The Commentariat -- July 9
I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square. which includes some links to opinion pieces & a video about Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal.
The President's Weekly Address, in which he crams as many wrong-headed, counterintuitive, right-wing ideas as possible into one brief speech:
... The transcript is here. ...
... Reuters: "Under pressure to reduce America's 9.2 percent jobless rate, Obama used his weekly radio and Web address to vow to seek common ground with his Republican opponents and try to overcome serious disagreements on taxes and spending cuts that he says will improve the atmosphere for job creation."
What everyone seems to forget is that as the stimulus passed its peak and began to decline it became anti-stimulus. The recovery had to be strong enough to weather that pullback in spending. It hasn't been.
-- Atrios ...... Any revenue reductions that result from the debt ceiling negotiations will increase the size of the anti-stimulus and further weaken the recovery.
-- Constant Weader ...
... David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "We are also committing an unforced economic error. We’re cutting government at the same time that the private sector is cutting. It is the classic mistake to make after a financial crisis. Hoover and even Roosevelt made a version of it in the 1930s. The Japanese made a version of it in the 1990s. Now we are making it." ...
... Paul Krugman notes in a blogpost that buried in the dismal jobs report was the news that wages had declined slightly. "... stagnant wages are NOT good for recovery; all they do is ensure that the burden of debt relative to income remains high, keeping demand and employment down. The situation cries out for aggressively expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. Instead, however, all the political push is in the opposite direction." ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic, borrowing a graph from another Krugman blogpost, calls the picture "political insanity in one graph.... An agreement to increase short-term deficits in ways that boost growth and then reduce long-term deficits through structural economic policy changes would be pretty close to ideal. But the chances of that happening seem awfully slim right now." CW: I'll say! (I thought Cohn explained the whys better than Krugman did.) ...
... Eli of Firedoglake compares Obama to Bush II: "Instead of using the financial crisis or the current debt hysteria to push through a progressive agenda like Bush used 9/11 to push through a conservative one, he’s using them as an excuse to capitulate to Republican budget chickenhawks, and even to cut Social Security and Medicare.... So which is worse? The president who serves his base and sets the country on fire, or the president who stiffs his base and fights fire with gasoline?"
... Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Senate Democrats have drafted a sweeping debt-reduction plan that would slice $4 trillion from projected borrowing over the next decade without touching the expensive health and retirement programs targeted by President Obama. Instead, Senate Democrats are proposing to stabilize borrowing through sharp cuts at the Pentagon and other government agencies, as well as $2 trillion in new taxes, primarily on families earning more than $1 million year.... On Friday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) visited the White House to brief Obama and Vice President Biden on the blueprint, which differs significantly from the framework under discussion with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other leaders." ...
... CW: remember this. Kent Conrad is one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. YET his budget proposal is considerably to the left of the one President Obama is proposing. ...
... Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Long-simmering tensions between the White House and congressional Democrats on how best to address the country’s debt boiled over Friday, with leaders and rank-and-file members alike fuming at reports that President Obama is mulling cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of a bipartisan debt-limit deal":
There’s been very little conversation between the White House and the Senate about this, and I think they’re making a grievous mistake if they think they can just present anything to us and assume that because we’re Democrats, we’ll go along with what the president has capitulated to. -- Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) ...
... AND Greg Sargent: "House liberals are launching an organizing drive inside the Democatic caucus, in an effort to line up Democrats and get them to commit to opposing any final deficit deal that contains any cuts to entitlements benefits...." ...
... BUT Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Republicans cited the [jobs] report in renewing their assault on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy, with lawmakers saying they would not accept tax increases at a moment when the economic recovery appears to be losing steam." CW: I believe the Republicans know this is B.S., and they are purposely sacrificing the nation's economy for their own benefits.
Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times: "Corning, I.B.M. and Raytheon all provide domestic partner benefits to employees with same-sex partners in states where they cannot marry. But now that they can legally wed in New York, five other states and the District of Columbia, they will be required to do so if they want their partner to be covered for a routine checkup or a root canal."
She's got hometown appeal, she's got ideological appeal, and, I hate to say it, but she's got a little sex appeal, too. -- Former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), on why Michele Bachmann would be "very hard to beat" in the Iowa caucuses ...
... AND, hours later: I made a mistake that was disrespectful to my friend Congresswoman Bachmann. I've been a Bachmann supporter in her congressional bids and I apologize. I was not speaking on behalf of Gov. Pawlenty's campaign, but, nevertheless, it was inappropriate and I'm sorry. -- Vin Weber
Right Wing World *
Susan Crabtree of TPM: "Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis." Oh, and then they ordered another bottle of the same. The Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand the party drank is the most expensive wine on Bistro Bis' wine list. After the meal, economist Susan Feinberg, who was sitting at a nearby table, "approached the table and asked Ryan 'how he could live with himself' sipping expensive wine while advocating for cuts to programs for seniors and the poor." Ryan later characterized Feinberg as "crazy" and "possibly drunk." Read the whole story.
... I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week. -- Susan Feinberg ...
... Fuck her. -- one of the reputed economists, in response to Feinberg's challenge to Ryan
Romney is the most transparent phony. He's rolling up his shirtsleeves, he's letting a few pieces of hair fall out of place, a little less hair gel, and we're supposed to believe he's Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. -- Frank Rich (See video of Rich talking about both Romney & Obama on "The Tavis Smiley show at this New York Mag site.)
* Where what's good for me, you can't have.
News Ledes
Washington Post: "House Speaker John A. Boehner abandoned efforts Saturday night to reach a comprehensive debt-reduction deal worth more than $4 trillion in savings, telling President Obama that a midsize package was the only politically possible alternative to avoid a first-ever default on the nation’s mounting national debt." New York Times story here.
New York Times: "The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively."
New York Times: "A new nation was ... born [today] in what used to be a forlorn, war-racked patch of Africa, and to many it seemed nothing short of miraculous. After more than five decades of an underdog, guerrilla struggle and two million lives lost, the Republic of , Africa’s 54th state..., declared its independence in front of a who’s who of Africa, including the president of the country letting it go: Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, a war-crimes suspect."
Los Angeles Times: "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Saturday that the United States is 'within reach' of 'strategically defeating' Al Qaeda as a terrorist threat, but that doing so would require killing or capturing the group's 10 to 20 remaining leaders. Arriving in Afghanistan for the first time since taking office earlier this month, Panetta said that intelligence uncovered in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against Al Qaeda had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives, most of whom are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa."
Reuters: The Icelandic bank that briefly gave WikiLeaks access to Visa & MasterCard did so unwittingly and has cut off WikiLeaks' payment provider DataCell.
New York Times: "For more than a week, Minnesota has stopped performing all services not deemed critical because Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature have been unable to agree on a state budget for this fiscal year. Though the shutdown meant that about 22,000 government employees became suddenly unemployed, the most significant impact so far for Minnesotans who do not work for the government appears to be in the sort of everyday thing, like child care for the poor, that had been easy to overlook for those not dependent on it."
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