, totally wrote bills and then got co-sponsors and shopped them around and tweaked them and stuff? No? Everyone's off to another meeting of the Twelve People Have Almost Got Their Arm Up The Tag End Of Their Alimentary Canal Past The Elbow Committee? Okay, well, have fun with that!
People! It is MAJOR NEWS TODAY that two Senators have written a bill! It's like they discovered a viable Dodo egg in the National Archives.
Look! Here is a scene of Clive Owen and Clare-Hope Ashitey carrying the Rubio-Coons bill through Washington!
Rubio says that he never though the Super Committee was a good idea, but the Democrats on the committee deserve some defense, because in his opinion, the President hasn't provided leadership. Rubio says that he hopes the Super Committee will do something meaningful, Coons says he has to hold out hope, too. The broader challenge, he says, is to identify $4 trillion in cuts. Neither man says that we deserve a further downgrade, though both clearly sympathize with the argument.
Back to the panel, for some sniping at the Super Committee.
Will says that the Super Committee is dumb and the trigger is nothing that puts fear into anyone. Krugman disagrees that the trigger cuts represent trivial amounts, but basically agrees with the rest -- the super committee was a terrible idea, and by the time the trigger even kicks in, there will be a new President or a re-elected one, and that creates "a whole new political universe."
Dowd points out that the Super Committee hasn't even met since November 1st. "They can't even walk across the hall!" And every institution is failing and sucks right now, like Penn State, they suck, and there's failure everywhere, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING.
"The Super Committee is over, it has broken down," says Noonan. She blames Obama, for not getting involved and having a "psychological effect" on the committee. Gah! Why do people believe that a guy can walk into a room and get them to just abandon all of their interests on the strength of SENTIMENTALIZING REALLY HARD about something? We have a Super Committee, solely because back during the debt ceiling negotiations -- which should have NEVER been a thing, Obama should have said, "NOPE. ZERO." to that instead of opening the door to that lunacy -- the President said, "Let's cut $4 trillion from the budget, raise $1 trillion in new revenue, and we'll move up the Medicare eligibility age, too. I'll lay my hand right on that electric rail." And John Boehner said, "Awesome. This is a deal well beyond anything I had any right to expect I'd get, let me take it to my guys." But when he took it to his guy, they were all playing with chicken bones and rubbing blood and gristle on their face and stewing in one another's stink and they grunted in very negative and hostile fashion at Boehner -- like, "BLAH WE PRIMARY YOU DROOL SLURP!" -- and the Speaker knew he was Nowhere Man. So the Super Committee was formed. "Send me your best men and women, people of the Republican and Democratic Party." And that went nowhere too!
Honestly, the critique of Occupy Wall Street is that they take up space and bother people and make no contribution or demands and no one seems to know what they want. But that critique applies double to Congress, who are actually tasked with solving a bona fide financial crisis. Is the only reason we haven't turned the fire hoses and pepper spray on them because they've all insider-traded their way to wealth and respectability? (SPOILER ALERT: YES.)
Now there's a segment on Penn State, which I guess we're having a hard time understanding as well? Need help with this? Here's help:
Okay, well, I wish we'd ended with the first panel discussion on This Week, which was fun, and not on a reminder that people sometimes harbor child predators, but that's the way this all worked out today. Here's a reminder that next week is Thanksgiving and there will be no liveblog of the Sunday shows. But then, we'll be back, and there will be two weeks of liveblogging! Then, there will be no liveblog again on December 18 or December 25. Somehow, I am going to try to wake up on New Year's Day to liveblog, but let's hope there are no Sunday shows that day. Eventually, 2012 will come and these periodic liveblog shortages will end. So that's how all that is going to work, hooray!
At any rate, I hope that everyone has a lovely Thanksgiving, and I hope everyone is safe in their travels and ready to have a wonderful weekend of reunions with family and old friends and tryptophan. I hope that the knowledge that I am intensely thankful, to all of you who read this every Sunday, serves as a small blessing that spurs forth a wonderful holiday for everyone.
Huffington Post | Jason Linkins | December 8, 2011 1:24 PM ET