Wednesday wonkery.
NY Times:
It is not clear that Mr. Obama can prevail given his own diminished popularity, the tepid economic recovery and the divisions within his party. But by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.
Steven Pearlstein:
Somewhere between the rantings of the Republican right, which is peddling the nonsense that excessive government spending is to blame for high unemployment, and the Democratic left, which clings to the false hope that another helping of fiscal stimulus is all that is needed to get millions of Americans permanently back to work, is this stubborn reality:
The loss of 8 million jobs reflects problems that are largely structural, not cyclical, which means they won't be brought back by fiddling with a magic dial in Washington that controls how much the government spends.
Politico:
The Democratic Governors Association plans to focus its campaign efforts this fall on a collection of high-value states with disproportionate influence over national politics, executive director Nathan Daschle writes in a strategy memo set for release today. Dubbing the DGA’s battle plan "Project Extreme GOP Makeover," Daschle writes that his committee will comprehensively exploit the Republicans’ "brutal civil war." "Over the next 56 days, the DGA will execute its largest-ever series of independent expenditures and direct contributions in more than a dozen states, focusing our resources on the best pickup opportunities," Daschle says, setting the bar for success thusly: "[T]he most telling indicator will be how the GOP performs in a wave year in critical states such as California, Colorado, Florida and Texas." Here’s the memo: http://politi.co/... ; and the appendix (!): http://politi.co/...
Maureen Dowd:
Kevin made a video this summer celebrating Fort Stevens, a mournful response to the news that the Civil War Preservation Trust had put the fort on its annual list of endangered battlefields.
The trust fears that a five-story building planned by the Emory United Methodist Church next door will block the line of sight from the fort and make it harder for visitors to visualize history.
On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the trust also warns that the Wilderness battlefield west of Fredericksburg, Va., the site of the first bloody confrontation between the commanders Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, could be violated by a huge development featuring a Wal-Mart at its gateway.
Gettysburg made the list because of a plan to build a casino half a mile from the park, along the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Scenic Byway. I can hear the Gen. Robert E. Lee slot machines jingling now.
Katrina vanden Heuvel:
A Team B report to be formally released tomorrow by the Afghanistan Study Group -- an ad hoc group of former government officials, well-known academics and policy experts assembled by the New America Foundation -- has the potential to be similarly influential. At a moment when the administration and too many members of Congress have failed to explore alternatives to Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy, the importance of this clear and cogent report can't be understated.
The report offers a thorough analysis of why and how we must dramatically reduce America's footprint in our nation's longest and most expensive war. Although the war is justified by its proponents as an effort to eradicate al-Qaeda, the report notes that "there are only some 400 hard-core al-Qaeda members remaining in the entire Af-Pak theater, most of them hiding in Pakistan's northwest provinces."
Scot Lehigh:
There's no shortage of political advice for Barack Obama as the midterm elections approach.
Go left, think big, and sharpen policy differences.
Slide center-ward, think small, and make like Bill Clinton.
Play the populist card.
Reach out.
Lash out.
And so on and so forth, each according to the commentator’s own political inclination.
But here’s an even simpler way for the president to regain his footing in this season of voter discontent.
Explain yourself. Regularly. Repeatedly. Clearly. And forcefully.
BBC:
'Many failures' caused BP spill
BP says no single factor caused the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst ecological catastrophe in recent US history.