Schwarzman’s critics have included fellow members of the financial industry like Robin Plunder of Dewey, Schwindel and Howe, a major U.S. pump-and-dump firm. "That comparison was way too kind to President Obama," Plunder wrote in his monthly letter to his co-conspirators. "Let’s remember that Poland provoked Hitler, after all. But Wall Street had nothing to do with the financial crisis."

Unlike Plunder, however, many financial historians think that Schwartzman’s comparison of President Obama to Chancellor Hitler was too harsh. "It’s way over the top," says Shirley U. Geste, the Ken Lay Memorial Professor of Financial Ethics at William Duer University. "Hitler’s invasion of Poland? No way. I think it would be much more accurate to compare the administration’s proposals for higher taxes on partners in private equity firms to the Hyksos invasion of Egypt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries B.C., which destroyed the 13th Dynasty and ended Egyptian unity until the Hyksos were finally driven out during the 17th Dynasty by Seqenenre Tao II and his son Kamose."

Other financial experts, like Engelbert Homunculus, the Samuel Insull Professor of Predatory Finance at the Gotham City Correspondence School, see other analogies: "I would compare the administration’s tax proposals to the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongol leader Hulaga Khan in 1258. That’s a much closer fit, I think, than the Hitler and Poland thing."

Schwarzmann is not the only Wall Street figure whose bloviations have stimulated debate in the halls of academe as well as the corridors of power. Daniel S. Loeb, a major Democratic fundraiser with the hedge fund Third Point, created a similar stir when he wrote: "As every student of American history knows, this country’s core founding principles included nonpunitive taxation, constitutionally guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority and an inexorable right of self-determination. Washington has taken actions over the past months, like the Goldman suit that seem designed to fracture the populace by pulling capital and power from the hands of some and putting it in the hands of others."

Is Loeb’s interpretation of American constitutional history accurate? Several leading American historians take issue with it.

"It is, of course, true that the Founders intended the Constitution to enshrine the principle that hedge fund managers and other people in the financial industry should pay much less as a proportion of their income than their secretaries and similar commoners," observes Dudley Gray Prose, author of the best-selling study Diet of Controversy: How to Lose Weight on What the Founders Ate. "Even so, I wouldn’t put nonpunitive taxation at the head of a list of the country’s core principles. I think that in any list of core American governmental principles, subsidies for politically well-connected businesses should go first."

K. Templar Mason, who teaches the Founding Era at Leo Strauss College, was more critical. "Loeb’s list of America’s core founding principles is completely inaccurate. I would tell you what the true core founding principles are, but they are secret and known only to Straussian initiates."

The controversy over the attacks on the Obama administration by members of the Wall Street elite has been accompanied by a continuing furor over the comparison by former Republican Senator and deficit commission member Alan Simpson of Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million tits." Zoologists around the country were uniformly critical of Simpson’s metaphor, pointing out that it was anatomically unlikely, if not impossible.

Nigel Doolittle, head of the Zoology Department at the Museum of Natural History in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, muses: "We scientists recognize that Sen. Simpson makes an important point about the worthlessness of American retirees who expect to be repaid after paying Social Security taxes all their lives. After all, they had a chance to get rich and they failed. But I think he would have been better advised to compare elderly Americans to something other than 310 million calves -- say, a swarm of insatiable piranhas in a frenzy, devouring a gaucho’s pony that has tragically strayed from the pampas and stumbled into the turgid currents of the Rio Parana."

"A plague of flesh-eating bacteria devouring Uncle Sam" is how another eminent biologist, Noah Arkwright, professor of parasitology at Wossamata University, thinks Simpson should have described American retirees who depend on Social Security because their low wages prevented them from accumulating high levels of personal savings. Professor Arkwright points out that it is not too late to get the metaphors right. "From the point of view of natural science as well as budgetary analysis, it is crucial that any parasitological metaphors included in the deficit commission report, in addition to vilifying hard-working, ordinary Americans who depend for their retirement income on Social Security, should be zoologically plausible. You wouldn’t want it to seem like mere political rhetoric."

"They talk about me like I'm a dog," he said with a smile, and then noted that line wasn't in his prepared text (which is below). He made a funny pun about Ds and Rs: "When you want to move your car forward, you put it in D, to drive. They want to put it in R, reverse." He acknowledged the way the GOP's fear strategy hurts Democrats and holds the country back (a phenomenon explored so well by Jefferson Cowie.)

It's easy for folks to stir up stuff and turn people on each other, everybody sets their sights a little lower. That's not who we are. We do not give up. We do not quit. Whenever times have seemed at their worst, Americans have been at their best. Because it is in those times when we roll up our sleeves and remember that we will rise or fall together - as one nation, and one people. That's the spirit that started the labor movement. Alone we may be weak, divided we may fall, but if we are united, we are strong. That's why they call them unions. That's why we're called the United States of America. I'm gonna make this case all across America.

Of course, I got excited about Obama's Labor Day speech a year ago. One speech doesn't mean a turnaround. I'm a little bit more encouraged that Obama is pushing a package of $50 billion in additional jobs spending, on roads and other infrastructure. It's probably not enough, and even this modest bill probably won't get the Republican and conservative Democratic support it needs to pass. But it's good to see the president acknowledge that the government has a responsibility to continue to spend its way out of this recession, and not merely hinge his program on small business and research and development tax cuts.

Here's the speech, in case you missed it:

Hello, Milwaukee! Thank you to the Milwaukee Area Labor Council and to all of my brothers and sisters in the AFL-CIO for inviting me to spend this day with you - a day that belongs to the working men and women of America.

I want to acknowledge your outstanding national president, a man who knows that a strong economy needs a strong labor movement: Rich Trumka; Dave Newby, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO; and our host, your Milwaukee Area Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer, Sheila Cochran, who I hear has a birthday tomorrow. I'm proud to be here with our Secretary of Labor, a daughter of union members, Hilda Solis; and our Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood. And let's hear it for the folks at the forefront of every fight for Wisconsin's working men and women - Senator Herb Kohl; Congresswoman Gwen Moore; and your outstanding mayor, Tom Barrett. Your other great senator, Russ Feingold, was here with you earlier, standing with you and your families just like he always has, but he had to head to his hometown of Janesville to participate in their Labor Day parade.

So it is good to be back in Milwaukee. Of course, this isn't my first time at Laborfest. I stood right here with you two years ago, when I was still a candidate for this office. During that campaign, we talked about how, for years, the values of hard work and responsibility that built this country had been given short shrift, and how that was slowly hollowing out our middle class. About how some on Wall Street took reckless risks and cut corners to turn huge profits, while working Americans were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat. And about how the decks were too often stacked in favor of the special interests and against working Americans.

What we knew, even then, was that these years would be some of the most difficult in our history. And then, two weeks later, the bottom fell out of the economy. Middle-class families suddenly found themselves swept up in the worst recession in our lifetimes.

So the problems facing working families are nothing new. But they are more serious than ever. And that makes our cause more urgent than ever. For generations, it was the great American middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It's got to be that way again.

It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the twentieth century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today - the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label.

And it was that greatest of generations that built America into the greatest force for prosperity, opportunity and freedom the world has ever known. Americans like my grandfather, who went off to war just boys, returned home men, and traded one uniform and set of responsibilities for another. Americans like my grandmother, who rolled up their sleeves and worked in factories on the home front. When the war was over, they studied under the GI Bill; bought homes under the FHA; raised families buttressed by good jobs that paid good wages with good benefits.

It was through my grandparents' experience that I was brought up to believe that anything is possible in America. But they also knew the feeling when that opportunity is pulled out from under you. They would tell me about seeing their fathers or uncles losing jobs during the depression; how it wasn't just the loss of a paycheck that stung. It was the blow to their dignity; their sense of self-worth. I'll bet a lot of us have seen people changed after a long bout of unemployment; how it can wear down even the strongest spirits.

So my grandparents taught me early on that a job is about more than a paycheck, as important as that is. A job is about waking up every day with a sense of purpose, and going to bed each night fulfilled. A job is about meeting your responsibilities to yourself, to your family, to your community. I carried that lesson with me all those years ago when I got my start fighting for men and women on the South Side of Chicago after their local steel plant shut down. I carried that lesson with me through my time as a state senator and a U.S. Senator. I carry that lesson with me today.

And I know that there are folks right here in Milwaukee and all across America who are going through these kinds of struggles. Eight million Americans lost their jobs in this recession. And while we've had eight straight months of private sector job growth, the new jobs haven't been coming fast enough. Now, the plain truth is, there's no silver bullet or quick fix to the problem. Even when I was running for this office, we knew it would take time to reverse the damage of a decade's worth of policies that saw a few folks prosper while the middle class kept falling behind - and it will take more time than any of us wants to dig out of the hole created by this economic crisis.

But on this Labor Day, there are two things I want you to know, Milwaukee. Number one: I'm going to keep fighting, every single day, to turn this economy around; to put our people back to work; to renew the American Dream for your families and for future generations.

Number two - and this I believe with every fiber of my being: America cannot have a strong, growing economy without a strong, growing middle class, and the chance for everybody, no matter how humble their beginnings, to join that middle class. A middle class built on the idea that if you work hard and live up to your responsibilities, you can get ahead - and enjoy some basic guarantees in life. A good job that pays a good wage. Health care that'll be there when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you're not rich. An education that'll give our kids a better life than we had. These are simple ideas. American ideas.

I was thinking about this last week. On the day I announced the end to our combat mission in Iraq, I spent some time, as I often do, with our soldiers and veterans. This new generation of troops coming home from Iraq has earned its place alongside that greatest generation. Like them, they have the skills and training and drive to move America's economy forward once more. And from the time I took office, we've been investing in new care, new opportunity, and a new commitment to their service that's worthy of their sacrifice. But they're coming home to an economy hit by recession deeper than any we've seen. And the question is, how do we create the same kind of middle class opportunity my grandparents' generation came home to? How do we build our economy on the same kind of strong, stable foundation for growth?

Well, anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it'll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up - they just haven't studied our history. We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn't come this far by letting special interests run wild. We didn't do it by just gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We did it by producing goods we could sell; we did it with sweat and effort and innovation. We did it by investing in the people who built this country from the ground up - workers, and middle-class families, and small business owners. We did it by out-working, out-educating, and out-competing everyone else.

Milwaukee, that's what we're going to do again. That's what's been at the heart of all our efforts: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn't just survive this crisis - but thrives once we emerge. And over the last two years, that's meant taking on some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for too long.

That's why we passed financial reform that provides new accountability and tough oversight of Wall Street; reform that will stop credit card companies from gouging you with hidden fees and unfair rate hikes; reform that ends the era of taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street once and for all.

That's why we eliminated tens of billions of dollars in wasteful taxpayer subsidies to big banks that provide student loans. We're using those savings to put a college education within reach for working families.

That's why we passed health insurance reform that will make coverage affordable; reform that ends the indignity of insurance companies jacking up your premiums at will or denying you coverage just because you get sick; reform that shifts control from them to you.

That's why we're making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving your tax refunds, a simpler system for enrolling in plans like 401(k)s, and fighting to strengthen Social Security for the future. And to those who may still run for office planning to privatize Social Security, let me be clear: as long as I'm President, I'll fight every effort to take the retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street. Not on my watch.

That's why we've given tax cuts to small business owners. Tax cuts to clean energy companies. A tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans, just like I promised you on the campaign. And instead of giving tax breaks to corporations to create jobs overseas, we're cutting taxes for companies that put our people to work here at home.

That's why we're investing in growth industries like clean energy and manufacturing. And you've got leaders here like Tom Barrett and Jim Doyle who have been fighting to bring those jobs to Milwaukee and to Wisconsin. Because we want to see the solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars of tomorrow manufactured here. We don't just want to buy stuff made elsewhere; we want to grow our exports so the world buys products that say "Made in America."

Because there are no better workers than American workers, and I'll place my bet on you any day of the week. When the naysayers said we should just let the American auto industry vanish and take hundreds of thousands of jobs down with it, we said we'd stand by them if they made the tough choices necessary to compete once again - and today, that industry is on the way back.

Now, another thing we've done is make sound and long-overdue investments in upgrading our outdated and inefficient national infrastructure. We're not just talking new roads, bridges, dams and levees; but also a smart electric grid and the broadband internet and high-speed rail lines required to compete in the 21st century economy. We're talking investments in tomorrow that are creating hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs today.

It was because of these investments, and the tens of thousands of projects they spurred all over the country, that the battered construction sector actually grew last month for the first time in a long time. Still, nearly one in five construction workers are unemployed. And it doesn't do anybody any good when so many American workers have been idled for months, even years, at a time when there is so much of America to rebuild.

That's why, today, I am announcing a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America's roads, rails and runways for the long-term.

Over the next six years, we are going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads - enough to circle the world six times. We're going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways - enough to stretch coast-to-coast. We're going to restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next generation air-traffic control system to reduce travel time and delays for American travelers - something I think folks across the political spectrum could agree on.

This is a plan that will be fully paid for and will not add to the deficit over time - we're going to work with Congress to see to that. It sets up an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on the smartest investments. It will continue our strategy to build a national high-speed rail network that reduces congestion, travel times, and harmful emissions. It will cut waste and bureaucracy by consolidating and collapsing more than 100 different, often duplicative programs. And it will change the way Washington spends your tax dollars; reforming the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck.

All of this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul. It's a plan that history tells us can and should attract bipartisan support. It's a plan that says even in the still-smoldering aftermath of the worst recession in our lifetimes, America can act to shape our own destiny, to move this country forward, to leave our children something better - something lasting.

So these are the things we've been working for. These are some of the victories that you helped us achieve. And we're not done. We've got a lot more progress to make. And I believe we will.

But there are some folks in Washington who see things differently. When it comes to just about everything we've done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress said no. Even where we usually agree, they say no. They think it's better to score political points before an election than actually solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses. No to middle-class tax cuts. No to unemployment insurance. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. Even as we speak, these guys are saying no to cutting more taxes for small business owners. I mean, come on! Remember when our campaign slogan was "Yes We Can?" These guys are running on "No, We Can't," and proud of it. Really inspiring, huh?

To steal a line from our old friend, Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women that they find so offensive?

When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said "no" to that, too. In fact, the Republican who's already planning to take over as Speaker of the House dismissed them as "government jobs" that weren't worth saving. Not worth saving? These are the people who teach our kids. Who keep our streets safe. Who put their lives on the line for our own. I don't know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.

We made sure that bill wouldn't add to the deficit, either. We paid for it by finally closing a ridiculous tax loophole that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. It let them write off the taxes they pay foreign governments - even when they don't pay taxes here. How do you like that - middle class families footing tax breaks for corporations that create jobs somewhere else! Even a lot of America's biggest corporations agreed the loophole should be closed, that it wasn't fair - but the man with the plan to be Speaker is already aiming to open it up again.

Bottom line is, these guys refuse to give up on the economic philosophy they peddled for most of the last decade. You know that philosophy: you cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; you cut rules for special interests; you cut working folks like you loose to fend for yourselves. They called it the ownership society. What it really boiled down to was: if you couldn't find a job, or afford college, or got dropped by your insurance company - you're on your own.

Well, that philosophy didn't work out so well for working folks. It didn't work out so well for our country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

I'm not bringing this up to re-litigate the past; I'm bringing it up because I don't want to re-live the past. It would be one thing if Republicans in Washington had new ideas or policies to offer; if they said, you know, we've learned from our mistakes. We'll do things differently this time. But that's not what they're doing. When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they'd follow "the exact same agenda" as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.

So basically, they're betting that between now and November, you'll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you'll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you'll just believe that they've changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they're asking you for the keys back.

Do you want to give them the keys back? Me neither. And do you know why? Because they don't know how to drive! At a time when we're just getting out of the ditch, they'd pop it in reverse, let the special interests ride shotgun, and hit the gas, careening right back into that ditch.

Well, I refuse to go backwards, Milwaukee. And that's the choice America faces this fall. Do we go back to the policies of the past? Or do we move forward? I say we move forward. America always moves forward. And we are going to keep moving forward today.

Let me just close by saying this. I know these are difficult times. I know folks are worried, and there's still a lot of hurt out here. I hear about it when I spend time in towns like this; I read about it in your letters at night. And when times are tough, it can be easy to give in to cynicism and fear; doubt and division - to set our sights lower and settle for something less.

But that is not who we are. That is not the country I know. We do not give up. We do not quit. We are a people that faced down war and depression; great challenges and great threats; and lit the way for the rest of the world. Whenever times have seemed at their worst, Americans have been at their best. Because it is in those times when we roll up our sleeves and remember that we will rise or fall together - as one nation, and one people. That's the spirit that started the labor movement. The idea that alone, we are weak. Divided, we fall. But united, we are strong. That's why we call them unions. That's why we call this the United States of America.

Milwaukee, that's the case I am going to make across the country this fall - yours. And I am asking for your help. If you are willing to join me, and Tom Barrett, and Gwen Moore, and Russ Feingold, we can strengthen our middle class and make our economy work for working Americans again. We can restore the American Dream and deliver it safely to our children. That's how we built the last American century. That's how we'll build the next. We don't believe in the words "No, we can't." We are Americans, and in times of great challenge, we push forward with an unyielding faith that we can. Yes, we can. Thank you, God Bless You and the work you do, and God Bless the United States of America.

 

 

Forty-seven of those vacancies have been labeled emergencies by the judiciary because of heavy caseloads.

Even some Republican senators have complained. Sen. Lamar Alexander took to the Senate floor in July to plead with his own leaders for a vote on an appeals court judge supported by Alexander and fellow Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker.

With Congress returning Sept. 13 for a session shortened by members' desire to campaign for re-election in November, there's little time to reverse the trend. Some say there's little chance of reversing it as polls show a rising chance the GOP will capture the Senate, which could stiffen GOP resistance to confirmation votes.

The Obama administration got a slow start sending names to the Senate last year and has yet to try to fill two vacancies on the high-profile federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, where four current Supreme Court justices once served.

Obama has voiced only tepid public objection as more and more of his judicial nominees become stranded in Senate limbo. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been unwilling to set aside the considerable time needed to force votes under complex Senate rules.

Now there are 45 nominees awaiting action, two for nearly 13 months. After Alexander's complaint, the Republicans agreed to allow a mid-September vote for appeals court nominee Jane Stranch, first nominated by Obama in August 2009.

At this point in President George W. Bush's first term, 72 judges had been confirmed by a Senate that Democrats controlled for much of Bush's first two years. By contrast, the Senate has had 59 or 60 seats under Democratic control during Obama's tenure but has only confirmed 40 of his judges. Nixon got 33 judges through a Democratic-controlled Senate.

"What's interesting is you got a guy (Bush) who was barely elected president with a Senate in the hands of the opposing party, and he is going to come out better in his first two years than a guy who got elected with a big majority and had a big majority in the Senate too," said Brookings Institution scholar Russell Wheeler.

White House counsel Bob Bauer and progressive groups squarely blame Republicans.

The Senate GOP is obstructing "confirmations across the board, even forcing noncontroversial nominees who passed committee with overwhelming bipartisan support to wait months for a floor vote," Bauer said.

Marge Baker, executive vice president of the liberal People for the American Way, said that stalling votes on judges is "part and parcel of the general obstruction we're seeing right now."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has acknowledged that his strategy is partly payback for Democrats' blocking some Bush appointees.

But McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said the responsibility for the lack of confirmations lies with Obama, who nominated just 33 people to judgeships in 2009, and Reid, who controls the Senate calendar.

"We can't confirm what's not there," Stewart said.

But Republican senators have forced postponements of hearings and votes in the Judiciary Committee and used their power under the chamber's rules to block any easy route to full Senate votes.

Persistent resistance by the opposition to a president's appeals court nominees reaches back to President Bill Clinton's administration and a Senate controlled by Republicans for six of Clinton's eight years.

Wheeler said the Republicans now are delaying votes on district court nominees, too. And in one instance, Republicans for months even blocked confirmation of openly gay Marisa Demeo to be a local trial judge in the nation's capital. The Senate confirms local judges because the city is a federal enclave.

Republican objections to Obama's nominees, however, are not primarily rooted in the candidates' ideology. With a couple of exceptions, the president has nominated moderates who receive overwhelming, sometimes unanimous, support once they get a vote.

The Obama nominees so far have not excited progressive groups that once hoped a Democratic administration combined with a large Democratic Senate majority would remake the federal courts.

When Bush left office, Republicans had appointed just under 60 percent of all federal judges. Twenty months later, the number has dipped only slightly to a shade under 59 percent, according to statistics compiled by the liberal Alliance for Justice. Because of retirements, the percentage of Republican-nominated district judges actually has gone up.

The president has had some successes, notably changing the composition of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., which had been dominated by conservatives chosen by Republican presidents.

His nominees also have been diverse: Just under half are women, one-quarter are African-American, 12 percent are Asian-American and 7 percent are Hispanic.

Obama also filled two Supreme Court vacancies. The confirmations of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan took considerable time, although they do not completely explain the initially slow rollout of judicial nominees.

Even now, Obama has nominated roughly 40 fewer people for judgeships than either Bush or Clinton at this point.

The smaller number of nominees has been a surprise because Obama once taught constitutional law and installed a team with vast experience nominating and confirming judges.

"It seems like it has not been a priority," said Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. "It's been surprising because he's a constitutional lawyer, he knows how courts work, how important they are. It seemed like an easy bone to throw to his base to make a mark, a lasting mark."

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Online:

Federal courts: http://www.uscourts.gov

After two terms as governor and nine as the state's lone congressman, Castle appears better positioned than other veterans who faced a tea party-backed challenge this year. If he prevails over Christine O'Donnell on Sept. 14 -- he and GOP officials have launched a fierce counterattack -- he would join more than a half-dozen other veteran Republican officeholders on the ballot in Senate races.

In matters of style as well as policy and political experience, they are the polar opposite of Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sharron Angle of Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado. Those three tapped into an anti-government sentiment, espouse politically risky positions, won primaries over establishment candidates, and now face difficult races in the fall.

No matter the blend of candidates that Republicans end up with, a persistently weak economy and voter anger add up to enough competitive races to give them at least an outside chance of winning Senate control. Already, a constellation of outside groups is spending heavily on television in Senate races, including more than $5 million this summer for two groups backed by former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove.

Republicans need to capture 10 seats to win a majority, and as many as a dozen held by Democrats appear competitive, as well as at least five currently in the hands of the GOP.

Ironically, as the primary season draws to a close and the fall campaign dawns, both parties try to straddle politically inconvenient facts that underscore broader trends.

Democrats are loath to concede their majority is at risk. "I don't think there are" enough competitive races for that to happen, said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, head of the party's Senate campaign committee. Yet the party's strategists issue a stream of statements saying that many tea party-backed challengers in tight contests are "too extreme" and will cost the GOP its chance of gaining control.

The committee is making a quick check to see whether it has a late, low-budget opportunity in strongly Republican Alaska, where tea party-backed challenger Joe Miller defeated GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a recent primary.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other lawmakers in his party tried repeatedly to defeat tea party-supported challengers in Kentucky, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and elsewhere in recent months, privately expressing fears they would prove unelectable.

Now, after compiling a mixed record in the primaries, the campaign chairman, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, says the fall is "an opportunity for Republicans, independents libertarians and disgruntled Democrats to come together around a fiscal responsibility message and one that says the government can't grow itself out of this problem."

There was never any doubt that GOP strategists wanted Castle on the ballot. Arguably the most moderate Republican in the House, he also was viewed as the only contender with a chance to win the seat at a time when Beau Biden, the state attorney general and son of the vice president, seemed likely to run.

When the younger Biden opted not to run, enter Chris Coons, a lawyer now in his second term as executive of the largest of the state's three counties.

Other veteran Republicans on Senate ballots this fall include Rep. John Boozman of Arkansas, whom party officials say needed some coaxing to run. Now he leads Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln by significant margins in public and private polls.

Already, Democrats have tacitly written off a seat in North Dakota, where former GOP Gov. John Hoeven, initially a reluctant candidate, is favored to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan.

Former GOP Sen. Dan Coats is ahead in the polls as he tries to win back an Indiana seat he voluntarily gave up a dozen years ago.

Next door in Illinois, Republican Rep. Mark Kirk is in a tougher race with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for the seat President Barack Obama once held. Kirk, too, was courted heavily by Cornyn and others.

Republican veterans also are on the ballot in important Midwestern races where GOP senators are retiring. In Ohio, former Rep. Rob Portman, who served in two Cabinet-level positions in the Bush administration, polls ahead of Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and had a multimillion-dollar cash-on-hand advantage in the most recent fundraising report.

Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt, a former member of the House Republican leadership, is in a competitive contest with Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan for an open seat in GOP hands.

In other races that are tight heading into the fall campaign, the political pedigree of the Republican is mixed.

In Florida, former House Speaker Marco Rubio is a rarity, a tea party favorite who is also an accomplished politician. The three-way race with Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek and Gov. Charlie Crist, a former Republican running as an independent, is one of the most unpredictable in the country.

In Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, a former congressman and ex-head of the conservative Club for Growth, is running against Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak. Sestak defeated Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary.

Republicans got the recruit they wanted in Washington state this summer, and Dino Rossi is challenging Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.

In Wisconsin, California and Connecticut, where veteran Democrats are on the ballot, it's the size of a candidate's checkbook as much as ideology that mattered keenly to Republican recruiters.

Millionaire Ron Johnson, a political novice, is challenging Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. In Connecticut, where Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is retiring, Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, spent millions of her own money to win the primary and has pledged to spend millions more against Democratic Attorney General Dick Blumenthal.

In California, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is challenging three-term Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in the costliest campaign state in the country.

In a difficult environment, Democrats also cite opportunities to pick up a seat.

High on the list is Missouri, followed by Kentucky, where Attorney General Jack Conway is running against Paul, and the complicated three-way Florida election. In Louisiana, Democratic Rep. Charlie Melancon is challenging Republican Sen. David Vitter.

Their claims have been more muted about the Delaware race, although the vice president is expected to make at least two more appearances in the state this fall.

Coons says he successfully restored his county to financial health and is ready to do the same for the federal government.

Treading carefully, at least for now, he says Castle is a "decent and likable man" but one who votes more and more like a conservative Republican while Delaware grows increasingly Democratic.

"He has lost or forgotten the courage to stand up to the increasingly conservative bent of his party," Coons says, pointing to the congressman's votes against the Obama administration's economic stimulus legislation of 2009 as well as the landmark health care bill.

On the other hand, as an outsider, Coons complains that Castle voted for the financial bailout of 2008, adding it lacked accountability.

Castle's rebuttal skips past any political implications of his votes in Congress.

The stimulus did little beyond creating temporary construction jobs, he says in an interview, and the administration lowballed the cost estimates for the health care bill. "Most of the banking (bailout) money has been repaid with interest."

A Republican in a Democratic state, and a longtime moderate in a conservative party under pressure from the tea party movement, Castle talks of government and civility, not politics.

"Once we are elected I think we have a responsibility to sit down and work out our differences," he said.

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Online:

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: http://www.dscc.org/

National Republican Senatorial Committee: http://www.nrsc.org/

A byproduct of reporters' narcissism, politicians' vanity and the Beltway's lockstep devotion to militarism, this present-tense hagiography ascribes the positive attributes of sanitized history to current events. And whether or not the analogies are appropriate, they inevitably help sell contemporary actions -- no matter how ill-advised. As just one example: If 9/11 was Pearl Harbor, as television so often suggested, then American couch potatoes were bound to see "shock and awe" in Baghdad as a rational reprise of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

Of course, after we were told seven years ago that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," and after a historically unique conflict that has lasted longer than almost any other, you might think the press would start questioning the government's martial stagecraft. You might also think all the comparisons to the past would stop. Instead, D.C. journalists and lawmakers are now celebrating the supposed withdrawal from Iraq, implicitly presenting the White House's August announcement as the second coming of V-J Day.

The trouble is that the announcement is anything but, because the war isn't even close to over. And we know that because the military is quietly acknowledging as much.

Just beyond pundits' soaring paeans and President Obama's history-referencing declaration of victory, the Pentagon admits "nothing will change." That isn't a paraphrase -- it's a direct quote from the Army's chief spokesman in Iraq. It came just before a Colorado Springs Gazette dispatch quoted another military official saying "our mission has not changed." The article then went on to point out that "current and scheduled deployments will resume as planned," as 50,000 soldiers remain stationed in Iraq.

"American troops in Iraq will still go into harm's way," notes the Brookings Institution's Kenneth Pollack. "American pilots will still fly combat missions in support of Iraqi ground forces, and American special forces will still face off against Iraqi terrorist groups in high-intensity operations ... (The United States) will probably face casualties there in the years to come, regardless of how we label our mission there."

The truth, in short, is clear: Despite Washington portraying this month's Iraq announcement as another big happy event created by Great Men, the only history that's truly germane to this moment is the kind that may portend future misfortune.

Notice that the White House has taken to saying that the remaining American troops are merely serving with the Iraqi army in an "advise-and-assist" role. Notice, too, that these same officials are now touting the Iraqification of that nation's security.

Considering this, if historical allegory must infuse America's foreign policy discourse, shouldn't reporters be pondering how our government deceptively employed the same "military adviser" moniker in the disastrous Vietnam buildup? And shouldn't elected officials remember that "Vietnamization" was the seemingly pro-withdrawal panacea floated four blood-soaked years before U.S. forces finally left Southeast Asia?

Sure they should -- but they don't because it's easier to pretend this is just another gauzy snippet in a saccharine History Channel documentary. And it's not just easier -- as with most present-tense hagiography, pretending the Iraq conflict has concluded serves a deliberate purpose: to make America forget the altogether unglamorous consequences of permanent war.

Does the president need to do anything, for 9/11? I'd be fine with him sitting this one out. The world does not need more pious platitudes delivered on the anniversary of still-unfathomable violence and pain and destruction.

Though I guess pious platitudes are preferable to lower Manhattan hate marches, like the one that will be held at the site of the World Trade Center on the anniversary of the attacks. And that hate march is pretty much why Obama will definitely not be in New York.

No matter where he goes, the president’s critics will likely speak out. If he doesn’t go to New York , Obama could be accused of dodging ground zero because of the Islamic center. If he does, he risks facing the anger of some Sept. 11 families and New York officials offended by his position.

Yes, but which of those criticisms will be the basis for Politico's big Sept. 13 story on Obama's stupid decision? I'm going with "he is perceived by some critics as being weak on national security issues." With quotes from Newt Gingrich and Peter King.