Morning Must Reads

–Despite the high profile retirements and a Majority Leader on the ropes in Nevada, the chances of the GOP flipping the Senate in November remain slim, albeit not impossible. Adam Nagourney looks at the map in today’s Times, concluding that Republicans would have to run the table in all competitive races to have a shot.

–Everybody wants to be an outsider: Vice President Biden told CBS News Washington is “broken.” Colorado Senator Michael Bennet landed this somewhat-less-than-devastating counterpunch on his primary opponent in last night’s debate: “I completely agree with everything Andrew said about the dysfunction in Washington and the Senate being broke.”

–It’s been one year since the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and, as I mentioned yesterday, the White House is firing on all cylinders to sell people on the success of the stimulus. Biden is on TV and in the papers making his case, Obama is expected to deliver remarks this morning, and political arm Organizing for America is sending around a chart that basically sums up their argument. Some Republicans will say it failed altogether, Reihan Salam argues there were cheaper alternatives, but I would note two things amid the media maelstrom: Two thirds of the $787 billion dollar package have yet to be deployed, which would suggest pronouncements of failure or success are premature. And regardless of policy, the fact that Democrats have so much convincing left to do one year later suggests a political failure by a party that made the stimulus its signature legislation in 2009.

–The captured Taliban military chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is reportedly providing “useful information.” Former envoy James Dobbins says it “could be a turning point” in the war, and Senator John Kerry says it signals a new level of cooperation from Pakistan.

–And finally, the fabled Paterson bombshell is a tough but fairly uncontroversial profile of a close aide. And he’s still running.

What did I miss?

The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

kevin

And regardless of policy, the fact that Democrats have so much convincing left to do one year later suggests a political failure by a party that made the stimulus its signature legislation in 2009.
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They could have done a better job promoting it, sure. But it’s, um, interesting once again to see a journalist scratch his head wondering why the public is so misinformed.
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The facts are clear. No matter what outside referee you use as your judge — CBO, Moody’s, IHS, etc. — the judgment is the same: the stimulus worked. Period.
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And yet the media coverage is all about perception, not facts. For instance, CNN had a story on this morning that led off with Republican criticism of the stimulus, which was balanced in typical he-said-she-said fashion by the “White House’s insistence that it worked,” and then settled things American Idol style by showing a poll that 63% of the public didn’t think it worked.
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Nowhere in the report were the actual facts of the matter discussed. Nowhere did the reporter or anchor note that there was a broad consensus out there that the stimulus has in fact saved or created over a million jobs. Just the typical he said, they said, and you at home said … and the reporter just shrugs his shoulders, as if all opinions are valid.
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As the numbers make clear, a lot of people have had their jobs saved by the stimulus. And as the media’s work makes clear, a lot of journalists need to lose their jobs.
pintortwo

The captured Taliban military chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is reportedly providing “useful information.” Former envoy James Dobbins says it “could be a turning point” in the war, and Senator John Kerry says it signals a new level of cooperation from Pakistan.
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Or it could be conveniently timed bad-guy-stories that keep you pressies from discussing the bellow and asking the admin. to explain why we need to be so concerned with the Taliban:
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Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.
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The evidence contradicts the claims by top officials of the Barack Obama administration that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the al-Qaeda plot to carry out the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sep. 11, 2001. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al-Qaeda’s global jihadist aims.
(link)
Ffred

How about the current push for the nuclear energy boondoggle? It’s toxic, expensive, and only works at all because it’s been subsidized out the beejeezus.
dwilde1

How about these sour grapes:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/02/16/lynn.amazon.power/index.html

Time for Zamazon to take on Amazon.