The Commentariat -- July 27, 2012

“Deleveraging Shock.” Paul Krugman: what happens when "everyone is trying to pay down debt at the same time. Household borrowing has plunged; businesses are sitting on cash because there's no reason to expand capacity when the sales aren't there; and the result is that investors ... [have] no place to put their money. So they’re buying government debt, even at very low returns, for lack of alternatives.... They are in effect begging governments to issue more debt. And governments should be granting their wish, not obsessing over short-term deficits.... It's simply crazy to be laying off schoolteachers and canceling infrastructure projects at a time when investors are offering zero- or negative-interest financing."

... "... add The New York Times editorial page to the list of the converted [a/k/a A**HOLES -- see video above]. We forcefully advocated the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. 'Few economic historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive,' one editorial said in 1988. Another, in 1990, said that the notion that 'banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture' 'makes little sense now.' ... Having seen the results of this sweeping deregulation, we now think we were wrong to have supported it."

Euripides, Banking Guru. Rob Urban & Sharon Smyth of Bloomberg News: "faced with mounting mortgage delinquencies are following the advice of 5th-century BC playwright Euripides: Time heals. Banks restructure loans rather than foreclose, extend terms to as long as 45 years, grant payment holidays of up to a year when borrowers are only required to make interest payments, or add guarantors to loans, often children who will eventually inherit the property." CW: Another argument for a classical education.

Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic: "An investigation undertaken by law clinics at NYU, Fordham, Harvard, and Stanford has concluded, after eight months of study, that the NYPD abused Occupy Wall Street protesters and violated their rights on numerous occasions during the 2011 protests that radiated out from Zuccotti Park. Their report ... focuses on transgressions against international law." Friedersdorf lists some of the incidents which -- because of independent documentation -- appears most credible.

Presidential Race

CW: for those of you who are discouraged that millions of Americans will vote for a guy who in 24 hours insults our "special" Anglo-Saxon friends, reveals their state secrets & spends the evening collecting bribes from the local fat cats, here's some better news from Nate Silver: "Mr. Obama's chances of winning the Electoral College rose in our model, to 66.4 percent from 65.0 percent, mostly because the stock market gain slightly bolstered the model's economic index." CW: these numbers are volatile, but they beat "Romney leads Obama."

England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that the rest of the world wants to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambition. -- Mitt Romney, from his book No Apology

WE Are Amused at our Veddy, Veddy Diplomatic GOP Presidential Candidate -- who has repeatedly stepped in it & pissed off our lovely Anglo-Saxon friends across the pond. Definitely not ready for primetime. Special relationship, my ass (or as Willard would say, "my backside"):

     ... Gaffe No. 1 begins a minute in:

... We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere. -- David Cameron, British Prime Minister, responding to Romney's remark & alluding to the 2000 Olympics Romney ran in The Middle of Nowhere, Utah ...

     ... Adam Gabbatt of the Guardian: "From criticising the biggest sporting event Britain has held in over 40 years, to 'looking out of the backside of 10 Downing Street', Mitt Romney's first foreign trip of his presidential candidacy hasn't gone quite as well as he might have hoped. As the former Massachusetts governor continues to gaffe his way across London, [Gabbatt provides] a round-up of Romney's red-facers. So far." ...

... Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, comments before a crowd of thousand's on one of Romney's gaffes:

     ... "Worse than Sarah Palin." Sam Coates of the Times of London: "... senior figures in all three political parties suggested that they had not been overwhelmed by Mr Romney in person and were disappointed by his Olympics gaffe.... One diplomatic source said of the encounters: 'It is worse than Sarah Palin in terms of basic diplomacy.' Another said: 'There is none of the stardust of his opponent.'" ...

     ... Alex Spillius of the Telegraph: "His derisory comments questioning Britain's preparedness for the Olympics in an interview with NBC were a strange way to build bridges with a country that he says should be restored as the umbilical ally of the United States, and a strange way to demonstrate the persuasive qualities needed as leader of the free world.... His comments to NBC ... showed how poorly he understands the land of his forefathers.... A standard [Romney campaign] refrain is to run down Europe -- not a hard case to make at the moment -- and that includes us. Not once have I heard him praise Britain or extol the special relationship he now belatedly trumpets. He even reprised his dislike of the [British National Health Service] shortly before leaving for these shores...." ...

     ... Suzi Parker of the Washington Post: "Rule number one when visiting a foreign country: Don't insult it.... [Romney's visit] is such a stark contrast from when Obama visited London in July 2008. He was cheered in the streets with 'Yes We Can.' (So far, no reports of massive cheering for Romney can be found.)" ...

     ... Matt Yglesias proves that Mitt is right: "English" houses really are small. ...

     ... David Taintor of TPM has a bit more on the Brits' reactions to Romney's insults. ...

     ... Ditto Holly Bailey of Yahoo! News. ...

     ... A video recap from the Democratic National Committee:

     ... AND Alex Altman of Time has an excellent overview of Romney's rolling gaffes. "Romney's blunders have undercut the entire purpose of the trip, which was to prove he could adequately represent U.S. interests with international leaders despite his scant foreign policy experience. He hasn’t met that standard so far." ...

... CW: Okay, this "gaffe" isn't so funny. Steve Chaggaris of CBS News: Romney revealed that he met with the leader of MI6, the British intelligence agency, which he was supposed to "keep under wraps." MI6 would not acknowledge the meeting. Includes video of Romney giving reporters an apparently classified account. He's just not all that smart. ...

... The Upside: Romney dissed Americans in London, too. NBC Reporters: "... those of us that have traveled overseas and been involved in these VERY limited press avails have rarely seen heads of democracies TOTALLY ignore their own press corps but answer ANOTHER press corps' questions." ...

... AND There's This: Ashley Parker & Landon Thomas of the New York Times: "After a day made long by his remarks about London's readiness for the Olympic Games, Mitt Romney found a friendlier audience here on Thursday night at fund-raisers heavily populated with American financiers...." ...

     ... NOW, on to Israel where Romney will make friends with ordinary people by visiting a deli & ordering a ham sandwich before heading to Poland to regale the locals with hilariously offensive Polish jokes. ...

... AP: "Michelle Obama formally opened her stint as leader of the U.S. Olympics delegation on Friday morning, attending a breakfast with American Olympians and saying she was 'just in awe' of their company." Obama, who eschewed the new American practice of disparaging the host country and sharing its state secrets in public remarks, was rewarded with social invitations from Queen Elizabeth II and Britain's first lady Samantha Cameron.

Jonathan Chait of New York: "Last night, Brian Williams asked Romney [see video above] to distinguish his approach to economic growth from Bush's. The answer was a mere recapitulation of his plans.... Romney did not make the slightest attempt to distinguish his approach from Bush’s. Of course that is because it's the same thing! Every single idea Romney listed -- low taxes, free trade, less regulation, developing energy, etc. -- was part of Bush's program.... Conservative rhetoric almost uniformly fails to acknowledge that even pre-crash growth under Bush was absolutely miserable."

** NEW. A very good piece by Jonathan Alter on "You Didn't Build That": "Romney said the president's gaffes reflected his 'strange' views, and supporters such as former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu said such beliefs were 'un-American.' In fact, it's the DIY libertarians -- who deny our 223-year nexus between government and business -- who are out of sync with U.S. history.... Like it or not, our private sector has always operated with at least some indirect government help. And it's perfectly legitimate for the president to point that out."

PolitiFact on "You Didn't Build That": "In speeches and videos, the Romney campaign has repeatedly distorted Obama's words. By plucking two sentences out of context, Romney twists the president's remarks and ignores their real meaning.... Romney also conveniently ignores Obama's clear summary of his message, that 'the point is ... that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.'" ...

... More Proof that People Vote Republican Because They're Stupid or Delusional. Michael Van Sickler of the Tampa Bay Times: Mitt Romney's "We Did Build This" Farce put on another road-show event in Tampa featuring two local business people boasting about how they got no help at all from the government. One teensy problem: most of their work is on government projects. In addition, both get a leg up on government contracts because of their minority status, something they don't get in the private sector. CW: reading these people's rationalizations for their anti-government views just leaves you shaking your head -- or wanting to shake some sense into theirs. ...

... Aviva Shen of Think Progress runs down a list of Romney's stellar examples of totally "independent" businesspeople who "Did Build This" -- with a lot of help from the government.

... "It's a Weekday, So It's Time for Another Misleading Edit of an Obama Quote." Dave Weigel of Slate:

What He Said: I'll cut out government spending that's not working, that we can't afford, but I'm also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history and everybody did well. Just like we've tried their plan, we tried our plan -- and it worked. That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term.

What the Romney Camp Says He Said: Just like we've tried their plan, we tried our plan -- and it worked. That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term.

... "All out of Context, All the Time." Steve Benen: "Republicans aren't just occasionally taking Obama quotes out of context; they're actually building their entire 2012 campaign strategy around sentiments the president didn't actually say." Benen runs down a few of the more flagrant examples.

Maggie Haberman of Politico: "... the Priorities USA Action ad mocking Mitt Romney on the Olympics came down from YouTube [Thursday] morning, over copyright infringement warnings from the International Olympics Committee." Haberman thinks the whole purpose of the ad was to force both campaigns & their supporters to keep ads featuring the Olympics off the air so Willard can't so easily tout his role in the 2000 Winter Olympics.

The ultra-conservative New Hampshire Union-Leader on Romney's refusal to release his taxes: "How did Romney get himself into this position in the first place? He has been running for office for a long time. His presidential aspirations predate the tax returns in question. What could he possibly have been thinking when he failed to ensure that everything contained in those documents was above reproach? Or was he simply not thinking at all? Surely he could not have arrogantly believed that he could withstand any storm that developed by bluffing his way through it? If so, it hasn't worked."

News Ledes

President Obama signs the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012:

... Yahoo! News: "The president also announced he would speed another $70 million to Israel to advance the so-called 'Iron Dome' short-range missile defense system, a response to sustained rocket fire from Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."

Crime Still Pays. Telegraph of London: "Jerry del Missier, the former Barclays Bank executive at the centre of the interest-rate rigging scandal that cost the lender £290m, has walked away with a pay-off of almost £9m."

Washington Post: "The shooting suspect in the Colorado theater rampage was seeing a university psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia in the weeks before the July 20 attack, according to court records released Friday."

Bloomberg News: "The U.S. economy expanded at a slower pace in the second quarter as a softening job market prompted Americans to curb spending. Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced, rose at a 1.5 percent annual rate after a revised 2 percent gain in the prior quarter...."

The Hill: "Senior House and Senate leaders voiced optimism that they could reach agreement on a stopgap spending measure that would prevent a government shutdown shortly before the November election."

New York Times: "Syrian Army helicopters fired on neighborhoods in Aleppo on Friday morning, activists said, as the army readied assault troops and armored columns for a possible invasion of the city, Syria's densely populated commercial capital.... On Friday a member of the Syrian Parliament, [Iklhas Badawi,] had defected and crossed into Turkey." ...

... Reuters: President "Obama is moving cautiously toward greater support for Syrian rebels, as international diplomatic efforts that had been Obama's first preference falter.... The White House has crafted a presidential directive, called a 'finding,' that would authorize greater covert assistance for the rebels, while still stopping short of arming them. It is not clear whether Obama has signed the document...."

Washington Post: "Iran is rapidly gaining new capabilities to strike at U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, amassing an arsenal of sophisticated anti-ship missiles while expanding its fleet of fast-attack boats and submarines, U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts say. The new systems, many of them developed with foreign assistance, are giving Iran's commanders new confidence that they could quickly damage or destroy U.S. ships if hostilities erupt...."

Cold War Redux. AP: "Russia is talking to Cuba, Vietnam and the Indian Ocean island country of Seychelles about housing Russian navy ships, the nation's navy chief said in remarks reported Friday.... [President Vladimir] Putin ... has grown increasingly eager to challenge Washington."

Reuters: "Barclays Plc revealed  a new regulatory probe and more U.S. lawsuits on Friday, making it harder for the British lender to repair the damage to its reputation caused by its role in the interest rate-rigging scandal shaking banks. Despite these latest blows, Barclays beat forecasts with a profit of more than 4 billion pounds ($6.3 billion) in the first six months of the year."

Austerity, as Good an Idea as Ever. Bloomberg News: "Spanish unemployment rose to the highest on record after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy made it easier to fire workers while implementing the steepest budget cuts in the country's recent democratic history. Unemployment, already the highest in the European Union, rose to 24.6 percent in the second quarter."

New York Times: "Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, and his wife, MacKenzie, have agreed to donate $2.5 million to help pass a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State, instantly becoming among the largest financial backers of gay marriage rights in the country."

Haaretz: "A day before Romney is due to land in Israel, U.S. President Barack Obama will sign the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which is meant to approve and expand military cooperation between the two countries. The act, which Congress passed a week ago, will be signed by the U.S. president at a White House ceremony on Friday."

The Commentariat -- July 26, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on "Ross Douthat's Assault on Logic." (And an excellent response from reader maineprep.) The NYTX front page is here.

** Nicholas Kristof: "Federal law requires large theaters to have wheelchair seating, ramps as well as stairs, and bathrooms that are accessible to the disabled. Fire codes limit audience size. Emergency fire exits must be illuminated.... Indeed, on that horrific night in the theater last week, only one major element wasn't regulated: the guns and ammunition used to massacre viewers. As a nation, we regulate fire exits, but not 100-round magazines. We shield youngsters in cinemas from violence -- but only if it's on the screen.... If we impose rules on toy guns to make them safer, shouldn't we do the same with real ones?" ...

... Former Chicago policeman Michael Black in a New York Times op-ed: "We register automobiles and require proof of driving proficiency before granting driving licenses. Is it so unreasonable to consider a national or state-by-state registry for firearms? While I'm not totally opposed to concealed carry laws, why not require comprehensive background checks, psychological screening and training? And while it might be considered un-American to prevent an ordinary citizen from owning an assault rifle, would it be too much to ask why he needs to have a specially modified 100-round magazine?"

New York Times Editors: On a day Senate Republicans "generously" allowed a vote on middle-class tax cuts, then voted against it, they "also voted to raise taxes on 13 million low- and moderate-income working families ... [and] give wildly generous estate tax breaks to a few of the richest American heirs at a cost of $119 billion to the deficit."

Matthew Wald & John Schwartz of the New York Times (via NBC News): "From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation's infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms."

Gail Collins: life in Williston, North Dakota, where the unemployment rate is one percent, is still pretty horrible.

Craig Timberg & Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Skype, the online phone service long favored by political dissidents, criminals and others eager to communicate beyond the reach of governments, has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police, said industry and government officials familiar with the changes."

Linda Greenhouse wants Chief Justice John Roberts to get on the teevee & educate the public about the Supreme Court.

In Virginia, a conservative Republican county official goes rogue & channels President Obama & Elizabeth Warren on the importance of infrastructure to the country's future -- and the need to pay for it with tax dollars. CW: local officials of the GOP stripe, who get the pothole calls from voters, often also get the importance of infrastructure. Thanks to reader Lisa for the link.

Also on the Blue Virginia site, via Lisa:

Presidential Race

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "President Obama and Mitt Romney, who can have trouble connecting with voters on a personal level, are trying to define each other as detached from mainstream American life."

Wow! The President got his groove back. He said yes to gun control. Pretty amazing:

AP: "In one of his most expansive responses yet to gun crime, President Obama on Wednesday embraced some degree of control on the sale of weapons but said he would also seek a consensus on combatting violence." CW: be sure to read down to Romney's reaction to the Aurora killings. The AP lets readers know he's either a liar or pathetically uninformed. I think the press is finally getting its groove on re: Mitt's mendacity. ...

... Amy Gardner & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama promised Wednesday to lead a national discussion about gun control after the deadly mass shootings last week in Colorado.... The president's comments were striking because he has generally been cautious on the politically potent issue of firearms.... Obama said that laws should be better enforced and that guns should be kept out of the hands of people with mental illness. Although he reiterated his commitment to uphold gun owners' Second Amendment rights to responsibly bear arms, he blamed Congress for inaction on what he called common-sense restrictions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals [and the mentally ill]." ...

... Garrett Haake of NBC News: "Mitt Romney said Wednesday that more restrictive gun laws would likely not have prevented last week's deadly mass shooting at a Colorado Cineplex, and argued that it would take Americans changing their hearts, not their legislation, to prevent similar future attacks.... " With video.

Americans United for Change has put out this Web video zeroing in on Romney's LIBOR scandal connection. Too bad it's not running nation-wide:

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times: Back in 2009, when Turbo-Tax Tim Geithner was in the hot seat for not paying his Medicare & Social Security taxes, "Mr. Romney ... thought tax records were fair game" & deliberate tax evasion was "disqualifying."

Commemorative pins for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, made in China & BangladeshIt's cheaper to get it from China. -- Mitt Romney, President of the Salt Lake City Olympics Organizing Committee, ca. 2002, on commemorative granite bricks manufactured in China "despite an abundance of granite in the nearby Wasatch mountain" ...

... Chris Good of ABC News: "After controversy arose over Ralph Lauren' 2012 U.S. Olympic uniforms' Chinese origins, Mitt Romney told ABC’s Jonathan Karl that the issue is 'extraneous' to the focus of the games.... 'I'm not going to get into the uniform issue.' Like the uniforms in 2012 and in 2002, when Mitt Romney ran the Salt Lake Olympics much of its official memorabilia was manufactured overseas, including a 9/11 commemorative pin and another fashioned in the shape of Romney's head. Salt Lake 2002 Olympics paraphernalia obtained by ABC bears 'Made in China' and 'Made in Bangladesh' stamps."

Anglo-Saxons -- some of Barack Obama's ancestors.Steve Benen: the Romney campaign sought to distance itself from an advisor's remark that President Obama didn't appreciate the "shared heritage" between the U.S. & the U.K. because he doesn't share "an Anglo-Saxon heritage" & "his father was from Africa." (CW: BTW, that is only half true. Obama has a number of ancestors who came to New England from England in the early 17th century. He might be more "Anglo-Saxon" than the Romney advisor, who has not been publicly ID'ed.) Vice President Biden has weighed in, & the Romney camp has not asked the Telegraph -- which reported the story -- for a retraction. ...

     ... NBC News Update: "'I can tell you that we have a very special relationship between the United States and Great Britain,' Romney said. '... But I also believe the president understands that. So I don't know agree with whoever that advisor might be.'" (See NBC News story on Romney & guns, linked above.)

** Dana Milbank: "There have been many mendacious moments in this presidential campaign, but it will be hard to top what Mitt Romney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference this week. President Obama is seeking 'an arbitrary, across-the-board budget reduction that would saddle the military with $1 trillion in cuts,' the Republican said.... If the defense cuts are Obama's, they are also John Boehner;s, Eric Cantor's, Mitch McConnell's and Jon Kyl's. The bill passed with the votes of a majority of House and Senate Republicans and the encouragement of -- wait for it -- Mitt Romney." ...

... Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: Richard Williamson, "a top advisor to Mitt Romney's campaign on Wednesday accused U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon of leaking classified intelligence information to New York Times reporter David Sanger.... 'There's been no administration that has been more aggressive in pursuing leaks than this one,' [Michèle Flournoy, an Obama advisor, said] pointing out that the administration has appointed two U.S. attorneys to investigate the leaks.... Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said Monday that the White House should understand the leaks were coming from within its own ranks, but she retracted that comment Tuesday and said she did not know who the leakers were."

Congressional Races

Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "The overall dynamic favors [House] Republicans, who look poised to maintain their hold on the House. More Democrats than Republicans have retired in districts where they were endangered, and more Republicans benefited from the decennial redistricting...."

News Ledes

AP: "Now that the Senate has voted to extend middle-class tax cuts, President Barack Obama is appealing to the GOP-run House to 'do the right thing.'"

New York Times: "The European Central Bank appears increasingly willing to throw around its weight in bond markets to hold down borrowing costs for Spain -- or at least wants traders to worry that it will. The euro and European stocks rose sharply Thursday after Mario Draghi, president of the E.C.B., said in London, “Within our mandate, the E.C.B. is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.'"

New York Times: "... a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has rejected the [drug companies' price-fixing] arrangements by ruling that a payment aimed at keeping a low-priced generic copy of the drug off the market for a certain period of time is anticompetitive on its face. The Philadelphia ruling conflicted with decisions from at least three other federal circuit courts of appeal, setting up the issue for possible review by the Supreme Court.... A decision prohibiting arrangements could profoundly affect drug prices and health care costs."

New York Times: "Strong summer storms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United States, researchers said on Thursday, adding that the risk of damage may increase as the climate warms."

Washington Post: "The first round of the 2012 presidential campaign is being waged in courtrooms nationwide, and one of the most important battles got underway Wednesday in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where challengers told a judge that a new voter-identification law violates the commonwealth's constitution."

New York Times: "The Senate narrowly approved legislation on Wednesday to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class but to let them lapse for more affluent households, in a surprise vote intended more to give both parties election-year cover than to produce a new tax law."

Washington Post: "University of Colorado officials on Wednesday faced questions about whether the suspect in last week's shooting rampage tried to warn a university psychiatrist about his grisly plan as much as a week before the incident. The questions came after Fox News reported that the shooting suspect, graduate student James Holmes, had mailed to a university psychiatrist a detailed journal that foreshadowed a gun-blazing massacre -- in a package that was not opened before the slayings." The Fox "News" story is here.

New York Times: The Japanese bank "Nomura's chief executive and his top lieutenant resigned on Thursday over recent revelations their employees abetted insider trading."

Reuters: "China has indicted Gu Kailai, the wife of deposed Communist Party politician Bo Xilai, for intentional homicide, in the latest development in a political scandal that has shaken the Party's once-in-a-decade succession."

AP: "Militants downed an Iraqi army helicopter on Thursday in clashes that have killed at least 19 people including 11 policemen, a regional official said, in what appeared to be part of an al-Qaida surge to retake one of its former strongholds."

The Commentariat -- July 25, 2012

Fed Thinks about Thinking about Doing Something. Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "A growing number of officials have concluded that the Federal Reserve needs to expand its stimulus campaign unless the economy soon shows signs of improvement." ...

... Ezra Klein: for one thing, the Fed could "begin buying huge numbers of mortgage-backed securities with the simple intention of bringing the interest rate on a 30-year mortgage down to about 2.5 percent and holding it there for one year, and one year only. The message would be clear: If you have any intention of ever buying a house, the next 12 months is the time to do it."

... Fire Tim Geithner. Jia Lynn Yang & Danielle Douglas of the Washington Post: "Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said that he sounded the alarm four years ago to regulators about problems with the benchmark interest rate known as Libor. But Geithner, who was then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, did not communicate in key meetings with top regulators that British bank Barclays had admitted to Fed staffers that it was rigging Libor, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead, regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Justice Department worked largely without the Fed’s help to build a case against Barclays. That work has culminated in a massive scandal rocking the banking industry on both sides of the Atlantic." ...

... CNBC: "Former Citigroup Chairman & CEO Sanford I. Weill, the man who invented the financial supermarket, called for the breakup of big banks in an interview on CNBC Wednesday.... He essentially called for the return of the Glass-Steagall Act, which imposed banking reforms that split banks from other financial institutions such as insurance companies."

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the Supreme Court decision on President Obama's health care overhaul would probably lead to an increase in the number of uninsured and a modest reduction in the cost to the federal government when compared with estimates before the court ruling. Of the 33 million people who had been expected to gain coverage under the law, 3 million fewer are now predicted to get insurance, the budget office said...." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic, once again: "The [Affordable Care Act], when fully implemented, will dramatically reduce the number of Americans without health insurance. It will also reduce the deficit. This last part remains a big deal, if only because so many conservatives -- and, yes, so many members of the public -- refuse to believe it. Over and over again, you hear people saying that Obamacare will run up the deficit. The CBO, which is our most reliable guide on such matters, begs to differ."

Charles Lane of the Washington Post: Europeans tut-tut about the U.S.'s lax gun laws, but "All told, European Union members shipped just under a million handguns to the United States in 2010. Their domestic markets may be limited by gun control, but Europe's small-arms makers can still get rich, and create jobs, thanks to the Second Amendment." Among those are the Glock, the Walther P22 & the Sig Sauer P232, mass-murders' weapons of choice.

New York Times Editors on companies in the business of background-checking: "The federal government clearly needs to step in. It should require companies to be federally registered, outline standards for accuracy, make sure that job applicants have a reasonable time to respond to erroneous reports and seek monetary and other penalties from companies that flout the law."

Rod Nordland of the New York Times: "... Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists are doing their best to hijack the Syrian revolution, with a growing although still limited success that has American intelligence officials publicly concerned, and Iraqi officials next door openly alarmed. While leaders of the Syrian political and military opposition continue to deny any role for the extremists, Al Qaeda has helped to change the nature of the conflict, injecting the weapon it perfected in Iraq -- suicide bombings — into the battle against President Bashar al-Assad with growing frequency."

Stupid Voter Tricks. Larry Bartels in the Monkey Cage: the hot, dry summer could hurt President Obama at the polls because voters punish the party in power when the weather is bad. CW: Bartels is right. I've been more worried about the weather's effect on the election than on the price of corn.

Another Illegitimate GOP Presidency. Harold Meyerson: "If voter suppression goes forward and Romney narrowly prevails, consider the consequences. An overwhelmingly and increasingly white Republican Party, based in the South, will owe its power to discrimination against black and Latino voters, much like the old segregationist Dixiecrats. It's not that Republicans haven't run voter suppression operations before, but they've been under-the-table dirty tricks, such as calling minority voters with misinformation about polling-place locations and hours. By contrast, this year's suppression would be the intended outcome of laws that Republicans publicly supported, just as the denial of the franchise to Southern blacks before 1965 was the intended result of laws such as poll taxes."

Kate Nocera of Politico: "It’s not exactly the Ron Paul revolution in full. But on Wednesday afternoon, a small piece of his grand vision will hit prime time, when a great majority of the House will vote to pass his Audit the Fed bill. To understand how remarkable this moment is -- coming near the end of Paul's congressional career -- consider this: When Paul first introduced his bill a decade ago, it was written off as another piece of his far-flung libertarian worldview."

Just Wow! ("a surprising move since the seat could be in play for Republicans.") --

Presidential Race

Horserace. Mark Murray of NBC News: "In the presidential horserace, Obama leads Romney by six percentage points among registered voters, 49 percent to 43 percent. That's a slight change -- within the margin of error – from last month’s poll, which showed Obama ahead by three points, 47 percent to 44 percent." But both men's negatives are up. "Romney would be the first GOP presumptive presidential nominee since 1996 to head into his nominating convention with a net-negative favorable/unfavorable score." ...

... Nate Silver: "... as of Tuesday afternoon, President Obama's lead in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls was 1.3 percentage points over Mitt Romney. But Mr. Obama led by a mean of 3.5 points in the RealClearPolitics averages for the 10 states (Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Wisconsin) that are most likely to determine the election outcome."

     ... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "President Obama is pushing back on ... Mitt Romney's 'You didn't build that' attacks in a new ad. It's a sign that the White House is worried that the quote, while taken out of context, is doing the president real damage." ...

... Adam Serwer or Mother Jones: "The problem [with Romney's 'you didn't build that' meme] is that the real-world examples Romney keeps seizing on include people who got help from the government. As ABC News' Jake Tapper reported Monday, the star of a recent Romney ad hitting Obama over 'you didn't build that' had received millions in government loans and contracts. Romney stopped in Costa Mesa, California Monday to meet with a 'roundtable' of small business leaders, held in front of a sign that says 'We did build it!' Naturally, it turned out that at least two of the companies represented ... had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government contracts." Ditto at a Boston Romney event."

Secret Mitt, Con'd. Maureen Dowd: "Mitt's casting a shadowy silhouette, hiding his fortune in foreign tax havens, hiding tax returns, destroying and hiding records as head of the Olympics and as governor, hiding a specific sense of where he would take the country."

New York Times Editors: "Mitt Romney [had a chance] to show that he could be a better international leader than President Obama, who has already proved himself in that field. He fell far short." ...

... Michael Crowley of Time: "Mitt Romney has a commander-in-chief problem." ...

... Daniel Drezner of Foreign Policy: "After the [Romney VFW] speech, Chuck Todd tweeted that 'The Romney VFW speech felt like it was aimed at GOP voters, not swing voters.' I'd agree. Foreign policy doesn't matter that much to swing voters, but rhetoric like this is a great way to appeal to and energize the base. If Romney were to actually follow through on this speech, then the consequences would range from insignificant to quite serious. But it could be that Romney simply doesn't care about foreign policy all that much, and is using these kind of speeches strictly as a tool to cater to key political constituencies."

... Heather Hurlburt of Democracy Arsenal pulls five big lies from Mitt's VFW speech. Via Greg Sargent.

We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he [Romney] feels that the special relationship is special. The White House didn't fully appreciate the shared history we have. -- Romney Adviser. CW Translation: he's black.

... Same batch of advisers, still on the same topic: "The advisers, who 'spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr Romney's campaign requested that they not criticise the President to foreign media,' were unable to provide the Telegraph with 'detailed examples of how policy towards Britain would differ under Romney,' other than restoring the bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office." CW: Excellent foreign policy initiative, and a reminder that Obama replaced the Churchill bust with a bust of Abraham Lincoln -- associated with freeing American slaves (wow, they were black, too!). So, um, would Romney ditch the bust of Lincoln, the first Republican president, & replace it with a representation of a "foreigner" (okay, Churchill's mother was American, but still)?? ...

... AND as Judd Legum of Think Progress reminds us, "The comments were the latest attack by the Romney campaign on Obama's multi-cultural heritage. Last week, Romney campaign co-chair John Sununu said Obama didn’t understand the 'American system' because he 'spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia.' Sununu also said Obama needed to 'learn how to be an American.' (Sununu later apologized for that remark.) Later that day Romney called Obama's policies 'extraordinarily foreign.'" CW: clearly, Team Romney has decided that racism is a winning campaign tactic, & they are keeping at it.

Go for the Gold, Mitt. Priorities USA has a new anti-Romney ad that will run in swing states. It's Olympics-oriented, and it's funny:

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "A Republican group backed by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is starting a new effort in battleground states to win over Jewish voters who could be persuaded to turn away from President Obama and support Mitt Romney. The group, the Republican Jewish Coalition, plans to begin a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in the coming weeks called 'My Buyer's Remorse,' targeting voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, aides said. The campaign uses testimonials from people who say they regret supporting Mr. Obama because of his economic policies and his posture toward Israel...."

Wells Tower's GQ piece is mostly about a journalist's life on the road with Mitt. It's inconsequential really, but an enjoyable read. "I'm thinking how emotionally fatiguing it would be to spend all day, every day telling America it can be rescued by rich men and hymns and keeping secret for the quiet room his real worries for the land he wants to govern. Secrets are exhausting."

Right Wing World

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "The mountain of idiocy building up around 'you didn't build that' has just about reached wrist-slitting proportions, both because of the sheer rapturous levels of dishonesty surrounding the quote itself and because of the ensuing, more intellectually-minded dishonesty that's now dedicated to proving that the government has never done anything for anybody -- not no how, not no way. The latest is Gordon Crovitz, who has decided to see if he can con the Wall Street Journal's readership into believing that government research dollars had virtually nothing to do with the invention of the internet."

CW: I haven't followed the Mike Huckabee Chick-fil-A to-do, but Dana Milbank has the particulars. Well, I don't eat at Chick-fil-A anyway, and Huckabee -- along with Chick-fil-A's president Dan Cathy -- have provided me with a few more good reasons to stay away.

Local News

Stupid Democrat Tricks. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "State Sen. Tim Cullen quit the Senate Democratic caucus Tuesday, saying Senate Democratic leader Mark Miller had snubbed him by refusing to give him a meaningful committee chairmanship.... The flap comes just a week after Democrats took control of the Senate after winning a recall election last month in Racine County. Miller then ascended to majority leader and restructured the committees."

News Ledes

Politico: "Timothy Geithner came under fire Wednesday from lawmakers who wanted to know what he did to head off the now-emerging Libor manipulation scandal when he was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank in 2008 -- when red flags were first going up. Appearing before the House Financial Services Committee to present the Financial Stability Oversight Council's annual economic report, Geithner told members of the panel that he had taken the 'fully appropriate' actions by alerting regulators in both the U.S. and the U.K." Uh-huh.

Washington Post: "Greenland's surface ice cover experienced a broader thaw during a three-day period this month than in nearly four decades of satellite record-keeping.... About half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet melts on average each summer. But between July 11 and 13, roughly 97 percent of the the sheet -- from its coastal edges to its 2-mile-thick center -- experienced some thawing."

AP: "Britain is suffering a far deeper recession than thought, official figures showed Wednesday in a development that is likely to increase the pressure on the government to ease up on its tough austerity approach."

Washington Post: "Japan posted its biggest first-half trade deficit on record, according to government figures released Wednesday, highlighting the economic consequences as this nuclear-averse country imports fossil fuels to meet its energy needs."

Reuters: "Protesters broke windows of least a half-dozen storefronts in Anaheim on Tuesday and five people were arrested in the second major clash between police and demonstrators since an officer shot dead an apparently unarmed man. Tom Tait, mayor of the southern California city, had called on Monday for a state and federal review of the shooting of the man, a suspected gang member."

Guardian: "Ghana's president, John Evans Atta Mills, has died suddenly, aged 68."

AP: "North Korea state TV is reporting for the first time that leader Kim Jong Un is married."