The Commentariat -- May 16, 2012

The full episode of ABC's "The View," with President Obama, is here.

Callum Borchers of the Boston Globe: "President Obama's total assets in 2011 were as high as $8.3 million in 2011, according to an annual financial disclosure filing released by the White House Tuesday. Much of the president's wealth is in the form of US Treasury bills and notes.... The Obamas also have $500,001 to $1 million in a checking account at JPMorgan Chase, the bank currently under FBI scrutiny for a $2 billion trading loss."

In a scathing takedown of House Speaker John Boehner's(R-Ohio) announcement that he would engineer another debt crisis this year, the New York Times editors conclude, "Mr. Boehner's decision to again threaten a default shows that he is an unreliable budget negotiator. President Obama failed to recognize that last time, and Congressional Democrats gave in too easily. We hope both are hearing the message this time around."

Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Sen. John McCain is talking with Democrats about a joint effort to require outside groups that have spent millions of dollars on this year's elections to disclose their donors. McCain (R-Ariz.), once Congress's leading champion of campaign finance reform, has kept a low profile on the issue in recent years."

Ilyse Hogue of The Nation: Facebook's Eduardo "Saverin exemplifies the spoiled 1 percenter who erodes the fabric of the country that afforded such opportunity by not paying back the investment America made in him." ...

... How Have We Helped Thee, Eduardo Saverin? Farhad Manjoo counts the ways, you little schmuck. ...

... BUT. Incredibly in Right Wing World -- Adam Peck of Think Progress: "Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of Facebook whose falling out with the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the subject of the 2010 blockbuster The Social Network, renounced his US citizenship last week, and the right has wasted no time labeling him a hero."

Maureen Dowd seems fond of Jamie Dimon, and apparently JPMorgan Chase stockholders are A-okay with him, too.

This Bears Repeating. New York Times editors: "Carlos DeLuna, who was executed in 1989 by the state of Texas, was almost certainly wrongly convicted of stabbing a young woman to death with a knife in a gas station robbery in Corpus Christi. Carlos Hernandez, who died in a Texas prison while serving time for stabbing someone else, almost certainly killed the young woman and repeatedly told others that he had committed the murder."

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post comments on Deb Fischer's upset win in the Nebraska GOP U.S. Senate primary. Money isn't everything.

CW: This is in the news, so I'm linking it. Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Elizabeth Warren has pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described her as Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up. But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School's 'first woman of color,' based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a 'telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996).'"

James O'Keefe, Still Full of Shit. Scott Keyes of Think Progress. "Conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe released a new video today supposedly exposing voter fraud in North Carolina by highlighting non-citizens like Zbigniew Gorzkowski who have voted in recent elections. The problem: Gorzkowski is an American citizen.... The one instance in the video where O'Keefe purports to show that a non-citizen had actually voted, in fact shows that a citizen voted." CW: Despite the falsity of O'Keefe's video, Matthew Boyle of the right-wing Daily Caller is promoting it. His "update" (on page 2) is unintentionally humorous. But then, The Daily Caller is unintentionally humorous every day.

Prof. Anne Butler in a New York Times op-ed: "... the current debate [between the Vatican & American nuns] has focused on the nuns' progressive stances on birth control, abortion, homosexuality, the all-male priesthood and economic injustice, tension between American nuns and the church's male hierarchy reaches much further back."

Booker!

Presidential Race

Jeffrey Jones of Gallup: "Fifty-six percent of Americans think Barack Obama will win the 2012 presidential election, compared with 36% who think Mitt Romney will win.... The poll was conducted at a time when U.S. registered voters are evenly divided in their vote preferences. Gallup's latest Daily tracking update, based on May 8-14 interviewing, shows 46% of voters preferring Obama and 45% Romney." ...

... Nate Silver comments on the polls.

... Dylan Byers of Politico: "The New York Times has sent in its response to the Obama campaign's heavy criticism of [Tuesday]'s NYT/CBS News poll (see previous post), which the campaign objected to, in part, because it surveyed the same group of people surveyed for a poll last month. That now controversial poll has Mitt Romney leading Obama among those surveyed -- including women -- and shows two-thirds believe the president supported same-sex marriage 'for political reasons.'"

It's Obama's Fault This Guy Can't Get a Job. Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Jason Clausen, a Mason City, Iowa man featured in Mitt Romney's new video featuring unemployed people has a lengthy rap sheet and served ten days in jail for 'assault on a peace officer,' public records show.... The records show Clausen had nearly 20 busts, tickets or fines, a number of them traffic infractions related to things like driving while intoxicated, or with a suspended license. Some were related to accidents, others to driving without seat belts." Here's the ad:

... Jamelle Bouie of American Prospect on the Romney ad: "In this narrative, the GOP didn't mismanage the economy into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression. Rather, the economic crisis simply happened, ex nihilo, and Obama did nothing to stop or mitigate it. What's more, he made things worse, with government spending and an explosion of debt.... For Obama to succeed, he needs to show -- convincingly — that Romney is peddling a false narrative and failed policies." ...

"Ads that Work so Long as You Don't Think." Steve Benen on Romney's ad: "There's nothing to connect the president to the plight of the individuals in the video -- unlike, say, the plight of those who got laid off because Romney's vulture capital firm threw them out of work -- but we're supposed to blame Obama anyway. What's more, there's nothing in the clip to explain why these struggling folks would be better off under a Romney administration that intends to cut taxes for the wealthy while slashing public investments that benefit working families, but we're probably not supposed to think too much about that, either."

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "President Obama’s Chicago-based campaign team has been waiting months to launch a real attack against Mitt Romney's experience at Bain Capital.... There is no mystery to the strategy underway: define Romney before he can fully pivot to general-election voters.... This week's opening volley is less an assault on private equity than it is an attack on the character of the former governor. It goes directly to the issue of whose side Romney is on, where the Obama campaign sees the GOP candidate as most vulnerable." ...

... David Axelrod explains the rationale behind the Obama campaign's "exploration" of Romney's run as head of Bain Capital:

Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times: "In advance of Mitt Romney's fundraising swing through Florida [Wednesday] Democrats are highlighting one of the business ventures of Bain Capital while Romney was in charge: Dade Behring, which, saddled with debt, wound up shuttering two medical technologies facilities in Miami. Some 850 jobs were lost, while Bain walked away with $242-million -- an 800 percent return on its investment. The Dade Behring case has been well-documented, but here's a new wrinkle: The company under Bain's leadership sought and received millions of dollars in tax breaks for creating jobs in Puerto Rico -- shortly before closing it's facilities, costing nearly 300 jobs."

Steve Kornacki of Salon: "George W. Bush may have established a new world record today for the shortest, most awkward public endorsement statement in presidential campaign history: '"I'm for Mitt Romney,' Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevatorclosed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home -- the White House.' The reason for this strange scene is obvious: Romney and his fellow Republicans want absolutely nothing to do with the 43rd president, lest voters connect the epic financial meltdown that played out on his watch to the economic anxiety they're now feeling."

Krugman v. Friedman: "... the center not only did not hold, it couldn't seem to get any attention whatsoever. Americans Elect, a lavishly funded 'centrist' group that was supposed to provide an alternative to traditional political parties, has been a ridiculous flop. Basically, about seven people were actually excited about the venture -- all of them political pundits. Actual voters couldn't care less." Read the whole post. ...

... Rebecca Elliott of BuzzFeed with "Seven Very Bad Predictions about Americans Elect." Top Flop: Tom Friedman.

News Ledes

Politico: "Defying a veto threat from the White House, the House approved its version of the Violence Against Women Act amid furious backlash from Democrats and women's groups that it wouldn't do enough to protect abused victims. Wednesday's vote to renew the 1994 anti-violence law was 222-205. Twenty-three Republicans voted against the bill, while six Democrats voted for it. Vice President Joe Biden, who wrote the law as a senator, said after the vote the measure would water down key protections for victims."

Washington Post: "President Obama warned congressional leaders on Wednesday that he would not tolerate a replay of the bitter debt-ceiling fight of last summer that nearly put the United States in default and led to the nation's first credit-rating downgrade. During lunch at the White House with top leaders of the House and Senate, Obama called the political deadlock last year 'not acceptable' and emphasized that he expects a 'serious bipartisan approach' to tackling the budget and the federal deficit this year, White House press secretary Jay Carney said."

Fox 8 Cleveland News: "Rep. Dennis Kucinich has decided against running for Congress in Washington State."

AP: "Mary Kennedy, ex-wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was found dead at her New York home Wednesday, a source told the Associated Press. Kerry Lawrence, an attorney, confirmed her death, but did not know the cause."

New York Times: "A day after Greece's president warned about the possibility of bank runs, Greek political leaders on Wednesday began forming a caretaker government before new elections next month that could lead the rudderless country to exit the euro, a prospect that has already sent jitters sweeping through world markets."

New York Times: "The defense in John Edwards's federal corruption trial rested on Wednesday morning without calling Mr. Edwards, his daughter Cate, or his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, to the stand. Closing arguments are set to begin on Thursday morning with the case going to the jury as early as Friday." AP story here.

New York Times: "The $2 billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase has claimed another victim. Bruno Iksil, the so-called London Whale at the center of the trading debacle, is expected to leave the bank, according to current and former colleagues. The timing of the departure is unclear."

New York Times: "Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday set the stage for a bruising election-year showdown on fiscal policy, vowing to hold up another increase in the federal debt ceiling unless it was offset by larger spending cuts. His combative comments came on the same day the Republicans' presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, hit President Obama hard on his fiscal stewardship in a speech in Des Moines, suggesting that Mr. Romney and Congressional Republicans see an opening to attack the president on the mounting federal debt and the size of the government."

Washington Post: "A Senate committee plans to vote Wednesday on legislation that would give partners of same-sex federal workers some key benefits, a week after President Obama endorsed marriage for same-sex couples."

Washington Post: "On Tuesday, Congress accomplished something relatively rare: It passed a piece of legislation and sent it to the president for his signature. On a broad bipartisan vote of 78 to 20, the Senate voted Tuesday to extend the life of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and expand its authority to make loans to U.S. exporters.... Amid the gridlock, Tuesday's bill was the rarest of breeds: a lasting compromise on an issue of substance."

Omaha World-Herald: "Deb Fischer ran a stealth campaign. The state senator from Valentine who scored one of the biggest upsets in Nebraska political history Tuesday started to surge in the polls at the perfect time -- early enough to win and too late for her opponents to respond. Fischer, who raised a paltry $440,000 to front-runner Jon Bruning's $3.6 million, is now in position to become the second woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Nebraska, if she defeats Democrat Bob Kerrey in the fall. A third was appointed."

Reuters: "In a primary election race for Oregon's top law enforcement post, the candidate who pledged to protect medical marijuana patients scored a decisive victory Tuesday night over a rival who led a cannabis crackdown last year. Retired judge Ellen Rosenblum, strongly backed by proponents of liberalized marijuana laws, captured 63 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary for state attorney general...."

New York Times: "Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's elegant public intellectual and grand man of letters, whose panoramic novels captured the complicated essence of his country’s history for readers around the world, died on Tuesday in Mexico City. He was 83."

WFTV Orlando: "WFTV has confirmed that autopsy results show 17-year-old Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles when he died. The information could support George Zimmerman's claim that Martin beat him up before Zimmerman shot and killed him."

Washington Post: "Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials."

Washington Post: "President Obama plans to issue an executive order Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who 'obstructs' implementation of the administration-backed political transition in Yemen."

New York Times: "Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, went on trial [in the Hague] on Wednesday for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from some of the bloodiest events of the Bosnian war in the 1990s, including the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo."

AP: "Paperwork for Chen Guangcheng, his wife, and two children [to travel to the United State] was completed in the hospital where the family of four has stayed since he left the embassy in Beijing two weeks ago." ...

... Foreign Policy: "Chen Guangcheng called into a U.S. congressional hearing Tuesday -- for the second time this month -- and asked the international community not to forget about his extended family members and friends suffering government harassment in China."

New York Times: "Just days before Facebook is scheduled to hold its first public stock offering, which could value the company at more than $100 billion, [General Motors] one of the country's largest marketers, has decided to remove its advertising from the social network."

AP: "President Barack Obama raised a combined $43.6 million in April for his campaign and the Democratic Party. Obama's campaign says 400,000 donors contributed last month, including 169,000 who donated for the first time. Obama raised about $53 million in April."

Comments

[Ken Winkes]

An early morning fantasy incubated in the do-I-wake-or-dream moment of morning's first light: In the two months before the November election couldn't we require all who might vote for a Republican to read Reality Chex every day, the Right Wing World section slowly and aloud?

Seems to this waking brain as reasonable as requiring women contemplating abortion to read anti-abortion pamphlets or to view an ultrasound of the fetus.

Hate to see all these folks making decisions about either their health or the nation's blindly. For all the Red states that have in the wake of the 2010 election passed anti-abortion legislation, it would seem equally reasonable that voting, like choice a constitutionally guaranteed right and a major responsibility, should require informed consent, too.

Unfortunately, all this typing woke me up...

[Akhilleus]

The Right has dubbed Eduardo Saverin, the Brazilian native who became a US citizen long enough to (1) save his life, and (2) become a billionaire, its latest and greatest All American Hero. Why? He told America to fuck off, that’s why.

I won’t recount the many reasons Saverin should be thankful for his time as an American citizen and for the many benefits America bestows on its citizens, including the opportunity to use the many systems in place in this country, many of which, like the internet itself, were created by government agencies like the Department of Defense. Conservative commenters—well, commenter is too polite a term for most of these posters; ideological zombies is more accurate—on many of the sites telling this tale can’t wait, like little children wanting to be called upon in class “teacher, teacher, teacher”, waving their little hands frantically, to inform the rest of us that the Department of Defense is NOT the government. Seriously? Is there no limit to the factless narratives required by the Right to try to make a case that will stand up to even cursory analysis? Their controlling narrative is that things like the huge projects credited to government over the years, development of the internet, landing men on the moon, etc, were NOT in fact done by the government but by – who the hell knows?

If we’re talking facts, lets stipulate first that the Department of Defense is an Executive Department of the United States Government. It is funded by taxes collected by the United States Government. The DoD website is defense.GOV, not .com or .org or .teaparty. The moon landing was brought about through a challenge from a United States president (hint: not a Republican) and was carried out by NASA, an agency of the United States Government created by an act of the United States Congress in the late 50s. It too has been funded by taxpayer dollars.

These people need to take a course in basic American knowledge before spraying their idiocy around like clueless fire hoses.

Okay, that mini-rant aside, and moving forward with the understanding that the government does in fact provide good things to American citizens and enormous benefits to corporations and entrepreneurs doing business in the US, let’s cut to the chase.
Many wealthy individuals like Saverin and likely most of the Wall Street Masters of the Universe and nearly all the major corporations operating within the US, don’t give a shit about the US. Or you, or me, except insofar as we provide them with ever more riches. Not only are they not good citizens, they aren’t citizens at all. At least not in the way one thinks of a classical definition of a citizen, one who enjoys the benefits of a nation and in turn accepts their responsibilities to that nation, one of which is paying taxes to keep things going.

But let’s pause for a quick moment at “taxes.” Another commenter on one of the Saverin stories ranted on with the usual Grover Norquist pap about taxes being the Government’s way of stealing from the deserving to give to the undeserving. One of the things I admire—in a snarky way—about the Right, is how shameless they are about tearing down the most complex and intricate concepts and rebuilding them tricked out with the most simplistic, moralistic bumper sticker tag lines. So instead of the idea of taxes being used to fund a myriad of projects and systems that benefit all Americans and enable people like Saverin to become billionaires, ensure our ability to drive in safe cars, on safe roads, eat safe food, enjoy the use of interconnected and regulated power grids, gain public education, remain safe from invading armies and navies, communicate over the air, over wires, and the internet, and a much longer list of benefits, the Right boils it down to “Stealing from the worthy to pay the worthless.” How great is that? No need to bother with facts or reality or truth. Just fucking make up whatever you think will win you points.

But this brings us to the heart of the matter.

These people aren’t interested in the United States. At least not the real one. They’re interested in scoring points and to propagate a Cloud Cuckoo Land ideology that allows the Republican Speaker of the House to play games with people’s lives and the American economic system as a whole purely to score political points and then with a straight face, blame the other guy.

People like these are not citizens. At least not in the way of Philip Nolan, the eponymous character in Edward Everett Hale’s story about The Man Without a Country. Nolan, who gave up his citizenship was forced to live his life out on the high seas, forever adrift without the country he realizes too late that he loves so dearly. Think that would bother any of these guys? Think Jamie Dimon or Eduardo Saverin would feel badly about losing their citizenship as long as they could keep their money?

Nope.

The One Percenters and the multinational corporations that are worshipped by the Right don’t give a rat’s ass about the United States of America. That’s why their water carriers in Congress can try to stick a shiv in the country’s back without a second thought. They who bandy about the epithet “traitor” at anyone who dares stand in their way are the real traitors. The real frauds.

So Eduardo Saverin wants to live in Singapore and thinks his money will keep him safe? Good for him. He’s just one of the many who believe they did it on their own and don’t owe anyone, especially the United States, anything. All American Hero? Only for Republicans. What these simpletons continue to overlook is the fact that without the government there IS NO United States of America. Without the general sense of safety and freedom awarded all US citizens through the offices of government services and systems, paid for by taxes, they might as well be living in Singapore.

Or Brazil.

Maybe Saverin, like Philip Nolan, will end up floating out on the ocean somewhere, in an attempt to escape all those looking to steal from him what's rightfully his. Just him and his piles of money.

[Ken Winkes]

@Akhilleus. Very well done, need it be said? Thanks. But the point you make about the extra-national nature of money and its power, of which the two Facebook fops are only an example, is an old one, made memorably by the post WWI "Merchants of Death" and others that documented the vast sums war profiteers (Henry Ford among others as I remember who made millions supplying Germany, our ostensible enemy) have accumulated by genuflecting to the dollar instead of national interest. Of course, that story, unlike the people it has affected, has never died. The merchants of death are still very much with us; and to them a national boundary is never more than an inconvenience to be brushed aside.

More recently, our headlong rush to globalization has only highlighted the practical absurdity of national boundaries. Business goes everywhere its own way, its paths smoothed and greased by trade agreements that benefit multi-nationals, leaving the quaintly formed and arranged nations to deal as well as they can with the unintended and unforeseen consequences. Among others, I'm thinking of our "immigration problem," the downward pressure on our workers' wages, on our shrinking tax collections and on our (though I haven't heard much of it lately) our imbalance of international payments.

Of course, the only way to deal with multi-nationals whose balance sheets are often larger than many national governments is through international agreements. Though I understand some efforts to exert international control of financial dealings are in the works, they lag far behind reality, and the multi-nationals like it that way. I see multi-nationals as earth-sized Somali pirates, and we have no Navy to protect our convoys, certainly no international Seals available to shoot them in the head.

Ever wonder why the Right is so worried about the United Nations? I don't. It's not that its masters believe the UN is going to come here and take our freedoms away; the Right's real worry is that a concerted, international effort just might someday succeed in taking away the absolute freedom the companies without a country now have to victimize us all.