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- Ezra Klein quotes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The revenue loss over the next 75 years just from extending the tax cuts for people making over $250,000 -- the top 2 percent of Americans -- would be about as large as the entire Social Security shortfall over this period." He calls this "How to Fix Social Security in One Graph," which is accurate enough, I suppose. I would have described this as "How Conservatives can Kill two Birds with one Stone." After all, conservatives find redistribution an affront to American Exceptionalism, so what better way to conquer redistribution than to distribute trillions to the very wealthiest Americans and let the elderly poor suffer in their golden years?
- How much do you want to bet that the following details about Barack Obama's Oval Office makeover will be thoroughly ignored in the ensuing right-wing media firestorm? "The makeover was not done at taxpayer expense; the White House said the costs were covered by the White House Historical Association, a nonprofit group, through a contribution from the committee that paid for Mr. Obama’s inauguration." Item one for investigation in John Boehner's Congress next year.
- Remember when Meghan McCain was a ubiquitous presence in the political media, guiding us through the early days of the Obama administration? Now, more than ever, we need McCain's keen insights into our contemporary political logjam, and I'm afraid she has decided to look back, not forward, publishing a tell-all book about campaign trail '08 and dishing on the former governor of Alaska, who for some bizarre reason is able to command enormous sums of money for talking about God knows what.
- Remainders: Orrin Hatch does the right thing; Jonathan Bernstein takes down the absurd (and insulting) notion that Democrats need their own "mama grizzly"; Dave Weigel explains why Tom Coburn hates Newt Gingrich; Adam does his best to figure out what the hell Reihan Salam is talking about; The Washington Post's excuse for sloppy editing and basic fact-checking is not convincing; the Cato Institute is not above ignoring libertarian principle to combat temporary unpopularity; and graphing the probability that health-care reform will be repealed.
--Mori Dinauer
