The Commentariat -- June 4, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on a news report about Willard that neglected mentioning a few facts.

Paul Krugman: "... the best argument against Republicans’ claims that they can fix the economy [is] the fact ... that we have already seen the Republican economic future — and it doesn’t work." ...

... Decca Aitkenhead of the Guardian interviews Krugman who lets on that his audiences are smarter than the Very Serious People.

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "Days before Bank of America shareholders approved the bank's $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch in December 2008, top bank executives were advised that losses at the investment firm would most likely hammer the combined companies' earnings.... But shareholders were not told about the looming losses..., leaving them instead to rely on rosier projections.... What Bank of America's top executives ... knew about Merrill's vast mortgage losses and when they knew it emerged in court documents filed Sunday evening in a shareholder lawsuit.... The disclosure ... is likely to reignite concerns that federal regulators and prosecutors have not worked hard enough to hold key executives accountable for their actions during the financial crisis." CW: who could have guessed? ...

... Nelson Schwartz & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "A small group of shareholder advocates delivered an urgent message to top executives at JPMorgan Chase more than a year ago: the bank's risk controls needed to be improved. JPMorgan officials dismissed the warning from the CtW Investment Group, the advocates, who also cautioned bank officials that the company had fallen behind the risk-management practices of its peers."

New York Times Editors: the I.R.S. should end the farce of groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS being allowed to claim itself a "social welfare organization" with tax-exempt status. ...

... Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-Montana) in a New York Times op-ed: "In Montana's frontier days, we learned a hard lesson about money in politics, one that's shaped our campaign-finance laws for a century and made our political system one of the country's most transparent. Those laws, and our political way of life, are now being threatened by the Supreme Court -- which is why I recently signed a petition for a federal constitutional amendment to ban corporate money from all elections."

Stephen Colbert explains an aspect of Obama's foreign policy:

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is rewriting the nation's environmental laws to speed the extraction and export of oil, minerals and other materials to a global market clamoring for Canada's natural resources.... Economic and political factors account for the controversial gambit. High prices for oil and minerals, along with demand from Asia, have given Canada new incentive to tap into its resources, and new technology has made extraction easier.... The strategy has won plaudits from energy industry officials and some economists, while sparking an outcry from environmentalists and their allies in Parliament."

The Washington Post is running a series on cyberwar, which you can link here. I'm sure it's interesting and really important; I'm just not smart enough to grasp it all, but I'm sure most of you are.

Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine has a long piece on NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose next act, Sherman writes, is "mayor of the world."

Here's a portion of Elizabeth Warren's speech at the Massachusetts Democratic convention Saturday. She won the nomination with about 96 percent of the vote:

... From Warren's Website, here's the transcript.

Presidential Race

Alex Koppelman of the New Yorker analyzes ten campaign ads. And the latest salvo from the Obama camp, an ad that will run in nine swing states:

That stimulus [President Obama] put in place -- it didn't help private sector jobs, it helped preserve government jobs. And the one place we should have shut back -- or cut back -- was on government jobs. We have 145,000 more government workers under this president. Let's send them home and put you back to work. -- Mitt Romney, May 29

Private sector jobs have increased under Obama and government jobs have fallen, making Romney's assertion incorrect.... If one assumes Romney was referring to federal workers, then his statistic is accurate but his comment makes little sense. He says he wants to cut back government jobs, even though Obama added jobs in areas that Romney identifies as critical -- and even though such cuts in government employment would further reduce overall employment. We had given him Two Pinocchios for the previous way he had used this 145,000 figure but given the context of this statement, we have no choice but to increase the number. -- Glenn Kessler, Washington Post fact-checker

Right Wing World

George Packer & Amy Davidson of the New Yorker discussed the extremism of the Republican party late last week:

"Evolution is hooey." Gail Collins in the New York Review of Books: "Texas certainly didn't single-handedly mess up American textbooks, but its size, its purchasing heft, and the pickiness of the school board's endless demands -- not to mention the board's overall craziness -- certainly made it the trend leader. Texas has never managed to get evolution out of American science textbooks. It's been far more successful in helping to make evolution -- and history, and everything else -- seem boring." CW: Toldja Collins could write serious stuff.

Local News

Reuters: "Two public opinion polls released on Sunday show Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walkerwith a lead of three and six percentage points two days before the election to recall.... Both findings were within the margin of error so the results could be even tighter." ...

... This Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel overview seems kinda pro-Walker to me, but there appears to have been a real effort to be objective, & the video is a good overview of the recall. (The Journal-Sentinel endorsed Walker in the recall election.) --

News Ledes

FP: "Chinese authorities have rounded up hundreds of activists in the capital Beijing, rights campaigners and petitioners said Monday, as they marked the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The detentions came as Washington angered Beijing by calling for all those still jailed over the demonstrations on June 4, 1989 -- when hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters were shot and killed by soldiers -- to be freed."

AFP: "The three Swedish nationals and one Tunisian living in Sweden had pleaded not guilty to the terrorism charges, but a district court found all four 'guilty of terrorism', chief judge Katrine Eriksen said in the unanimous verdict, which was broadcast live. However Sahbi Ben Mohamed Zalouti, Munir Awad and Omar Abdalla Aboelazm -- all Swedish citizens of Tunisian, Lebanese and Moroccan origin, respectively -- and Tunisian national Mounir Ben Mohamed Dhahri were found not guilty of a secondary charge of weapons possession due to a technicality, she said. Prosecutors had charged that the four planned to 'kill a large number of people' at the Jyllands-Posten's offices in Copenhagen when they were arrested on December 29, 2010."

The Commentariat -- June 3, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is a three-fer -- Dowd, Friedman AND Douthat. The NYTX front page is here.

Here's the first segment of ABC News' "This Week":

... George Stephanopoulos: "This morning on 'This Week,' New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget plan a 'fraud' as Romney campaign senior advisor Eric Fehrnstrom confirmed his candidate's support for the plan that would trim trillions in federal spending over the next decade."

Michael Linden in Think Progress: "Even with [Friday]'s disappointing and troubling jobs report, private sector job creation under President Obama has far exceeded private sector job creation under President Bush.... But there is one area of job creation where President Bush clearly outshines President Obama: the public sector":

... Floyd Norris of the New York Times: "... the outlook [for economic recovery -- anywhere] is far darker than it seemed to be only a couple of months ago." ...

... Déjà vu All Over Again. Here in the U.S., that might be because we're smack dab in the middle of repeating the mistake of 1937 -- reduced government spending. Krugman has a chart. ...

... Steve Weissman & Frank Browning in Salon: in Europe, Krugman is a rock star.

Tim Arango & Clifford Krauss of the New York Times: "Despite sectarian bombings and political gridlock, Iraq's crude oil production is soaring, providing a singular bright spot for the nation's future and relief for global oil markets as the West tightens sanctions on Iranian exports. The increased flow and vital port improvements have produced a 20 percent jump in exports this year to nearly 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, making Iraq one of the premier producers in OPEC for the first time in decades."

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "The American nuns who were harshly condemned by the Vatican in April as failing to uphold Catholic doctrine finally responded on Friday in their own strong terms, saying the Vatican's assessment was based on 'unsubstantiated accusations' and a 'flawed process,' and has caused scandal, pain and polarization in the Roman Catholic Church."

Frank Bruni has a pretty good post on the viral video I'm just not going to embed. (Bruni has it.) I've read elsewhere that people have recommended that the parents of the toddler singing the hate hymn should be arrested for child abuse; I don't really disagree with that. Or maybe the whole damned congregation can be sent to one of those re-education camps Michele Bachmann claims Obama has planned.

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: A Congressional primary "in northern New Jersey, between Rep. Steven R. Rothman and Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. has exposed old wounds in the Democratic Party dating to the bitter 2008 primary contest between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama is backing Rothman, while Bill Clinton is supporting Pascrell. Their reasons are simple: Rothman endorsed Obama in the 2008 primary, and Pascrell endorsed the former first lady."

Presidential Race

Maureen Dowd seems to think President Obama is diddling around in the White House trying to "find himself." CW: I think that's nonsense, but some people like this stuff. Besides, no use looking for Romney. There's no there there. ...

... For another superficial look at the candidates, Mark Leibovich of the New York Times finds that Willard & Barack have a lot in common: they like chicken & Star Trek. CW: how is it possible that two people who like chicken & Star Trek can disagree on policy? I guess we'll have to wait till next week for that insiight.

An Inconvenient Comparison. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "On Thursday, Mitt Romney campaigned at the headquarters of Solyndra -- the first renewable energy company to receive a federal loan under the stimulus — and reiterated his debunked claims that its bankruptcy symbolized the corruption and cronyism of the Obama administration. But just one day later, a solar panel developer 'that landed a state loan from Mitt Romney when he was Massachusetts governor' went belly up, the Boston Herald reports, creating an inconvenient storyline for the GOP presidential nominee.... Konarka is the second Massachusetts solar company ... to receive taxpayer dollars under Romney's tenure and subsequently declare bankruptcy." The Boston Herald story is here & comes down hard on Romney, noting near the top of the story that "Romney personally doled out a $1.5 million renewable energy subsidy" to the failed company.

Local News

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "While the [Wisconsin] candidates were on the trail, their campaign organizations were maneuvering armies of volunteers to man phone banks and fan out across neighborhoods. With few if any undecided voters remaining, Democrats and Republicans are relying on turnout operations to get their voters to the polls and decide races for governor, lieutenant governor and four state Senate seats."

Dara Kam of the Palm Beach Post: "Florida elections supervisors said Friday they will discontinue a state-directed effort to remove names from county voter rolls because they believe the state data is flawed and because the U.S. Department of Justice has said the process violates federal voting laws."

News Ledes

Celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee continued with a Thames River flotilla:

    ... There's more footage from the BBC here.

Orlando Sentinel: "George Zimmerman returned to the Seminole County jail today. He will remain without bond until a judge decides whether he should be free before his second-degree murder trial."

Reuters: "Egyptian pro-democracy campaigners called for a new uprising on Sunday, enraged that a court had spared former leader Hosni Mubarak his life over the killing of protesters during the street revolt that ended his three-decade rule. In the first judicial reckoning of a leader toppled in last year's Arab spring uprisings, Mubarak was handed a life prison sentence. His sons were found innocent of corruption charges and senior policemen were acquitted.Thousands took to the streets for protests that went on through the night in Cairo's Tahrir Square and in other cities...."

AFP: "Police in China beat and detained political activists marking the 23rd anniversary of the brutal crackdown on the Tiananmen Square democracy protests on Sunday, rights campaigners said. Officers used violence against activists in the southeast province of Fujian and detained them, while more than 30 people who came to Beijing "to petition" were held and forced to return to their home province, the activists reported."

AP: "Syrian President Bashar Assad said Sunday that his country is facing a 'real war,' warning that he will not be lenient with the terrorists he says are behind the country's uprising."

AP: "Vice President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley married a Pennsylvania doctor [Howard Krein] at a ceremony in Delaware, the vice president's office announced late Saturday."

The Commentariat -- June 2, 2012

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. Guardian story here.

Digby has a terrific post in Mother Jones on the modern history of Jim Crow-type voter suppression and how the Democrats have been letting Republicans get away with it, even after the 2000 election travesty in which the Florida tally was a direct result of Jeb Bush's suppression of eligible Florida voters. ...

... Charles Blow covers the most of the same material, but it bears repeating. See also yesterday's News Ledes.

Daniel Gross of Yahoo! News found quite a bit of good and not-so-bad news in yesterday's economic numbers. ...

... Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The odds surely increased Friday that the Federal Reserve will ride again to the rescue of the faltering economic recovery, making borrowing a little cheaper for a little longer, as it has done repeatedly over the last four years."

** Fire Eric Holder. Joe Nocera: "... the Justice Department has ... taken after the smallest of small fry [in the national mortgage fraud debacle] -- and then trumpeted those prosecutions as proof of how tough it is on mortgage fraud. It is a shameful way for the government to act." The DOJ was willing to spends tens of millions prosecuting John Edwards for hiding his mistress, "Yet this same Justice Department isn't willing to use similar resources ... to go after the pervasive corporate wrongdoing that gave us the financial crisis and the Great Recession.... George W. Bush has turned out to be tougher on corporate crooks than Barack Obama." ...

... Sari Horwitz & Manuel Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post report on how the Obama Justice Department got on board the John Edwards case, an effort begun by George Holding, a Bush holdover prosecutor who is now running for Congress as a Republican. Includes video of three jurors speaking to Matt Lauer on yesterday's "Today Show."

Riding in Cars with Candidates. Gail Collins: "... somehow, the public realized that [John Edwards] who looked so good and sounded so glib was really a fraud. Even without knowing about the secret love child or the sleazy right-hand man, or the impressive ability to stare right into a TV camera and lie like a rug, they got his number and picked other people to run for president. Voters' gut instincts are generally pretty good. They certainly were with John Edwards. Which is, in a way, a happy ending to an awful story."

Dan Amira of New York magazine: "Good news. People eat other people on a pretty regular basis." See also today's News Ledes.

Presidential Race

The MSM are beginning to fact-check Willard:

     ... Jake Tapper of ABC News: "Yesterday in California, Mitt Romney stood in front of the failed Solyndra factory and said 'an independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded that the administration had steered money to friends and family, to campaign contributors.' In a TV ad focused on Solyndra, the Romney campaign makes a similar claim, saying the 'Inspector General said that contracts were steered to friends and family.' This isn't true. [blah blah]... That isn't correct. [blah blah]... The charge is simply false." ...

     ... AP: "Mitt Romney ... didn't get the story completely straight when he accused the administration of favoring 'cronies.'" ...

... BUT. Media Matters: "Economic experts agree that spending cuts in a weak economy hurt the creation of jobs and economic growth. Though Republicans in Congress spent much of 2011 demanding spending cuts, the media are amplifying their attacks on President Obama's economic record."

... Ha Ha. Simon van Zuylen-Wood of The New Republic: even as Willard has been hammering Obama on Solyndra & green energy loans & promising to abolish the entire DOE loan program, "a surprising dissent can be found in Ohio Senator Rob Portman [R], often mentioned as a potential [Romney] running mate, who has sponsored a bill that would expand the program. And since he assumed office, in 2010, Portman has relentlessly badgered Energy Secretary Steven Chu to approve a guarantee four times larger than Solyndra's for a teetering Ohio nuclear facility. Can the GOP handle a potential veep who seems A-OK with such innovation-killing 'government overreach'?"

** Andrew Miga of the AP: "With a few strokes of his pen on a sleepy holiday six months after he became governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney quietly scuttled the state government's long-standing affirmative action policies.... When civil rights leaders, black lawmakers and other minority groups finally learned of Romney's move two months later, it sparked a public furor." CW: Read the whole story.

Julie Davis of Bloomberg News: "Romney ... doesn't intend to offer targeted relief for the 11.5 million American homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, [Romney's policy adviser] said, suggesting that such actions are temporary fixes insufficient to stabilize the housing market. 'Governor Romney has indicated that there are some steps we ought to take to ensure that we're growing our economy.... I do think we have to resist the temptation for short-term approaches.'" CW: Remember when Romney said, "Don't try and stop the foreclosure process"? He meant it.

It's Friday, so time for another installment of Steve Benen's epic WIP, Mitt's Mendacity, which is now in Vol. XX, & lists Willard's 18 Whoppers of the Week.

AND Mitt is still rich. His financial disclosure statements are here.

With Friends Like These.... Frankly, the Romney people did the only thing they could. They used their strengths -- which were money and the super PAC and a willingness to go after me very aggressively -- to offset my strength, which was an ability to define a larger, better future. It's not bad to say [Romney] has proven he will do what it takes to beat Obama. It's the nature of our current political culture that cynicism trumps idealism. -- Newt Gingrich, newly-minted Romney surrogate

With Friends Like These.... Rodney Hawkins of CBS News: "Former President Bill Clinton, seeking to contain the political damage from his earlier praise of Mitt Romney's 'sterling' business background, said on Friday that his remarks shouldn't be construed as an endorsement." CW: Clinton's remarks about Romney are, for me, just another of many reminders of what a lousy, right-wing president Clinton was. ...

... Tim Mak of Politico: "Mitt Romney on Friday thanked former president Bill Clinton for complimenting his work at Bain Capital, saying he was 'happy to see President Clinton … called my record superb.'" ...

... Karoli of Crooks & Liars has a good take on Clinton's sterling remark: "Once again, a surrogate steps all over the campaign message in order to praise ... Bain Capital? And not just any surrogate, either. Bill Clinton, who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall into law, which is ultimately responsible for the 2008 meltdown on Wall Street. That very same Bill Clinton."

** Steve Benen nails Congressional Republicans for causing the near-zero jobs growth: "As panic sets in after [Friday]'s brutal jobs report, take a moment to consider a hypothetical: what would the economy look like today if Congress had followed Obama's lead, responded to public-opinion polls, and passed the American Jobs Act? In 2012, do you think the nation could use those 1.3 million jobs or not?." CW: Obama kinda sorta said this yesterday & has done a slightly better job of it in his weekly address. But he needs to really lay it out -- then present a full-fledged program of what Congress should do instead of campaigning on this nitpicking Congressional "honey-do" list.

... Bernie Becker of The Hill: At a committee hearing, "A top House Democrat slammed Jeb Bush on Friday for criticizing President Obama's economic policies while not condemning those of his brother, former President George W. Bush. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, noted that hundreds of thousands of Americans were losing their jobs in the months before former President Bush left office in 2009, and said Bush's policies tipped the scales toward the wealthy and Wall Street."

Devin Dwyer of ABC News: President Obama told a group of Minnesota donors that he thinks Republicans will get more reasonable after the election since he won't be running for re-election & they'll start being cooperative. CW: He said this in the state that brought us Michele Bachmann.

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The Fox News producer behind a provocative four-minute anti-Obama video that aired Wednesday and caused the network considerable embarrassment has found his career on ice. The producer, Chris White, had been offered a job by CNN before the video was broadcast. But on Thursday, a CNN spokeswoman said that the network would not be hiring him." ...

... BUT. Here's a surprise. Alex Alvarez of Mediaite: "Chris White ... will remain at Fox News." He did something terrible for which he was "not authorized," but we're keeping him on anyway. See links in the May 31 Commentariat. ...

... John Hudson of the Atlantic, who must be dumb as a post, said the video below, produced by an outside entity and aired in February on Chris Matthews' show -- which is commentary, not news -- was just like Fox "News"'s "factual" hit job on President Obama. Anyway, the video is humorous:

... Meanwhile, a much smarter guy at the Atlantic -- Jim Fallows -- republishes John Sides' charts tracking positive & negative MSM coverage of Obama & Romney. "Main point: At no time in the past year has coverage of President Obama been as positive as that of Governor Romney. Indeed, at no time in the past year has it been on-balance positive at all."

Local News

President Clinton stumps for Barrett:

An outtake from Thursday's gubernatorial debate in Wisconsin. (I looked for video of the full debate yesterday and couldn't find it -- but the audio is here):

... Charles Pierce comments on the debate.

News Ledes

Boston Globe: "After building questions about the durability of her Senate candidacy, Elizabeth Warren displayed brute strength today by winning the endorsement of 96 percent of delegates to the state Democratic convention and blocking potential opponent Marisa DeFranco from the party's primary ballot. The win allows Warren to instead focus on Republican Senator Scott Brown in the general election."

Guardian: "The Queen has kicked off the first major event of her diamond jubilee weekend, driving on to Epsom racecourse before the Derby to be greeted by 130,000 enthusiastic racegoers. Fans in the stands gave the monarch and Duke of Edinburgh a huge cheer as they were driven down the course past the hospitality tents."

New York Times: "An Egyptian judge on Saturday sentenced former President Hosni Mubarak to life in prison for the killing of unarmed demonstrators during protests that ended his rule.... His interior minister, Habib el-Adly, was sentenced to life for the same reason, but the charges against other Interior Ministry officials were dismissed. The judge also dismissed the bribery charges against Mr. Mubarak and his sons, concluding that the statute of limitations had lapsed." ...

... Reuters: "Deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarakand other defendants standing trial with him must be retried with solid evidence, the Muslim Brotherhood said in a statement issued on Saturday by the campaign of its presidential candidate."

AP: "The U.N.'s top human rights official said Saturday that there should be no amnesty for serious crimes committed in Syria, even if the threat of prosecution might motivate members of the regime to cling to power at all costs."

AP: "Two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues were rescued in a pre-dawn raid Saturday after being held by militants for 11 days in a cave in northern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition said. The women -- Helen Johnston and Moragwe Oirere -- and the two Afghans were kidnapped on May 22 in Badakhshan province. The four work for Medair, a humanitarian non-governmental organization based near Lausanne, Switzerland."

AP: "The credibility of Trayvon Martin's shooter could be an issue at trial after a judge said that George Zimmerman and his wife lied to the court about their finances to obtain a bond, legal experts say. That's because the case hinges on jurors believing his account of what happened the night the 19-year-old was killed."

AP: "For more than 50 years, the New York Mets chased that elusive no-hitter. Johan Santana finally finished the job. Santana pitched the first no-hitter in team history, helped by an umpire's missed call and an outstanding catch in left field in an 8-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night." New York Times story here. And a banner headline in the New York Daily News online edition, natch.

Weird "News." New York Daily News: "With fears of a possible 'Zombie Apocalypse' growing, the feds have been forced to deny that the undead are real. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made it clear in a statement that flesh-eating, undead creatures definitely don't exist. 'CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms),' CDC spokesman David Daigle wrote to the Huffington Post on Thursday."