memeorandum: “The Obama tax cuts for the middle class” (Greg Sargent/The Plum Line)

9:10 PM ET, September 13, 2010

Top Items:

Timothy R. Homan / Bloomberg:

Rich Americans Save Tax Cuts Instead of Spending, Moody's Says — Hand the wealthiest Americans a tax cut and history suggests they will save the money rather than spend it. — Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Donklephant and The Political Carnival

Stephanie Condon / CBS News:
Mitch McConnell Stands Firm: No Partial Bush Tax Cut Extension

Discussion: CBS News, Daily Kos, Liberty Pundits Blog, Ezra Klein, Guardian, Firedoglake, Say Anything, National Review and HotAirPundit

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
“The Obama tax cuts for the middle class”

Discussion: TPMDC and Talking Points Memo

Christina Bellantoni / TPMDC:
House Dems Will Not Force Vote On Middle Class Tax Cuts

Discussion: The Politico, TalkLeft, Daily Kos and The Plum Line

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Boehner concedes only three percent of small businesses affected …

Discussion: The Politico, Washington Monthly, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, TPMDC, Wonk Room, Crooks and Liars and Talking Points Memo

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
MCCONNELL BREAKS WITH BOEHNER, WILL FIGHT MIDDLE-CLASS TAX BREAKS. …

Discussion: Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!

Associated Press:
GOP spokesman: Senate GOP to oppose Obama tax plan

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Freedomist, Swampland, Raw Story, First Draft, FrumForum, Washington Monthly and New York Times

The Huffington Post:

Tom Ross, Delaware GOP Chair, Threatened With ‘Bullet In The Head’ — WHAT'S YOUR REACTION? — The chairman of the Delaware Republican Party received a death threat last week over his support for Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del) over Tea Party challenger Christine O'Donnell in the state's upcoming Senate primary …

Discussion: TPMDC, Weigel, Ballot Box, Raw Story, The Atlantic Online and FrumForum

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

2 Insurgents Could Hurt G.O.P. Chances for Senate Takeover — Tomorrow's primaries in New York and six other states - the last of the 2010 cycle, save for Saturday's primary in Hawaii and a runoff in Louisiana on Oct. 2 — originally looked as though they'd have little impact on the electoral landscape.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Facebook, Doug Ross, New York Times, The Politico and National Review

Sean J. Miller / Ballot Box:

Conservative group didn't think O'Donnell could win in Del. — A large conservative advocacy group aligned with the Tea Party movement stayed out of the Delaware Senate race over concerns about Republican Christine O'Donnell's candidacy. — “We stayed out of that race because we're …

Discussion: Public Policy Polling, CNN, ABCNEWS, The Other McCain and The Note

ABCNEWS:
Delaware Senate Race: A Kamikaze Republican and the Tea Party

Discussion: The Freedomist, CNN and Ballot Box

The Note:
From the Campaign Notebook - Delaware: The GOP Primary and the Candidates

Discussion: Mediaite

Michelle Malkin:
The DE Senate GOP primary: Castle, Soros & a health advisory

Discussion: JOSHUAPUNDIT, Riehl World View, The Moderate Voice, Swampland, Liberty Pundits Blog and The Mahablog

David Catanese / The Politico:
Mike Castle: Outsiders trying to ‘take me out’

Discussion: msnbc.com, GOP 12 and Democratic Strategist

David Frum / FrumForum:

Gingrich: Obama Wants Whitey's Money — Newt Gingrich upped the rhetoric against the president on Friday night. Interviewed by National Review's Robert Costa, Gingrich cited Dinesh D'Souza's cover story in Forbes. … With the Forbes story and now the Gingrich endorsement …

Discussion: TheFourthBranch.com, Washington Monthly, Political Punch, The Caucus, Salon, Democracy in America, DownWithTyranny!, THEROOT.COM, Hullabaloo, News Desk, Guardian, Politics Daily, Ben Smith's Blog, Think Progress, Jay Bookman and PostPartisan

Adam Serwer / American Prospect:

Forbes Embraces Birtherism Lite. — Sometimes it's best to think of racism as intellectual laziness. That is, it reflects a failure to evaluate people for who they actually are, because its easier to slip them into a familiar, predetermined category that doesn't upset other related conclusions a person might have come to as a result.

Discussion: JustOneMinute, Weigel, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Daily Dish, National Review, The Rachel Maddow Show, Balloon Juice and The Huffington Post

Andy Barr / The Politico:
Andy Card: Newt Gingrich is not ‘helpful’

Discussion: Outside the Beltway, CNN and FrumForum

Chris Johnson / Washington Blade:

Reid to schedule 'Don't Ask' vote next week — The Washington Blade has learned that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) intends to schedule a vote next week on major defense budget legislation that contains “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” repeal language, regardless of any objection from members of the U.S. Senate.

Discussion: Wonk Room and Joe. My. God.

Alexander Nicholson / Congress Blog:
Reid my lips: no forgiveness if no NDAA in September

Discussion: The Note, The Politico, Open Left, Pam's House Blend and The Page

Michelle Malkin:

Document drop: Breaking: DOJ Inspector General will investigate Obama voting rights record — Just obtained this letter from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine to members of Congress informing them that he will open up a review of the Obama administration's selective enforcement …

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and JOSHUAPUNDIT

Sherry Devlin / Missoula Editor:

We didn't “sneak in” to Sarah Palin's speech — First: This blogpost is not about politics. — Second: Contrary to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's warning to the standing-room-only crowd at this afternoon's Teen Challenge fundraiser in Missoula, the media did not “sneak in” to her speech.

Discussion: Missoulian and The Political Carnival

Alex Seitz-Wald / Think Progress:
Paranoid Palin Hunts For Media ‘Moles’ At Montana Speech

Discussion: News Hounds

Chris Cillizza / The Fix:

Elevating John Boehner (and will it work) — The White House has become very interested in House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) of late. — In a speech last week in Ohio, President Barack Obama mentioned Boehner a whopping eight times(!) and White House surrogates spent …

Discussion: Don Surber, The Huffington Post, Weigel, PostPartisan, USA Today and Washington Post

Timothy P. Carney / Beltway Confidential:
Pelosi has pocketed nearly twice as much lobbyist cash as Boehner

Discussion: theblogprof, Hot Air, NewsBusters.org, Say Anything, Politics Daily, Liberty Pundits Blog, GayPatriot and The Caucus

Martin Peretz / The New Republic:

An Apology — Nicholas Kristof and I do not see the world—and America's role in it—in the same way. I have sometimes expressed my disagreements with his opinions vociferously (vociferousness is my business). But in yesterday's The New York Times, he quotes two sentences that I recently wrote …

Discussion: The Daily Dish, Nicholas D. Kristof, Mediaite, Salon, Raw Story, Politics Daily, Hit & Run, Ò", The Huffington Post, TPMCafe, TPM LiveWire, Wonkette, Gawker and The Atlantic Online

Mark Halperin / The Page:

Halperin's Take: Brown Escalates War of Words With Bill Clinton — HALPERIN'S TAKE: The Whitman ad is probably the best TV spot by any campaign all cycle. Clinton and Brown have always had a rough relationship, which probably hit rock bottom... ... in 1992, when, in the same debate …

Discussion: Hot Air, Salon, Taylor Marsh, RedState and Politics Daily

Michael Scherer / Swampland:
Jerry Brown: “I Did Not Have Taxes With This State” UPDATED

Discussion: Washington Wire, The Fix, CNN and Calbuzz

Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:

Reporting With the Weekly Standard — Hot on the heels of unearthing the Kenyan anti-colonialist roots of Barack Obama's ideology, conservative journalists are apparently scouring the progressive community for more shady African ties. The latest began when my colleague Sara Haile-Mariam …

Discussion: Balloon Juice

Patrick Gavin / The Politico:
MIDTERM BIEBER FEVER

Discussion: Michelle Malkin, Outside the Beltway, Think Progress, JammieWearingFool and PostPartisan

Michelle Malkin:

What will — and won't — get you banned from the U.S. — President Obama's Department of Homeland Security and State Department are hard at work making sure that no drunk foreign teens who call the commander-in-chief names ever set foot in our country. — Feel safer?

Discussion: AmSpecBlog

Virginia Wheeler / myfoxdc WTTG FOX 5:
UK Teenager Banned From America For Life Over Obscene Obama Email

Discussion: The Confluence, Hot Air, LewRockwell.com Blog, Say Anything and Outside the Beltway

Leon H. Wolf / The New Ledger:

Meghan McCain's Dirty, Sexy Politics — On June 20, 2002, the United States Supreme Court decreed, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, that the mildly mentally retarded were categorically exempt from capital punishment, reasoning that fully functional adults of diminished mental capacity …

Discussion: Outside the Beltway and AmSpecBlog

Lydia Saad / Gallup:

Generic Ballot Splits 48% for GOP, 43% for Dems — Republicans close to unanimous in supporting GOP candidates — PRINCETON, NJ — Forty-eight percent of registered voters favor Republican congressional candidates and 43% favor Democratic candidates in Gallup's national generic ballot for the week of Sept. 6-12.

Discussion: TPMDC, The Hill, The Huffington Post and Taegan Goddard's …

Sean Trende / Real Clear Politics:

Signs of a Democratic Rebound? — Connecticut Senate - Many race watchers had pegged the Connecticut Senate race as an “upset special.” After all, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had committed what looked a self-inflicted wound when it was discovered that he had exaggerated his military service.

Discussion: Democratic Strategist and Weekly Standard

WIS-TV:

Obit: In lieu of flowers, donate to anybody running against Obama in 2012 … ROME, GA (NBC) - About 50 people attended the funeral for Don Unsworth, a northwest Georgia businessman, father, grandfather and husband. — Described by family as lively, humorous and politically conservative …

Discussion: CNN, Weasel Zippers and HotAirPundit

Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:

63% say trade out Snowe — Last November, right after she supported the health care bill in committee, we found that 59% of Maine Republicans wanted to replace Olympia Snowe with someone more conservative while only 31% said they would support her again in 2012.

Discussion: AMERICAblog News and Outside the Beltway

Lawrence Wright / New Yorker:

INTOLERANCE — When a dozen cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammed appeared in the conservative Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, in September, 2005, there was only a muted outcry from the small Danish Muslim community, and little reaction in the rest of the Muslim world.

Discussion: News Desk, Atlas Shrugs, The Confluence and Talking Points Memo

Ben Smith / Ben Smith's Blog:

Liberal despair: Age of irrationality — A couple of influential writers broadly in sympathy with Obama today float the same notion: That we're living in a fundamentally unreasonable age, that voters basically can't be trusted, and that democracy is just barely muddling through.

Discussion: The Daily Dish, RedState and Hullabaloo