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- The New York Times reports that President Obama sent a secret letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last month hoping to strike a compromise: the U.S. would stop deployment of the Interceptor missile defense system in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia taking a harder line against Iran's development of long-range weapons. In other realpolitik news, Secretary of State Clinton announced her State Department would reopen talks with Syria, cut off four years ago by the Bush administration in the wake of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
- Clearly, the effort to portray Rush Limbaugh as the godfather of the GOP was greatly aided by yesterday's cowardly about-face by RNC Chair Michael Steele, who retracted his critical comments about the radio host in less than 36 hours, and the resulting brouhaha is clearly getting under the Right's skin. (Representative sample: "The only reason the Obama White House is attacking Rush Limbaugh is because Obama already has been a complete failure in office. Since his election in November the market has lost 25 percent of its value and every single one of his policy announcements has only been followed by hundreds of thousands of more lost jobs.") Greg Sargent was treated to an email conversation with Limbaugh himself, and the latter refused to say whether a successful overhaul of the economy by Obama would be good for the country. Oddly, there still seems to be little interest in Republican politics to actually ditch Limbaugh. Bobby Jindal sang his praises for Limbaugh on Larry King Live, and Adam correctly explains the relevant political jujitsu.
- It shouldn't surprise us that the stock market has become the preferred barometer for conservatives and the investor class to gauge the level of populist rage brewing in the Ownership Society. Real indicators of the economy are routinely ignored by the news media, prompting the president today to describe obsessively watching daily fluctuations in the markets as akin to following a daily tracking poll during an election. Neither can we always count on big news orgs (or people with high incomes) to have a clue about such challenging concepts like the marginal tax rate, although Ezra did manage to find a good counterexample of this trend.
- The primary election to fill Rahm Emanuel's House seat is today, and The Chicago Tribune has a quick roundup of the twelve candidates vying for the seat on the Democratic side.
- Even worse than abusing the filibuster, in my view, is the cowardly use of anonymous holds in the Senate. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who is a Cuba hardliner, believes the best way to protest the loosening of trade restrictions with Caribbean nation included in the omnibus bill is to block the nominations of John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco to head up, respectively, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NOAA. Ironically, Menendez has taken the initiative on climate change in the past so it seems strange that he would jeopardize that commitment in order to continue a half century-long failure in foreign policy.
- I've never understood John McCain's obsession with earmarks. They're a drop in the bucket in terms of federal money, and while plenty of them are wasteful, many are reasonable requests on the part of legislators who are expected to bring federal money home to their districts. Well, the Senate has rejected McCain's proposal to strip 9,000 earmarks from the omnibus bill, and he's predictably throwing a hissy fit. If you're interested, you can view the total list of earmarks in this inelegant, non-graphical spreadsheet.
- Remainders: When it comes to judicial appointees, Republicans are anything but principled; Tim Pawlenty takes a crack at the cult of Reagan; Obama calls his VP the "sheriff" of stimulus oversight; The Club for Growth picks Specter, Snowe and Collins for their "Comrade of the Month"; Sean Quinn interviews Sen. Jon Tester; The White House reverses eleventh-hour modifications to the Endangered Species Act by the Bush administration; conservatives love Scott Rasmussen's polls; CQ Politics explores the bark and bite of the Blue Dogs; and The Washington Post concludes that implementing Obama's ambitious budget will require "tens of thousands of new federal government workers to realize his goals."
--Mori Dinauer
