How to Write a Book Review without Naming the Author or the Book:

David Brooks' ingenious method of going about the panning of George W. Bush's recent fanciful memoir of his years in the White House does just that, and he chooses, of all people, Tolstoy to serve as his substitute.

As Brooks says, "[M]ost historical leaders write pallid memoirs not because they are hiding the truth but because they’ve been engaged in an activity that makes it impossible for them to see it clearly" (emphasis mine).

Happy Thanksgiving!

And the good news is "Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful and divisive Republican lawmakers ever to come out of Texas, was convicted Wednesday of money-laundering charges" (James McKinley, The New York Times). Unfortunately, he's appealing the conviction and it's doubtful he'll ever spend a minute in jail. Elected officials who try to undermine the government, like Richard Nixon, are immune from the penalties the rest of us face. Some clown gets caught with a joint, and he can go away for decades, but an elected politician who commits a treasonous act like trying to undermine the government, which can adversely affect 300 million people, gets a slap on the wrist. Remember when Ford argued that being forced to resign from office, the way Nixon felt he had to, was more punishment than the rest of us could understand. Evidently, we are not a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Some of us live on Mt. Olympus, while the rest of us are mere cows to be milked.

Must Read:

Back in the late 1980s all the talk was about studying the Japanese economic model, which quickly went away in the following decade as that nation sank into economic doldrums. Perhaps we should have paid more attention to what the Germans were doing. Harold Meyerson describes in today's Washington Post what he terms "the Jimmy Stewart" approach to managing the economy: a local centric system that does a better job of limiting unemployment and maintaining the ability to ramp up production as needed. Thus Germany's export/import balance is second only to China's.

Recession? What Recession?

Unemployment may still be hovering near ten percent, but corporate profits continue to set record highs. Try saying $1.659 trillion! The actual figure is $415 billion for the past quarter, but as usual economists can't speak in straight forward terms. They take the quarter and then talk about it stretched out over the year. Nevertheless, there seems little doubt that the larger figure will be achieved. Corporate profits have been steadily hitting astronomical levels since 2006. In other words, the recession has been limited to the working class. (See The New York Times' story.)

Breaking News: Rupert Murdoch Buys White House, Inserts Sarah Palin!

A number of years ago, Charlie Rose interviewed America's best known billionaires over the course of several episodes on his talk show. When he talked to Bill Gates, he asked the world's richest man what it was that he feared most. Without hesitation, Gates replied, "Rupert Murdoch."

Rose was astounded. He found the media mogul to be a charming man, if conservative in his politics. At the time, Murdoch was best known for being a union buster and a panderer of soft core porn. Now Murdoch is becoming known as the man who intends to buy the White House and insert Sarah Palin into it.

Why not? If the country could survive George W. Bush for eight years—if just barely, and the verdict is not yet in—then why not a third rate diva?

But having the country "survive" is not a Rupert Murdoch goal. Gathering a vast amount of wealth into a mountainous pile and sitting on it is. (See Frank Rich's take on the Palin-Murdoch connection.)

Michelle Bachmann Out in the Cold:

The Republican party may pay homage to Tea Party favorite Michell Bachmann of Minnisota, but when it comes to electing people to leadership roles, they don't have a place for her in Washington. As The Washington Post points out, Bachmann is known to insiders as "all talk and no show." Bachmann has never sponsored, much less authored, a piece of legislation, preferring to show up in front of friendly audiences, like Fox News, to spout irresponsible nonsense, where she won't be called on for having her facts wrong, in other words, lying.

Here's my prognostication on the two most powerful women in the Republican Party: Bachmann and Palin will undo each other.

It's Official: Big Energy Defeats Big Irrationality:

Lisa Murkowski, bought and paid for by big energy companies to the tune of $4 million in contributions, has successfully beaten Sarah Palin's lap dog and the Republican party candidate (what's his name with $1.8 million in contributions) in Alaska. (See Gail Collins' take on the outcome.) Big energy can now rest more comfortably, since Murkowski will likely retain Republican leadership of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Quote Worthy of Note:

[I]f Republicans were truly interested in reducing the deficit while stimulating private-sector job creation, they would have jumped to embrace the idea floated last week by Sen. Mark Warner, the centrist Democrat from Virginia: let high-end tax rates return to where they were during the Clinton years and use the $65 billion in additional income over the next two years for tax breaks for businesses that increase investments or hire new employees. After that, the extra revenue would go toward deficit reduction.

And how many of Warner's Republican colleagues have called to express interest in his idea? So far, not a one.

- Steven Pearlstein, "GOP to jobless: Drop Dead," The Washington Post

The truth is that the "small businesses" the GOP says it represents when it wants to continue Bush's bankrupt-America tax cuts are mostly hedge funds and law firms. These groups are already awash with cash, by the way. They're part of that top percentage group that has been getting filthy rich for the past 30 years while the rest of us have been running on their treadmill.

More Must Read:

Mark Greif examines class structure in "The Hipster in the Mirror," in a recent New York Times' essay. Anything that reasonably examines class is important. We are a nation of 300 million, all claiming to be "middle-class." Obviously, if everyone were middle-class, no one would be. Class, the root of "classification," implies division by definition. As others have pointed out, the notion of universal middle-class-dom indicates values and desires. Ironically, no one agrees on what values are middle-class.

What You Need to Read:

Gail Collins explains "What Everything Means" in today's New York Times, including the relevance of pop culture and how we are repeating history. Yes, she also explains why George W. Bush's recent interview (hawking his book) received such low ratings: everybody was watching Sara Palin's daughter on Dancing with the Stars.

The Optimistic Conservative:

Truly, can there be such a creature? David Brooks thinks the outlook for America's future is bright because we are a far more diverse country than China or Germany. (He doesn't mention India or any of several Latin American countries, perhaps in the latters' case because we just never bother to think of them beyond our never ending drug wars.)

Brooks argues that American culture is far more "permeable" than any other society, and he has an excellent point. The current concern, however, is with his fellow conservatives who seem to want nothing more than to return the country to the powers who bulldozed the country into near collapse during the Bush regime. Already leading Republicans, like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are already beating the drums of war with Iran, arguing that we can fight our way out of the current Great Recession just as we did during World War II. (Like that worked so well in the first decade of this century.) Graham and his ilk must intend to re-instate the draft, because otherwise that just won't work. (See Roger Cohen in today's New York Times.)

Such conservatives are the same folks who will tell you from one side of their mouths that World War II saved the country from the Great Depression, not FDR, and then speaking from the other side of their mouths remind you that the war marked the beginning of the great national debt and deficit spending from which the country has never managed to extract itself.

Somebody please explain to me …

who are the happy pranksters who keep electing Michele Bachmann from Minnesota?

Gail Collins clues us in on the new Sarah Palin show airing on TLC. In the first episode, the Palin family is seen sitting in a boat, watching a family of haggard looking bears ambling along the shore. Collins notes that the mother bear is on her way to Planned Parenthood.

TLC used to be the acronym for "The Learning Channel," but now it simply stands for "making money with the least effort possible."

Bachmann claimed on CNN recently that the president's upcoming trip to India would cost the taxpayers $200 million a day, which is more than the taxpayers pay per day for the war in Afghanistan. Is Bachmann that stupid or does she just think the people who elected her to office are? (Answer: Well, they did elect her!)

NOTE: Newt Gingrich is what passes for an intellectual in the Republican party. He is a sometimes lecturer in a history department at a college in Georgia. We won't name it here, they already suffer terribly from the embarrassment. Have you read Lies My Teacher Told Me?

Quote of the Day:

"And I haven't liked you for a very very very long time now. At least since yesterday, I think. Maybe it was somebody else I was thinking about. What's your name again?" — Anonymous student.

Prognosis: Unemployment will remain high as long as Obama is in the White House

The top 5 percent in the U. S. has continued to make record amounts of money throughout the recession. They have no motivation to move the economy along just so the other 95 percent can get back to the levels of stagnation that we have endured over the past thirty years.

Is it a conspiracy? Not really. Those at the top don't need to sit down and discuss this. It is readily apparent in their quarterly statements.

So what does Obama have to do with this? Those at the top, by and large, are simply afraid of what he represents to working people. They felt the same way about Clinton, but Clinton's health care initiative was defeated, and he had to spend most of his two terms working with a Republican congress that pushed the country's top five's agenda: keep wages at pre 198o levels, reduce benefits, destroy any attempts on the part of labor to unite.

By the way, Bush admits in his new book, Decision Points, that he authorized water boarding. No one, however, much expects him to be tried for violation of various torture agreements. After all, he's a member of the top 5 percent, and thus above the law. In Bush's words, "Damn right" he authorized torture. Naturally, he denies the act was torture. Silly semantics. It's only torture when it's done to you, not when you do it to someone else.

Bush said he'd do it again to save lives, and he knows that's why it was being done because Dick Cheney told him so. (Luke, you are my fodder!)

The Day After: Advice for Obama and the Democrats

E. J. Dionne offers excellent advice to the Democrats on how to handle the Republican tsunami, in today's Washington Post, starting with some Reagonomics: revenue sharing for the states.

This is the best post election article I've seen, a step by step argument for the best way to move the country forward and to make the Republicans put up or shut up.

Some of Dionne's points:

Obama should take up the old Republican idea of revenue-sharing by offering states large-scale assistance to prevent layoffs and tax increases. This would be welcomed by the many new Republican governors.

... push forward with an infrastructure bank, which has bipartisan support. There is no better time to rebuild our nation's crumbling public facilities than when borrowing is cheap. And he should address the decline of American manufacturing, a prime cause of the discontent that roils the Midwest.

... make a full-disclosure law the first order of business in the lame-duck congressional session, and come back to it again and again if the bill is blocked.

Republicans need to be pressed to put specifics behind their anti-spending, anti-deficit rhetoric. They should be confronted with budget cuts that force them to face their constituencies. Farm subsidies are not sacred, nor is spending for weapons systems the Pentagon says it doesn't need, nor are hundreds of millions in tax expenditures and preferences. And if Republicans continue to insist on tax cuts for the wealthy, they should have to identify spending cuts to cover the costs.

On immigration, the president should make plain that no solution is possible absent bipartisan agreement.

... press on with reforms to the bureaucracy and to the ways the federal government hires people, buys things and responds to citizens.

"Who are these people?"

Richard Cohen opines in today's Washington Post, as he voices his astonishment that 27 percent of the electorate believe that Sarah "I-never-finish-anything-I-start" Palin is qualified to be president of the United States.

Well, the fact of the matter is that Palin is qualified. She's at least 35 years old, a naturally born U.S. citizen, and alive.

That's it, folks. That's all you need to be. Plus receive the majority of the electoral college's votes, of course.

Cohen seems to think a candidate needs to be smart as well as alive, but let's face it; the last time the Republican party put up a smart man for president he turned into Richard Nixon. Republicans don't want a smart man in the White House, they want someone who just follows orders. The orders of the ultra rich oligarchy who claim ownership of this country.

For more about these folks, check out Bob Herbert's op-ed: The rich, the really and truly rich, have had record high earnings during the Great Recession. These aren't the worst of times for them. They just keep raking in record amounts of profit. Oh, that top 5 percent! To be one of them! Not to worry about patriotism or loyalty or to otherwise give a damn about their fellow man!