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- To whom the president is trying to appeal, post-midterms, grows more mysterious by the day. The organization that helped elect him, OFA, is writing letters to the editor informing them how awesome a federal pay freeze is. In a meeting with congressional Republicans, the president made sure he communicated to the opposition that hates him with every fiber of their being that he should have done more to reach across the aisle over the last two years. The feeling I have is like the last few years of the Bush administration -- like we don't really have a president at all, just someone who's lost interest in the office altogether.
- My impression of Julian Assange has always been that of an anarchist with half-baked ideas about freedom flowing from information through open markets and this Forbes interview confirms my impression. "WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical," he says at one point. Well, OK. I'm not sure what the private remarks of diplomats have to do with making capitalism less predatory, but I suppose I should wait for the upcoming release of private-sector documents before I say anything more.
- Say what you will about Tea Partiers, they aren't just in it for historical re-enactment. Via Jonathan Chait, the president of the Tea Party Nation wants to go back to the good old days of the Republic when owning property was a prerequisite for having the right to vote. I have to wonder, though. Are Tea Partiers actually optimistic that their retrograde ideas will come to pass? Seems like making the country less democratic would be a tough sell, yet they idealistically soldier on anyway.
- Remainders: Marc Thiessen (like Bill Kristol) apparently thinks the U.S. military is something akin to a drug cartel's personal hit squad; I would have made the bank bailouts conditional on restructuring the financial sector, but at least the losses will be quite manageable; there will be no GOP civil war; and California's political institutions are broken, not its economy.
--Mori Dinauer
