The Commentariat -- August 7

Still no Off Times Square, but I did finally get word that the techs are back working on it. Must be a complex problem!

** Prof. Drew Westen, in a New York Times op-ed, on the failed Obama presidency:

... the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks. ...

... Maureen Dowd on the failed Obama presidency: "'Yes, we can!' has devolved into 'Hey, we might.' ... The dissonance of his promise and his reality is jarring.” ...

... "The Madman Theory." Kurt Andersen of NPR: "... it's a pity Barack Obama isn't more like Richard Nixon." And another thing: Nixon was more liberal than Obama.

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. -- Standard & Poors (full report here [pdf]) ...

... Blame the Tea Party. Felix Salmon of Reuters: Treasury takes a shot at Standard & Poors, but oops! they missed the mark. "Whatever else S&P is doing here, it isn’t repeating its mistakes of the subprime bubble.... Any student of sovereign default knows that it is born of precisely the kind of failures of governance that we saw during the debt-ceiling debate. That is why the US cannot hold a triple-A rating from S&P: the chance of having a dysfunctional Congress in future is 100%, and a dysfunctional Congress, armed with a statutory debt ceiling, is an extremely dangerous thing, and very far from risk-free." ...

     ... Here's the Treasury shot at S&P Salmon discusses. ...

... Edmund Andrews of the National Journal agrees with Salmon: "The big new element on Friday was an official outside recognition that U.S. creditworthiness is being undermined by a new factor: political insanity. S&P didn’t base its downgrade on a change in the U.S. fiscal and economic outlook. It based it on the political game of chicken over the debt ceiling, a game that Republicans initiated and pushed to the limit, and on a growing gloom about the partisan deadlock. Part of S&P’s gloom, moreover, stemmed explicitly from what a new assessment of the GOP’s ability to block any and all tax increases." ...

... Ezra Klein: "... the credit-rating agency model is broken and, at times, dangerous, and investors need to pay less attention to their pronouncements. But that doesn’t make Standard Poor’s wrong in this particular case.

... Jamie Klatell of The Hill: So then Jay Carney, John Boehner & Harry Reid take their positions in a triangular firing squad with dueling statements. ...

... Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Liberals are growing frustrated with President Obama’s soft response to the Tea Party after fractious negotiations over the debt limit led to the loss of nation’s AAA credit rating on Friday. 'It’s hard to see how we avoid a Tea-Party recession if the president who has the biggest megaphone in the country is not willing to speak clearly on the issue,' Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, told The Hill." ...

... How Fucked Are We? Pretty Darned Fucked -- Christina Romer:

... The Cantor Coup. Lori Montgomery, et al., of the Washington Post: "The frantic showdown that followed, bringing the nation to the brink of default, looked like the haphazard escalation of a typical partisan standoff. It wasn’t." ...

... ** Southern Saboteurs. Michael Lind in Salon: "Today's Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white Southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way." CW: still think the Civil War was a good idea? P.S. If you don't think there's a new flavor of racism in Republican Tea Party attacks on Obama Administration policies, then you don't know the South. Thanks to a reader for the link.

Paul Starobin in a New York Times op-ed: Whatever happened to Harold Koh? As dean of the Yale Law School, he was "one of the country’s foremost defenders of the notion that the president of the United States can’t wage wars without the approval of Congress." But as legal advisor to Hillary Clinton, Koh "has become the administration’s defender of the right to stay engaged in a conflict against Libya without Congressional approval."

Right Wing World

Mystery Solved, Legal Case Pending. Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Edward Conrad, a former executive at Bain Capital, has revealed himself as the mystery donor who gave a $1 million corporate contribution to a special political action committee supporting Mitt Romney.... Campaign finance groups say the donation may have violated the law, which prohibits the use of straw donors to evade disclosure requirements."

News Ledes

Not Necessarily Good News. New York Times: "The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, has told President Obama that he will remain in his position for the time being, the department announced on Sunday, ending speculation that he might step down soon."

New York Times: "Hugh L. Carey, the governor who helped rescue New York from the brink of financial collapse in the 1970s and tamed a culture of ever-growing spending, died Sunday at his summer home on Shelter Island. He was 92."

New York Times: "The day after Standard & Poor’s took the unprecedented step of stripping the United States government of its top credit rating, the ratings agency offered a full-throated defense of its decision, calling the bitter stand-off between President Obama and Congress over raising the debt ceiling a 'debacle.'”

Guardian: "World leaders are battling to prevent panic from spreading across financial markets as the sudden downgrading of the US credit rating triggered fears of global turmoil when stock exchanges open. Finance ministers from the G7 leading industrial countries -- many of them away on summer holiday -- agreed to a series of urgent weekend telephone talks to try to prevent a loss of confidence in the world's biggest economy. But the uncertainty grew when the Saudi market dropped by a massive 5.5%." ...

     ... Desperately Seeking Something. New York Times Update: "As the shock of Friday’s downgrade of United States debt reverberated dangerously with anxiety about European liabilities, central bankers and national leaders were under pressure to try to do something to restore confidence before Asian markets opened, and to prevent an extension of the rout that began last week. As Group of 20 leaders conferred by phone, the governing council of the European Central Bank was holding an emergency conference call late Sunday." ...

     ... New York Times story has been updated with this new lede: "The European Central Bank signaled late Sunday it would intervene more aggressively in bond markets to protect Spain and Italy, part of an increasingly forceful campaign by policymakers around the world to prevent deteriorating public finances and slower growth from provoking another financial crisis."

Al Jazeera: "The Syrian army has launched fresh assaults, reportedly killing dozens of people, as international condemnation of the violence against protesters continues to mount. Activists said troops stormed parts of the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor before dawn on Sunday, killing at least 20 people." Al Jazeera has a liveblog here.

AP: "One police officer was hospitalized and seven others were injured during riots in the Tottenham area of London, police said Sunday, after a demonstration against the death of a local man turned violent and cars and shops were set ablaze. The area in London's north exploded in anger Saturday night after a gathering to protest the Thursday shooting by police of the 29-year-old." Guardian liveblog here.