Tag: TMC Politics

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Lawrence Lewis (Turkana): The war in Afghanistan enters Joseph Heller territory

Earlier this month, it was reported that one of the largest U.S. government contractors in Afghanistan was being fined nearly $70 million for having “knowingly and systematically overcharged the U.S. government.” But just two months after a whistleblower revealed the Louis Berger Group’s deliberate and systematic overcharging, the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded the company a new joint contract worth $1.4 billion. That seemingly large fine turned out to be but a minor business expense.

The one part of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan that is going very well is the contracting. Not the results of the contracting, the money being made off it. Less than two weeks ago came this news:

U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan, has ordered a dramatic expansion in contracting. Other than asking a brigadier general to investigate problems with military contracts, so far he’s failed to address their flaws.

   A McClatchy investigation has found that since January 2008, nearly $200 million in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction projects in Afghanistan have failed, face serious delays or resulted in subpar work. Poor recordkeeping made it impossible for McClatchy to determine the value of faulty projects before then. The military tries to recover part of a project’s cost, but in many cases, the funds were already spent.

McClatchy’s investigation also found that the Corps accepts bids that don’t cover such obvious costs as security or the contractor’s profit margin. One might think security costs in Afghanistan would be significant. One might think a contractor’s profit margin should be a factor when considering whether to send said contractor piles of taxpayers’ cash. Remember that whole deficit thing? Apparently, the Corps doesn’t. And, of course, it gets even worse. . . .

It’s hard to verify who is whom. It’s hard to verify where the billions of U.S. tax dollars are going. It’s hard to verify what exactly is supposed to be accomplished by continuing the war. It’s hard to verify the existence of an exit strategy and it’s hard to verify the existence of an exit date.

To be continued.

Joe Conason: Iran’s Best Friends on Capitol Hill

Nuclear weapons treaties are like currency exchange rates-always vitally important to the national interest but often stunningly dull, not to say impenetrable. Yet Washington has suddenly been jolted awake by Republican threats to stall if not kill the Obama administration’s New START treaty.

The irony is that by doing so, they would do little to protect American security while providing moral support to Iran, North Korea and any other rogue regime seeking to arm itself with nukes.

By reducing the bilateral limits on deployed warheads and delivery systems, and by modernizing the verification and monitoring system contained in the original START treaty, the new agreement achieved a breakthrough in arms control and improved U.S. relations with Moscow. The equally important strategic objective, however, was to establish a renewed bilateral commitment to arms control that would strengthen the international effort to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

The FBI helps fabricate and then thwart a terrorist plot to blow up a van at the Christmas Tree lighting in Portland, OR. You can’t make this stuff up but apparently the FBI can. The suspect, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized United States citizen living in Corvallis, Ore., is the only person arrested and other than the FBI agents, the only one involved in this so-called plot. For over a year the FBI prompted a gullible and angry teenager and led him into believing that he was participating in a jihadist plot. The more details that the FBI reveal the more it seems that it was the FBI who targeted Mohamud and radicalized him into believing that he could pull this off. It appears almost impossible that a high school student even with terrorist contacts would have been allowed to be privy to the details of the plans, let alone help formulate it.  

Teddy Partridge who has been following this story at FDL said it best in is first article:

Clearly, the Pacific Northwest has been too complacent about terror brewing in our midst. Thank goodness for the heroic FBI that allowed one silly young man trying to impress older, more senior “terrorists” with an operational plan. And thank goodness they saved us from this attack, moments before it didn’t occur.

How long are we going to let the cowboys shoot up our country with their false terror plots and operations that would go nowhere without their instigation, planning, and coercion? How long will we allow our own federal constabulary to justify its own recklessly inflated budget by permitting actions like this to develop, fester, and grow operational in our midst?

This is terror, pure and simple. State-sponsored terror. Big-splash terror designed to make people compliant and fearful, and grateful to their federal government – in a city which has not yet installed the Rapiscan porno-scanners at our airport.

Someone needs to put an end to it.

Exactly.

Glenn Greenwald expounds on this further:

It may very well be that the FBI successfully and within legal limits arrested a dangerous criminal intent on carrying out a serious Terrorist plot that would have killed many innocent people, in which case they deserve praise.  Court-approved surveillance and use of undercover agents to infiltrate terrorist plots are legitimate tactics when used in accordance with the law.

But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI — as they’ve done many times in the past — found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a “Terrorist plot” which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI’s own concoction.  Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts — and an uncritical media amplifies — its “success” to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government’s vast surveillance powers — current and future new ones — are necessary.

Greenwald goes further, examining the evidence already put out by the FBI and shredding their case against Mohamud with numerous violation of his Constitutional rights that will never hold up in a court of law. The prosecution must also be able to show that this was not entrapment by the FBI by showing that the defendant “was independently predisposed to commit the crime for which he was arrested.”. They must also prove that they did not manipulate the accused by him from traveling domestically for employment.

I would think that there are bigger fish to fry out there that don’t need the help of the FBI to plan and carry out their attacks. A little less time and money spent on manipulating a lone teenager and a little more effort into catching real bad guys would go a long way into protecting the US, and the world, from criminals.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Berkshire-Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CNN founder Ted Turner and hedge fund manager Tom Steyer sit down with Christiane Amanpour in a “This Week” exclusive and explain their reasons for making the Giving Pledge – a commitment by some of America’s wealthiest individuals to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Joined by 40 billionaires, boosting diverse causes such as education, the environment, AIDS, human rights and nuclear arms reduction these visionaries offer their insights on changing the world.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:] Roundtable: Edmund Morris, Ron Chernow, Arianna Huffington and Bob Woodward.

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The Chris Matthews Show: This Week’s Guests John Heilemann, New York Magazine, National Political Correspondent, Norah O’Donnell MSNBC Chief Washington Correspondent, Anne Kornblut, The Washington Post White House Correspondent and Reihan Salam, National Review.

They will discuss along with Mr. Matthews these questions:

Can Sarah Palin Remake Herself Into a Serious Presidential Candidate?

Will the U.S. Turn the Airport Security Focus to the Bomber Instead of The Bomb?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: This Sunday Mr. Gregory will be joined by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Assistant Majority Leader and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Assistant Minority Leader.

The Round Table pudits, Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Republican Strategist Ed Gillespie, The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Arizona Sen. John McCain, who just won his fifth term in the Senate, will join Candy to discuss the lame duck Congress and the conflicting priorities of a Democratic White House and a more powerful Republican Party in Congress.

Then, Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. David Obey will tell us why they’re thankful to be leaving Washington. Both of them announced their retirements earlier this year and have just over one month left in the nation’s capital.

We’ll also share the final segment from our interview with former President George W. Bush and his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Jeb will tell us how many copies of his brother’s book he purchased and whether or not he’s actually read it.

And finally, a fascinating interview with White House photographer Pete Souza who captures history 1/500th of a second at a time.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: This week on GPS: It’s that time of year when American’s gather together with their loved ones to give thanks for all that they have. But Fareed says the puritanical roots of that tradition are hard to find in America these days…and you’ll be surprised where you need to look to find them today.

Then, the nation’s top military man, Admiral Mike Mullen the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sits down with Fareed. On the agenda with the President’s top military adviser: the world’s trouble hot spots from Afghanistan to North Korea and beyond.

Next up, has somebody in China know what web sites your visited? Have they read your email? Maybe.

After that we have a fascinating discussion with the man who helped engineer the largest tax cuts in American history. Fareed sits down with President Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, to talk about how to fix the economy. Stockman says his own party – the GOP – has all the wrong ideas…and has abandoned its core economic principles.

Finally, a last look at Afghanistan’s brutal national sport and what the US military just might learn from it.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Glenn Greenwald: The US of A breaks the Soviet Record

Even for the humble among us who try to avoid jingoistic outbursts, some national achievements are so grand that they merit a moment of pride and celebration:

US presence in Afghanistan as long as Soviet slog

   The Soviet Union couldn’t win in Afghanistan, and now the United States is about to have something in common with that futile campaign: nine years, 50 days.

   On Friday, the U.S.-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a socialist state.

It seems clear that a similar — or even grander — prize awaits us as the one with which the Soviets were rewarded.  I hope nobody thinks that just because we can’t identify who the Taliban leaders are after almost a decade over there that this somehow calls into doubt our ability to magically re-make that nation.  Even if it did, it’s vital that we stop the threat of Terrorism, and nothing helps to do that like spending a full decade — and counting — invading, occupying, and bombing Muslim countries.

Johann Hari: There Won’t Be a Bailout for the Earth

Why are the world’s governments bothering? Why are they jetting to Cancun next week to discuss what to do now about global warming? The vogue has passed. The fad has faded. Global warming is yesterday’s apocalypse. Didn’t somebody leak an email that showed it was all made up? Doesn’t it sometimes snow in the winter? Didn’t Al Gore get fat, or something?

Alas, the biosphere doesn’t read Vogue. Nobody thought to tell it that global warming is so 2007. All it knows is three facts. 2010 is globally the hottest year since records began. 2010 is the year humanity’s emissions of planet-warming gases reached its highest level ever. And exactly as the climate scientists predicted, we are seeing a rapid increase in catastrophic weather events, from the choking of Moscow by gigantic unprecedented forest fires to the drowning of one quarter of Pakistan.

Before the Great Crash of 2008, the people who warned about the injection of huge destabilizing risk into our financial system seemed like arcane, anal bores. Now we all sit in the rubble and wish we had listened. The great ecological crash will be worse, because nature doesn’t do bailouts.

Bruce Fein: Congresswoman Harman’s Afghan Delusions

To paraphrase British sage Samuel Johnson, Congresswoman Jane Harman’s generalship over the Afghanistan war is like a dog walking on its hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

Harman’s November 17, 2010, column for Politico (“Take the Lisbon deal, Mr. President”) is exemplary, but not exhaustive. There, the Congresswoman applauds a NATO timetable to exit Afghanistan militarily by 2014, a wretched idea which she egotistically attributes to herself. But why claim an authorship no more promising than General George C. Custer’s strategy at the Battle of the Little Bighorn? The deadline guarantees victory by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They will temporarily scale back their attacks and then return in full force in 2014 to overrun the incorrigibly inept, corrupt, and popularly reviled Karzai administration.

I started writing this diary on July 20, put it in draft. It was based on Richard Haass’ cover story in Newsweek on July 18 of this year. It is still very relevant in that the war in Afghanistan has taken on a different aspect than when it start over nine tears ago. As pointed out by Glenn Greenwald at Salon, the US of A Breaks the Soviet Record this past week and still has not recognized waste and the futility of the effort.

It seems clear that a similar — or even grander — prize awaits us as the one with which the Soviets were rewarded.  I hope nobody thinks that just because we can’t identify who the Taliban leaders are after almost a decade over there that this somehow calls into doubt our ability to magically re-make that nation.  Even if it did, it’s vital that we stop the threat of Terrorism, and nothing helps to do that like spending a full decade — and counting — invading, occupying, and bombing Muslim countries.

This is Mr. Haass’s appearance on “Morning Joe” on July 19, 2010. It is still very pertinent

While I strongly disagree with Mr.Haass on the use of drone and missile attacks, as well as air strikes, what he says about the ground troops is very true. There are far better ways to make the US safe from terrorist attacks than invading a country, destroying property and infrastructure as the US did in Iraq and killing innocent civilians. The actions of the US and her allies  steeled the resolve of the terrorists and given them recruits and support. It is fairly obvious that the Obama administration is not thinking and has learned nothing from the 20th century Russian adventures or from the English in the 19th century.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Paul Krugman: Eating the Irish

What we need now is another Jonathan Swift.

Most people know Swift as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels.” But recent events have me thinking of his 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he observed the dire poverty of the Irish, and offered a solution: sell the children as food. “I grant this food will be somewhat dear,” he admitted, but this would make it “very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.”

O.K., these days it’s not the landlords, it’s the bankers – and they’re just impoverishing the populace, not eating it. But only a satirist – and one with a very savage pen – could do justice to what’s happening to Ireland now.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The GOP: Gobbling Up Our Blessings

Thanksgiving may be a time to give thanks for our blessings, but in Washington, the resurgent Republican conservatives want needy Americans to have fewer of them. The new Republicans have the same old leaders – and their passion hasn’t changed. It isn’t about offering a hand up to the afflicted – it’s about handouts to the connected.

In the lame-duck session now convened until the end of the year, Republicans have continued their strategy of obstruction – opposing the New START treaty, opposing repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” opposing consideration of immigration reform, opposing even passage of appropriations for the current year. Their passion is focused on getting one thing done. They will run through the wall to extend the extra tax cuts enjoyed by those, largely millionaires, earning more than $250,000 a year.

Forget about deficit reduction. According to Republicans, these tax cuts – costing an estimated $700 billion over the next decade – need not be balanced by spending cuts, or “paid for” in the Washington parlance.

Robert Reich: Sarah Palin’s Presidential Strategy and the Economy She Depends On

Monday night, Sarah Palin watched from the audience as daughter Bristol danced on ABC. Twenty-three million other Americans joined her from their homes. Tuesday, the former vice-presidential candidate started a 13-state book tour for her new book, “America By Heart,” which has a first printing of 1 million. Her reality show on TLC, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” is in its third week. Last Sunday she was the cover story in the New York Times magazine.

It’s all part of The Palin Strategy for becoming president in 2012 – or 2016 or 2020.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Today’s “pundits is going a left turn from the “norm” and give thanks and high praise to Alex Pareene chief “warrior” of the War Room at Salon for his compilation of the 30 worst Pundits of the MSM.  I don’t necessarily agree with the order of his picks but I do like his selections giving true meaning to “punting”

Your regular “Pundits” will return tomorrow.

I give you the Top Ten of the Hack Thirty with links to the rest of the worst.

No. 1: Richard Cohen

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen has been a columnist since 1976. He’s good friends with Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn. He works one day a week. At a certain point, in that exceptionally privileged and cushy position, his brain disintegrated. He’s not so much an old liberal who grew conservative as he is a simplistic old hack who believes his common prejudices to be politically incorrect truths and his Beltway conventional wisdom to be bracing political insight.

No. 2: Mark Halperin

I thought we were all done talking about former Bob Dole speechwriter former ABC News political director Mark Halperin, whose star had seemed to stop rising toward the end of the Bush years — but then he attached himself, leechlike, to reporter John Heilemann, to co-write “Game Change,” a lengthy catalog of the 2008 presidential campaign’s moments of least import.

Halperin used to write this thing called the Note, which was an e-mail newsletter that various Washingtonians whom Halperin referred to as “The Gang of 500” used to read to find out what they themselves thought about the news of the day. It was written as privileged wisdom from Beltway insiders — cryptic references, obscure jokes, endless name-dropping, constant inexplicable plugs for the Palm restaurant — when it was in fact just “whatever a professional political operative recently told Mark Halperin, along with links to political stories in the major papers.”

No. 3: Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman is an environmentalist, now. When he’s not jetting around the world on the literally unlimited expense account his money-bleeding newspaper provides him with pondering KFC billboards he spots outside the windows of gleaming office towers in Delhi — or when he’s not lounging beside the pool at his absurd home — the [second-most-influential business thinker in the country] is worrying about carbon emissions. Which is, I freely admit, a nice change of pace from back when he was telling the world that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would lead to a glorious new dawn of freedom/democracy/whiskey/iPods/Old Navy in the Middle East as a whole.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Mike Lux: The Heart of Darkness

Democrats are still reeling from our political losses, and the DC political class is still obsessed with the re-positioning dance, but at the heart of everything else, at the center of everything that matters, are these bleak economic facts driving our politics. The sooner Democrats stop worrying about being center or left, and start focusing on how to get the middle class out of its economic black hole, the sooner our politics start getting fixed. Period. End of story. The heart of our political darkness is the heart of the middle class’ economic darkness.

Valerie Plame Wilson: START Treaty Must Not Be Derailed

For me, the most bittersweet moment watching the new movie Fair Game comes when it shows my clandestine CIA work involving nuclear counterproliferation. I remain passionate about the issue of preventing rogue states and terrorist organizations from ever procuring a nuclear weapon. Since resigning from the agency however, I realize that much of what I had been doing may only have served to delay the inevitable. My thinking on proliferation has therefore evolved considerably, and I now believe that the best way to ensure our national security for the long term is to move to achieve the goal of total, global elimination of nuclear weapons.

Laura Flanders: Solving the Irish Crisis

The financial crisis in Ireland is leading to a political crisis on the heels of a bailout and more “austerity measures.” The coalition that currently rules is falling apart, the Green Party detaching from the prime minister’s Fianna Fail party, and elections loom.

But just as in colonial days, the “Irish problem” is really a problem from outside. Ireland wouldn’t need “help” if it hadn’t been robbed by multinationals.

To be fair, its own government turned over its pockets to be picked. Ireland’s corporate tax rates are some of the lowest in the EU and its loopholes allow foreign companies to use Ireland’s well-educated and health-insured workforce, while giving the least possible back. Americans are linked to the problem — every time we GOOGLE we’re using a company that’s avoiding taxes at home in the United States and in other, higher-rate European countries by setting up in Ireland, and shuttling profits in and almost tax-free out.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Jim White: Douthat Stumbles Upon, Discards Truth to Promote Conservative Myth on Irish Economic Woes

Poor little Ross Douthat, this analysis gig of his is so hard, especially while the fantasy world of conservatism continues crashing all around him when his primary job is to keep that fantasy alive, at great cost to the real world. Today we find little Ross taking on the crash of the Irish economy. In flailing about for an explanation of what has happened to this former poster-child of Chicago economics run wild, Douthat briefly flirts with an accurate explanation of what went wrong, but then pays proper homage to his overlords by discarding the painfully obvious truth in favor of yet another conservative talking point that is easily demonstrated to be false.

When examining Ireland’s rapid economic growth just prior to the collapse, Douthat of course rushes immediately to tout conservatives’ wet dreams about growth. . .

Yup, it’s that nasty move toward “one world government” represented by the EU that is really to blame for Ireland’s woes. Poor little Ross can’t trouble himself with considering that if this explanation were true, all of the EU would be suffering just as badly as Ireland. So where are the staggering government debts in those EU countries that didn’t slash their taxes? Where are the failing banks in the EU countries that maintained more regulation? Maybe Ross can get back to us on those points.

Joe Conason: On Earmarks

It isn’t the earmarks, stupid.

Bullying Republican Senate leaders into a “voluntary” ban on earmarks may represent a political triumph for the tea party movement, but as a measure to reduce the federal deficit it is a meaningless substitute for real action. The facts about earmarks — and the deficit, for that matter — are so simple that even the dumbest birther should be able to understand.

Funds directed to specific projects by legislators — which is what earmarks are — account for around 1 percent of any annual budget, so they represent far too little money to substantially reduce the budget. Besides, banning earmarks won’t reduce the budget (or the deficit) anyway, because they are drawn from funds that have already been appropriated. . . .

It isn’t the stimulus, stupid. And it isn’t the bailouts, either. . . .

Proposals to reduce the deficit by impoverishing seniors, punishing middle-class families, and neglecting infrastructure and education will do more harm than good. The deepest problem in the U.S. economy is the gross tilt of income and wealth toward the very top and the distortion of policy to favor financial manipulation rather than real growth.

Perhaps it is time to listen again to the only president in recent memory who balanced four budgets and left a surplus for the Republicans to squander. He achieved those goals not by cutting spending, shutting down the government or ending welfare, but raising taxes on the wealthy in his first budget. There will be no progress toward fiscal balance and economic sanity until we acknowledge those facts — and stop listening to stupid.

Thom Hartmann: Michael Chertoff, Bend Over, Please…

During the time you’re reading these words, somewhere in the world somebody is getting onto or off an airplane with a few ounces of cocaine, heroin, or diamonds packed into a condom and stuffed up their rear.

The cocaine, heroin, or diamonds could just as easily be enough C4 plastic explosive to blow out the side of a plane, easily molded to fit into a condom.

Easily removed in an airplane lavatory and detonated. . . .

As Benjamin Franklin famously wrote on February 17, 1775 in his notes to the Pennsylvania Assembly, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

If we are serious about stopping Middle Eastern zealots from attacking us, instead of blowing up our own Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons, let’s stop blowing up Middle Eastern countries.

When the Obama administration pulls our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and works hard to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian crisis, then I’ll believe our government really cares about our safety.

Until then, it’s just theatre – with a few millions in profit for Chertoff and his friends.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Frank Rich: Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha

“THE perception I had, anyway, was that we were on top of the world,” Sarah Palin said at the climax of last Sunday’s premiere of her new television series, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” At that point our fearless heroine had just completed a perilous rock climb, and if she looked as if she’d just stepped out of a spa instead, don’t expect her fans to question the reality. For them, Palin’s perception is the only reality that counts.

Revealingly, Sarah Palin’s potential rivals for the 2012 nomination have not joined the party establishment in publicly criticizing her. They are afraid of crossing Palin and the 80 percent of the party that admires her. So how do they stop her? Not by feeding their contempt in blind quotes to the press – as a Romney aide did by telling Time’s Mark Halperin she isn’t “a serious human being.” Not by hoping against hope that Murdoch might turn off the media oxygen that feeds both Palin’s viability and News Corporation’s bottom line. Sooner or later Palin’s opponents will instead have to man up – as Palin might say – and actually summon the courage to take her on mano-a-maverick in broad daylight.

Short of that, there’s little reason to believe now that she cannot dance to the top of the Republican ticket when and if she wants to.

NIcholas D. Kristof: When Donations Go Astray

This holiday season, Americans will dig into their pockets for good causes. But these gifts will sometimes benefit charlatans or extremists, or simply be wasted.

Partly that’s because religious giving – and a good deal of casual secular giving – isn’t vetted as carefully as it should be. Researchers find that religious people on average donate more of their incomes than the nonreligious, and Christians, Jews and Muslims alike write checks to charities that they assume share their values. Dangerous assumption.

Some well-meaning Christians will support Feed the Children, a major Oklahoma-based Christian charity that describes its mission as providing food and medicine to needy children at home and abroad. By some accounts it is the seventh-largest charity in America.

But the American Institute of Philanthropy, a watchdog group that also runs Charitywatch.org, lists Feed the Children as “the most outrageous charity in America.” The institute says that Feed the Children spends just 21 percent of its cash budget on programs for the needy – but spends about $55 to raise each $100 in cash contributions.

Turkana: Do the Democrats remember why they are Democrats?

The Republican Bush administration inherited a budget surplus from the Democratic Clinton administration. The Bush administration destroyed the surplus and created the largest deficit in human history by cutting taxes, increasing corporate welfare, and launching a trillion dollars worth of wars. President Obama inherited one of the worst disasters inherited by any president. But he knew, going in, what he was getting. Or he should have.

The obvious answer should have included repealing and revoking as much of the Bush agenda as was possible. Let the tax cuts on the wealthiest expire. Cut corporate welfare. Draw down the two lost wars. Instead, one war was expanded and we now hear that the other may be allowed to continue. Corporate welfare to Wall Street increased. The tax cuts may be allowed to remain in place. And instead of helping the vast majority of the American people by upending the Bush agenda, we may actually see the burden fall even harder on the most vulnerable. Even Social Security is on the table.

Not even Bush tried to cut Social Security. Not when he had a Republican Congress and was soaring in the polls, and not in his second term, when he faced a Democratic Congress that wouldn’t have given such an idea a serious hearing. If President Obama follows the recommendations of the Catfood Commission, he will be going where not even Bush dared go. We will have a Democratic administration taking on the Third Rail of which Democrats, in particular, are supposed to be unwaveringly protective. We are told that the Catfood Commission is just advisory, and we shouldn’t fear the worst. We must hope that turns out to be true.