• In light of the latest news about our Vibrant and Growing Economy, it's worth looking at the composition of all this idle labor that's been sitting around for the past few years. Via Matt Yglesias, the biggest losses were in manufacturing and construction, which isn't surprising, but the policy response has been. I realize the political difficulty of getting a large and well-targeted stimulus out of Congress the Senate, but would it have been impossible to get a decent bill whereby the federal government hired people to build and fix stuff? I know, arguing the past, but it's not like the 112th Congress is going to get anything worthwhile done.
• Alan Abramowitz surveys recent polling data and confirms the old adage that the American people are ideological conservatives but operational liberals, despite the outcome of the midterm elections. While this isn't shocking, it would be a good opportunity to simplify this a bit and conclude that most Americans are not ideological in the first place. If they were, they would either pair their hatred of government with hatred of government programs, or they would pair their love of government programs with an optimism about government doing stuff. Instead they want government to keep its hands off their Medicare. Oh well.
• Mike Potemra confesses to being "blind-sided" by a National Review reader who wrote in to argue "why a true conservative should not like Reagan," which is quite telling. There was a tension borne in the Reagan years, after all, between Conservatives and conservatives: The former are the "movement" who either participated in or unfailingly believe in the Reagan mythology and studiously ignore all of the contradictions and policy incoherence in Conservative ideology. The latter are the apostates and castoffs who prefer intellectual honesty to boosting the Republican Party.
• Remainders: The fiscal commission was a long, distracting, waste of time; whichever list you look at, conservative activists take cues from a motley crew of hucksters and jerks; and fun with the Sunlight Foundation’s political action committee name generator.

--Mori Dinauer

Keith Olbermann, who sparred publicly with Bristol Palin over his criticism of her recent abstinence PSA.

To Adam, I say absolutely. I'll only add that this is basically true for the original series as well; in Star Wars and its sequels, failed religious fanatics successfully deceive and coerce a gifted young man into carrying out their insane plan for revenge. It's tragic, really.

-- Jamelle Bouie

Over at Slate, John Dickerson gets a pretty amazing statement out of Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republicans' supposed budget expert:

Obama had said he could have done more to work with Republicans. Did the GOP share any of the blame?

"No, it's all the Democrats' fault," Ryan said. "We're great. We have halos over our heads," he added sarcastically.

"How do you want me to answer that?" he asked. I told him that truthfully would be fine.

He seemed boxed-in. Even if he believed Republicans shared some blame, he couldn't admit it. "They had to make a decision," he said, referring to the president and Democratic leaders. "Do we work with these Republicans and do we meet in the middle? But we don't have to because we have all the votes. They made a choice to go it on their own, and that's when we had to protect ourselves."

He said he tried to reach out to the White House early in the administration on a health care plan. "We sent a plan to the president, we sent them letters, we called people, we kept trying to talk to them," he said. "It was just a thud." Of the White House, he said, "They don't talk to us."

So Republicans didn't share at all in the blame? I asked, just to be clear. Ryan repeated his answer.

One's first reaction, is, holy cow. He can't even admit that Republicans had even the smallest part in the lack of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans? No, apparently he can't -- it's 100 percent Obama's fault. Ryan isn't saying Republicans have been cooperative, but what he is saying is that they tried to reach out, then "They made a choice to go it on their own," and Republican opposition is just a reaction to that. So it's all Obama's fault.

Now, you might conclude that Ryan has had some kind of psychotic break, or that he's so blinded by hatred of Obama that he interprets everything Obama does as evil, and therefore even when thinking about the administration's repeated and fruitless efforts to reach out to Republicans, he has convinced himself they weren't real, or never happened, or something. But I don't think that's really what's going on.

I think this has more to do with the current atmosphere within the GOP. They spent so much time calling Obama a vile despicable socialist communist America-hating terrorist sympathizer -- not necessarily every single Republican, but as a group -- that it isn't just substantive compromise that has been ruled out of bounds. Republicans now seem to believe that it's extraordinarily dangerous within their party to grant even the tiniest bit of good will or lack of blame to the president and the Democrats. You can't talk about them unless you're expressing anger or contempt. As David Brooks said of his fellow Republicans, "And my problem with the Republican Party right now, including Paul, is that if you offered them 80-20, they say no. If you offered them 90-10, they’d say no. If you offered them 99-1 they’d say no. And that’s because we’ve substituted governance for brokerism, for rigidity that Ronald Regan didn’t have. And to me, this rigidity comes from this polarizing world view that they’re a bunch of socialists over there." And guess who the "Paul" in that statement is.

-- Paul Waldman

Since I've done my fair share of criticizing Obama for his failure to nominate judges to circuit and district courts, I should probably take the time to give credit for when he offers a nomination, and a good one at that:

U.S. District Judge Bernice B. Donald of Memphis has been nominated by President Barack Obama to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. "Judge Donald has shown an outstanding commitment to public service throughout her career and as a district judge in Tennessee," Obama said. "I am proud to nominate her ... for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals and I am confident she will serve the American people with distinction."

Jill Fillopovic passes on the kind words of a former clerk:

Diane Lucas, who is an attorney in New York and an occasional Feministe guest-blogger, clerked for Judge Donald and sent me this story, with the comment that “Judge Donald is an amazing judge who truly is bringing justice in our federal courts. She has been a staunch advocate for the rights of women and people of color, and I am so happy she is ‘moving on up’.”

Even better, this continues Obama's laudable trend of appointing women and minorities to the lower courts. Of course, now the real question is whether the Senate will confirm her or whether Republican radicals will use the 112th Congress as an excuse to keep the federal judiciary understaffed and overworked.

Does Andrew Sullivan really believe this?

The debt is obviously the most pressing issue at hand; this commission represents the best hope in a long time to tackle it.

Granted, what follows is a nice demolition of Paul Ryan's budget nonsense, which as an avowed Ryan skeptic, I can appreciate. Still, with 9.8 percent unemployment (16 percent for African Americans), and millions of Americans poised to lose their unemployment benefits, it's plainly wrong to call debt "the most pressing issue at hand."

That said, I understand Sullivan's enthusiasm for Simpson-Bowles. It's a nice conservative plan for a nice conservative guy. But ignoring the unemployed in favor of (what is still) a hypothetical crisis is ludicrous. And let's be clear: This isn't cowardice or ideological blindness. Rather, it's a recognition that balanced budgets are impossible without first tackling widespread joblessness, and the depression-like conditions that exist for millions in this country. Anything less is a Sandra Lee version of fiscal stability.

-- Jamelle Bouie

Count among those pissed off at President Obama's inability to follow through on his campaign promises the scientists who want the president to draft a policy on scientific integrity in the government.

It's not the first time the administration has had complaints from scientists. Those who work on food safety have reported to the Union of Concerned Scientists that, under the Obama administration, they've faced pressure to alter or delete findings from reports.

The survey offers little evidence that things have improved much under Obama. At the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition, they may even have got worse. In 2006, during Bush's second term, a similar UCS survey found that 10 per cent of its scientists they had been asked to inappropriately exclude or alter information in the previous year; the 2010 figure was 16 per cent.

It's getting harder to find a stance from which Obama's not willing to back away.

-- Monica Potts

During two days of hearings that were sometimes so frustrating I began to refer to them as “don’t ask, don’t yell (at C-SPAN),” some players stood out for their clarity, integrity, leadership, and sheer toughness. For these bracing displays of intelligence and spine, I hereby grant the following awards:

The Straight Shooter goes to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his vice chairman, Gen. James Cartwright. The former for making no bones about the fact that LGBT people have always and will always serve in the military, citing his own experience from 1968 onward. And for smacking down the first wave of the our-combat-troops-feel-funny-about-this arguments with admirable cool, saying, “There is no gray area here. We treat each other with respect, or we find another place to work. Period. Leadership matters most.” Cartwright, a Marine, kept opponents on the defensive by continually reminding them of the vast statistical gap between combat troops who didn’t think they had served with LGBT people (over half of whom perceived that there would be problems with repeal) and those who knew they had -- approval ratings in the Army and Marines are 89 percent and 84 percent, respectively.

To Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin, the Keeping the Heat On Award: Levin was strong throughout, but his most delicious moment came when Gen. Casey, chief of the Armed Services, gravely opined that there were things that “wouldn’t get done” if the troops and their commanders had to deal with no longer expelling LGBT service members during a time of war. Levin pressed (“What things?”), and Casey folded, incapable of mentioning a single specific example.

To Sen. Mark Udall, the "For the Record" Award. In this stunning sequence, Udall goes down the line of all the service chiefs, and forces them to go on record -- twice -- supporting repeal. First he has them agree that Secretary of Defense Gates’ assurance that he won’t certify the repeal until “everything has been done to get ready” alleviates their concerns. Then, in a brilliant turn that makes the service chiefs’ responses a referendum on their own leadership, he asks: “If we change this policy can your branch and the U.S. military make it work?” Their unanimous positive answers make for satisfying viewing -- and one of the only parts of these hearings you’ll want to watch over and over again.

And finally, the Surprise the Hell Out of Me award goes to Sen. Joe Lieberman. In addition to turning in a smart, sober, unpendantic peformance during both days of the hearing, Lieberman was the only participant to mention that the 14,000 service members discharged under DADT include a large number of people with special skills -- proof that the current policy hurts unit cohesion and effectiveness.

-- Nancy Goldstein

Kevin Drum on the Democratic Party's congenital inability to play hardball politics:

Maybe a reluctance to play hardball is the issue here. But there are at least two other things involved. The first is simply that Republicans believe their own PR more than Democrats do. When Republicans get hysterical about something, it's genuine. They really believe, way down in their self-righteous little hearts, that they're speaking God's own truth, no matter how ridiculous it is. And it shows.

The bigger issue, I think, is that Republicans have an astounding level of ideological unity and a keen understanding of the political dynamics at work. Most Republicans agree on the big things -- tax cuts are always good, regulation is always bad, and the more belligerent the better -- and those that don't are still able to see the utility in being a team player; if Democrats lose, the party wins, and the potential naysayers gain (or at least, avoid losing, in the form of a primary challenge or poor committee assignment).

By contrast, Democrats don't have the luxury of ideological cohesion, at least not at the level the GOP enjoys. Any attempt to play hardball -- especially from the left -- is met with skepticism and opposition from members who are too liberal for their districts (and want to stay safe) or who have a reputation for "moderation" that they want to uphold (even if it's preening and vacuous). As hard as it is to find Democratic convergence on policy, it might be harder to find convergence on strategy, which is why Democrats scatter when confronted with GOP unity. And this is to say nothing of the odd Democratic habit of drawing their leaders from moderate to conservative areas. If Nevada were a reliable blue state, Harry Reid might have been a little more willing to go on a ledge when it came to legislative fights.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that there's anything you can do about this. Part of what makes the Democratic Party a "natural" governing party is that it is broad-based; there is room for virtually anyone who wears the label. Liberals could try a Tea Party-style purge of moderate and conservative members, but that might have the net effect of creating a longer minority period, while placing a low limit on the size of future majorities (compare the 111th Congress to the 109th). A weak grasp on any given member is the price you pay for a big majority.

-- Jamelle Bouie

Craig Fehrman says Jack Anderson's obsessive coverage of Nixon marked the beginning of our modern scandal culture.

In 1967, the jury for the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting unanimously recommended that the award go to the muckraking columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson for their expose of the financial chicanery of Thomas Dodd, a powerful senior Democratic senator. The prize instead went to two Wall Street Journal reporters for a story about gambling and organized crime that the members of the jury had not even read.

The reversal by the Pulitzer advisory board created a scandal on top of a scandal. Newsweek, The New York Times, and the Associated Press all ran down the suspicious details, starting with the fact that the Journal had submitted its winning story in a different category (local as opposed to national reporting). Did Pearson and Anderson lose the Pulitzer because of their reputation for employing ethically fuzzy methods? Or did they lose it because the advisory board looked down on them as practitioners of the crude arts of scandal-mongering and sensationalism?

KEEP READING ...

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is a sleazebag of epic proportions, a corrupt leader whose name has become synonymous with amorality and thuggish governance. His career produced some good journalism, notably this GQ profile which contains perhaps the best kicker of the year. But, via Michael Scherer, this anecdote is another level of horrifying.

At one of their most memorable appearances together, in Moscow, in 2008, a Russian journalist named Natalia Melikova asked [Russian President Vladimir Putin] about his apparent marital trouble and rumored romance with the young and indecently plastic gymnast-cum-parliamentarian Alina Kabaeva. When asked about the liaison, Putin's face hardened. “There is not a word of truth in this story,” he said. Berlusconi, giggling, regarded the exchange. When Putin had finished answering, Berlusconi cocked his hands, and, imitating a gun, fired with a silent “Pow! Pow!” at Melikova. It had only been a year and a half since Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist, had been shot in her Moscow elevator, and Melikova was reduced to tears. On the dais, Berlusconi laughed, and Putin nodded.

Horrendous. Putin shut down a newspaper that reported on his affair a few hours later.

-- Tim Fernholz

Adam Serwer says a new case in Oregon reignites concerns over how the government catches terrorists.

The most recent sting, involving an FBI-facilitated plot by a 19-year-old Somali American named Mohamed Osman Mohamud to bomb a Portland Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, has reignited concerns in the Muslim community about whether these FBI operations, which involve scary-sounding plots that make for sensational headlines, amount to entrapment and strain the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community. Muslim community leaders say they are torn between their desire to engage with law enforcement and offer themselves as the first line of defense against terrorism and their concern that the FBI's sting operations sometimes amount to fabricating terrorism threats that wouldn't otherwise exist.

KEEP READING ...

How do Americans think the government spends their money? Via Ezra Klein, is one answer:

To be fair, given the size of the Pentagon's budget -- $663 billion in 2010, or 19 percent of budgeted expenditures -- and the extent to which we are still committed to a language of "freedom" in our foreign policy -- these wars are fought for your benefit, etc. -- there is definitely a sense in which the public is completely correct, and we do spend tremendous amounts on "foreign aid."

-- Jamelle Bouie

The most important distinction made in this morning’s hearings by supporters of repealing "don't ask, don't tell" is about the difference between perception and experience, believing and knowing.

First, the gap between the perception of service members who don’t understand they’ve been serving alongside LGBT people all along, and those who do. A full 92 percent of the latter are just fine with that -- and that includes high percentages of OK-ness among active combat troops. Second, there’s the experience of the Netherlands, Britain, etc., all of whom have reported that there was plenty of fussing by straight troops before the open inclusion of LGBT service members, and virtually none afterward.

You’d think the Service Chiefs of Steel, particularly Generals Amos (Marines) and Casey (Army), who are the most openly opposed to repeal, might be embarrassed to be spending so much time being squishy about the perceptions of their troops when faced with what history and experience show: That repeal is a non-issue, especially when troops are engaged in combat; their minds turn to other more important issues. Then again, it’s always the toughest guys who are the biggest sissies, at least on paper, when it comes to knowingly sharing a foxhole with someone who gets it on with people of the same gender. Where’s Sharron Angle to tell Amos, Casey, and their combat troops to “man up”?

Today, like yesterday, what grinds most is the hypocrisy of the opponents of repeal -- the gap between the Service Chiefs’ and the Republicans’ concern about how it might affect their troops versus the actual, current effect on troops of other stressors. It’s OK to stretch the forces by forcing multiple deployments. It’s OK to stretch the forces by making up for low recruitment numbers by allowing criminals to serve beside them. It’s OK to ask the troops to fight two seemingly hopeless wars over the course of a decade with no end in sight. But asking them to knowingly share showers with LGBT people is one toke over the line.

-- Nancy Goldstein

Senate Republicans are holding up all the chamber's business to push their top priority of giving the wealthy an unpaid-for tax cut. Meanwhile, the Build America Bonds program, which I have defended before, is set to expire at the end of the year. The bonds are unlike those normally issued by states and cities because they aren't tax-exempt, but rather have a tax credit, lowering costs and opening up the bond market to nonprofits; they also eliminate the incentives that have made many typical tax-exempt muni bonds into little more than glorified tax shelters. DCStreetsblog lays out what's at stake if the program is allowed to expire, including the hopes of both investors and municipalities that the program will be extended. Note to any Republicans who were impressed with Matt Continetti's recent argument in favor of long-term investment: This would be a good down payment on that agenda.

-- Tim Fernholz

We've talked before about critiques of the loan underwriting at the heart of the financial crisis; basically, the judgment needed to do good borrower evaluation dissappears when you take the human element out of underwriting, a problem compounded by the monetary incentives to produce and sell as many mortgage-backed securities as possible, regardless of the quality of their content. Even J.P. Morgan chief Jamie Dimon agrees:

Dimon ruefully observed that the optimal way to deal with delinquent loans would be to evaluate customers one at a time — the way the bygone corner banker did when a borrower got sick or lost his job. Of course, corner banks disappeared when conglomerateurs like Dimon acquired them. But it’s important to remember that the mass production of mortgages was welcomed early in the decade, because it allowed more people to get credit. Society wants banks to make loans, only not with such improvidence that large numbers of borrowers end up defaulting. There is, again, a tension between these goals; and when mortgage shops were converted to factories, banks lost sight of how to manage it. “This is way beyond the capacity of the machine,” Dimon admitted.

That's from this long profile of America's (arguably) most successful banker. It is a bit foolish, though, to try to blame "society" for asking for more mortgages. As a society, we tried to encourage homeownership by way of things like the Community Reinvestment Act, which promoted sensible loans to underserved communities with few problems for nearly 30 years. The serious challenges arose when unregulated mortgage brokers started selling ridiculously irresponsible loans and Wall Street invented a way for everyone to pretend those loans, packaged together, were as good as cash. That's not a response to society's need for credit; that's a response to bankers' (and many speculators, no doubt) desire for profit.

-- Tim Fernholz

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its latest jobs report: Unemployment has notched up to 9.8 percent after the private sector gained some 37,000 jobs, a disappointing total considering we need to see monthly gains in the hundreds of thousands to start digging the country out of its unemployment hole any time soon. The most important labor statistic, the U-6 total unemployed, which includes folks who have given up finding jobs and those working part-time due to the economy, remains at 17 percent. Maybe the saddest fact? There are now 1.3 million discouraged workers, up nearly half a million from last year, who have given up on looking for jobs.

It's probably no surprise that they feel that way -- there hasn't been much job creation, in large part because we haven't seen more fiscal stimulus from Congress, which everyone from economists to the Republican chair of the Federal Reserve thinks is necessary -- even the president's centrist fiscal commission recommends such a path, including the endorsement of Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, for goodness' sake.

Hey, at least consumer spending has gone up before the holidays -- woo Cyber Monday -- which optimists can hope will bear out a growth in demand as people move closer toward shedding their debt and regain some confidence in the economy.

-- Tim Fernholz

Not too long ago, John McCain was one of the most admired people in Washington. He was held in esteem by both Republicans and Democrats. His legion of admirers in the press painted a picture of a heroic figure working to clean up the political system, fighting against overwhelming odds, pushed on by courage and principle. But there was always another side to McCain. On a personal level, he was actually an enormous jerk, who could be petty, rude, and even cruel to those who got in his way (not for nothing was he once known as "Senator Hothead"). He didn't really care much about policy. He was always more concerned with personal ambition and preening for the cameras than accomplishing anything.

And over the last few years, McCain has fallen further than most politicians ever imagine they could. He ran an abysmal, losing campaign for president. He delivered Sarah Palin to the country. His sole meaningful legislative accomplishment in three decades in Congress -- the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or McCain-Feingold -- not only got overturned by the Supreme Court, it was used as a vehicle to vastly expand the amount of corporate influence over election campaigns. And now here he is, in what could be his last significant public fight, doing what?

We don't know whether "don't ask, don't tell" will end this year or next, but we all know it will end, and gay people will be allowed to serve their country in the military, just like they do in almost every other Western nation. And when this debate is remembered, John McCain will be the symbol of fear and bigotry, abandoned by even his wife and daughter, the military's answer to George Wallace circa 1963, a bitter old man standing in the recruiting office door, shouting, "Discrimination now, discrimination tomorrow, discrimination forever!" That will be his legacy.

It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for him. Almost.

-- Paul Waldman

In the 1997 sci-fi film "The Fifth Element," Earth is being approached by some menacing blob of evil, and the planet's military (brief digression: Have you ever noticed how sci-fi writers all seem to believe our future involves one world government?) decides, naturally, to fire some missiles at it. The blob not only absorbs the missiles but gets bigger, as though the puny earthlings' attempts to kill it have only made it stronger.

Something similar may be happening with the Republican establishment and Sarah Palin, sort of anyway. Though her fellow candidates are all tiptoeing around her, probably because they want someday to gain her supporters, bigshot Republicans have been lining up to tell her not to run for president. You've got Ed Rollins, who ran Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign, writing a piece headlined "Palin, I Knew Reagan. You're No Reagan,", in which he writes, "If you want to be an imitator of Ronald Reagan, go learn something about him and respect his legacy. If you want to be a gadfly, just keep doing what you're doing." Zing! You've got Joe Scarborough writing, "Palin is not a stupid woman. But like the current president, she still does not know what she does not know. And she does know how to make millions of dollars, even if she embarrasses herself while doing it." Kapow! You've got Barbara Bush saying, "I sat next to her once, thought she was beautiful, and I think she's very happy in Alaska. And I hope she'll stay there." Oh, snap!

This criticism doesn't exactly make Palin stronger in a strict vote-getting sense -- if you're so fervently anti-establishment that Barbara Bush criticizing Palin will drive you into her arms, you're probably with her already. But it does keep Palin the axis around which discussion of the primary revolves. One other thing it does is make it more likely that Palin will actually run. Palin's is the politics of victimization and resentment; she draws sustenance from criticism, and if she comes to see a Republican primary as a way to get down and fight with all the meanies who are going after her, she's far more likely to do it. And she may be moving toward the realization that once the 2012 GOP field takes shape, if she's not in it, she won't matter much anymore. Sure, there'll be some speculation about who will get her endorsement. But the main event will be the race to decide who gets to be the face of the Republican Party, and then the contest between that person and Barack Obama. If Palin passes on the 2012 race, all her Facebook friends and Twitter followers will have bigger things to worry about than the latest missive from the sage of Wasilla.

-- Paul Waldman

• It isn't fair to use the tax-cut debacle as an example of how poor Barack Obama is at negotiation -- his position has been clear for some time -- but rather how lost congressional Democrats have been on the issue (at least until today). That being said, the tax-cut fight has prompted a lot of discussion over what Obama really believes; it's even been suggested that he's a "Rockefeller Republican." For now, I'm going to agree (again) with Kevin Drum that after the lame-duck session is over, the president needs to start picking fights with the GOP, or his supporters will simply lose interest in him.
• Yesterday I mentioned how conservative economists don't understand what motivates liberal economists, but this can be generalized further. Take Jonathan Zasloff's amusement at the conservatives who troll his blog. They cannot comprehend how anyone would choose to work in the public interest rather than cashing in in the private sector, which is how they believe that compensation rates must be higher in the public rather than the private sector. This is just an element of the Randian belief that anyone who takes any form of "handout" -- in this case, working for the government -- is a parasite leeching off society's real producers.
• I have no strong positive or negative feelings about retiring Sen. Chris Dodd, but in light of his farewell address/ode to the glory of the United States Senate, I have to say: good riddance. Reforming that institution requires a body of senators who have known nothing but its current dysfunctional incarnation. Dodd comes from another time, and his reverence for the institution and his belief that it was immaculately conceived to be the world's greatest deliberative body are anachronistic. People like Jeff Merkley are the future of a functioning upper house of Congress.
• Remainders: I guess in hindsight, believing Congress would do something about climate change was right up there with believing in fairies and leprechauns; you might even say that people who make the connection between the Muslim and liberal "agenda" are wallowing in ignorance about both; I'm shocked, shocked, The Weekly Standard would make shit up in the service of promoting war against Iran; and Tea Partiers love earmarks.

--Mori Dinauer

Rep.-elect Tim Scott of South Carolina, the state's first black Republican since Reconstruction, has opted not to join the Congressional Black Caucus:

"While I recognize the efforts of the CBC and appreciate their invitation for me to caucus with them, I will not be joining them at this time," wrote Scott in an e-mailed statement. "My campaign has been about themes that unite all Americans--restoring the American dream by reducing the tax burden, decreasing government interference in the private sector, and restoring fiscal responsibility, and I don't think those ideals are advanced by focusing on one group of people. … The black community, like all communities, will benefit when businesses can use their profits to hire more workers instead of paying higher taxes; when companies decide to locate in America instead of overseas; and when our government no longer saddles our children's futures with ever-increasing debt."

This isn't a surprise. Scott's district is 74.8 percent white and heavily Republican, with a Partisan Voting Index of R+10. To echo a point from yesterday, Scott will succeed as long as he isn't perceived as deviating from the interests of the racial majority. Scott probably doesn't need to reject the CBC -- his district is so conservative that it wouldn't matter if he joined -- but it can't hurt; by distancing himself from the black establishment, Scott builds trust with white constituents who might otherwise be apprehensive about supporting a minority politician.

Statuary Hall. The new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has ordered the construction of a new women's bathroom closer to the House chamber. At the moment, women have to take a two-minute walk across Statuary Hall to reach the nearest ladies' room.

Nicki Minaj, a rapper who has so far fashioned a career out of guest-spots on other albums but is finally promoting her own, appeared on Regis & Kelly today. But instead of just getting to promote her album as a professional, Philbin swatted her on the ass and made an uncomfortable sex joke about himself. His co-star, Ripa, asks about her waist size and and the two have a competition over whose is smaller all while grabby-hands Philbin takes every chance he gets to rest his arm around said body part. Video via Huffington Post.

What is Minaj to do? Unfortunately, if she wants a career, her only real choice is to smile and nod, as she does here, and compliment Philbin on his pink shirt. At least that's the conventional wisdom, and it's the conventional wisdom Minaj and many women before her have absorbed themselves. The sexualization of women working for success in all different fields of entertainment probably dictates a lot of the artistic choices they make as well. Though apologists want to use form-fitting outfits or overtly sexual lyrics as excuses for behavior like Philbin's, the truth is those things are symptoms, not the causes, of sexism.

The truth is this is also the kind of overly casual, overly familiar sexualization commonplace on morning TV. There's something about the stereotypes of those who watch these shows -- that they're nonsexual, middle-aged housewives or female retirees -- that excuses these kinds of exchanges as nonthreatening, even when they are clearly out of bounds. Philbin's actions stand out because they're so over the line, but it's equally offensive that Ripa is so ready to remark on her curvature, as if the primarily female audience watching at home has nothing better to do than ogle Minaj's tiny waist with envy.

This also, of course, belies a misunderstanding among Americans of what racism and sexism look like. It's not just the exclusive all-male, all-white clubs or obvious hate-speech but the kind of casual privilege that lets an older, white man touch a younger, black female in a sexual way, and that dictates her continued politeness in the face of such an obvious invasion. And situations like this, by the way, happen every day.

-- Monica Potts

*That's Minaj's explanation of how she came to work with Li'l Wayne.

There was never any question that Republicans, led by John McCain, would kick up a fuss during today’s Senate hearings on whether to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." The only question had been what their strategy would be -- what to do in light of the recently released report by the Department of Defense Working Group, which concluded that DADT should be repealed, particularly since 70 percent of the troops surveyed couldn’t care less.

Basically, Republicans complained that the military and Congress "need more time" before going ahead with repealing DADT – and that the decision to repeal DADT, unlike any other policy that applies to the troops, should be made via a referendum in which every solider has a chance to express his or her feelings. McCain, the guy who picked his 2008 running mate in 15 minutes and made no big fuss about the importance of counting every vote in 2000, said that he wants more time to read the report -- and more reports after that. Along with three other Republicans, he said that while not enough troops answered the survey – there was “only” a 28 percent response rate -- we should consider the high percentages of combat troops (Marines in particular) who opposed repeal. Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested that military chiefs should ask better questions and listen better when it comes to the people they serve. (The Senate, not so much.)

It was a touching embrace of lesbian feminist collective politics: The soldier-who-respects-the-chain-of-command-and-does-what-he’s-told is now concerned that too few soldiers got to express their feelings. Of course, all of the Republicans who suddenly care about the feelings of our troops should get some kind of commendation for hypocrisy: They voiced no such concerns when it came time to rush them into Iraq without sufficient justification for war or enough body armor and have made no move to stop multiple forced deployments or address the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, unemployment, and homelessness among those who return.

That said, a profile in courage award should go to Susan Collins, who broke ranks with her Republican colleagues to state her support for repeal and to note that one does not poll the troops when it comes to other policy decisions. Tomorrow, the committee will hear from the five heads of the military branches, including those representing the combat troops whose objection to repeal provided the Republicans with so much of their thunder today.

-- Nancy Goldstein

If you haven't already, you should check out my column today on the Supreme Court's decision to hear arguments in McComish v. Bennett, a case which deals with Arizona's public-financing law. Here are the important parts:

McComish deals with an aspect of Arizona's public-financing law that provides extra funds for candidates who opt into the system when their opponents opt out. Candidates are still bound by spending limits, but if their opponent goes beyond that limit, they are given the funds to match their opponent's spending.

The plaintiff's case is pretty straightforward: This program limits the free speech of privately funded candidates and groups, because it forces them to cut back on their spending, lest they advantage their opponents with public money. If money is speech and groups have the right to speak freely, the argument goes, then it is unfair to have a campaign-finance system that works by limiting the other guy.

As I write in the piece, there's good reason to think that Arizona's law is constitutional and has little effect on the free speech of privately funded candidates and groups. That said, if it is overturned, campaign-finance reformers have other options. For instance, there's nothing to stop states from working to expand the number of small-time donors by matching public funds to candidate contributions. In fact, a recent report from the Campaign Finance Institute suggests that a version of said approach -- used by New York City -- might serve as a model for the country at large.

New York's system is easy to understand. In a press release, CFI explains:

In 2009, the program provided $6 in matching funds for each of the first $175 that a participating candidate raised from New York City residents. For example, a $10 donation from a city resident would be worth $70 to a candidate, a $175 donation would be worth $1,225.

The majority of candidates in state and local elections receive most of their funds from donors who give $1,000 or more, and that is also true of New York City candidates who didn't participate in the system; on average, 64 percent of their funds came from donations of $1,000 or more, while only 17 percent came from small donors. By contrast, participating candidates raised 37 percent of their private money from small donors. And if the value of public funds is attributed to the donor who triggered them, participating candidates raised 65 percent of their funds from small donations of $250 or less.

A system like this gives candidates huge incentive to reach out to small donors and people who don't normally participate in the system. On a large enough scale -- as the Campaign Finance Institute notes -- this could be a nationally viable system and help progressives and others provide a counterweight to the force of corporate money. If you get a chance, you should read the full report.

-- Jamelle Bouie

Imagine a basketball game in which each side had a phone-book-sized rule book, and every once in a while a player on the bench would pick up his head from the book and say, "Wait! It says here on page 845 that if four of our players hold their breath and hum 'It's a Small World After All,' then you have to take the next free throw standing on one foot with your eyes closed!" That's kind of what legislating in the U.S. Congress is like. It's governed by a spectacularly complex set of rules, including some that most of the participants have barely heard of or understand.

Which brings us to today, when Democrats in the House used a procedural gambit to produce a vote on extending the tax cuts only for those below $250,000 of income, thus forcing Republicans to take a stand on whether they'll accept tax cuts for regular folks without tax cuts for rich folks. I'll let Brian Beutler explain:

Brace yourself for some procedural jargon: Dems once believed they were faced with two mixed options for holding this vote. The first was to hold an up-or-down vote under the normal rules. But that would give Republicans the opportunity to introduce what's known as a motion to recommit -- a procedural right of the minority that would have allowed them to tack an extension of tax cuts for high-income earners on to the legislation.

The second option -- suspending the rules -- would have foreclosed on that right, but would have required a two-thirds majority of the House for passage: 290 votes, an impossible hurdle.

But Democrats figured out a way to avoid this. They're attaching their tax cut plan as an amendment to a separate bill [the Airport and Airway Extension Act, to wit]. That legislation already passed the House, and has just been returned from the Senate. The rules say it can't be recommitted. So the GOP's hands are tied.

Needless to say, Republicans are outraged -- outraged!!! -- that Democrats found a procedural maneuver that trumped their procedural maneuver. John Boehner called it "chickencrap." But what all this is about is whether you can hold a vote on something in which the side with more votes wins. Although these days, that almost never happens in the Senate, and in the House it actually happens occasionally.

And one more thing is worthy of note here: While the White House seems to be spending its time devising new and creative ways to capitulate to Republicans, over in the House, Nancy Pelosi still has her war paint on and a knife in her teeth.

-- Paul Waldman

House Republicans delayed a vote on the childhood nutrition bill yesterday by attaching amendments that would change the legislation and therefore kick it back to the Senate. That would probably kill it since there's little time left in the lame duck, and the House wants to pass it as is so that it can go straight to President Obama's desk instead. The bill provides a little more money for the school lunch program and makes it easier for students to enroll in free lunches. It also, importantly, sets new nutritional guidelines for school meals and bars junk food from schools.

It's the last part that has led some Republicans, mainly the Sarah Palin brand, to label the bill government overreach. She called it the "nanny state run amok" on her Twitter feed. But here's the deal; we're talking about a situation in which public schools already are feeding children and taking care of them for eight or more hours a day. They're actually serving as nannies, in a sense, in this instance. Unless we do away with school lunches entirely, it makes no sense to protest a change in the way we decided how to feed children. This is what's so ridiculous about the way this debate has played out. We're not introducing a new program that fundamentally alters the way children eat; we did that decades ago when we instituted the school lunch program in the first place. We did it then because children were starving, and that's a problem we haven't solved and in some cases have exacerbated because we succumbed to easy and cheap industrial food instead of paying attention to nutrition. This bill fixes a problem with a government program. It's not overreach; it's exactly what the government is supposed to do.

-- Monica Potts

And yet, this will do nothing to harm Paul Ryan's credibility with the Beltway deficit hawks:

Incoming Budget Committee chairman -- and fiscal commission member -- Paul Ryan (R-WI) will not be voting for the White House Fiscal Commission's report, he told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today. [...]

Ryan was at pains to praise the commission's chairmen, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, for their efforts, but ultimately criticized the plan dramatically -- in particular, he says, because it reinforces President Obama's health care law.

"It not only didn't address the elephant in the room -- health care -- it made it fatter," Ryan said. "This just makes the fiscal situation worse in my opinion, by not just keeping Obamacare but actually entrenching it more, and expanding it and accelerating it."

Of course, that's nonsense. Health-care costs are the main driver of our long-term deficits, and the Affordable Care Act reduces those costs. Ryan can believe whatever he wants, "Obamacare" is the most significant attempt to tackle long-term deficits in more than a decade. But because it doesn't involve a government effort to shovel money into the pockets of our Galtian overlords, I guess it doesn't count.

-- Jamelle Bouie

Matt Yglesias on racism in Western Europe:

My casual-ish impression is that in 2010 racism is generally a bigger problem in Western Europe than in the United States. We’re obviously far from perfect in this regard, but progressives can I think legitimately count substantial progress in fighting bias as a major achievement and the European experience as illustrating the fact that the challenge is a non-trivial one.

A few thoughts. First, broadly speaking, I think this is right; Europeans do seem to be more comfortable with public expressions of bigotry and anti-Semitism, although anecdotally, I've heard that Europeans are more likely to see Americans as the "real racists," given our history of slavery and apartheid. Of course, it's that same history of slavery and apartheid that has fueled the fight against bias in the public sphere.

Still, it would be a real stretch to call the United States an "anti-racist" society; systemic bias is a defining feature of American life, and individual prejudice remains alive and well. And indeed, one of the downsides of making racism a taboo -- perhaps the ultimate taboo -- is that bias has gone "underground." Vanishingly few white people would attack blacks in public, but quite a few -- and probably more than we think -- would disparage them in private. The funny thing, of course, is the taboo is so strong that someone might do or say something racist in private while adamantly maintaining their anti-racism. I have white high school classmates who have gone to Halloween in blackface or who freely use "nigger" on their Facebook pages.

To borrow from an e-mail exchange I had with a few friends, "I can't tell you, for example, how often I've had Chris Rock's 'black people vs. niggers' speech recited to me and the insistence from the white person that he is just the same as Chris Rock, and so it's not racist, and it's about behavior and not race, etc. etc." Worse, because racism is almost exclusively identified with Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan, discussions of institutional racism are incredibly difficult, if not impossible (see: nearly any discussion of affirmative action).

That said, I can't help but prefer "underground" racism to its above ground counterpart; as someone who has been the target of overt racism and who will probably encounter it in the future, I kind of prefer a world where racism is banished from polite society, even if the result is a hard fight against systemic bias.

-- Jamelle Bouie

This week, the House passed a bill that extends Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, for a year instead of leaving it up for reauthorization debate. As Yvonne Yen Liu writes in Colorlines, this is bad news for progressives. Welfare reform in 1996 was designed not to keep people out of poverty, but to get people off the welfare rolls and, in particular, prevent single mothers from being single mothers by promoting marriage and abstinence for single women. It's an old-timey sexism that devalues motherhood at the same time that it wants to reinstall men in traditional roles as heads of households without providing low-income men with needed social services.

Under Obama, progressives had a shot of reforming TANF to refocus the legislation on programs that would actually alleviate, or alleviate the suffering caused by, poverty. But, as I wrote last month, progressives aren't making as much headway on issues like these as they hope to with Obama at the helm, and that's likely to be even more true in the next Congress. So, as disappointing as it is to see this conservative re-imagining of anti-poverty policy continue, extending it may be the only bulwark against unwanted changes that would decimate help for the poor even more.

-- Monica Potts

According to Pat Garofalo's research, it can! Ireland has long been a favored economic example for conservatives, who loved its ridiculously low tax rates -- so low that the country's role as a corporate tax shelter actually distorted measures of its economic growth. Now that Ireland has been caught up in the financial crisis, conservatives are changing their tune and saying Ireland's big government led to disaster. Here's CATO's Dan Mitchell, in 2002:

Ireland already has shown that tax cuts are a recipe for prosperity. Thanks to Reagan-style tax-rate reductions, including a corporate income tax rate of just 10 percent, Ireland has become the “Celtic Tiger” and is now the European Union’s second richest country.

And in 2010:

There are lots of lessons to learn from Ireland’s fiscal/economic/financial crisis.There was too much government spending. Ireland also had a major housing bubble. And some people say that adopting the euro (the common currency of many European nations) helped create the current mess.

It's also worth noting that besides lauding Ireland's baseline economic policies, conservatives also praised Ireland for its decision to immediately adopt austerity policies (as early as April 2009) in the face of the recession, with massive budget cuts. Other troubled countries, like Spain, were more reluctant to embrace austerity, and as Paul Krugman has frequently observed, seem to have been rewarded for that decision.

-- Tim Fernholz

On this week's podcast from The American Prospect: Tim Fernholz, Monica Potts, and Jamelle Bouie discuss the debate going on in Congress over what to do with Bush-era tax policy: Are tax cuts for the wealthy the trade-off for anything?

Listen Now:

To download the mp3 directly, click here.

One reason I remain skeptical of advice that Democrats should sound more “populist” is that the audience for this advice always seems to be well-off liberals, and the people who tend to give this advice either aren’t in a position to practice it, or when they are, they flinch.

Case in point: Today’s hero, Ted Strickland, the former governor of Ohio who was defeated in his bid for re-election last month. In an interview with the Huffington Post, he gave the site’s readers exactly the red meat they love: Obama and other Democrats, he said, suffer from “intellectual elitism” that makes them “hesitant to talk using populist language” or “draw a line in the sand.” He denounced Obama for saying he would be willing to negotiate with Republicans in the current fight over the Bush tax cuts, declaring, “If we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up.”

Tell it! Not surprisingly, Strickland was the toast of the Netroots town: A DailyKos front-pager announced “Ted Strickland Speaks for Me On This One.” My distinguished predecessor, Michael Tomasky, declared them “Wise Words.”

But what happened when Strickland had his chance to “draw a line”? Here’s the candidate in action, answering a question from a Youngstown-area paper during the campaign:

Q. Would you encourage Congress to extend or make permanent the Bush tax cuts for all Americans?

A. As governor, I have cut taxes for Ohioans. Our state's income tax has been reduced by 17 percent since 2005. Additionally, I have cut taxes for seniors, Ohio businesses, military retirees and on advanced energy projects that create Ohio jobs.

Here he is in a September 7 interview with CNN’s John King, who asks a complicated question about extending the Bush tax cuts:

STRICKLAND: Well listen there are no easy answers, John. And I want the people of Ohio --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's a no.

(LAUGHTER)

STRICKLAND: No. I'm trying to speak the truth here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.

STRICKLAND: There are no easy answers and for snake oil salesmen to come along and make promises that can't be fulfilled and to say we're going to do this and it's going to solve all of our problems, that's just simply not the way it is.

Here’s more of Strickland on taxes, from the same debate:

I have worked with business leaders, members of the Ohio Business Roundtable and others to -- to embrace a tax reform that was passed before I became governor.

I'll embrace a competitive tax structure that my Republican predecessor put in place.

It’s true that in one respect, Strickland employed populist language; he denounced his opponent, John Kasich, for having worked on Wall Street, calling him an “outsourcer,” and accused him of a conspiracy to privatize Social Security. Noam Scheiber, in The New Republic the day after the election, credited that limited, modified populism for Strickland’s electoral success, if success is defined as losing by only 250,000 votes.

For the most part, though, Strickland played it very safe, as Monica Potts concluded when she looked at the race for TAP’s September issue:

Strickland may luck out in that Kasich, who once worked at Lehman Brothers and hosted a Fox News show, is running so far to the right that he has pledged to completely eliminate the state income tax. But Strickland's own tax-cutting stance makes it hard for him to ridicule Kasich's pledge, a lesson for other Democrats who have chosen to tack right on fiscal issues.

Exactly right. And exactly why the calls to “talk using populist language” would be more credible from people who actually tried it – and not just in denouncing their opponents, but in taking stands on issues that matter to people. In fact, why not just skip the “populist language” and just make the argument for responsible tax policy? It won’t play as well with the HuffPo crowd, but it might make sense in Ohio.

-- Mark Schmitt

I wasn't impressed with the EU's rescue of Ireland -- it simply doesn't share enough of the costs with the private-sector lenders, putting all the (unsustainable) financial pressure on Irish taxpayers. Matt Yglesias has a good post on the politics behind this. Basically, Germany and France set the tone for the EU's monetary policy and are very happy to blame Ireland first -- even though their bankers made many of the bad loans now dragging down the Celts' financial system (German banks are owed $139 billion by Ireland, for instance). When the EU bails out Ireland -- and Irish citizens will pay them back for their loans -- they're bailing out their own banks, who will take little to no responsibility for the failure of their underwriting.

One simple lesson of the financial crisis still hasn't been fully appreciated: Creditors need to take some share of responsibility when a loan fails. Understanding this could make our problems in the housing markets, the challenges of "too big to fail," and the specter of further sovereign-debt crises all much more manageable.

-- Tim Fernholz

You can't disagree with this (from Matt Yglesias):

In other words, there’s no debate in Washington about whether rich people should get a permanent tax cut. Nor is there any debate in Washington about whether rich people’s tax cut should be financed by long-term borrowing. Nor is there any debate about whether rich people should get a bigger tax cut than middle class people. But we “can’t afford” unemployment insurance, we “can’t afford” to pay bank regulators competitive salaries.

On a related note, I thought this was an amusing line from The New York Times' look at Russian corruption, as revealed in the leaked diplomatic cables:

The cables also showed how bureaucratic, national and economic power often all converged in the Kremlin, and how the state’s suitors grasped that access often equaled results. [...]

The cables further revealed how the nexus of business and state interests among Russia’s ruling elite had fueled suspicions in Washington that Mr. Putin, in spite of his vigorous denials, had quietly amassed a personal fortune.

Wall Street wrecked -- and nearly destroyed -- the global economy, but instead of investigations and prosecutions, we dropped billions of dollars in an effort to keep them safe. TARP was successful, and financial reform a genuine accomplishment, but it's still unsettling to watch Obama treat the banks with kid gloves and look the other way as homeowners are ripped off in near-sham foreclosure courts. And, as Yglesias says, our Congress is currently arguing over how much money we should should give to the country's wealthiest people.

Obviously, Russia is a tremendously corrupt place -- and as far as I know, Obama hasn't amassed a huge personal fortune while president -- but given the last two years, is the Times really so shocked by a government that works closely with and for the benefit of business?

-- Jamelle Bouie