I'm sure you saw this piece in the Washington Post by Gerard Alexander titled, "Why are liberals so condescending?"

Jamison Foser busts the WaPo:

Well, this is interesting. Remember that "Why are liberals so condescending" piece by Gerard Alexander the Washington Post published last week? Turns out, the author didn't submit the piece the the Post -- the Post sought him out:

Bethesda, Md.: I thought that "Why are Liberals So Condescending" was the most intelligent article I've read in the Post in some time.

Do you think that this is the result of a decision by your editors to be more fair and balanced?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on the "All serious scientists agree that Global Warming is an enormous problem." school of thought. This matter has been positioned in exactly the same condescending manner.

Gerard Alexander: I can only tell you that the Post editor I dealt with searched me out, and were as encouraging as any editor could conceivably be.

I wonder when we'll find out that a Washington Post staffer is actively seeking out a similarly disparaging column about conservatives? After all, Howard Kurtz keeps telling us how liberal the Post's opinion operation is.

Meanwhile, Alexander spent the bulk of today's Washington Post online Q&A acknowledging that some conservatives are plenty condescending to liberals, but claiming that it just isn't very common. Or something. Alexander, for example, contends that "conservative magazines, elected officials, etc" don't accuse coastal liberals of being out of touch with heartland values -- and that if they did so, they'd be "run out of town."

What planet has Alexander been living on for the past thirty years? Conservatives are always so courteous. Why does the Post think we're so mean and nasty? I certainly don't remember conservatives calling us traitors, terrorist sympathizers, we hate our freedom, the troops and American values, do you?

Please email the Washington Post and tell them I sent you. Maybe they can answer your inquiry even if you are a condescending a-hole.

ombudsman@washpost.com

Or just use the phone and call here:

Phone 202.334.6000 | 800.627.1150

Here's their full contact page for more:

This story reeks of "I'm on deadline, I don't feel like working that hard so I'll just expand this handy list of Republican bullet points and then call a few Democrats for 'balance.'" But then, maybe it's just me:

WASHINGTON — When Republicans take President Obama up on his invitation to hash out their differences over health care this month, they will carry with them a fairly well-developed set of ideas intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable, by emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations, with no new federal mandates and only a modest expansion of the federal safety net.

Umm, excuse me, Mr. Reporter? What do you mean by "fairly well-developed"? And why are you just taking their word for it that their ideas will make health insurance more affordable? Did you, you know, ask any experts?

It is not clear that Republicans and the White House are willing to negotiate seriously with each other, and Mr. Obama has rejected Republican demands that he start from scratch in developing health care legislation.

But Congressional Republicans have laid out principles and alternatives that provide a road map to what a Republican health care bill would look like if they had the power to decide the outcome.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were writing a press release!

[...] The Republicans rely more on the market and less on government.

Ha ha ha! Oh, I get it now: It's a parody of a press release, like Stephen Colbert!

All kidding aside, is this really journalism? Not by any stretch of the imagination. There's no new information, there's only the Republican insistence on their far-fetched version of reality - which we could just as easily get from Fox News. New York Times, maybe you should put some actual work into these stories if you plan to charge us for them.

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I don't agree with Mark Halperin about very much, but I agree with him on this one. After a discussion on Sarah Palin going to speak to the Tea Bag Convention and whether or not this is an independent movement or disgruntled Republican voters, Mark Halperin lists the reasons Sarah Palin will never be President.

Brzezinski: Mark Halerin is there a third party wave brewing? Is it real?

Halperin: It’s real and there for someone who has a lot of money that they could spend tens of millions on a campaign and who had real ideas about how to unite left and right because there is commonality such as going after Wall Street. I see no such person. Can I state three other reasons why to date Sarah Palin will never be president?

Brzezinski: Yeah.

Halperin: One is that Republican elites behind her back think she’d be horrible for the party. Two is, she’s not appealing to anybody but a narrow slice of American life and she’s heading more and more in that direction based on her rhetoric.

And finally and I think it’s best for the country. She has no ideas. She stands for nothing specific. To go into an event like that with the opportunity to say “I hear you disaffected Democrats” and here’s where we need to go. Great opportunity—she wasn’t woken up and kidnapped and flown to this event.

It’s been on her schedule for a long time. To come in so ill prepared for both the event and the interview with no ideas I think forfeits any claim on being a credible national leader right now.

Anyone believe Halperin or the rest of them are just figuring this out now? I sure don't. Don't you just love Peggy Noonan making sure everyone knows what John noted here earlier—that Sarah Palin now owns the tea bag movement which has been co-opted by the Republican Party and Fox News. But that’s been obvious since Dick Armey and Tim Phillips and other astroturfers got in there and started planning rallies. She made sure to let the rest of the cast know that these people will be voting for Republicans even though she and Mike Barnicle tried to act like there were a bunch of disaffected Democrats in that crowd. I doubt there were very many of them if any.

Noonan also claims there were a thousand people watching her. I thought they were only trying to sell 600 tickets and they couldn’t get those to sell out? Nothing like over-hyping the crowd size and calling it a movement when we had quite a few more show up for events like Netroots Nation. They weren’t giving that prime time live coverage on all the cable news stations and saying that the Democrats had better listen to the netroots or they were going to be in trouble the next election.

If nothing else, Barack Obama is a glutton for punishment. Apparently confident in his ability to manhandle the Republican leadership in the wake of his televised beat-down of the House GOP caucus two weeks ago, Obama has invited McConnell, Boehner and company to the White House for a health care summit. But instead of applying a full-court press on recalcitrant members of his own party to finally pass a Democratic bill the country so badly needs, Obama will waste yet more time in his futile quest for bipartisanship.

After a year of unprecedented obstructionism by the Republican Party, it begs the question:

Mr. President, what part of "no" don't you understand?

Within days of Obama taking the oath of office, Clinton health care assassin Bill Kristol counseled his Republican colleagues to repeat their obstructionism at all costs. (Not, of course, because Democratic health reform plans might fail, as Orrin Hatch later admitted, but precisely because they might succeed.) Despite facing almost total GOP opposition to his economic stimulus plan, on health care President Obama reached out to mythical moderates like Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME). All voted against the Senate bill, including Snowe (who supported it in the Finance Committee) and Grassley (who was among those regurgitating the "pull the plug on grandma" fraud).

And the 220-215 margin in the House and the complete 60-39 Republican rejection in the Senate came despite, as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein reported, "The six Republican ideas already in the health-care reform bill":

At this point, I don't think it's well understood how many of the GOP's central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP's "Solutions for America" homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them -- yes, you read that right -- are in the Senate health-care bill.

On July 20, 2009, weeks before the August town hall disruptions and a full seven months before President Obama's proposed bipartisan health care conclave is to meet, Bill Kristol penned a memo telling Republicans to "Kill It, and Start Over." And for months, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, John Kyl, John Cornyn, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and myriad other Republican leaders have faithfully coughed up that same talking point. As Boehner reproduced it in September:

"It's really about the president pushing the reset button. There's a way to start this process over, and I think that's really what the American people want. Let's start over."

And as Eric Cantor and John Boehner made clear today in the responses to the President's invitation, that rejectionist position is still operative.

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Dean Baker writes a fabulous new post on the skanky tactics of the Deficit Hawks.

Jingoism and the Budget Deficit: Using Any Tactic to Advance the Budget Cutting Agenda

The deficit hawks apparently believe that their case is so weak that they must resort to crass jingoism to push their agenda. NBC apparently intends to run a piece on the evening news on Tuesday that talks about the portion of the government debt that is owned foreigners, highlighting the role of China.

This is incredibly dishonest. The extent to which foreigners hold U.S. assets is determined by the trade deficit, not the budget deficit. (Actually, the causation largely goes the other way. The decision of foreign governments and/or investors to buy dollar assets raises the value of the dollar, leading to a larger trade deficit.) Insofar as there is an issue of U.S. indebtedness, it is the holding of U.S. assets in general by foreigners. This represents claims against future U.S. output that will be paid out to foreigners rather than being available for domestic consumption. Whether foreigners hold shares of General Electric and Microsoft or U.S. government bonds makes no difference, especially since one can be readily sold to buy the other any day of the week.

A serious discussion of this issue would focus on the value of the dollar. That is the relevant factor in the story of foreign indebtedness. Given the current value of the dollar, at the same level of GDP, we would be building up just as much foreign debt if the government were running a budget surplus rather than a $1.3 trillion deficit. Economists all know this.

However, the deficit hawks are not interested in a serious discussion. They are pushing their agenda of cutting Social Security and Medicare. And they are apparently willing to appeal to crude jingoism to make their case.

Can we ever have an honest debate in this country over such a serious topic as this? The College Republicans headed by Norquist, Reed and Abramoff in the '80s, along with the rise of Newt Gingrich in 1994, rendered the political environment in America toxic, and it has never recovered.

Are the Blue Dogs shamelessly self-interested and venal, or are just plain stupid? Economists are predicting these high unemployment numbers through the end of 2011, and these clowns want to cut government spending even further. As long as they get to keep their jobs, they don't give a crap about putting even more Americans out of work. Lovely!

Blue Dog Democrats want Congress to go further than President Barack Obama’s proposal to freeze spending in next year’s budget.

The group of House centrists will soon introduce a bill capping discretionary spending at specific levels. The move would challenge their leadership and the president, who are balancing concerns with the nearly $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 with those who say government spending on job creation is the way out of the recession.

The spending levels sought by the Blue Dogs may result in spending cuts, which would go beyond Obama’s proposal to save $250 billion over the next decade by freezing non-security discretionary spending for three years, said Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), a senior Blue Dog.

“Two hundred and fifty billion is a lot of savings with a freeze on discretionary spending, but I think we can do better,” Hill said in a brief interview.

The group has yet to hash out the details on the spending caps bill, but it has near-unanimous support among its members, a Blue Dog aide said.

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On Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell mocks Sarah Palin's crib notes during the National Tea Party Convention by holding up her own hand with notes written on it. When you've finally got Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd throwing you under the bus, you've got problems with ever being taken seriously as a future presidential candidate. They make some comparisons to how Ronald Reagan was treated and not taken seriously and Todd points out that unlike Sarah the quitter, Ronald Reagan didn't quit being the Governor of California just because he thought the job was too hard and if she would run, the other presidential candidates are going to beat her up for this.

Why it's taking this long for some of the media to finally start admitting what's been obvious for a very long time is another story. I guess the crib notes and her partisan, know-nothing attack speech were too much even for them to continue to ignore since they know full well if they don't finally admit how bad she is, the late night comedians, the blogs and the other candidates will tear her up even if they weren't ever going to be willing to do it.

Pam Martens: Wall Street's killer instinct spells death knell for jobs

OurFuture: Colorado Springs, conservatism's shining city

Multi Medium: Great moments in rationalization

AMERICAblog News: HHS investigating Blue Cross of CA for raising rates 39%

They gave us a republic: Nightowl Newswrap

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Elemental Praxis, BITTER LAWYER, First of the Month

Talk to the hand. (Just FYI, the annual Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm is April 2-4.)

Open thread below...

If you miss the delectable power pop sounds of the Sixties and the complex melodic structure of the Beatles, you'll want to check out the Philadelphia music scene's beloved adopted son, Jim Boggia.

Like Alex Chilton, he's one of those cult figures, the kind we can't figure out why he's not a major star. If Paul McCartney married Brian Wilson, they might have given birth to Boggia. He writes gorgeous, hook-y songs that stay with you and his musical chops are impeccable, strong enough to get him guest spots with Will Lee's Fab Faux, the celebrity-studded Beatles tribute band.

I guess they can't figure out a marketing niche for him. (Psst, record executives: a funny, hipper Michael Buble with a guitar -- and better songs.)

Here's a Prefix mag review of his most recent CD, "Misadventures in Stereo":

To call Jim Boggia's Misadventures in Stereo a smashing power-pop success almost seems like damning it with faint praise; that is, if you think the term “power pop” only encompasses a stylistic breadth that starts with the Raspberries and ends with the Romantics. However, if your definition extends instead to the somewhat more singer-songwriterly realms of Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, Matthew Sweet, et al, it may start to make more sense. Especially when you discover that Boggia's last album featured contributions from L.A. pop cult-hero Emitt Rhodes and Mann herself.

The Philadelphia-based artist's third album makes no bones about its influences; “Listening to NRBQ” not only lives up to its title but even goes so far as to feature the Q's erstwhile leader, Big Al Anderson, on guitar. Elsewhere, echoes of the Beach Boys and Beatles abound. That said, Boggia is much more than simply the sum of his inspirations. His unerring melodic sensibilities canter in intriguing, unexpected directions through settings that match a musical sophisticate's knowledge of harmony with a pure popster's knack for gut-targeted hooks.

His voice doesn't do the material any harm, either; Boggia's possessed of a smooth, airy tenor that's shot through with soulfulness, enabling him to glide gracefully atop an elegantly arcing melody or deliver a visceral punch on one of the album's more rocking tracks. Misadventures in Stereo proves that its possible to pack a sharp pop bite and go deep into troubadour territory with surprising simultaneity.

There's no such thing as a bad Boggia album. They're collections of marvelous songs instead of two hits sandwiched into a bunch of filler. And he's a great live act, too.

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(James Roosevelt - selling dad's plan in 1937)

When FDR suggested changes be made in the Supreme Court, appointing as many as six additional justices instead of the usual nine, it was a hard sell. In fact it went down to a stinging 70-20 Senate defeat by July. But FDR did a huge sales pitch for the plan, including enlisting his son James to stump for its passage.

James Roosevelt: “ I believe you will come to the conclusion that the President’s proposal if the most effective way to make constitutional democracy work. It confers no new powers. It takes away no previously existing authority. It is unquestionably constitutional. It will enable the Chief Executive to carry out with quickness and dispatch all those measures which meet the cry for repair and restoration. To you and to me and to millions of others throughout our country, it will bring comfort in the thought that those evil years of eight, yes of even twenty years ago will not come back.”

I'm sure at the time most Republicans had coronaries over the thought of six additional judges, all appointed by FDR setting the laws of the land. No doubt the wave of fear and calls of Dictatorship ran up and down the ranks of the right wing like a flu epidemic. But I can only imagine what it would have been like, had those fifteen judges been in place around the time of Bush, or even Nixon for that matter.

The mind fairly reels.

Perhaps some things were best not to have happened after all.

Paul Krugman hits the nail right on the head. Now what are we going to do about it?

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

Don’t hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don’t even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents’ obstructionism.

It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby of “silliness.” Yep, that will really resonate with voters.

After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

Steve Clemons reacts to a close look inside the Obama White House, written by Financial Times Washington bureau chief Edward Luce. Go read the whole thing, Steven's comments are enlightening:

At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: "A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again."

Just over a year into his tenure, America's 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington's ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons - from Mr Obama's decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president's inability to convince voters he can "feel their [economic] pain", to the apparent ungovernability of today's Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis - and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

[...] An outside adviser adds: “I don’t understand how the president could launch healthcare reform and an Arab-Israeli peace process – two goals that have eluded US presidents for generations – without having done better scenario planning. Either would be historic. But to launch them at the same time?”

Again, close allies of the president attribute the problem to the campaign-like nucleus around Mr Obama in which all things are possible. “There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government,” says one. “Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.”

(This reinforces what I recently wrote about Obama's lack of executive skills. Seems like I'm not the only person who noticed.)

Clemons calls the piece a "vital" and "brave" article, noting that most of the insider media isn't mentioning it at all:

But one thing essential to understand is that the kind of policy that smart strategists -- including by people like National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other advisers like Denis McDonough, Tom Donilon, James Steinberg, William Burns, (previously Gregory Craig) -- would be putting forward is getting twisted either in the rough-and-tumble of a a team of rivals operation that is not working, or is being distorted by the Chicago political gang's tactical advice that is seducing Obama towards a course that has not only violated deals he made with those who voted him into office but which is failing to hit any of the major strategic targets by which the administration will be historically measured.

President Obama needs to take stock quickly. Read the Luce piece. Be honest about what is happening. Read Plouffe's smart book again. Send Rahm Emanuel back to the House in a senior role. Make Valerie Jarrett an important Ambassador. Keep Axelrod -- but balance him with someone like Plouffe, and get back to putting good policy before short term politics.

Set up a Team B with diverse political and national security observers like Tom Daschle, John Podesta, Brent Scowcroft, Arianna Huffington, Fareed Zakaria, Katrina vanden Heuvel, John Harris, James Fallows, Chuck Hagel, Strobe Talbott, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others to give you a no-nonsense picture of what is going on.

And take action to fix the dysfunction of your office.

Otherwise, the Obama brand will be totally bust in the very near term.

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I tell you, it's hard to watch this stuff and not want to just beat your head against the wall. After playing some of Sister Sarah's fearmongering and playing the terrorism card during her speech to the Tea Baggers the other night, the panel on CNN's State of the Union discuss how the Democrats have been reacting to the Republicans deciding to try to scare the bejesus out of everyone with the trial of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab possibly being held in New York and with the newly elected Senator Scott Brown deciding to play the fear card as part of his campaign rhetoric.

Jane Mayer who has a new article at the New Yorker out on the subject and the fear mongering over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being tried in New York as well points out how completely ridiculous all of this is and that that AG Eric Holder is "up against two big myths right now. One myth is that what the Obama administration is doing is any different than what the Bush administration did in terms of prosecuting terrorism".

Of course as Dana Bash points out, having the truth on their side never seems to be enough to keep the Democrats from running like scared sheep instead of standing up to the Republicans since they're afraid the terrorism issue is going to hurt them at the polls. But even Chris Cillizza realizes that they're behind the curve with the public actually caring about terrorism. They're more worried about the economy.

I'm just tired of all of them treating the American people like the scared sheep the Democrats seem to be when it comes to getting reelected and any of them, no matter what party, playing the fear card. It's tiresome. It's extremely tiresome watching the Democrats cave to the likes of Sarah Palin, or Scott Brown or any of them when they go out there throwing flames. Of course sadly our media is happy to carry those torches for them, especially at ClusterFox as they hurl the flames and hope to keep the public as misinformed and afraid as possible.

Transcipt below the fold via CNN.

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I saw President Obama talking to Katie Couric before the Super Bowl, and I didn't breathe for a few minutes as I took in what he was proposing. I guess they are spooked by the losses of the mythical independent voters in recent polling, but even if that's the case, it's a horrible idea from my perspective.

President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health-care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do.

I understand the strategy behind them doing this, but the country is too polarized at this point to really turn perceptions enough to make any difference.

This will accomplish nothing except to possibly empower Republican obstructionists even more. They will tell us what wonderful new ideas they have and that if only Obama opened up competition in all the states, it would solve all the problems in health care. Here's Crying Boehner's response:

"The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health care costs and expand access. The House Republican alternative, which would lower premiums by up to 10 percent while increasing access for Americans without health insurance, would be a solid starting point. I look forward to discussing these issues with the Democratic Leadership and the President."

America didn't elect President Obama so that Republicans could rule the legislative process, but through the guidance of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, that's what's happening now. There is no way Republicans will sign on to anything at this point unless the president gives in to all of their demands.

Funny thing how Obama keeps reaching out to the other side instead of his own. I'd much rather have a liberal blogger meeting with President Obama instead of having to endure this.

Digby also adds a lot to this discussion and brings a really smart observation to the discussion. Much sharper than what you'd hear from the MSM.

It's fascinating, of course, because it's gossip and because some in the White House and others close to the administration have decided to try to dethrone these four. The courtiers are rebelling...read on

UPDATE: And here comes the reinforcements. There's and article in FT.com that says the Chicago team is hurting the Obama White House and I can't disagree on that one.

Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce has written a granularly informed insider account about those who hold the keys to the inner most sanctum of Obama Land -- Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.

--
The article goes on to document how people like Health Secretary and former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius were kept off television -- along with others like Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Add to this others that Luce does not name -- including important voices like Paul Volcker and Austan Goolsbee on Obama's economic team, who saw their public voices choked off by a media-dominating Lawrencean Summers with support from Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel.

I've been complaining about the lack of surrogate speakers to go out and sell his ideas and the lack of a cohesive legislative strategy and that's been a huge problem also. Read the piece---it's very good. Oh, and Obama is the president and isn't a child so he still has the ultimate say.