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The Commentariat -- June 9
CLICK ON IMAGE TO READ THE FINAL EDITION.I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square today.
John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "Far from embracing Republican calls for immediate cuts in federal spending, the White House should be looking at crafting another stimulus package." ...
... CW: If you want to know why the economy is stalled, blame voters. Yes, Republicans have wooed them with lies, and Democrats have not effectively fought back with truths, but we voters are ultimately responsible for our own bad lot. As Michael Scherer writes in Time, "
... The End of the Affair. He’s a politician who no longer corresponds to the grand ideas that many students had in their heads about him. And that’s deflating and disheartening for them. -- Oberlin College Prof. Michael Parkin on Oberlin students' falling out of love with Barack Obama, a bad -- and scarcely unexpected -- sign for Obama's 2012 campaign
"Swipe Fees." As Karen Garcia lays out in this post, there were a lot of Senators crossing traditional party lines in yesterday's vote on an amendment to delay the Fed's new Dodd-Frank mandate to cap the amount banks can charge retailers for customer debit card sales. Needless to say, both banks & retailers made huge lobbying investments (one lobbyist called it the lobbyists "full employment amendment") to influence senators. Biggest surprise for me: North Carolina Republican Johnny Isakson voted against the banks; North Carolina is a big bank mecca, second only to New York, whose two Democratic Senators Schumer & Gillibrand sided with their Wall Street BFFs. ...
... BUT as Ann Carnns of the New York Times points out, "What remains to be seen, however, is whether the savings will be passed on to shoppers." The majority of consumers/voters don't think so. ...
... AND Aaron Couch of the Christian Science Monitor, who has a longer piece on the expected effects of the swipe fee limitations (worth a read), notes that "It’s a win for retailers, who say the fee cap will allow them to pass savings onto consumers, but experts say shoppers are unlikely to see lowered prices at the checkout line." Besides, banks will probably make up for their losses here by increasing customer fees elsewhere. ...
... Bottom Line: As the old adage goes, 'The customer is always the loser.' Or something like that. -- Constant Weader
CW: The Atlantic dubs its blog, The Atlantic Wire, "What Matters Now." Oh, maybe not. Here's a post by Uri Friedman titled "Osama bin Laden Hogged the Air Conditioner." "... bin Laden's room had the only air conditioner in the house -- in a region where summer temperatures can rise above 100 degrees Fahrenheit." ...
... Friedman cites this AP story by Kimberly Dozier, which actually is "what matters now": "Surveillance has been stepped up on possible terrorist targets around the world, as intelligence experts near the end of decrypting and translating material seized from the bin Laden compound. The trove of material has helped fill in the blanks on how known al-Qaida operatives work and think, and where they fit in the organization."
Click to link to feature.More on the Very Serious Media: while reading Michael Scherer's actually serious article on why Washington won't do anything to improve the economy, I glanced at the sidebar featured at left. The only serious thing about this little feature is that Time is famous for its Top Tens. What does that tell you the future holds for Playboy bunnies? BTW, that particular bunny, her pouty painted lips notwithstanding, looks neither happy about her "success" nor anxious to fuck you.
Steve Kornacki of Salon on "The Dirty Trick that Launched Anthony Weiner's Campaign": Weiner anonymously sent out race-baiting literature that undemined a top competitor in his first campaign for public office. Kornacki concludes, "Is it unfair if he loses his political future because of a scandal as dumb as this one? Sure. But it's also not exactly fair that he ever made it this far." ...
... Oh, nice. Michael Barbaro & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: Anthony Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, is pregnant. ...
... Joan Walsh of Salon: If Abedin is pregnant, Weiner should resign. ...
... Adrian Chen of Gawker has the cock-shot here. As Chen "It is the Osama bin Laden Death Picture of our time." Do you really want your Congressman sending photos of his penis erectus to young women? ...
... Finally, and this really is an antidote to the last bit, "Fragments from "Weiner! The Musical."
Right Wing World *
** Michael Grunwald of Time explains the dynamics of the Republican presidential primary to shut-ins: "These days being a real Republican means defying reality — not just on global warming, but on the tax code, the deficit, health care, and just about everything else.... Unfortunately for [Mitt] Romney, he’s not quite as comfortable defying reality as Tim Pawlenty, who’s running on a platform that magical tax cuts will cure all our problems by producing forty-twelve percent growth for the next eleventy thousand years. And he’s not as comfortable in his own skin as Jon Huntsman, who’s also reality-based, and therefore probably doomed in the primary, but seems less likely to sacrifice his dignity running away from his public record; if the primary electorate somehow decides that it’s more desperate for electability than purity, Huntsman seems much more plausible than Romney, even if he did serve in the Kenyan Socialist Administration."
"A Tale of Two Mitts." Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: "The Good Mitt had so much potential: the distinguished political pedigree, the successful career, the beautiful family. The latest Washington Post poll has him beating Obama. The Bad Mitt jeopardizes it all by pandering so shamelessly and so inartfully to the Republican right wing. Instead of demonstrating the honesty and character to boldly lead the country beyond the partisan feud and the ideological holy war, the Bad Mitt reveals himself to be just another ambitious, poll-tested pol that no one can trust."
Steve Benen: to conservatives, ideology always trumps facts: case in point -- even though the evidence demonstrates that tax cuts for the rich reduce rather than increase revenues, Republicans ignore the empirical evidence & continue to promote this disastrous policy on the theory, evidently, that the left only opposes it because lefties hate rich people. ...
... Jonathan Chait of The New Republic on Tim Pawlenty's bold economic plan: "... this is just your basic supply-side pixie dust plan, sprinkling massive windfall gains on the rich, not bothering to make the numbers add up and assuming implausibly high economic benefits will result. The interesting thing is that Pawlenty's version of voodoo economics is more radical than George Bush's 2000 version of voodoo economics, which was in turn more radical than Bob Dole's 1996 version of voodoo economics, which was itself totally nuts." ...
... Jonathan Cohn of TNR contrasts Republican pixie dust (packaged, ironically, by Pawlenty as "hard truths") with 2008 Democratic pesidential candidates' actual plans.
"Decimating Medicare." After WashPo fact-checker Glenn Kessler asserts that Democrat Kathy Hochul won her New York 26th special election seat partly because of misleading Mediscare ads, he reviews this NRCC ad against Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) The ad is being or will be used against nine targeted House Democrats. Kessler says, "... the new NRCC campaign is one of those misleading ads that cites biased editorials and pretends that the quotes are from objective news sources, i.e., 'the media.' ... The claim ... that the 'Democrat plan' would 'bankrupt' Medicare or cut benefits by '17 percent'" is not true. What Republicans are calling the "Democrat plan" is today's Medicare, as modified by the Affordable Care Act, which reputable analysts say improves Medicare cost efficiency and quality of health care. Here's the NRCC's four-Pinocchio ad:
Wishing It Could Make It So. Ali Gharib of Think Progress: despite the right-wing meme that "Obama is losing Jewish donors," there is no evidence of that.
*Where facts never intrude.
News Ledes
ABC News: "A new poll by New York 1 and Marist College found 56 percent of registered voters in New York’s 9th congressional district think [Anthony] Weiner should stay, despite bold public lies about his online behavior and the embarrassing details that have since come to light. Thirty-three percent said Weiner should immediately resign, while 12 percent were undecided, according to the poll." CW: bet his backers didn't see the penis pic.
Common Dreams: "President Barack Obama is considering nominating Treasury aide and former banker Raj Date as head of the new consumer financial watchdog agency, a source familiar with the decision-making said Wednesday. Date is a close associate of Elizabeth Warren...."
The Hill: "A group of House Democrats is calling for any deal to raise the debt ceiling to bring about the end of the Bush tax rates for the wealthy. The lawmakers, led by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), also say that, following last week’s weak job report, they are concerned that certain decreases in federal spending could hurt the economy’s recovery."
Chicago Tribune: "The fate of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is in the hands of a federal jury at his corruption retrial. U. S. District Court Judge James Zagel instructed jurors on the law following closing arguments by the lawyers and then sent them from the courtroom at about 5:30 p.m."
While Gingrich Cruises, Campaign Staff Jumps Ship. Time: "While Newt Gingrich and his wife are off on a two-week Greek cruise to recuperate from three exhausting weeks of campaigning, his political operation is imploding. The AP and Politico are currently reporting that six senior campaign staffers–including campaign manager Rob Johnson and spokesman Rick Tyler – are quitting en masse."
Washington Post: "Federal prosecutors will withdraw key documents from their case against a former National Security Agency manager charged with mishandling classified material, a move that experts say could signal the unraveling of one of the Obama administration’s most prominent efforts to punish accused leakers. Prosecutors informed U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett this week that they would withhold documents they had planned to introduce as evidence to keep from disclosing sensitive technology. Former NSA executive Thomas A. Drake is charged with unlawfully retaining classified information at a time when he was in touch with a Baltimore Sun reporter who later chronicled mismanagement at the agency."
New York Times: "Citigroup acknowledged on Thursday that unidentified hackers had breached its security and gained access to the data of hundreds of thousands of its bank card customers. 'During routine monitoring, we recently discovered unauthorized access to Citi’s account online,' the bank said in an e-mailed statement. 'We are contacting customers whose information was impacted.' The giant bank said about 1 percent of its bank card holders had been affected, putting the total count of customers exposed in the hundreds of thousands...."
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