WRONG TRACK....The New York Times reports that the Commerce Department is expected to announce strong economic growth Friday morning. But something strange is going on:

In the most recent CBS News poll, conducted last month, 55 percent of respondents rated the economy as good, even though 66 percent of Americans said the country was on the wrong track. In 23 years of polling by CBS, only once — in late 2005 — did a higher percentage of people say the country was on the wrong track.

That is unusual. Normally people are pretty satisfied when the economy is strong. Perhaps the explanation is lower down in the article:

Spending by upper-income families appears to be driving much of the economy's growth. The average hourly wage for rank-and-file workers — who make up roughly 80 percent of the work force — has fallen by 5 cents in the last four years, to $16.49, after inflation is taken into account.

Yep, that might account for it. For most of us, trickle-down economics is more like Republican water torture.

AUTHENTICITY....Ryan Lizza's profile of presidential hopeful George Allen is mostly notable for its evidence of Allen's youthful Confederate sympathies, but there's a subtext to the whole thing that might be even more important. Here is George Allen, man of the people, in action at a political shindig in Virginia:

As the scrum breaks up, Allen turns away and spits a long brown streak of saliva into the dirt, just missing one of his constituents, a carefully put-together, blonde, ponytailed woman approaching the senator for an autograph. She stops in her tracks and stares with disgust at the bubbly tobacco juice that almost landed on her feet. Without missing a beat, Allen's communications director, John Reid, reassures her: "That's just authenticity!" It's a word they use a lot it the Allen world — "authenticity."

The press corps is a sucker for "authenticity," and it's something that both George Bush and John McCain have cleverly exploited — because for most reporters, speaking in complete sentences or having smart ideas about policy are way less important than being a "straight talker" or "comfortable in your own skin." But just as McCain's embrace of Jerry Falwell has shown him to be a wee bit less of a straight talker than his handlers claim, Allen's "authenticity" also turns out to be barely skin deep. See, Allen didn't grow up in the South at all. He grew up in Chicago and California:

In Palos Verdes, an exclusive cliffside community, he lived in a palatial home with sweeping views of downtown Los Angeles and the Santa Monica basin. It had handmade Italian tiles and staircases that his eccentric mother, Etty, designed to match those in the Louvre. "It looks like a French château," says Linda Hurt Germany, a high school classmate.

....While there, [Allen] became obsessed with the supposed authenticity of rural life — or at least what he imagined it to be from episodes of "Hee Haw," his favorite TV show, or family vacations in Mexico, where he rode horses. Perhaps because of his peripatetic childhood, the South's deeply rooted culture attracted him....Whatever it was, Allen got his first pair of those now-iconic cowboy boots from one of his father's players on the Rams who received them as a promotional freebie. He also learned to dip from his dad's players. At school, he started to wear an Australian bush hat, complete with a dangling chin strap and the left brim snapped up. He wore the hat for a yearbook photo of the falconry club. His favorite record was Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison.

Ed Kilgore explains why we should care about this, even though it's long in the past:

As a native southerner, I find this weird and a bit troubling. Personally, I have all sorts of issues with the Confederate Flag and the whole self-destructive cult of the Lost Cause. But I do understand its appeal to people who have grown up saturated in southern culture; I may sometimes consider them SOBs, but they are my SOBs. The idea of young, incredibly privileged, golden-boy-quarterback George Allen of California choosing to embrace southern shibboleths at the precise moment, in the late 1960s, when they were most associated with atavistic racial attitudes, bothers me a lot.

Allen may reasonably claim that what he did as a teenager four decades ago shouldn't be held against him now. But the consistent evidence in Lizza's piece that Allen's red state good 'ol boy schtick is little more than a personal invention, carefully cultivated and maintained through the years, should at least give the press corps pause as they cover his campaign. They've gotten suckered by this act before, and both McCain and Allen are currently gearing up to sucker them again with the same song in a different key. Caveat emptor should be their watch phrase this time around.

PANDERING FOR DUMMIES....I realize that high gasoline prices bring out the worst in everybody, but Senate Republicans have surely given new meaning to the word "pandering" with today's proposal:

Most American taxpayers would get $100 rebate checks to offset the pain of higher pump prices for gasoline, under an amendment Senate Republicans hope to bring to a vote Thursday...."Our plan would give taxpayers a hundred dollar gas tax holiday rebate check to help ease the pain that they're feeling at the pump," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced Thursday.

A hundred dollar rebate! It's bad economics, bad policy, bad optics, and the palpable stink of election-year desperation all rolled into one fetid package. But at least it's means tested!

Frist said the rebates would go to single taxpayers making less than $125,000 per year, and couples making less than $150,000.

Whew. For a minute there I thought they were just being frivolous about this. But as long as Bill Gates doesn't get a rebate check, sign me up.

PORT SECURITY....Is 100% scanning of all containers coming into American ports an unrealistic goal? Republicans may think so, but experts say otherwise:

This is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. Since January 2005, every container entering the truck gates of two of the world's busiest container terminals, in Hong Kong, has passed through scanning and radiation detection devices.

Images of the containers' contents are then stored on computers so that they can be scrutinized by American or other customs authorities almost in real time.

....If they agreed to impose a common security fee of roughly $20 per container, similar to what passengers are now used to paying when they purchase airline tickets, they could recover the cost of installing and operating this system worldwide. This, in turn, would furnish a powerful deterrent for terrorists who might be tempted to convert the ubiquitous cargo container into a poor man's missile.

Hong Kong's pilot program has scanned 1.5 million containers in the past two years and officials there report that it hasn't slowed down operations in any way. The cost to install high-end scanners at ports worldwide would be around $1.5 billion, and not only would it improve port security immediately, but the resulting database of scanned images would be useful for both intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

So why are Democratic proposals to require 100% scanning routinely voted down by Republicans — as they were once again yesterday? Because it's unrealistic? Or because Republicans are afraid to tell their campaign contributors that they're going to have to pay a security fee of $20 per container?

YOU'D THINK IT GREW ON TREES....You want to know how much money oil companies are making lately? Well, ExxonMobil just announced profits of $8 billion in one quarter and their stock dropped on the news. Wow.

HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL.....Greg Sargent has more on the delaying game being played by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Pat Roberts. He's confirmed that Roberts quietly allowed a key deadline for his committee's investigation into intelligence manipulation to slip weeks ago, with no indication of when, if ever, Roberts plans to meet it. Now that the subject of the committee is possible misconduct by President Bush, Roberts obviously has no intention of ever allowing anything to see the light of day.

PUTTING FEMA OUT OF ITS MISERY....A new report says FEMA is FUBAR:

Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released Thursday.

....Describing FEMA as a "shambles and beyond repair," [Republican Senator Susan] Collins said the overall report "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina."

This is truly remarkable. FEMA was a fine organization for eight years under Bill Clinton, widely recognized as one of the best run agencies in the federal government. But after a mere five years of George Bush's stewardship there's now a bipartisan consensus that it's so rundown that the only choice is to get rid of it and build a completely new agency in its place. Astonishing.

DEMOCRATS AND BLOGS....Here's an interesting tidbit. The Diageo/Hotline poll recently surveyed registered Democrats, and one of the questions they asked was about blog readership, something I'm not sure I've seen before in a mainstream poll.

According to the survey, 17% of the respondents read a political blog several times a week or more. In other words, there are roughly 10 million registered Democrats who read blogs on a regular basis. That's a lot.

NET NEUTRALITY....THE CURRENT RULES....Just in case you're curious, here are the current principles of net neutrality that were adopted by the FCC last August. These principles would be enforced by the Barton-Rush bill if it were passed in its current form:

The Federal Communications Commission today adopted a policy statement that outlines four principles to encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of public Internet:

1. Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

2. Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

3. Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

4. Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.
   

Although the Commission did not adopt rules in this regard, it will incorporate these principles into its ongoing policymaking activities. All of these principles are subject to reasonable network management.

The Barton-Rush bill instructs the FCC to enforce these principles if a complaint is submitted, but does not allow the FCC to proactively create new regulations based on them.

Note that these principles prohibit internet providers from blocking access to sites, but do not explicitly prohibit degradation of service. It's an open question how the FCC will interpret "access" if someone ever lodges a complaint alleging that a network provider has deliberately degraded performance in a way that effectively prevents a site or application from working properly.

Note also that these principles do allow internet providers to create special high-speed lanes that they can offer for a price to specific customers. The most likely customers for such a service are video-on-demand providers.

Conversely, Ed Markey's amendment, which failed 34-22 today, would have specifically prohibited network providers from impairing or degrading performance and would have required them to operate "in a nondiscriminatory manner so that any person can offer or provide content, applications, and services through, or over, such broadband network with equivalent or better capability than the provider extends to itself or affiliated parties, and without the imposition of a charge." In other words, no special high-speed toll lanes.

This is just FYI.

PLAME UPDATE....Karl Rove testified today for the fifth time before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame case, and it appears that his testimony revolved around former Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak (no relation to Robert Novak). Here's a recap:

1. Rove originally testified that he had never spoken to Time reporter Matt Cooper about Plame.

2. Later, Rove admitted that he had, in fact, spoken to Cooper. His excuse for his earlier testimony was that he had had a simple memory lapse and had forgotten about the conversation.

3. However, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (or so it was rumored) didn't buy the "I forgot" story and was ready to indict Rove for perjury. But then he held off. This was apparently due to a last-minute conversation he had with Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.

4. What Luskin told Fitzgerald was that Rove really had forgotten about his conversation with Cooper — and what jarred Rove's memory was a conversation Luskin had with Novak, who told him offhandedly that Cooper had spoken to Rove and everyone in the Time newsroom knew it. Luskin immediately went to Rove, initiated a massive search of Rove's email, and eventually discovered that, yes, Rove really had spoken to Cooper. That was what caused Rove to go back to the grand jury and correct his testimony.

5. But is that really true? The reason nobody knew about the phone call in the first place is that it wasn't entered in Rove's phone log, and Raw Story claims that Rove's secretary has testified that Rove specifically told her not to log it. Needless to say, that's mighty incriminating behavior. However, no other news account that I know of has confirmed this.
   

So: did Rove really forget? Or did he lie and then correct his testimony only when he knew he was about to get caught?

Perhaps the best clue is whether Fitzgerald asked Rove to testify (which Fitzgerald might do just to clear up some loose ends) or whether Rove volunteered to testify (which Rove wouldn't do except as a last ditch effort to keep from being indicted). So far, reports are distinctly mixed on this point.

It's all still rumors so far, though. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Luskin released this statement after Rove's testimony:

In connection with this appearance, the Special Counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he is not a target of the investigation. Mr. Fitzgerald has affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges.

That's pretty weaselly language, so it's hard to know what to make of it. Luskin doesn't say that Rove isn't a target, only that he's not a target "in connection with this appearance." As for bringing charges, there's no telling what "no decision" means. Maybe he's waiting to see if Rove cooperates in testimony against someone else. Maybe that's just boilerplate stuff that prosecutors say until the day they hand down an indictment. Who knows?

IMMIGRATION UPDATE....Via Mickey Kaus, John O'Sullivan writes about the immigration debate in the New York Post today and has some kind words for Bill Clinton:

I recently suggested — wrongly — that there had been little or no enforcement of employer sanctions since the passage of the 1986 amnesty law....That was not quite accurate. The Clinton administration in fact managed some (albeit patchy) "internal" enforcement of employer sanctions. For instance, the period 1995-1997 saw 10,000 to 18,000 worksite arrests of illegals a year. Some 1,000 employers were served notices of fines for employing them.

Under the Bush administration, however, worksite arrests fell to 159 in 2004 — with the princely total of three notices of intent to fine served on employers. Thus, worksite arrests under President Bush have fallen from Clintonian levels by something like 97 per cent — even though 9/11 occurred in the meantime.

Unlike O'Sullivan, I don't especially want to deport the 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the country. However, he's right that tighter border security is unlikely to make a dent in illegal immigration as long as there are jobs waiting on this side of the border. All it really does is motivate illegals to stay here permanently once they've made it across, since they know what a pain it will be to get back in if they ever leave.

But — there's an alternative. Don't worry so much about the workers themselves, and instead crack down on employers. If the total cost of employing illegals — i.e., actual cash wages plus fines and possible criminal charges — goes up, employers will simply decide it's cheaper and more convenient to increase the cash part of that wage equation and hire American citizens instead. And if jobs for illegal immigrants dry up, illegal immigration will dry up too.

And the best part is that it's free! Make the fines big enough and the enforcement consistent enough, and the fines pay most of the cost of the enforcement. Couple it with more generous quotas for legal immigration, and the whole "illegal" part of the immigration problem could dry up almost entirely within a few years. It's as close to a free lunch as you can get.

Of course, there's that whole "cracking down on corporations" thing, which isn't exactly a strong point for today's Republican Party. After all, you don't want to piss off K Street! On the other hand, Michelle Malkin promises on behalf of her merry band of xenophobes that if George Bush supports anything resembling common sense on immigration, "This is not going to be forgotten."

Rock, meet hard place. I know you're going to get along famously.

HEALTHCARE UPDATE....Here's the latest on America's (very) rapidly declining healthcare infrastructure. A new survey from the Commonwealth Fund reports that middle and high income workers aren't doing too badly — though they're doing worse than they were five years ago — but that workers with incomes less than $35,000 are in free fall. Five years ago 17% of moderate income workers were uninsured; today that figure has skyrocketed to 28%. And a whopping 41% were without health coverage at some point during the year.

Providing healthcare for the poor and working class isn't the only reason to support a sensible national healthcare plan. Cost, efficiency, peace of mind, and increased choice are equally important drivers. But when nearly half of even those who are solidly in the working class don't have medical coverage during some or all of each year, we're in trouble.

Needless to say, George Bush's beloved "ownership society" isn't the solution. It's the problem. There's no way to fix our dysfunctional healthcare system until we stop forcing corporations to be healthcare providers in addition to whatever their actual line of business is. As these figures show, they don't want to be in the healthcare business, and more and more of them are bailing out. It's time to face reality on this.

LOOSE LIPS....Max Boot is unhappy that Pulitzer Prizes were awarded this year to stories that exposed an illegal domestic spying program and the torture of prisoners in a secret network of prisons in Eastern Europe. It wouldn't have been tolerated during World War II, he says:

I want journalists to cover the present struggle as a fight between good and evil. And when the good guys — that would be U.S. officials — say that certain revelations would help the bad guys, I want them to be given the benefit of the doubt. So, I suspect, do most Americans.

Nice try, Max, but FDR earned the benefit of the doubt. This gang hasn't. They've made it crystal clear that they consider the war on terror little more than a useful campaign topic of unlimited duration.

MANIPULATING INTELLIGENCE....Having slightly defended the honor of Senate Intelligence Committee chair Pat Roberts a few minutes ago, let's switch gears and rip right back into him. You may recall that back in 2004, Roberts divided his committee's investigation of prewar intelligence into two parts: Phase 1 assessed the intelligence agencies themselves, and Phase 2 was supposed to investigate possible prewar manipulation of intelligence by the Bush administration.

Needless to say, the purpose of this was political: it allowed the committee to blast the intelligence community before the 2004 election, but put off the delicate topic of administration malfeasance until after the election.

But then it got even worse: even after the election was over, Roberts still showed no inclination to go ahead with Phase 2. It just dropped into a black hole. Finally, a year after the election, with no progress apparent, Harry Reid dramatically shut down the Senate as a way of forcing Roberts to follow through on his promise. Roberts reluctantly said he would.

But guess what? There's another election coming up this year, and you know what that means. The Hill reports:

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he wants to divide his panel’s inquiry into the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq-related intelligence into two parts, a move that would push off its most politically controversial elements to a later time.

....Questions about the Bush administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence have new political relevance as the midterm elections draw nearer. Public concern about the war in Iraq is considered a major reason for Bush’s low job approval rating, which, in turn, is widely viewed as harmful to congressional Republicans’ political fortunes.

What a worm. We keep hearing that the intelligence committees in Congress are a rare example of sober, bipartisan consensus, but Roberts apparently subscribes to Grover Norquist's definition of bipartisanship: it's date rape. It looks like Roberts is still bound and determined to loyally do whatever it takes to cover up the Bush administration's prewar manipulations.

Via Greg Sargent, who suggests that Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Dem on the committee, needs to grow a pair this time around and not let Roberts get away with this. Sam Rosenfeld agrees. So do I.