The article Groundhog Day: Judith Miller-Style casts serious doubts on the integrity of The New York Times for its shoddy reporting of the unsubstantiated claims that:

“Secret American intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles, based on a Russian design, that are much more powerful than anything Washington has publicly conceded that Tehran has in its arsenal, diplomatic cables show. Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a cable dated Feb. 24 of this year.”

The New York Times refused to let its readers know that the report was unsubstantiated or give the item the context .by which the readers could form their own opinion.

The article that casts the aspersion is on The Huffington Post which is not necessarily any safer to read than The New York Times.

Be that as it may, I want to record the links to this article for when hawkish The New York Times continues to beat the drums for war with Iran.  Maybe someone will remember the lies that led up to their call and just tell them to pipe down.

Richard Kirsch wrote the article, What Obama Can Learn From Reagan. The subtitle is “He must show real leadership on his core values, not weakness and waffling.”

What the president fails to comprehend is that his style of public vacillation and preemptive compromise is much more to blame for the disillusionment that so many Democrats share than the substance of what he gave up, whether it be on health care or taxes.

Kirsch goes on to show how different was the fight on Health Care from the tax cut capitulation, and yet how Obama’s style detracted even from that “win”.

The fact that so many people draw the line at the tax capitulation isn’t so much its absolute magnitude.  It is the cumulative effect of all his compromises.  In essence this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

An article Who Really Got What in the Tax Deal? by Mike Konczal is posted on the New Deal 2.0 web site.

There is no continuation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund  (TANF EF) from the stimulus bill in the tax cut compromise. Regular TANF was created as part of the Clinton-era welfare reform to get people off assistance by getting them back to work. This approach becomes problematic when unemployment is high due to faults in monetary and fiscal policy, not because people choose not to work. In a Great Recession, TANF runs out of both money and conceptual scope very quickly. So this Emergency Fund, at the low cost of five billion dollars distributed to states, allowed locals on the ground to expand and continue TANF to meet the needs of fighting poverty and putting people to work.

The White House claims that “We got $238 billion and the Republicans got $114 billion out of the tax cut capitulation.”

Mike Konczal shows that the White House got $106 billion out of the deal and the Republicans got $246 billion.

Not bad negotiating for a party that has minorities in one branch of the government and nothing in a second branch of the government.  Maybe we need to stop President Obama from negotiating with himself before he negotiates with the opposition.  By the time he is finished negotiating with himself, the opposition has already got more than they had hoped for.

Whose Side is the White House On? is the headline give to this talk by James K. Galbraith to the Americans For Democratic Action on November 20, 2010.  This was before we  knew about the Obama tax capitulation.

Recovery begins with realism and there is nothing to be gained by kidding ourselves. On the topics that I know most about, the administration is beyond being a disappointment. It’s beyond inept, unprepared, weak, and ineffective. Four and again two years ago, the people demanded change. As a candidate, the President promised change. In foreign policy and the core economic policies, he delivered continuity instead. That was true on Afghanistan and it was and is true in economic policy, especially in respect to the banks. What we got was George W. Bush’s policies without Bush’s toughness, without his in-your-face refusal to compromise prematurely. Without what he himself calls his understanding that you do not negotiate with yourself.

It’s a measure of where we are, I think, that at a meeting of Americans for Democratic Action, you find me comparing President Obama unfavorably to President George W. Bush.

He goes on to fault the set of advisers and administrators that Obama chose for his administration.

The president deprived himself of any chance to develop a narrative from the beginning by surrounding himself with holdover appointments from the Bush and even the Clinton administrations: Secretary Geithner, Chairman Bernanke, and, since we’re here at Harvard, I’ll call him by his highest title, President Summers. These men have no commitment to the base, no commitment to the Democratic Party as a whole, no particular commitment to Barack Obama, and none to the broad objective of national economic recovery that can be detected from their actions.

I think back to the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  In Hillary we would have had the tough fighter, but one who did not really understand what she was fighting for.  In Barack Obama we seemed to have a person who really knew what we were fighting for, but he turns out to be one who doesn’t have much fight.

I wonder if some of the international policy decisions come from Hillary Clinton’s toughness in fighting for the wrong policies that contradict what Obama ran on.

I frequently remind myself that I think I may have myself financially protected enough that perhaps I won’t suffer too much if the country collapses while I am still around.  There is not much I can do after that.  A stiff deflation might actually help me with my zero long term debt policy.

For those that did not catch parts of Senator Bernie Sanders’ long speech, both Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann show snippets.

Below are links to the three segments of the entire 8 ½ hour speech.

Sanders Filibuster: Part 1

Sanders Filibuster: Part 2

Sanders Filibuster: Part 3