The Commentariat -- May 17, 2012

My regular column in the New York Times eXaminer is a piece on how both Paul Krugman & Ross Douthat whupped Tom Friedman Tuesday. Plus, ...

... My second column in the New York Times eXaminer rebuts Yves Smith's takedown of Paul Krugman's post on the failure of Americans Elect to find a third-party presidential candidate.

Suzy Khimm of the Washington Post: "... at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2012 Fiscal Summit, there was a clear difference between Democrats and Republicans: Democrats talked constantly about how they should be talking about entitlements. Republicans reiterated their position that they won't talk taxes." CW: bear in mind that the Peterson Foundation is devoted to cutting Medicare & Social Security in the name of "fiscal responsibility" & "deficit reduction." This is as phony-baloney as a "conference" could be. ...

... Gail Collins does a mighty fine job of summing up all the budgetary posturing.

"JPMorphing." New York Times editors: "On Monday, a JPMorgan official told The Times that the trades -- which have since ballooned to at least $3 billion — started out as allowable [under the Volcker Rule], but had 'morphed into something' that crossed the line.... [JPMorgan CEO Jamie] Dimon and other bankers have been fighting to make the regulations as loose and vague -- and as prone to morphing -- as possible.... The banks will keep pushing the limits."

Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States."

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times: "In the dead of night on Monday, the Virginia House of Delegates scuttled the appointment of a highly qualified judicial nominee, Tracy Thorne-Begland, because he is gay. Even Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, a rock-ribbed conservative, found this display of intolerance a bit over the top.... According to Delegate Bob Marshall -- an aggressive activist for the pro-heterosexual agenda -- if you're gay, and publicly in favor of equal rights, then you can never serve as a judge because you can't be trusted to rule impartially on gay issues. (Never mind that gay rights cases are unlikely to come before Virginia's General District Court.)" ...

... "Another Virginia Disgrace." Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: "Apparently, the only advocates we can trust to morph into a neutral umpire upon rising to the bench are straight white men. Anyone else who pledges to become an umpire -- as Thorne-Begland did, by the way -- must be lying."

Richard Hasen argues in Slate that Justice Souter (or Justice Stevens) should publish the secret dissent Souter wrote in the Citzens United case. The dissent was unknown to the public until Jeff Toobin published his story in this week's New Yorker on how Chief Justice Roberts manipulated the case (linked in Monday's Commentariat).

Serge Kovaleski of the New York Times: "An examination of the Sanford, [Florida,] Police Department's handling of the [Trayvon Martin] case shows a series of missteps -- including sloppy work — and circumstances beyond its control that impeded the investigation and may make it harder to pursue a case that is already difficult enough."

Presidential Race

Jim Rutenberg & Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire [-- Joe Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs --] on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the 'super PAC' era and attack President Obamain ways that Republicans have so far shied away from." CW: "Provocative" is the wrong word; "racist smear" would work better. The registered name of the group: "Character Matters," acutely ironical in that they haven't any character. Read the story. ...

     ... Update: "Mitt Romney on Thursday condemned plans by Republican strategists and a billionaire investor to run a $10-million advertising campaign linking President Obama to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, his incendiary former pastor.... At the same time, Mr. Romney stood by remarks made in February on Sean Hannity's radio show that Mr. Obama wanted to make America 'a less Christian nation.' 'I'm not familiar, precisely, with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was,' Mr. Romney said."

... Jamelle Bouie of American Prospect: "What this illustrates ... is the extent to which racialized, anti-Obama conspiracies are in wide circulation among the GOP donor class of wealthy businesspeople.... There's nothing about wealth and education that grant immunity to conspiratorial beliefs.... That this comes with a serving of racism is only a reflection of the race-baiting that is now common to conservative media outlets (see: Rush Limbaugh).... If you accept that wealthy conservatives are the most likely to believe insane things about the president, then you also have to give up hope -- at least in the short-term -- that the Republican Party will abandon its camp in the right-wing of American politics."

David Firestone of the New York Times tears apart Karl Rove's non-factual attack ad on President Obama & deplores GPS Crossroads' unwillingness to reveal the donors responsible for it.

Peter Nicholas of the Wall Street Journal: Vice President Biden, speaking in Youngstown, Ohio, warns of the dangers of "Romney economics," highlighting Romney's Bain Capital shenanigans. "'Romney made sure the guys on top got to play by a separate set of rules, he ran massive debts, and the middle class lost,' Mr. Biden ... says. 'And folks, he thinks this experience will help our economy. Where I come from, past is prologue. So what do you think he'll do as president?'" ...

... Greg Sargent: the Obama campaign is well aware that Romney is benefiting from the public perception that his version of his "success at turning companies around" is accurate. They're working on it. Sargent notes that Romney is back to claiming he created 100,000 jobs, a claim that has been thoroughly debunked.

Calvin Woodward of the AP did a mighty fine fact-check of Romney's budget speech. I hope a lot of local papers published it.

David of Crooks & Liars: "Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is refusing to even utter George W. Bush's name after the former president endorsed him in an elevator on Tuesday. 'I'm for Mitt Romney,' Bush had blurted out to ABC News on Tuesday as the doors of the elevator closed on him in Washington, DC where he was giving a speech on human rights. Speaking to a crowd of supporters in St. Petersburg, Florida on Wednesday, Romney would only refer to Bush as President Barack Obama's 'predecessor.'" With video. Thanks to Kate M. for the link. ...

... Steve Benen notes that the Romney campaign did not send out a press release on the Bush endorsement, but they did send one out when failed Delaware Republican Tea Party candidate Christine I-Am-Not-a-Witch O'Donnell endorsed Romney. CW: So a former two-term president is more toxic than a failed Tea Party candidate who said she had dabbled in witchcraft. Your Republican party today. ...

... AND King Willard is not taking questions from the riffraff press.

Right Wing World

Quote of the Day. Listen, you're a person of faith and so am I. In his administration and now on his re-election campaign, President Obama has surrounded himself with morally repugnant political whores with misshapen values and gutter-level ethics. -- Mike Huckabee, jovial former governor of Arkansas, jovial Fox "News" host, just being jovial in a fundraising letter ...

... Update. Dylan Byers of Politico: "Mike Huckabee is firmly denying that he approved a fundraising letter which refers to President Obama's advisers as 'morally repugnant political whores.'"

... Paul Waldman: there's a lesson in Huckabee's letter: personality is not policy; Huckabee's views are no different from Rick Santorum's; Huckabee just has a more pleasant manner.

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) -- Retro Man. Pitts sends a letter telling a constiuent he favors "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat to clamp down on Palestinian extremists." Sharon suffered a stroke in 2006 & has been a vegetative state ever since. Arafat died in 2004. Ian Rhodewalt in MondoWeiss: "Apparently, my congressman believes that the solution for peace in the Middle East will be reached by encouraging negotiations between a vegetable and a dead man."

Local News

"Walker Dislikes Jobs Numbers, So He'll Put out His Own." Tim Jones of Bloomberg News: "When Wisconsin job numbers compiled by the U.S. government were on the upswing last year, Governor Scott Walker traveled to Milwaukee to tout them as proof that he was turning around the state's economy. Now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures have shown for months that the state is losing more jobs than any other, Walker, a Republican who faces a June 5 recall election, will release his own." CW: That's right. When you don't like the facts, make up your own. ...

... "Scott Walker Magically Turns Dismal Wisconsin Job Numbers Into A Pre-Election Miracle." Rick Ungar of Forbes: "The Governor has simply decided to ignore the system used by the Department of Labor -- and every other state in the nation -- to measure job growth (or loss) and elected instead to go with a different set of numbers that makes things in Wisconsin look better.... According to Laura Dresser, a labor economist at ... The University Of Wisconsin, Walker's new numbers are little more than an incredibly transparent effort to create a false reality just in time to mislead Wisconsin voters who will cast their ballot in a few short weeks." In an update, Ungar reports that "Governor Walker has released the revised numbers, indicating that Wisconsin produced 23,300 jobs in the fourth quarter of 2011 rather than the reported loss of approximately 33,000."

... We Are Wisconsin: "It's obvious that Scott Walker, his campaign, and administration officials are engaging in a brazenly dishonest campaign to obscure his worst-in-the-nation jobs record. But now they've been caught in a lie showing use of taxpayer resources and insider knowledge of private information for campaign purposes, further eviscerating any shred of credibility regarding this disgraceful and dishonest PR stunt." ...

... Here's the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report, which is kind of a he said/he said report & doesn't necessarily leave the impression that Walker is just inventing numbers. ...

... Madison's Wisconsin State Journal report isn't much much illuminating. But both major papers do at least concentrate on the controversy.

News Ledes

New York Times: "... a trove of new documents and photographs [were] released Thursday by the special prosecutor in the [Trayvon Martin] case, Angela B. Corey, that form part of the discovery process in the murder case of Mr. Martin."

The Hill: "JPMorgan Chairman Jamie Dimon will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on his bank's multibillion-dollar trading loss. The hearing is yet to be scheduled...."

New York Times: "The Senate on Thursday confirmed two nominees chosen by President Obama for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, overcoming Republican objections and bringing the seven-member board to full strength for the first time since 2006, before the economic crisis struck." CW: the story is worth reading.

Washington Post: "In February, Supreme Court Justice [Stephen Breyer] was robbed at his Caribbean vacation house by a man wielding a machete. And more recently ... he suffered a burglary at his Georgetown home."

New York Times: Facebook "raised $16 billion on Thursday, in an initial public offering that valued Facebook at $104 billion."

New York Times: "Donna Summer, one of the most influential singers of the disco era, died on Thursday. She was 63."

New York Times: "The trading losses suffered by JPMorgan Chase have surged in recent days, surpassing the bank's initial $2 billion estimate by at least $1 billion, according to people with knowledge of the losses."

AP: "National foreclosure trends took a positive turn in April, as the number of homes seized by banks declined and fewer properties entered into the foreclosure process. But state-level data point to potentially more home repossessions ahead in Florida and many of the 25 other states where courts are required to sign off on foreclosures."

New York Times: "Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said Wednesday that she was ready to discuss stimulus programs to get the Greek economy growing again and that she was committed to keeping Greece in the euro zone, signaling a softer approach toward the struggling country." ...

... Guardian: "One estimate put the cost to the eurozone of Greece making a disorderly exit from the currency at $1tn, 5% of output. Officials in the United States are also nervously watching the growing crisis: Barack Obama on Wednesday described it as a 'headwind' that could threaten the fragile American recovery." ...

... Guardian: "Barack Obama is to press German chancellor Angela Merkel to support a growth package to help bail out Europe at the G8 summit this weekend amid fears in the White House that the eurozone crisis could damage the president's re-election chances."

New York Times: "A commando-style squad of [U.S.] Drug Enforcement Administration agents accompanied the Honduran counternarcotics police during two firefights with cocaine smugglers in the jungles of the Central American country this month, according to officials in both countries who were briefed on the matter. One of the fights, which occurred last week, left as many as four people dead and has set off a backlash against the American presence there."

Guardian: "Investigators are questioning Mexico's former deputy defence minister and a top army general for suspected links to organised crime, in the highest level scandal to hit the military in the five-year-old drug war. Mexican soldiers on Tuesday detained retired general Tomás Angeles Dauahare and general Roberto Dawe González and turned them over to the country's organised crime unit...."

AP: "The presiding judge in the U.N. trial of Gen. Ratko Mladic has delayed indefinitely the presentation of evidence that had been scheduled to start later this month due to 'errors' by prosecutors in disclosing evidence to defense lawyers."

The Hill has more on the meeting yesterday between President Obama & Congressional leaders on the budget & debt ceiling. (See also yesterday's News Ledes.)

ABC News: "At a news conference this morning, Sens. [Chuck] Schumer [D-NY] and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the 'Ex-PATRIOT' ... Act to respond directly to [Facebook co-founder Eduardo] Saverin's move [to renounce his U.S. citizenship & go to Singapore which has no capital gains tax], which they dub a 'scheme' that would 'help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.' The senators ... will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin.... Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship. The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again."

New York Times: "Mitt Romney almost matched President Obama in fund-raising during April after securing his party's presidential nomination and joining forces with the Republican National Committee, the campaign will announce on Thursday."

AP: "With only two hours allotted to each side to make closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors and defense lawyers neared the end of a month-long trial into whether former presidential candidate John Edwards violated campaign finance laws."

Space: "An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station early Thursday (May 17), kicking off a four-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory."

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."

The Commentariat -- May 15, 2012

My column in the New York Tiimes eXaminer is on Paul Krugman's column on the JPMorgan Stanley kablooey. The NYTX front page is here. ...

... ** NEW. I have another column in today's New York Times eXaminer, this one on David Brooks' attempt to explain Obama's popularity. The NYTX front page is here.

President Obama will appear on the ABC TV show "The View" Tuesday morning. Barbara Walters provides some clips:

President Obama delivered the Barnard College commencement address Monday:

NEW. Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post: "Richard Fisher, the conservative president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, has been raising alarms about the big banks for years. The top five banks now control 52 percent of the financial industry's assets; they had 17 percent in 1970.... Fisher argues 'Complacency, complicity, exuberance and greed' are in our DNA. These 'human traits and weaknesses result in market disruptions,' Fisher says, that are 'occasional and manageable.' ... Big banks backed by government turn these manageable episodes into catastrophes.' Fisher would force the big banks to reorganize and get much smaller. And he would require 'harsh and non-negotiable consequences' for any bank that ends in trouble and seeks government aid, including removal of its leaders, replacement of its board, voiding all compensation and bonus contracts and clawing back any bonus compensation for the two previous years."

Jessica Silver-Greenberg & Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "In the years leading up to JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion trading loss, risk managers and some senior investment bankers raised concerns that the bank was making increasingly large investments involving complex trades that were hard to understand. But even as the size of the bets climbed steadily, these former employees say, their concerns about the dangers were ignored or dismissed. An increased appetite for such trades had the approval of the upper echelons of the bank, including Jamie Dimon...." ...

"Regression to the Mean, JPMorgan Edition." James Kwak of Baseline Scenario: "The performance of anyone doing anything will exhibit regression to the mean.... If JPMorgan came through the financial crisis well, it was some combination of skill and luck. Remember, JPMorgan didn't have as big a portfolio of toxic assets as its competitors because it was late to the party; only in retrospect do we ascribe this good fortune to the supposed skill of Jamie Dimon. JPMorgan was never as good as people (both supporters and critics) made it out to be, so we shouldn't be so surprised that it just lost $2 billion (and counting)." ...

... John Schoen of NBC News: JP Morgan Chase's "spectacular multibillion-dollar losses, still being tallied weeks after a risky trading strategy began to unravel, have renewed concerns that the government may not be up to the task of reining in the nation's biggest banks." CW: No kidding.

** Ezra Klein: prominent attorney Emmet Bondurant "alongside Common Cause, where he serves on the board of directors, [is] suing to have the Supreme Court abolish" the filibuster. ...

... New York Times Editors: "We have supported eliminating the filibuster for judicial and executive nominees. Making other filibusters harder would be good for both parties. If [Harry] Reid [D-Nev.] remains majority leader in January, he should lead the reform."

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "The Columbia Human Rights Law Review ... has cleared its entire spring edition, doubling its normal size to 436 pages, to carry an extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law school professor and his students. The book sets out in precise and shocking detail how an innocent man was sent to his death on 8 December 1989, courtesy of the state of Texas. Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, is based on six years of intensive detective work by Professor James Liebman and 12 students."

Speaking Truth to Powell. Charles Pierce: "Has there been a more vastly ove rrated person in the past 50 years than Colin Powell? He helped cover up My Lai. He did his part to make sure that the Iran-Contra mess never came fully to light. He buckled under to chickenhawk bullies in the Bush White House and did his part to lie us into a destructive war with a speech to the U.N. that he knew was based on stovepiped bullshit from people he already didn't trust. And still, people trust him and revere him.... And now, of course, he's back with another book in which he polishes his own apple to a high gloss while ducking his responsibility for the greatest foreign-policy foul-up of our time."

NEW. Oh, dear. Could these patriots be breaking the law they hold so dear? Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones: "the Tea Party Patriots ... is recruiting volunteers for phone banks and promising a massive outpouring of support for embattled Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.... As a nonprofit group, TPP is banned from devoting the bulk of its resources to campaign activities.... If it goes in for a big campaign in support of him, it may risk violating its tax exempt status. The IRS recently announced its intention to crack down on nonprofit groups operating as thinly veiled political campaigns, and many of its recent targets have been tea party groups."

And Krugman gets zapped:

     ... Via Daily Kos.

Presidential Race

Priorities USA, the pro-Obama superPac, provides the two-punch in the Obama campaign's attack on Romney's tenure as head of Bain Capital (but of course they don't coordinate with the O-campaign, because that would be illegal):

... I don't agree with Michael Scherer of Time on this, but he thinks the attack on Romney's business acumen might not work. ...

... For one thing, Pat Wells, who stars in the Priorities USA ad, is a self-described conservative who voted for Dubya & McCain. ...

... Steve Benen: "... for months, there's been a standard line from the GOP campaign...: what Romney did at his vulture-capital firm was similar to what the administration did when it saved the auto industry.... Romney exploited the companies he gutted to line his pockets and those of his investors. That isn't the same as what Obama did for GM and Chrysler; it's the opposite.... Obama ... wasn't motivated by profit; he was trying to save the American auto industry, the backbone of the nation's manufacturing sector, millions of American jobs, and the economy in the Midwest."

Are These People Paying Attention??? Lucy Madison of CBS News: "Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has a slight edge over President Obama in the race for the White House in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll. According to the survey, conducted May 11-13, 46 percent of registered voters say they would vote for Romney, while 43 percent say they would opt for Mr. Obama."

Tim Egan: Mitt Romney is a weasel.

Say What? Greg Sargent: "... the Obama campaign began airing an ad attacking Mitt Romney over layoffs at Bain Capital, which the Obama team is holding up as emblematic of Romney's economic philosophy. Byron York reports that the Romney campaign has settled on a line of pushback -- compare what Romney did at Bain to what Obama did with the auto companies. ...

... Jon Chait of New York magazine: "One of the hidden reserves of profit discovered by Bain was the moneymaking potential opened up by breaking a social compact between workers and their bosses, a compact that increased the security of working life but held down the profit potential.... The old corporate ethos was well embodied by George Romney..., who as head of American Motors repeatedly turned down bonuses because he believed $225,000 a year (about a million and a half dollars today) was the highest salary an executive ought to earn.... Conservatives [today] have coalesced around the view that market incomes are inherently just. [Mitt] Romney himself has argued that to the extent that unfairness exists in the economy, it consists of intervention by the government or labor unions. The market is fair by definition." Read the whole post. ...

... Dueling Views of Bain. Amy Gardner & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: Both the Obama camp & the Romney campaign produced ads yesterday about Mitt Romney's tenure as head of Bain Capital. "How the public comes to view Bain, a Boston-based company Romney led for 15 years, is critical to the former Massachusetts governor's chances in November. He has pointed to his time at Bain and the business experience he gained there as the singular reason he is the right man to fix the nation's troubled economy."

Shannon Travis of CNN: "A well-known, openly gay supporter of Mitt Romney in New York has decided to withdraw his support for Romney and back President Barack Obama instead.... Bill White wrote in a letter addressed to the former Massachusetts governor and obtained by CNN, 'You have chosen to be on the wrong side of history and I do not support your run for president any longer.'"

"Mitt Likes Music, Including This." A fairly funny auto-tune video by the Gregory Brothers, a New York Times "op-doc":

Marin Cogan of GQ reads the Ron Paul forums and reports on the "Seven Stages of Ron Paul Supporter Grief." Kinda funny. Unless you're a Ron Paul supporter.

News Ledes

Raleigh News & Observer: "John Edwards seemed surprised to hear from Rachel 'Bunny' Mellon in August 2008 that she had been providing money to Andrew Young, a friend of the former presidential candidate testified on Tuesday."

ABC News: "A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a 'closed fracture' of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation."

Washington Post: "The Justice Department has initiated a criminal probe into the $2 billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the situation."

AP: "Greece is headed for another month of political paralysis ahead of new elections in mid-June, after party leaders on Tuesday failed to reach an agreement to build a coalition government."

Washington Post: "Newly installed French President Francois Hollande declared Tuesday that he would propose a 'new pact' to his European partners emphasizing economic stimulus, as he opened a new chapter in Europe's push-pull dispute about whether growth should be stoked through spending or saving."

New York Times: "The Virginia House of Delegates rejected the judicial nomination of a gay prosecutor on Tuesday after conservative Republican lawmakers argued that the nominee would press an activist agenda."

President Francois Hollande shakes hands with his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy before the investiture ceremony. Photo: AFP/Getty Images.

Guardian: François Hollande, France's first socialist leader in nearly 20 years, was sworn in at the Elysée palace on Tuesday in a deliberately low-key ceremony ahead of a meeting in Berlin with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, at which he will begin his quest to temper Europe's austerity drive."

Guardian: "Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is to be charged over allegations that she tried to conceal evidence from detectives investigating phone hacking and alleged bribes to public officials. Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, will be charged later on Tuesday with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced." New York Times story here.

Reuters: "Jamie Dimon faces growing calls to give up the chairmanship of JPMorgan Chase & Co when shareholders of the bank convene on Tuesday, days after it revealed losses of billions of dollars in trades that were supposed to protect it from risk."

NEW. Politico: "Americans Elect, the deep-pocketed nonprofit group that set out to nominate a centrist third-party presidential ticket, admitted early Tuesday that its ballyhooed online nominating process had failed.... Just after a midnight deadline Monday, the group acknowledged that its complicated online nominating process had failed to generate sufficient interest to push any of the candidates who had declared an interest in its nomination over the threshold in its rules." CW: somewhere in the world, Tom Friedman is weeping.

New York Times: "Iran said on Tuesday it had executed a man accused of being an Israeli intelligence agent responsible for the assassination of one of its nuclear scientists, Iranian state media reported." ...

... Reuters: "Iran's talks with the U.N. nuclear watchdog about Tehran's atomic activities are going well, a senior Iranian official said on Tuesday, the second day of discussions."