As we all know, there are two competing views on the proper role of government. On the one hand, we have those who believe that it is the government's responsibility to redistribute as much income as possible upward to the richest people in the country. On the other hand, there are those who believe that government should promote a strong economy that serves the vast majority of the population.

Adherents of the former group in both political parties have been firmly in control of government in recent decades. This comes out very clearly in the treatment of the foreclosure crisis.

The basic story of the foreclosure crisis is that banks made trillions of dollars of bad mortgage loans that were used to buy or refinance houses at bubble-inflated prices. With the collapse of the housing bubble, more than a fifth of all mortgages are underwater. As a result, many homeowners are struggling to pay mortgages on houses in which they have no equity and have no real prospect of ever getting equity.

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Yesterday the Washington Post published Lally Weymouth's interview with British Vice Prime Minister Nick Clegg which wasn't too bad until she became prosecutor, not interviewer, when the subject of Israel came up. (Weymouth is the daughter of former Post publisher Katherine Graham and mother of current publisher and CEO, Katherine Weymouth).

I wondered how Lally Weymouth, the Post heir, became such a right-wing Zionist. (She tends only to write about Israel, usually penning love notes to right-wing Israeli leaders). True, her mother was half-Jewish (the modern Post was founded by Eugene Meyer) but any Judaism she imbibed at home was of the most assimilationist kind.

So I Googled her. And found this. I won't say more except, holy cow, this is an amazing story. Sad that it is about her 42 year old boyfriend's funeral -- he really was a tragic case -- but, it is a story of the Establishment like none I've ever read before. You won't be able to stop reading.

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The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung has posted a story titled "Obama Envisions No Major Changes in Afghan Strategy."

DeYoung writes:

Despite discouraging news from Afghanistan and growing doubts in Congress and among the American public, the Obama administration has concluded that its war strategy is sound and that a December review, once seen as a pivotal moment, is unlikely to yield any major changes.

This resolve arises amid a flurry of reports from outside experts and former officials who are convinced that the administration's path in Afghanistan is unsustainable and its objectives are unclear. Lawmakers from both parties are insisting that they be given a bigger say in assessing the war's trajectory.

The White House calculus is that the strategy retains enough public and political support to weather any near-term objections. Officials do not expect real pressure for progress and a more precise definition of goals to build until next year, with the approach of a July deadline President Obama has set for decisions on troop withdrawals and the beginning of the 2012 electoral season.

I don't doubt that DeYoung, a top-connected correspondent, had a key White Official convey to her the message that no change was ahead as some in the national security establishment would like to puncture early a growing bubble of criticism of the Afghanistan War, the conduct of it, and the war's objectives.

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Many at Harvard are misconstruing what's at stake in its Standing Committee on Social Studies' coming decision on whether to establish a student research fund in the name of New Republic editor-in-chief and long-time Harvard donor and instructor Martin Peretz.

What's at stake is not Peretz's First Amendment right to say things about Muslims that even he admits were wrong. Nor does it matter whether his apology was contrite enough. That it was groveling didn't make it sincere, but let's not transpose Puritan moralism into "progressive" moralism, as Harvard does so often in its desperate efforts to cleanse itself ritually of sins of class that are destroying the country. The master of such atonement rituals, the academic politician Henry Louis Gates, has leaped to Peretz's defense, just as he did to Harvard President Lawrence Summers' defense, offering cover against charges of bigotry that are actually justified but largely irrelevant to what's truly at stake.

What is truly at stake, not only at Harvard, is the increasing bestowal of quasi-academic distinction on people who've bought or wormed their ways into liberal education, as Peretz has done, sometimes vowing to rescue it from damage done to it by Marxist, politically correct, and post-modernist leftists.

That some leftists have indeed miscarried liberal education doesn't justify their critics' own abuses. I have body scars to show from taking on leftist abuses, sometimes even in the pages of Peretz's New Republic. But that is not the problem now, even though neo-con harpies will be busy insisting otherwise, as they did even when Harvard's corporation ejected Summers for sins worse than political incorrectness.

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In French the phrase on dit means, literally, "one says." But really it signifies what someone in the know considers it au courant and fashionable to say.

No one works harder to parade his apartness from such pseudo-sophisticated posturing than New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, who dispatched the apostles of on dit last week by complaining,

"Our sophistication is merely a skill for many surfaces. ... Its objective is breadth, not depth. It is... the intellectual aspiration of a dinner guest. .... We teach ourselves to become even a little haughty about what we discovered the day before yesterday. ("What, you haven't seen Osipova?") And the victims of our intimidation go home to bone up in private, to remediate their out-of-the-loopness and prepare themselves for a role in the on dit--except of course the strong ones among them who recognize this game for what it is, and prefer something better than sophistication, more specific and more substantive, a parcel of knowledge strenuously acquired and genuinely possessed....."

And here is Wieseltier, recognizing the game for what it is on October 8, 2001, as the ruins of the World Trade Center smoldered, dispatching Vanity Fair sophisticates' reactions to the calamity:

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Only 9 days left. That's all we've got.

We're in the red zone, and the clock is ticking on some of the most important legislation for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. With just 9 voting days left in Congress, we need the crowd to get loud, get us fired up , and push us across the goal line. Think a Rex Ryan speech in the fourth quarter on fourth and goal.

And a touchdown is in sight. We are just 10 yards away from securing critical upgrades to the New GI Bill. These upgrades will help thousands of veterans get the educations benefits they have earned. From National Guardsmen left out of the first round of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, to vets attending vocational school, to warriors looking for on-the-job training and apprenticeships, this legislation will help set these men and women up for success. Just like the first GI Bill did after World War II.

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Check this out from THINK PROGRESS.

One thing I admire about the right (it's the only thing I admire about the right) is that they will not tolerate Republicans who totally sleep with the enemy.

No Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, or Ben Nelsons for them.

No matter who wins his seat in November -- Republican, Democrat, Whig, Maoist, or Tea Party -- Bayh will be out of the Senate and the Senate Democratic caucus. And that is something to celebrate.

Thank you, God.

Photo Credit: Nicholas Rosenberg

With unemployment in the stratosphere and the midterm elections weeks away, politicians naturally want to show voters they're committed to getting jobs back.

So now they're getting tough on China.

But it's a dangerous ploy based on wishful thinking.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told the Senate Banking Committee Thursday the Administration is "examining the important question of what mix of tools, those available to the United States and multilateral approaches, might help encourage the Chinese authorities to move more quickly." Translated: We're on the verge of threatening them with trade sanctions.

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Taken simply on the merits, the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and Russia should have already been ratified by the Senate. It calls for a reduction of about one-third in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, and establishes procedures so that each side can make sure the other is abiding by the agreement. It is an essential stepping stone to further reductions in nuclear weapons, since no other country will consider reducing its nuclear arms until the two countries that possess 95% of the world's nuclear weapons -- the United States and Russia -- move first.

Until now, the treaty has been tied up by partisan politics and old, Cold War thinking on the part of its (Republican) opponents. But there is hope for a change in that unfortunate set of circumstances. Today, the treaty was voted out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and can now be considered by the Senate as a whole. The vote was 14 to 4, including three Republicans: Senators Richard Lugar of Indiana, Bob Corker of Tennessee, and Johnny Isakson of Georgia. To reach the two-thirds vote needed to ratify the treaty, eight Republicans will be needed. Other possibilities include Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio, Robert Bennett of Utah, and a number of others who have yet to declare their final opinions on the agreement.

Time is of the essence. It is imperative that the treaty be ratified this year, and with Congress going out of session on October 8th, it is possible that the agreement will need to be considered during the "lame duck" session after the November elections. Senators need to hear from their constituents now, both about the need to vote for the treaty and about the need to consider it as soon as possible.. Organizations that are working toward that end include the Arms Control Association, the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Two Futures project, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Women's Action for New Directions. They are to be congratulated on today's successful vote, and supported in whatever way we can as they help move the treaty towards ratification.

Readers of my posts know the importance of Israel cultivating, or at least getting out of the way of, the Palestinian private sector. Without an evolved civil society, subtended by sustainable businesses, the prospect of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel and itself is purely hypothetical.

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Here is the latest from Harvard on Peretz. He is considered Harvard's greatest embarrassment in 374 years although one Harvard grad said, "He didn't go to Harvard and he was never more than a TA there. My kid lives in Holworthy Hall and gets drunk and throws up all over himself every Saturday. Is that Harvard's fault? And my kid actually is a student there. Why is Peretz Harvard's shame?"

My answer: the scholarship being set up to honor racist Peretz is at Harvard.

***

Here is Jeff Goldberg citing with approval a defense of Martin Peretz by Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan basically argues that Peretz is a well-intentioned man who is nuts on the subject of Arabs and Muslims but is decent nonetheless.

Sullivan writes, "Marty is a man of deep passion and such passion, especially on a subject like the Middle East, sometimes leads to irrationality."

And, for writing that, Goldberg calls Sullivan "big-hearted" (Sullivan seems "big-hearted" to me too, but I don't know him).

But here's the thing. Peretz didn't slip up once or twice and spout bigotry against Muslims and Arabs. He does it several times a week. Hating Arabs and Muslims is primarily what he is about. How can that be forgivable?

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You may have noticed that we just closed access to reader blogs at TPMCafe. If you'd like to move your reader blog to another platform, we're providing an export tool that coverts your blog to a format called WXR. Short for WordPress eXtended RSS, WXR is the de-facto blog interchange format and is supported by most blogging services and platforms including Movable Type, Typepad and WordPress. The WXR files we're generating will capture up to 500 latest entries (and all the comments on those entries) from your reader blog.

To grab your WXR, you don't need to log in anywhere, just go to the address following this URL pattern:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/yourusername/export.wxr

That should download the file to your hard drive. In your new blogging platform of choice, simply upload that file where it asks for an import, and your blog should be restored on that platform! Enjoy!

Update: It seems like people are having trouble downloading the file, since it's only a URL pattern not a link. Here's a little tool called ExportFile Instant that should generate a link that you can right-click and download. Just type your username in the input box below. A link will appear under the box. Just right-click and download from that link. Don't save as a .doc or any other format. WXR is a form of XML that can be uploaded to various services as is.

Additionally, I see the 10-posts limit, and will be working to fix that. I'll update this post when we've pushed the fix.

Update 2: We just kicked off a rebuild of all the export files that should contain full blogs and comments (up to 500 entries). If yours isn't up yet, it will be within the next few hours. Thanks for your patience!

Update 3: Genghis has asked me to post this link to his instructions for importing your TPMCafe blog to dagblog.

Newt Gingrich is saying if Republicans win back control of Congress and reach a budget impasse with the President, they should shut down the government again. GOP pollster Dick Morris is echoing those sentiments, as is Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R. Ga), and Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller.

I am continuously amazed at the GOP's ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of potential victory. It is the gift that keeps giving.

I was there November 14, 1995 when Newt Gingrich pulled the plug on the federal government the first time. It proved to be the stupidest political move in recent history. Not only did it help Bill Clinton win reelection but it was a boon to almost all other Democrats in 1996 (Gingrich's photo was widely used in negative ads), and the move damaged Republicans for years.

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In case there was any doubt that Republicans are campaigning on arguments that are impervious to the passage of time or even the facts, we have an ugly foreign policy snit today from the nominee for PA-Sen, Pat Toomey. Toomey must be getting his foreign policy advice from John Bolton and Dick Cheney, since his message today tried to portray international cooperation as a radical left cause.

As pretext for his gutter-scraping smear against opponent Joe Sestak, the Toomey campaign used Sestak-supporting Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) as a foil. Disclosure time, I serve on the political action committee for CGS that makes these decisions on donations. Disclaimer time, I bear sole and personal responsibility for this post / rant.

Seriously, you'd have to have a gaping hole in your memory to think that America can promote its interests by giving the rest of the world a big kiss-off. Just as a gentle reminder: Iraq War, detainee torture, climate change denial, "un-signing" a bunch of treaties, bloviating about North Korea instead of really working to halt their nuke program, refusing to press the Israeli government... (Remind me why the gap in liberal enthusiasm?) I guess the only good news is that the Toomey campaign had to make **** up in order to make Sestak (a former Navy admiral, by the way) sound really bad and scary.