Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise

The media, you see, used to have something called a “watchdog” role in this country, by which it was understood that they worked for society and protected it against those in power, preventing abuse. But as with the Sherlock Holmes case of the “dog that didn’t bark,” old traditional media such as the New York Times, network television, National Public Radio and PBS, are not doing much, if anything, to keep those in power in check. For that today, one has to rely on blogs and popular outlets such as FOX News. In fact, FOX News gets labeled as conservative for merely fulfilling this obligation.

The New York Times, for example, ran zero—that’s right, zero—stories on Van Jones, the Obama Administration “green jobs” Czar before he was forced to quit last weekend. It was left to investigative reporting by conservative bloggers, amplified by FOX News, to reveal that Jones had signed a petition accusing the Bush administration of allowing 9/11 to happen so they could have a pretext to wage war on Iraq. This was a man with real power and real budget authority. In fact his department’s budget nearly doubled the total annual budget for NASA. But not only did the New York Times or the networks never devote any resources to investigate, even after the revelations of his obvious instability came to light, the traditional media outlets sat on the story.

Much, much worse, has been the silence on ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the community shakedown artists for whom President Obama worked with when he was a community organizer.ACORN also has real power—it was going to work with the Department of Commerce on the 2010 Census—and receives tens of millions of dollars annually in tax payer money.

It was left to a couple of 20-somethings working for the new BigGovernment.com site to break omerta on ACORN by releasing videos of ACORN employees conspiring to help avoid taxes for a criminal enterprise. Thanks to these new media types, last night, in an 83-7 vote, the Senate voted to strip all funding of ACORN from the transportation housing and urban development appropriations bill.

Why didn’t the old media report on Jones, or ACORN? Where was 60 Minutes, or 20/20? And where are all the old media on the tea party protestors? Why do they keep denigrating them, emphasizing how angry they are, or how they are unrepresentative of the public? When was the last time tens of thousands of people showed up on the steps of the Capitol, less than a year after an election, to speak up against out of control federal spending? Many across all sides of the spectrum are taking note. One of the left’s sharpest minds, Camille Paglia, observed in an article in Salon last week that:

Too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web—both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights.

No wonder that, according to Pew Research this week, two thirds of Americans do not trust the media, the lowest ranking ever. And no wonder that Glenn Beck, the FOX commentator who went after the Jones story, gets 2.6 million viewers every day, while his closest competitor at the same time slot gets 600,000 on a good day.

The old media is busy keeping the administration accountable—the Bush Administration, that is. NPR this morning had another long piece on the investigations into Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft. Trouble is, the Bush administration is no longer in power.

In the case of the dog that didn’t bark, the pooch stayed silent because it was friendly with the man who committed the transgression. Today the left has all the power, controlling the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the media in all the above-named outlets are acting like adoring supporters. Is that the reason this watchdog isn’t barking?

Democracy, Thomas Jefferson believed, could only survive if the populace was informed, and that, he believed, was the job of newspapers. Thank God, at least, for those media still doing their jobs.

Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst last week is drawing new recriminations from his colleagues, with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus suggesting that a failure to rebuke Wilson is tantamount to supporting the most blatant form of organized racism in American history.

In an obvious reference to the KKK, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will put on "white hoods and ride through the countryside" if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked. He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example.

The charged comments come as the House is preparing to take further action against the South Carolina Republican. House Democratic leaders decided to formally discipline him Tuesday afternoon for his jeer last week at President Obama during a joint session of Congress.

The punishment is expected take the form of a "resolution of disapproval," which is a milder version of other more traditional means of congressional discipline. Wilson can avoid the rap on the wrists by apologizing to his colleagues on the House floor, but Wilson -- who already apologized directly to the White House -- has said that's not going to happen.

Wilson bellowed "You lie!" at Obama during his address.

While he was widely condemned by colleagues on both sides of the aisle for breaching protocol, some have gone a step further and accused Wilson of being racially motivated.

Johnson seemed to reference the protests held in Washington, D.C., on Saturday in making his claim. While many protesters were there to demonstrate against big government and federal over-spending, Johnson argued that a "fringe" element is motivated by race and that Wilson's behavior is a "wink" to that fringe.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in her column Sunday that Wilson's outburst convinced her that racial angst is the underlying motive among Obama critics like Wilson.

"I've been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer ... had much to do with race," she wrote. "But Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president -- no Democrat ever shouted 'liar' at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq -- convinced me: Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

Dowd wrote that Wilson "clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber."

Asked about the claim, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said race is not the factor.

But it is against House rules to call the president a "liar" or accuse him of "lying" when the House is in session, which is the basis for the punishment Tuesday.

"We're not the British parliament for a reason," said Kristie Greco, spokeswoman for House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.,."Ignoring the issue sets a precedent for bad behavior."
Greco described the resolution as "direct" and "non-partisan."

"It goes directly to conduct on the House floor," Greco said.

Most Democrats in the House appear poised to sanction Wilson. But many Republicans argue that since the South Carolina Republican has already apologized, this step is unnecessary. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., opposed punishing Wilson until Clyburn and other Democratic leaders persuaded her to change her mind.

Critics say Democrats are only prolonging the issue and hurting themselves by pushing for further action against Wilson. Republicans may use the Wilson resolution to try to embarrass Democrats Tuesday, by bringing up the alleged ethical lapses of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., or Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., or others.

The resolution is "privileged," meaning whenever it is introduced the measure goes to the front of the legislative line. It is unclear who will call up the measure.

A "resolution of disapproval" is not one of the four forms of discipline typically meted out in the House. The most commonly used means of punishment are expulsion, censure, reprimand or fine.

For instance, in 1997, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was both reprimanded and fined for his book deal. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., was reprimanded in 1990 for ethical breaches tied to a male prostitute. Republicans tried to censure Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., in 2007 for comments he made on the House floor about President Bush. But Democrats voted to set aside that effort.

A simple majority vote is needed to approve the resolution against Wilson.

FOX News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

The right-wing media’s single-minded focus on a handful of targets over the past months and its success in pushing those stories into the mainstream have underscored the sharp divide between traditional news organizations and the bloggers and talk show hosts aggressively pursuing an ideological agenda on-line and on TV and radio.


From birthers to tea parties to town halls and ACORN, the scandal-plagued anti-poverty group — not to mention President Obama’s speech last week to school children and the background of former White House aide Van Jones — issues initially dismissed or missed entirely by the national media have burst, if only fleetingly, onto the national agenda after relentless coverage on Fox News, talk radio and in the blogosphere.

“If it wasn’t for Fox or talk radio, we’d be done as a republic,” Glenn Beck declared Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends.” Beck, who’s aggressively pushed the Van Jones and ACORN stories, told the morning show hosts that he plans to devote his hour-long, top-rated 5 p.m. show to new undercover tapes of ACORN employees.


Last week, Big Government, a site run by conservative Andrew Breitbart, showed videos of undercover stings in three ACORN offices, where journalists posing as pimps and prostitutes were instructed by employees on how to skirt legal restrictions on housing. The tapes got big play on The Drudge Report—where Breitbart has worked—and right-leaning news outlets and commentary shows. But only after the Senate voted to cut off federal funding to ACORN on Monday did the story get more attention in the mainstream media.


ABC "World News" anchor Charles Gibson seemed caught off guard by the ACORN tapes on Tuesday when he told Chicago radio hosts Don Wade and Roma that he hadn't heard of them, in a clip flagged by prominent conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. Gibson added that "maybe this is just one you leave to the cables."


Jon Banner, executive producer of ABC’s “World News,” told POLITICO that he’s been discussing doing an ACORN piece with chief White House correspondent Jake Tapper over the past week, but the show hasn’t run one on the latest scandal. “World News,” he said, is expected to report on ACORN tonight.


“It’s a very different editorial process when you have 24 hours to fill as opposed to 22 minutes,” Banner said, explaining why ACORN hasn’t yet fit in the evening newscast. Lately, Banner noted that the program has been focused on covering Afghanistan, health care, the economy and the anniversary of 9/11.


While Banner admits that some stories may get more attention on cable, blogs or talk radio, it doesn’t mean they’re suited for the “World News” audience. “There’s a tremendous amount of – for lack of a better word – ‘noise’ out there. We’re not in the business of noise.”


Indeed, “World News” has to distill the news of the world, in under a half hour, and can’t be expected to cover every budding controversy in the blogosphere. Nevertheless, Beck, and others, claimed that competing networks slowness in jumping on the ACORN or Van Jones stories indicates some sort of bias.

During Beck’s show on Monday, he stood in front of a blackboard-like screen, citing statistics that he said demonstrated the mainstream media’s lackadaisical coverage of the ACORN and Van Jones stories.


“Reports on Van Jones, from appointment to resignation. Look at this: Fox had 51 reports on this guy. CNN was next, with nine. MSNBC, two. The New York Times, one. Washington Post, four. The ACORN corruption -- this is your money. Fox has had 133 reports on it. CNN, 90. MSNBC, 10 -- how’s that possible? Hey, ABC, how’s it working out for you, with two?” Beck’s onscreen tally credited CBS with two Jones stories, and ABC and NBC with one apiece.


The succession of such controversial stories has exposed blind spots in both the Obama administration and the press, with the president's aides at first trying to ignore critics they considered shrill or ignorant, and networks and newspapers finding themselves flat-footed when issues they had ignored caught fire online and on cable.


But news executives argue that they have limited staff and resources, and there is a lot more to cover on a daily basis than a handful of controversies stirred up primarily on the right.


“For Glenn Beck to devote 45 minutes of his show to ACORN and Van Jones says more about his news judgment than mine,” said Dean Baquet, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times.


“He’s not a newsman and that’s not a news show,” Baquet continued. “He’s not trying to cover the economy, two wars, health care, the aftermath from one administration to another, negotiations with Iran or North Korea.”


Baquet said he agreed with Times managing editor Jill Abramson, who responded to readers on NYTimes.com that the paper was “a beat behind” on the Jones story. The paper, he said, should have run a piece when Jones apologized for radical statements and an affiliation with a 9/11 “truther” group prior to his resignation.


Still, Baquet said he doesn’t think “not being all over the Van Jones story is a mortal sin.” And for critics claiming bias, Baquet pointed out that the paper aggressively covered allegations against Democrat Tom Daschle, someone who would have had far more power in the Obama administration.

While Baquet noted that The Times ran a story on ACORN today—following the Senate vote to cut off funding—critics like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough contend that the paper would have not only have been covering the current scandal earlier, but would have played it up if it was a conservative organization.


On his radio show Tuesday, Scarborough debated the media’s coverage of ACORN and Van Jones with NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd, who said he believed these stories can be a “crutch” for conservatives looking to highlight instances of media bias.


“If the Christian Coalition, in 1995, had a sting operation carried on against it by a liberal group, I guarantee you it would have been front page, New York Times, the next day, “ Scarborough said, “and people like me would have been called out, people saying, ‘how could you ever, ever justify supporting a group that would teach people how to violate the tax code and promote prostitution.’”

Christopher Isham, Washington bureau chief for CBS News, disagrees.


“There’s no ideological filter that goes on,” Isham said. “If it’s a good story, it’ s a good story.”


Isham said that CBS has been “batting around” an ACORN story, and expects it to soon be covered on the evening newscast. Although the sting videos quickly went viral, Isham said that “you have to be very careful” when it comes to such reporting, and “learn as much as you can about the circumstances” before putting them on the air.


“Clearly, Fox is going to be more aggressive on a story like that, initially, then other media organizations,” Isham said.


A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but the network has been criticized in the past for running more favorable coverage of conservative protests than demonstrations against the Iraq war —from the April 15 tea parties to this past weekend’s rally in Washington—or stories that could be expected to be more detrimental to Democrats.


Karl Frisch, a senior fellow at Media Matters, a group founded to counter what it regards as the media’s bias toward conservatives, said that if anything, the mainstream media too often follows the lead of Fox. “Mainstream publications and networks take the Fox News bait of sensationalistic, delusional, partisan reporting far too often,” he said.


“To Fox News,” Frisch continued, “outlets that don’t share its single minded obsession with Obama conspiracy theories and one-sided reports designed to weaken progressives, have some sort of shadowy liberal media bias. Much like its self-serving cries of bias, it is a myth that Fox News has any interest in journalistic integrity or responsibility.”


While liberals may dismiss Fox, the network clearly dominates cable news -- often beating both MSNBC and CNN combined in prime-time. So even with some stories initially not getting much play on other networks, or in the major papers, Fox has the power to drive them into the debate.


The dearth -- and tardiness -- of coverage by the traditional media is explained in part by the fact that most reporters for establishment news organizations do not follow the conservative media.

They tend to consider many of the more outlandish charges from the right to be plain loony -- which they often are.

And ACORN has long been an obsession of the right, with some of past criticism taking on racial overtones. So reporters, being used to tuning out charges against ACORN, were slow to realize that this was a time when the group’s opponents had the goods.


The White House has vowed to be more nimble in the future, and is already working to be sure it does not lose control of future debates the way it did on health care this summer. It has become more aggressive about rebutting reports it considers to be false and misleading, both through administration resources and use of the Democratic National Committee.


With criticism raging about the president’s plans to give a back-to-school address to pupils, for example, the White House pointed out that the past four presidents had made similar remarks, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs argued on Air Force One that the remarks were mainstream and non-political. *


About the same time, the DNC came out with ads attacking former Vice President Dick Cheney’s support for harsh interrogation techniques, and accusing Republicans of supporting cuts to Medicare.


Administration advocates are looking ahead to the Senate debate over an energy and climate bill late this year or early next year, and are already making plans to be sure that news coverage is not hijacked by opponents, as was so much of August’s health-care debate.

Bonjour Madame Thomas!

"How much longer are we going to have to wait? It can't wait," Mr. Obama said to union leaders in Pittsburgh. The crowd responded with loud cheers and chants of "We can't wait."

In Lordstown, Ohio, he appealed for support from workers at a General Motors Co. small-car factory. "As long as you've got an ounce of fight in you, I've got a ton of fight in me," Mr. Obama said. "I've said it before: I'm skinny, but I'm tough. So give it for me, guys."


Reuters

President Barack Obama speaks at the AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

After a bruising summer, the president shed some of his nonchalance about the rising and bitter opposition to his policies and proposals. He made a nod to "a lot of stuff" supporters have been hearing "from folks who are not that friendly to me."

And he saw his audiences today as a respite from those critics. Outgoing AFL-CIO President John Sweeney hailed Mr. Obama's decision Friday night to impose stiff tariffs on Chinese car and light-truck tires. That decision has angered some conservatives and raised the specter of a trade war with the nation that Mr. Obama is counting on to finance a record budget deficit and help pressure Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear programs.

But it was popular in a region battered by foreign competition and manufacturing imports. Jon Carmichael, 30 years old, of Cortland, Ohio, said he encouraged the president to use tariffs more widely to protect U.S. manufacturers during a closed-door roundtable Mr. Obama held with a dozen GM workers before his speech. Mr. Obama was noncommittal, saying he could only do so much under the rules of the World Trade Organization. Instead, he told the group, he needed to focus on prying foreign markets open to U.S. products.

The president's visit to the sprawling Lordstown GM plant marked the first meeting with GM workers since his administration effectively took over the company.

In a rousing address, Mr. Obama hailed the return of 150 workers here Monday, and the pending return of more than 1,000 more in the next three weeks as the plant gears up to build more Chevrolet Cobalts. Inventories of the small cars were depleted by the "cash for clunkers" program, and the Lordstown plant is preparing to launch the Chevy Cruze, a small, high-mileage car, next year -- just the sort of vehicle the Obama administration has hoped GM would embrace.

Mr. Obama said he hadn't run for president to run a car company. "It wasn't on my to-do list. It wasn't even something on my want-to-do list."

But, he said, "for me to just let the auto industry collapse, to vanish, would have done unbelievable damage."

The workers here showed thunderous gratitude to a commander-in-chief who has taken a significant political hit for his GM intervention. Lines of diminutive Cobalts formed the backdrop for Mr. Obama's speech, a marked contrast to the Firebirds, Cavaliers and Chevy vans the plant used to produce. Mr. Obama made it clear he did want something from them: their vocal support for his agenda, especially his push to overhaul the U.S. health-care system.

At the AFL-CIO convention, Mr. Sweeney promised, "we in this room are the wind at his back."

But former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania didn't let up. In a conference call organized by the Republican National Committee, Mr. Santorum said the president's plan to cap the emissions of global warming gases would be "devastating" to western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio steel-and-coal country. And the resurgent medical industry of Pittsburgh would "suffer greatly from the Obama socialized medicine proposal."

"He's coming to sell a message that I think won't resonate," Mr. Santorum said.

Mr. Obama framed the struggles of the labor movement as the struggle to maintain a prosperous middle class and an egalitarian society.

"The fundamental test of our time is whether we will heed this lesson, whether we will let America become a nation of the very rich and the very poor, of the haves and the have-nots," he said, "or whether we will remain true to the promise of this country and build a future where the success of all of us is built on the success of each of us."

The working-class, mainly white auto workers in Lordstown and Pittsburgh are precisely the kind of voters Mr. Obama has had a tough time with. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran well in this region with her wins over Mr. Obama in the Ohio and Pennsylvania Democratic primaries, and he is still struggling with the demographic.*

But a dozen workers who sat down with the president before his speech were positive. Jay Tomasic, 31, of Berlin Center, Ohio, dismissed the angry sentiment over Mr. Obama's economic agenda. "Any time you change things, you have people opposed to change," he said.

But Mr. Tomasic is not so sure Mr. Obama's plans for GM -- or the turnaround he hailed at Lordstown -- will take. In the wake of the GM shake-up, three shifts at the plant were cut.

Auto-parts maker Delphi slashed jobs here as well. The "cash for clunkers" rebound is cause for some hope, Mr. Tomasic said. But, he added, "the jury's still out."

Write to Jonathan Weisman at jonathan.weisman@wsj.com

September 16, 2009, 11:51 am
Carter’s Racism Charge Sparks War of Words
By Kate Phillips

Former President Jimmy Carter’s view that some of the recent protests against President Obama, including the “You Lie!” outburst by Representative Joe Wilson last week, are “based on racism,” has fueled a new war of words over this already charged issue.

The former president first weighed in on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Mr. Carter responded to a question about Mr. Wilson’s eruption by saying that he did believe it was laced with racism. Coupling the Wilson remark with the images in recent weeks of angry demonstrators wielding signs depicting Mr. Obama as a Nazi or as Adolf Hitler, Mr. Carter said: “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”

He lamented the tone of disrespect toward the current president, adding: “Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care. It’s deeper than that.”

Mr. Carter’s criticisms drew a sharp response from Michael Steele, the African-American chairman of the Republican party, who called the remarks an “outrage.” In a statement, Mr. Steele said: “President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn’t about race. It is about policy. This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president’s wildly unpopular government-run health care plan that the American people simply oppose. Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn’t create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation.”

Mr. Steele called on President Obama to reject the former president’s assessment. A White House spokesman declined to comment directly on Mr. Carter’s views, citing remarks made by Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, on television this past Sunday that Mr. Obama did not believe the protests or opposition were based on the color of the president’s skin.

By stepping into the debate in such an explicit way, Mr. Carter used labels that the White House and others have clearly tried to avoid in the wake of Mr. Wilson’s remarks and last weekend’s angry demonstration on the Washington Mall. White House aides and some lawmakers had earlier deflected or dismissed questions centered on whether a racially tinged prism was underfoot, in what seemed a concerted effort to try to stay above the fray.

In a television interview on Sunday, Mr. Wilson, who was officially rebuked by the House on Tuesday, dismissed suggestions that his actions were racially motivated. One of his sons sprung to his defense after Mr. Carter’s remarks were publicized, saying his father didn’t have a “racist bone” in his body.

Meanwhile, Mr. Carter elaborated on his answer in a separate interview with NBC anchor Brian Williams. In the interview, which was taped for an upcoming feature timed for Mr. Carter’s 85th birthday and released on Tuesday, the former president drew on his Georgia roots and further added fuel to the fire.

“I live in the South and I’ve seen the South come a long way,” he said. But, “I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people not just in the south but around the country … that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”

Mr. Wilson’s son, Alan, an Iraq veteran who is running for state attorney general, was widely quoted defending his father in the wake of the Carter criticism: “He doesn’t even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won’t comment on former President Carter, because I don’t know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it’s just not in him.”

“It’s unfortunate people make that jump,” Alan Wilson continued. “People can disagree — and appropriately disagree — on issues of substance, but when they make the jump to race it’s absolutely ludicrous. My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race.”

In response to a request for comment, Bill Burton, the White House deputy press secretary, wouldn’t address Mr. Carter’s remarks directly. Instead, he referred us back to those made by Mr. Gibbs on Sunday. “I don’t think the president believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin. I think people are upset because on Monday we celebrate the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse that caused a financial catastrophe unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” Mr. Gibbs counseled that everyone needed to take a deep breath to defuse the hot rhetoric bandied about.
Other prominent officials however, like Representative James Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip from Mr. Wilson’s home state, have publicly implored the White House to directly confront what they view as an unseemly element aimed at, in Mr. Clyburn’s words “delegitimizing” the president. Don’t let it fester, he warned.

Many have argued otherwise, noting that it would be a treacherous road for the president to level a charge of racism at opposition, in part because his detractors — as they did during his election campaign — would likely retort that he’s playing the race card. (In the wake of Mr. Carter’s remarks, that’s exactly what Mr. Steele did, accusing Democrats of employing the race card.)
Instead, for now, White House aides and some lawmakers seem to be working from a different playbook. Along with Mr. Gibbs’s response on Sunday, take a look at these two takes — articulated in separate, unrelated venues on Tuesday.

No. 1, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was asked at his daily briefing whether he agreed with members of the Congressional Black Caucus that racism played a role in Mr. Wilson’s comments. He first indicated that he didn’t see a racial connotation in those remarks. But pressed about the angry protests and asked what else might underlie the vituperative reactions, Mr. Hoyer offered a lengthy digression on Mr. Obama’s election popularity, the expectations carried with it, and the economic downturn that accompanied his rise to the White House. Then, Mr. Hoyer said: “Americans are fearful right now. And they are angry at what has happened to their country and those they hold responsible for what has happened.”

No. 2, Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, used similar words in an interview with Anne Kornblut of The Washington Post. Ms. Dunn said she didn’t believe the protests were racially motivated. “I think that is less a part of it than some other people might think,” Ms. Dunn was quoted as saying. “If you look at the history of this country, you see that in times of great stress and change, there are people who are concerned, who are threatened, there are people who are scared.”

Nearly all agree that the level of hostility aimed at Mr. Obama runs extremely high. Mr. Hoyer termed it unusually harsh. Some attribute part of the volume to the 24/7, Web-and-cable news driven world that we live in. Mr. Hoyer also noted policy divisions, including those who are also angered by how their tax dollars are being used, given the bank and auto bailouts by the government.

But he added: “Now to the extent that Mr. Obama’s race plays a role in this, it is difficult for me to assess. I have said what I said, that I hope that that’s not the case.”

From the White House to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Democrats raced to distance themselves from the former president’s claim that racism was behind Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst and other attacks on President Barack Obama.



“Listen, he’s the former president, and he’s entitled to his point of view,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “I personally believe President Obama and his administration are focused on the issues, and I agree with that.”


“I don’t see this as a racial issue,” added Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). “There are a lot of people upset about how we on the Democratic side can engage like we have been, and there’s a lot of anger out there. So, I don’t see it as a racial issue.”


“I didn’t agree with it,” Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) said of Carter’s remarks.


Congressional Democrats have no interest in starting a racial fight that could turn off swing district voters whose support the party will need if it plans on keeping its grip on Congress in 2010. And the current occupants of the White House made it clear Wednesday that they have no interest in bringing race back to the fore of any discussion about Obama.


“The president does not believe that criticism comes based on the color of his skin,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters in his Wednesday briefing. “We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we’ve made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be taken by both this administration and the previous administration.”


Carter said Tuesday that there’s “an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president,” and that that feeling drives some of the anti-Obama dissent.


He isn’t the first to suggest that race is driving some of the anti-Obama animus. Reps. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) and David Scott (D-Ga.), among others, have suggested that Wilson wouldn’t have interrupted a white president. And New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that “fair or not,” she heard “an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”


In the hours before Tuesday’s vote, Rep. Hank Johnson (R-Ga.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, predicted that if Wilson’s outburst were allowed to go unpunished, “We will have people with white hoods running through the countryside again.”
But, by and large, congressional Democrats have tried to keep the race factor out of the Wilson debate.


With their resolution Tuesday night reprimanding Wilson, Democrats had sought to refocus their narrative toward their efforts to turn around the nation’s economy and pass a sweeping health care reform bill. Leaders had spent Tuesday trying to prevent anger among black lawmakers from boiling over in that evening’s floor debate about a resolution reprimanding Wilson.


During a caucus meeting just hours before the start of the debate, Democratic leadership aides said that Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, an African-American from Wilson’s South Carolina, pleaded with his fellow Democrats to keep the debate far from the racial issue.


But Carter’s comments brought them right back to it — even as they tried to get away.

“I just think 2010 will be about — as most midterm elections are — the whole economic well-being of America,” said Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who heads up the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “And that’s what the focus should be.”


“We should take our cue from President Obama,” Durbin told POLITICO. As his personal friend for many years, I can tell you, he is the last person to raise this issue.”


Wilson brushed off Carter’s comments Wednesday, telling POLITICO that they were a “distraction” — a point with which some of Wilson’s critics agreed.


Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards, who has represented a conservative, heavily white Texas district for 18 years, said he didn’t believe there was any evidence to support Carter’s assertion that racial factors had motivated Wilson.


“I just don’t want a divisive dialogue on race to become a battering ram of division for our country,” he said.

Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis agreed. “It’s not a productive or healthy conversation,” he said.

It’s fascinating to watch how furious liberals have become despite Obama’s being president and Democrats’ controlling the Senate and the House by wide margins. This period should be—they expected it to be—years of milk and honey for them. But events and reality have intervened. They see the Anointed One, Barack Obama—their “sort of God”—failing. He is not only a mere mortal but also a deeply flawed one.

They see support for Obama’s effort to nationalize our health-care system collapsing. They see the American people rising up against his brand of liberalism. They see Republicans with all the intensity on their side. They see GOP candidates leading in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.

They see the popularity of their majority leader, Harry Reid, cratering. They see the Republican party drawing almost even with Democrats on issues like health care—and surging ahead of Democrats on many other issues. They see a dangerous loss of support for Obama among independents and the elderly. They see, in short, what the respected political analyst Charlie Cook sees:


The president’s ratings plummet; his party loses its advantage on the generic congressional ballot test; the intensity of opposition-party voters skyrockets; his own party’s voters become complacent or even depressed; and independent voters move lopsidedly away. These were the early-warning signs of past wave elections. Seeing them now should terrify Democrats.

Many liberals simply cannot process this new data, this horrible turn of events. What we are seeing is the equivalent of a computer crash. As a result, they are returning to what has become for some liberals an emotional and psychological norm: anger and fury, overheated and reckless charges, bitterness and pettiness. It is embodied in people like Frank Rich and Keith Olbermann and Joe Klein, but some version of this affliction extends to many others.

We’re only eight months into the Age of Obama—the period in which he promised to unite our divided country, heal our wounds, and bind up our divisions—and Obama’s critics are now routinely labeled as unpatriotic, racists, liars, mobsters, evil mongers, practitioners of un-American tactics, and more. As Obama’s failures mount up, it will only get worse. The volume will only get louder. And the charges will only get more desperate and incendiary.

It will be an ugly and sad thing to witness. Nervous breakdowns often are.

While the false accusation of racism is not a new tactic, it has been refined by Obama supporters into a toxic powder which is causing damage to the social fabric of the country by artificially injecting race into every political issue.

During the campaign, Obama supporters successfully ended scrutiny of Obama's overstated opposition to the Iraq war by accusing Bill Clinton of racism for calling Obama's narrative a "fairy tale." False accusations of racism also were used against Hillary supporter Geraldine Ferraro and against John McCain in order to frame the political debate.

In the 2008 campaign cycle, the race card worked well because it could. The legitimate enthusiasm for an historic black presidential candidacy combined with media bias created an acceptance that there was no way to fight back against the tactic without making matters worse.

Over time, as Obama assumed the presidency and began implementing sweeping plans to restructure society and to run up the national debt to unthinkable levels, opposition to Obama's plans has grown. This opposition has little to do with race, and includes vast numbers of independents who voted for Obama.

The American people, while they still mostly like Obama on a personal level, increasingly oppose his policies and plans. Democrats know that the debate on the merits of initiatives such as health care and cap-and-trade has been won on the merits by the opposition.

Not surprisingly, the pace of racial accusations has picked up as opposition has grown. Just in the past few days the usual and not-so-usual suspects have been seeking to out-do each other in making accusations of racism including Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, Jimmy Carter, Rep. Hank Johnson, Chris Matthews, a wide range of Democratic politicians, and of course, almost all of the mainstream media.

The effect of these accusations is poisonous. Race is the most sensitive and inflammatory subject in this country. By turning every issue, even a discussion of health care policy, into an argument about race, liberals have created a politically explosive mixture in which the harder they seek to suppress opposing voices, the harder those voices seek to be heard.

The stresses this situation has created were exposed at the town hall hearings this summer. The voices of ordinary Americans who never protested anything before in their lives resembled steam forcing its way through the lid of a tightly closed political lid.

But it will not work this time for the effete intellectual bullies for whom the race card traditionally has been the trump card.

Everyone understands that Obama was not subject to the same scrutiny as other candidates because of the fear of being called a racist. That lack of scrutiny gave us a president whose moderate campaign rhetoric belied an underlying agenda which, if revealed during the campaign, would have resulted in an electoral landslide for McCain-Palin. The vocal opposition we are witnessing has everything to do with a sense of being betrayed not just by a candidate, but by a process which was rigged by the use of the race card.

We are seeing for the first time a strong push-back against the race card players. And that reaction is visceral, much like an allergic reaction, from people who have been stung before.

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Jacobson is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and blogs at Legal Insurrection.

Une pauvre ame au Q.I. peu eleve...

Acorn found its way into the mortgage business through the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1977 legislation that community groups have used as a cudgel to force lenders to lower their mortgage underwriting standards in order to make more loans in low-income communities. Often the groups, after making protests under CRA, were then rewarded by banks with contracts to act as mortgage counselors in low-income areas in return for dropping their protests against the banks. In one particularly lucrative deal, 14 major banks eager to put CRA protests behind them in 1993 signed an agreement to have Acorn administer a $55 million, 11-city lending program. It was precisely such agreements that helped turn Acorn from a network of small local groups into a national player. And Acorn hasn't been alone. A U.S. senate subcommittee once estimated that CRA-related deals between banks and community groups have pumped nearly $10 billion into the nonprofit sector.

Given the economic fallout from the long efforts by advocacy groups to water down mortgage lending standards, as well as the controversy surrounding Acorn's mortgage counseling methods, you would imagine that politicians in Washington would be eager to narrow the scope of the CRA and reduce the leverage that community groups wield under it. But to the contrary, Washington is actually looking to expand the CRA once again.
On Capitol Hill today the House Committee on Financial Services under Chairman Barney Frank is holding hearings on legislation supported by the Obama administration that would bring insurance companies and credit unions under the umbrella of CRA, placing new lending demands on these groups and opening them up to protests and pressure tactics by organizations like Acorn. As proof that Washington is a looking-glass world where basic values and logic get perverted, proponents of the new legislation claim we need more CRA to rein in the bad practices of the housing bubble, which is sort of like arguing that the cure for alcoholism is another martini. Any review of the history of the affordable mortgage movement in America demonstrates the power that CRA had in helping to shred mortgage underwriting standards throughout the industry and exposing us to the kind of market meltdown we've experienced.

Congress passed CRA in 1977 as legislation designed to prompt banks to lend more in lower income areas which advocates claimed were being ignored. Gradually over time community groups learned they could use the law as leverage to negotiate new inner-city lending programs with banks based on lower underwriting standards, which the groups demanded when banks complained that one reason they weren't doing more lending in some neighborhoods was because few applicants in those areas qualified for loans under traditional criteria.

Acorn led the way in this movement. In 1986, for instance, it protested a potential acquisition by Louisiana Bancshares, a Southern institution, until the bank agreed to new, "flexible credit and underwriting standards" for minority borrowers which included counting public assistance and food stamps as income in mortgage applications.

Acorn also put pressure on the two quasi-government purchasers of mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to lower their standards, complaining that they were "strictly by-the-book interpreters" who stood in the way of new lending programs. Under pressure both organizations committed to backing billions of dollars in affordable housing loans under so-called "alternative qualifying" programs which approved loans to individuals who didn't qualify under traditional standards, including those who agreed to go to mortgage counseling classes run by community groups like Acorn.

The threat of CRA proved an effective tool in gathering non-bank lenders into this affordable lending maelstrom, too. In late 1993 President Clinton's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, announced a plan to boost homeownership in the U.S. through a series of government initiatives, including having government subsidize mortgages that required no down payments. To produce more of these new, riskier loans Cisneros proposed expanding CRA to cover mortgage lenders and other financial institutions that were not chartered banks. In Congress Rep. Maxine Waters dubbed mortgage companies "egregious redliners" who needed to be corralled by CRA.

Under pressure from these threats, the trade group that represented mortgage bankers announced an agreement with HUD to sharply boost lending in low-income areas. These mortgage bankers, the so-called non-bank lenders, agreed to "voluntarily" help develop new mortgage products with laxer underwriting standards. The first member of the trade group to sign onto the new program was Countrywide Financial, which partnered with Fannie Mae to commit to $2.5 billion in lending in minority communities under new, lower standards.

Other programs soon followed. Sears Mortgage Corp began a massive effort with Freddie Mac's backing, known as the alternative qualifying initiative, in which low-income borrowers could qualify for a mortgage if their monthly mortgage payment amounted to 45 percent of income, when the industry standard had traditionally been that a mortgage payment should amount to no more than one-third of monthly income. Arbor National Mortgage Inc., a nonbank lender, went further, making loans with monthly payments up to 50 percent of income.

These lending institutions were not only pushed by politicians and advocates into these new programs but were assured by federal institutions that the loans could be safe. In 1992 the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston produced lending guidelines for banks operating in low-income markets which advised them to take into consideration the "economic culture of urban, lower income and nontraditional customers."

The Fed told lenders, for instance, that applicants with poor credit histories, a problem which plagued many would-be urban borrowers, could still be good loan risks if they agreed to mortgage counseling, even though there was no evidence that counseling programs prevented defaults. The Fed also told banks to consider junking their traditional income requirements in favor of lending with much higher ratios of income to mortgage payments, and to consider nontraditional sources of income as qualifying earnings, including unemployment benefits, even though by definition they are temporary and don't last nearly as long as the term of a mortgage.

Some of the recommendations by the Boston Fed and other groups led directly to new mortgage products that engendered the greatest abuses during the housing bubble. The Boston Fed, for instance, urged lenders to allow borrowers who didn't have enough money for down payments and closing costs to accept gifts and grants from charities and nonprofits. That spurred nonprofit groups to solicit donations from builders with houses to sell, which the nonprofits turned around and gave to low-income buyers to use as down payments on homes purchased from the participating builders. Heavily criticized by the IRS as a tax scam and by the Government Accountability Office for their high rates of default, such programs were eventually banned by the Federal Housing Administration, but not until 2007, when the housing bubble was already upon us.
Over time, the mortgage industry not only developed new products based on these lower underwriting standards but eventually allowed many borrowers to qualify for such loans under the reasonable assumption that if they were "safe" for low-income borrowers they were certainly safe for middle and upper income borrowers, too.

Of course, these loans weren't actually safe, and as far back as the early 1990s it was clear that mortgages made under affordable housing standards had a significantly higher default rate. But the facts weren't allowed to get in the way of the housing juggernaut, and so the quantity of risky loans increased. By 2005 HUD required that 45 percent of all loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be from low and middle income borrowers, with no sense whatsoever of whether such a quota was advisable or doable.

It wasn't. Despite all of the talk of how the mortgage crisis has affected all sorts of borrowers across the income spectrum, once the troubles started with the market in 2006 a disproportionate percentage of foreclosures and defaults occurred in low and lower-middle income areas. And some of the pioneers of the affordable mortgage market, like Countrywide, collapsed spectacularly under the weight of their riskier loans, as did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The subsequent drying up of the mortgage market and failure of many banks has proved an especially great burden to the umbrella of nonprofit groups who were operating programs financed by CRA, which has become big business for nonprofits. So now we have, rather than a diminished CRA, legislation in Washington which would find new sources of funding for community groups in the form of credit unions and insurance companies. And the new legislation takes CRA well beyond the mortgage market and into small business lending, requiring financial institutions to begin keeping records on the race and gender of owners of firms who apply for loans. If form follows, soon banks and other financial institutions operating under CRA will be cudgeled into lending to small businesses based on race and gender, which will be the opening of a new round of lower lending standards in the very risky small business sector.

The effort to save and extend CRA in the face of its role in the mortgage market's massive meltdown is testament to the unique power of this legislation to nourish an entire industry of nonprofits which, like Acorn, have been reliable supporters of politicians like Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and a former community organizer and associate of Acorn by the name of Barack Obama.



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Steven Malanga is an editor for RealClearMarkets and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute

une autre pauvre ame

In the war on the czars, Glenn Beck and the GOP are picking up reinforcements from an unlikely source: the Democratic Party.

The Fox News host and leading Republican lawmakers have been hammering President Barack Obama for weeks over a proliferation of policy “czars” — presidential appointees who don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate and aren’t easily held to account by Senate oversight committees.

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin joined the anti-czar chorus Wednesday, asking Obama to detail the roles and responsibilities of all of the czars in his administration and to explain why he believes the use of czars is consistent with the Senate’s constitutional power to offer advice and consent on top-level executive branch officials.

“To the extent that this undercuts that role and people are put in the place of Cabinet people and really are the key authorities and you can’t question them, that’s something worth talking about,” Feingold said. “I think it’s a fair point.”

Feingold says he doesn’t know if there are any constitutional violations, but he suggested that he may hold an oversight hearing on the matter.

Although the czar charge has come mostly from the right, Feingold isn’t the only Democrat to voice concerns about the issue.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in an interview Wednesday that there needs to be better Senate oversight, although she was quick to add that some czar critics have incorrectly labeled a number of Senate-confirmed administration officials as White House czars.

“If you look over certain people [who] have real titles and real authority, I don’t think it’s quite fair to call, for example, David Hayes at the Department of Interior a czar,” the California Democrat said. “He’s the deputy secretary of the Department of Interior, and he’s got real authority.”

Feinstein said she thinks it’s a “problem” when the White House appoints someone to a czar position that is not clearly defined. “I don’t know what a car czar does, for example,” she said.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) — a fierce defender of congressional authority — argued in a letter last February that the czars may upset checks and balances in the federal government.

Van Jones, Obama’s green-jobs czar, resigned earlier this month amid conservative outcry over his association with the Sept. 11 “truther” movement and derogatory comments he made about Republicans. Beck, who helped lead the push against Jones, called him a “self-avowed radical revolutionary communist.”

Republicans on the Hill have picked up on the czar issue, using the presidential appointees as a powerful symbol for the problems of unchecked government.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said the czar fight is a “great issue because it raises the whole issue of this agenda of expansion of government in Washington — and lack of accountability and transparency.

“It seems like everything we’re doing right now is just consolidating power here, as opposed to distributing, which most of our folks would be more favorably disposed to, at least philosophically.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who spearheads messaging for the Senate Republican Conference, has stepped up his criticism of Obama’s use of czars, but he downplayed the role the conservative media have played in his attacks.

“I just think it upsets the checks and balances,” Alexander said. “And it’s a symbol of too many Washington takeovers.”

Democrats note that Obama isn’t the first president to use czars; the Democratic National Committee said Wednesday that George W. Bush had 47 czars — and that congressional Republicans didn’t complain about the use of czars then. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested that Alexander and other Republicans were being hypocritical, since they pushed for czars in the previous administration. *


“It’s something that some talk show hosts have made a great deal out of; they apparently didn’t make a great deal out of it when President [Richard] Nixon did it, [and] there were other czars over the course of the last eight years,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat from Nebraska. “It wouldn’t necessarily be the way I’d do it, but the president is entitled to have his advisers.”


Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) also noted Wednesday that other presidents have made use of czars, but he said that there may be a limit to what they should be allowed to do. “My expectation would be that if you have people with line responsibility, you need to have confirmation,” he said.

* C'est un fait, et a l'epoque, les Democrates s'en plagianeitn eux et comme il etait question de CHANGEment, on pouvait esperer au moins une diminution de ces "conseillers" plutot qu'une augmentation, ne serait-ce que pour montrer le bon exemple.