The Commentariat -- Sept. 17, 2012

Colin Moynihan of the New York Times: "As the Occupy Wall Street protests reach their first anniversary on Monday, numerous activities have been planned to highlight issues like the presence of corporate money in politics, the foreclosure of homes and the type of risky speculation that caused JPMorgan Chase to lose as much as $9 billion this year betting on credit derivatives." ...

... The One Percent Court:

"The Lie Factory." Jill Lepore of the New Yorker on the history of campaign consulting. "No single development has altered the workings of American democracy in the last century so much as political consulting, an industry unknown before Campaigns, Inc. [was founded in 1933.] In the middle decades of the twentieth century, political consultants replaced party bosses as the wielders of political power gained not by votes but by money. [Clem] Whitaker and [Leone] Baxter, [who founded Campaigns, Inc.,] were the first people to make politics a business."

New York Times Editors: A "bill, sponsored by Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, would hire veterans as firefighters and police officers and for conservation jobs in national parks and on other public lands, through grants to federal departments and agencies and contracts with state and local governments and private organizations. It would give a lift to veteran entrepreneurs and contractors.... Ms. Murray has tried to make her bill as bipartisan as possible." Nevertheless, Republicans are trying to defeat it. "'Where is our honor? Where is our valor? Where is our sacrifice?' thundered [Sen. Tom] Coburn [R-Okla.], suggesting that giving jobs to veterans was an affront to American values." The bill is scheduled for a vote Wednesday.

The Actuary. In a New York Times op-ed, Steve Rattner, the financier & Obama car czar advocates for death panels. CW: I hope his parents are in a safe house where he can't find them.

CW: I have a gut-level disagreement with Glenn Greenwald's absolutist stance on free speech. But I'd love to have input from others on this.

Brett Smiley of New York: "New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd rings in the Jewish new year Sunday with a controversy brewing over her column titled "Neocons Slither Back," in which she peddles Jewish stereotypes and uses anti-Semitic imagery, according to a number of writers, editors, and observers." CW: I saw some of the criticism yesterday, & I really don't agree with it. Maybe if I were Jewish, I'd have a different take, but I agree with Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "There's nothing anti-Semitic in Dowd's column."

     ... Cartoon by Jeff Danziger. His Website is here.

Presidential Race

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama, under renewed fire from Mitt Romney for not standing up to China on behalf of American workers, used a rally in [Ohio] ... on Monday to announce a new trade case against Beijing. He said it was Mr. Romney who had sent jobs to China through his zealous practice of outsourcing at Bain Capital.... 'Ohio,' the president declared, 'you can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs.... We've brought more trade cases against China in one term than the previous administration did in two -- and every case we've brought that's been decided, we won.' " ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: Ed Gillespie, "a top strategist for Mitt Romney, conceded Monday that the campaign has not provided enough specifics about the candidate's vision for the country and pledged a renewed effort in the last 50 days of the race to better communicate with voters."

Soledad O'Brien of CNN tries to pin down Rep. Peter King (R-NY) on just when President Obama's "apology tour" was:

Jeff Mason of Reuters: "On long flights to swing states in the West and late nights at the White House after his children have gone to bed, President Barack Obama is cramming" for the presidential debates.

Philip Rucker & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "Mitt Romney, who last week struggled with his responses to a major ­foreign-policy crisis in the Middle East, will now turn his focus back to the economy with a new offensive aimed at recharging a campaign that even some allies believe he is losing. The Obama campaign, also sobered by the violent deaths of U.S. diplomats in Libya, seems willing to join Romney in a debate about the economy instead." ...

... CW: if you'd like to know what Romney will have to say AND what's wrong with it, Paul Krugman lays out Romney's "five points to nowhere" & has the point-by-point breakdown. If you want to skip the five points & go with five words, here's a good overview: "You've got to be kidding." As for how effective Romney's economic offensive will be, Krugman writes,

What the Romney revival people imagine is that he can now go out and aggressively sell his carefully unsubstantive economic ideas, without letting voters know that his underlying ideas involve things they really don't want. I suppose a master politician might be able to pull that off. But you go to an election with the candidate you have ...

... Jeff Zeleny & Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "With time dwindling for him to gain an edge in the presidential race and with an outbreak of finger-pointing signaling trouble in his campaign, Mitt Romney plans to begin an offensive this week, his aides said, seeking to give voters a clearer picture of where he wants to take the country." ...

... McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: "Mitt Romney's campaign has concluded that the 2012 election will not be decided by elusive, much-targeted undecided voters -- but by the motivated partisans of the Republican base.... Three Romney advisers told BuzzFeed the campaign's top priority now is to rally conservative Republicans, in hopes that they'll show up on Election Day, and drag their less politically-engaged friends with them. The earliest, ambiguous signal of this turn toward the party's right was the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate, a top Romney aide said." ...

... Rick Klein of ABC News: "Things haven't been going Mitt Romney's way since roughly the moment that Clint Eastwood dressed down that empty chair.... Romney has struggled to fill the leadership chair himself, despite several high-profile opportunities handed to him by national and international events."

Paul Krugman: In response to the Fed's announcement that it would introduce a new round of quantitative easing, "Republicans ... have gone wild, with Mitt Romney joining in the craziness. His campaign issued a news release denouncing the Fed's move as giving the economy an 'artificial' boost -- he later described it as a 'sugar high' -- and declaring that 'we should be creating wealth, not printing dollars.' ... What about Mr. Romney's ideas for 'creating wealth'? The Romney economic 'plan' offers no specifics about what he would actually do. The thrust of it, however, is that what America needs is less environmental protection and lower taxes on the wealthy. Surprise!" ...

... Jonathan Bernstein in Salon: Why did Mitt Romney pull out the "liberal media" canard last week? Because he's got nothing else.

Mike Allen & Jim VandeHei of Politico have a long, mildly interesting piece on how the Romney campaign screwed up the Republican convention, especially the last night & Romney's speech. The blame goes to Stuart Stevens, Romney's chief strategist, who scrapped the prepared speech 8 days before the convention, then largely scrapped another one, written days later, then helped Romney write his own. ...

... Taylor Berman of Gawker: "The sources [from inside the Romney camp] in the article, which includes the sort of shit flinging you'd expect to read after a candidate loses, not before, fault Stevens for Romney's mediocre speech and Clint Eastwood's spectacular performance art piece at the RNC, amongst other campaign snafus."

E. J. Dionne: "Many conservative commentators attribute Obama's bounce to Romney's failure to be specific enough. They don't want to acknowledge that on core issues, the electorate is far closer to Obama's moderate progressivism than to Romney and Ryan's conservatism."

Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker on God's seat at the conventions.

Congressional Races

Robert Rizzuto & Shira Schoenberg of MassLive: "... Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren has pulled ahead of Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, according to a new poll. The survey of Bay State voters conducted Sept. 6-13 by the Western New England University Polling Institute through a partnership with The Republican and MassLive.com, shows Warren leading over Brown, 50 to 44 percent, among likely voters." CW: if the poll is accurate, it's a stunning turnaround from a poll published last week that showed Brown with a 5-point lead. In any event, it looks as if the convention speech helped, & fired up Massachusetts Democrats. ...

... Public Policy Polling: "Things have been going Elizabeth Warren's way in the Massachusetts Senate race over the last month. She's gained 7 points and now leads Scott Brown 48-46 after trailing him by a 49-44 margin on our last poll." Via Taegen Goddard.

... Sally Jacobs of the Boston Globe on Elizabeth Warren's Amerindian heritage. CW: I used to live near one of the Oklahoma towns Jacobs cites as a place where Warren's Amerindian relatives lived. A number of my neighbors there, who passed for white, appeared to be of American Indian heritage. I don't remember the women as well as the men, & I remember them because they were drop-dead handsome. I believe Warren.

"Crocodile Tears." Dan Avery of Queerty (Sept. 12): During the Democratic convention, Brian Nemoir, "a member of Republican Tommy Thompson's Senate campaign team sent out a mass email to right-wing bloggers ridiculing Thompson's lesbian Democratic opponent, Tammy Baldwin, for celebrating at a Wisconsin Capital Pride Rally in 2010.... This week, Thompson ... apologized for the gay-baiting email and tweets, explaining he was 'very upset' about them: 'I thought it was a mistake, I'm sorry, and he's apologized, I believe. He shouldn't have done it.' Clearly Thompson is furious at Nemoir -- but not so furious that he fired him. Nemoir has been removed as spokesman but will remain active in the Thompson campaign."

Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon interviews Wayne Powell, the Democrat running to unseat "self-absorbed egomaniac" House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

Right Wing World

** Frank Rich spends a week listening to & reading right-wing media and finds "a Republican party far more despairing than the lamestream knows." CW: I was going to write something like this, but Rich beat me to it: "I finished the week with sympathy for true believers on the right who are far more divorced from their own political party and the nation's culture than even those on the left who are perennially disillusioned by Obama, the Democratic hierarchy, and their own journalistic Establishment." Well, I probably wouldn't have included the "sympathy" part.

NEW. Aviva Shen of Think Progress: "'Nutjobs stuck in the thirteenth century' is just one insult used in the parody song showcased by ... Mike Huckabee on his website Monday. Huckabee, an outspoken Islamophobe, is the latest media figure today to embrace anti-Islam rhetoric to explain the violent anti-American protests in the Middle East." Shen has the audio. Not as irresponsible as the movie trailer, but offensive, disrespectful & stupid, particularly at this time. Bear in mind, quite a few people thought Huckabee should be president. Thanks to contributor Lisa for the link.

Ghostbusters. Stephanie Saul of the New York Times has a long piece on True the Vote, an offshoot of the Tea Party that is obsessed with dedicated to eliminating voter fraud. Their favorite urban legend is one about "those people" being bussed into polling places in a bus nobody has ever actually seen. "In some versions the bus is from an Indian reservation; in others it is full of voters from Chicago or Detroit. 'Pick your minority group,'" a Wisconsin elections official said. And get this: the founder & president of True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, "said that until four years ago she was apolitical, a churchgoing mother of two.... 'Then in 2008, I don't know, something clicked,' she said. 'I saw our country headed in a direction that, for whatever reason -- it didn't hit me until 2008 -- this really threatens the future of our children.' -- CW: it's a mystery, isn't it, just what clicked for Catherine in 2008? Sorry, Frank Rich, these people make me want to scream.

Grover Norquist, playing the part of a wino in "Atlas Shrugged, Part 2." Or else, just Grover Norquist.The Reliable Source, Washington Post: Mr. Anti-Tax has a cameo role in "Atlas Shrugged, Part 2." Should make the movie a real hit.

News Ledes

NBC News: "Looking to reignite their movement on its one-year anniversary, several hundred Occupy Wall Street activists protested in lower Manhattan Monday, staging a sit-in near the iconic New York Stock Exchange and swarming through the streets in costumes and toting American flags and signs. Roughly 100 protesters were believed to have been arrested, including some rabbis and pastors who had sat down in the street and sidewalk, blocking them...."

Chicago Tribune: Chicago "Mayor Rahm Emanuel late Sunday called the [Chicago teachers' union] walkout 'illegal' and pledged to seek an injunction in court to force an end to the city's first teachers strike in a quarter century." ...

     ... NBC News Update: "A Cook County Circuit Court judge on Monday declined a request to hold a same-day hearing for an injunction to immediately end Chicago's teacher strike. During a short meeting, Judge Peter Flynn postponed the requested hearing until Wednesday.... That comes after the Chicago Teachers Union's delegates are scheduled to meet and vote on a proposed contract."

Washington Post: "After days of anti-American turmoil in the Muslim world, governments on Sunday looked ahead to a week of trying to make an uneasy accommodation between the anger of their citizens and their desire to convince the United States of their goodwill. But U.S. diplomatic outposts remained under threat. In Pakistan, at least one protester was killed and 18 were injured Sunday as hundreds of people broke through a barricade in a march to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, and thousands more rallied in Lahore, where American flags were burned, the Associated Press reported." ...

... AP: "Hundreds of Afghans burned cars and threw rocks at a U.S. military base as a demonstration against an anti-Islam film that ridicules the Prophet Muhammad turned violent in the Afghan capital early Monday. And in Jakarta, Indonesians angered over the film clashed with police outside the U.S. Embassy, hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails and burning tires outside the mission. At least one police officer was seen bleeding from the head and being carried to safety by fellow officers."

New York Times: "The Obama administration plans to file a broad trade case at the World Trade Organization in Geneva on Monday accusing China of unfairly subsidizing its exports of autos and auto parts, a senior administration official said late Sunday, in a move with clear political implications for the presidential elections less than two months away."

AP: "U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that U.S. and Japanese officials have agreed to put a second missile defense system in Japan. The exact location of the installation has not yet been determined."

Space: "A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American spaceflyer has landed safely back on Earth, wrapping up a four-month mission to the International Space Station."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 16, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on a Times' story about Romney playing a fun-loving human being on the teevee while Ryan attacked President Obama at the Value Voters Summit. Commenting on NYTX is open to all. ...

Quote of the Day: We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side. -- Rick Santorum, to Values Voters

... Josh Glasstetter of Right Wing Watch has more on the backers & speakers at the Values Voters Summit where Ryan spoke. What is most disturbing is that a vice-presidential candidate, members of Congress and two sitting governors are right at home with this bunch of documented wackos & holy warriors. ...

... Steve Benen has more in a feature he's carried over from his days at Washington Monthly: "This Week in God." ...

... Brian McLaren, writing on CNN's "Belief" blog: "... any discussion of Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations around the world must include the phenomenon of American Islamophobia, for which large sectors of evangelical Christianity in America serve as a greenhouse." Thanks to contributor Lisa for the link.

"Don't Tell Anyone, But the Stimulus Worked." David Firestone of the New York Times: "On the most basic level, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is responsible for saving and creating 2.5 million jobs. The majority of economists agree that it helped the economy grow by as much as 3.8 percent, and kept the unemployment rate from reaching 12 percent. The stimulus is the reason, in fact, that most Americans are better off than they were four years ago, when the economy was in serious danger of shutting down."

Presumption of Guilt, with a Price. Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: more than 300 district attorneys across the nation are allowing debt collection companies to use their stationery & permitting those debt collection companies to not only threaten criminal prosecution for writing bad checks but also to con the check-writers into taking costly, stupid classes on "financial accountability." CW: one irony: the biggest debt collection agency using this D.A. scam -- went bankrupt. Maybe that shoulda taken their own stupid class. P.S. This egregious practice is just what Americans should expect to happen when private corporations take over public functions. Privatization is a racket.

Jeremiah Goulka explains in a Salon piece why he left the GOP. The ignorance Goulka admits is stunning, but let's give him credit for admitting it. There are millions of Americans who are just as ill-informed as Goulda once was and living lives just as insular as Goulka's was. Thanks to Lisa for the link.

Presidential Race

John Ingold of the Denver Post: "Mitt Romney canceled his Sunday afternoon campaign rally after a fatal small-plane crash at the airport in Pueblo, [Colorado,] closed down two of three runways. An experimental, home-built airplane crashed as it was attempting to land at Pueblo Memorial Airport around 9 a.m. Sunday. The man ... died in the crash. He was the only person on board. Romney, making his first campaign visit to Colorado in a month, had been scheduled to speak at the Weisbrod Aircraft Museum on the airport's grounds at around 4:30 p.m. Sunday."

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is declining to endorse Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's charge that President Barack Obama has 'thrown allies like Israel under the bus' during his first term in office. In an interview aired Sunday on NBC's 'Meet The Press,' Netanyahu initially demurred on Romney's comments, but then appeared to distance himself from the GOP candidate's inflammatory charge. 'You're trying to get me into the American election and I'm not going to do that,' the Israeli prime minister said." CW: Evidently Bibi has been reading the polls.

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: after initially faltering in public opinion polls, Democrats are winning the Medicare argument again. CW: Calmes is writing what is mostly a horse-race story, but she does write: "At the heart of the conflict is the proposal backed by Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan to change the way Medicare works in an effort to drive down health care costs and keep the program solvent as the population ages.... Critics say the fixed payments might not keep up with rising insurance costs and could leave older Americans facing cutbacks in care or paying more out of their own pockets." (Emphasis added.) That's about as pro-Romney/Ryan as a report can get & not qualify as an op-ed piece.

"The Foreign Relations Fumbler." Nicholas Kristof: "... every time Romney touches foreign policy, he breaks things.... It has been unseemly for Romney to side with a foreign leader [Netanyahu] in spats with the United States." Kristof also writes, "President Obama himself blew it a few days ago by mistakenly asserting that we didn't consider Egypt an ally." CW: that was no fumble. See Juan Cole's take, linked in yesterday's Commentariat.

"Neocons Slither Back." Maureen Dowd: in his Values Voters speech, “Ryan was moving his mouth, but the voice was the neocon puppet master Dan Senor. The hawkish Romney adviser has been secunded to manage the running mate and graft a Manichaean worldview onto the foreign affairs neophyte. A moral, muscular foreign policy; a disdain for weakness and diplomacy; a duty to invade and bomb Israel's neighbors; a divine right to pre-emption -- it's all ominously familiar." ...

... Emily Schultheis of Politico: "Fear of President Barack Obama -- not enthusiasm for Mitt Romney -- is driving religious conservatives to pull the lever for the GOP nominee this November.... Conservatives attending the [Values Voters Summit] said they worried about a range of things during a possible Obama II, from implementation of the president's health care law, and a move to what they saw as more 'socialist' policies to the end of the very values -- including the protection of life and traditional marriage -- that they came to the summit to support. House Majority Whip Eric Cantor ... framed the campaign as a battle for the very core of the country, saying another term for Obama would continue the nation's decline. 'This election is going to determine whether or not the very moral fabric of our country will be upheld, or whether it will be torn apart,' he said."

Dylan Byers of Politico: Romney's "blame the liberal media" ploy isn't working all that well when a good deal of the criticism is coming from the right.

Right Wing World

It seems Right Wing World is winging out over "brownshirted enforcers ... [who made] a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration." I won't link to the original Instapundit post, but here are comments by John Cole of Balloon Juice and David Watkins of Lawyers, Guns & Money, both of whom cite the "key bits" of "evidence" that has led Instapundit to regretfully demand that President Obama immediately resign in disgrace.

Local News

Deborah Charles of the AP: "Voting-rights groups that virtually stopped registering voters in Florida for a year as they challenged the state's new restrictions on elections now are scrambling to get people there registered for the November 6 election."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Having been rebuffed privately by President Obama last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel took to the airwaves in the United States on Sunday to warn that Iran was only six or seven months from having -90 percent' of what it needed to make an atomic bomb."

AP: "Hundreds of Pakistanis protesting an anti-Islam video produced in the United States clashed with police as they tried to march toward the U.S. Consulate in the southern city of Karachi." ...

... Guardian: "Defence secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday that the US was still on standby to deploy elite forces to protect American interests in cities caught up in a wave of Muslim protest, but that the level of violence appears to be levelling off." ...

... Washington Post: "The Obama administration ordered the evacuation of all but emergency U.S. government personnel, and all family members, from diplomatic missions in Tunisia and Sudan on Saturday and warned Americans not to travel to those countries. The action came as leaders across the Muslim world took stock of their relationship with the United States, a major provider of aid and investment, and struggled to balance it with the will of their populations." ...

... Al Jazeera: "Libyan authorities have arrested about 50 people in connection to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in which the US ambassador and three embassy staff were killed, Libya's parliamentary chief said." ...

... Al Jazeera: "The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans and ten Libyans was the work of 'experienced masterminds' that had been planned well in advance, the Libyan president says. 'I think this was al-Qaeda,' President Mohamed al-Magarief told Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid on Friday...." ...

     ... ABC News Update: "U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was not premeditated, directly contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance."

Washington Post: "Four international service members were killed early Sunday near a remote NATO installation in southern Afghanistan when a member of the Afghan security forces opened fire on them.... The deaths at a remote checkpoint in Zabul province marked an escalation of so-called insider attacks on foreign troops.... On Saturday, an Afghan gunman thought to belong to the local police killed two British soldiers in southern Helmand province."

Chicago Tribune: "Thousands of teachers from Chicago and beyond rallied at a Near West Side park Saturday as lawyers labored into the night at a Loop office to turn a framework for a new contract into finer points that can become a deal. Hundreds of union leaders are scheduled to meet at 3 p.m. Sunday for a potential vote that could end the walkout." ...

     ... Update: "The Chicago teachers strike will continue Monday as the union's House of Delegates refused to halt the walk out this afternoon and signaled classes may not resume before Wednesday."

AP: "About 300 people observing the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street marched to a small concrete park in New York's lower Manhattan that served as headquarters for the protest movement and was its birthplace. Police patrolled the crowd Saturday and took at least a dozen people into custody near Trinity Church that borders Zuccotti Park.... Protesters marched from Washington Square Park and headed south down Broadway to Zuccotti Park, chanting as they went."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 15, 2012

I didn't think I'd have time to address David Brooks Friday, but I did eventually manage to knock out a column for the New York Times eXaminer.

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

Juan Cole: President Obama played hardball with Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi. And it worked. CW: re: the same events Cole outlines, this was my impression, too. I'm glad to see that someone with Cole's expertise drew the same conclusion. And Tough Romney can just shut up.

Craig Timberg of the Washington Post: "... after the White House warned Tuesday that a crude anti-Muslim movie trailer had sparked lethal violence in the Middle East, Google acted..., keeping it from easy viewing in countries where more than a quarter of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims live. Legal experts and civil libertarians, meanwhile, said the controversy highlighted how Internet companies, most based in the United States, have become global arbiters of free speech, weighing complex issues that traditionally are the province of courts, judges, and occasionally, international treaty.... In temporarily blocking the video in some countries, legal experts say, Google implicitly invoked the concept of 'clear and present danger.' That's a key exception to the broad First Amendment protections...." ...

... BUT Gerry Shih of Reuters: "Google Inc rejected a request by the White House on Friday to reconsider its decision to keep online a controversial YouTube movie clip that has ignited anti-American protests in the Middle East. The Internet company said it was censoring the video in India and Indonesia after blocking it on Wednesday in Egypt and Libya...."

Adrian Chen of Gawker: "The anti-Islam film that's set off a firestorm in the Middle East was directed by a 65-year-old schlock director named Alan Roberts, we've confirmed. He's the creative vision behind softcore porn classics like The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood.... Roberts may have been duped by the film's producer in much the same way as the rest of the cast and crew. They believed they were participating in a period piece about ancient Egypt and had no idea the movie would be edited and dubbed into a piece of Islamophobic propaganda."

New York Times Editors: "There is still time before year's end for Congress to cancel this destructive sequester and negotiate a realistic plan to balance spending cuts with tax increases on the rich. One look at the details should persuade lawmakers that the task is urgent."

New York Times Editors: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is trying to browbeat President Obama into a pre-emptive strike [against Iran].... It is dangerous...."

Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "Conservative critics of President Obama are accusing him of 'skipping' daily intelligence briefings throughout his first term and in the days leading up to this week's deadly attacks on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya.... But the substance of the charge, aimed at undermining Obama's credibility as commander in chief, appears to be more a matter of semantics than hard fact.... Obama has never 'skipped' a Presidential Daily Briefing, aides say, even if an in-person briefing isn't listed on his schedule."

Mark Sherman of the AP: "More than 8 in 10 Americans in a poll by The Associated Press and the National Constitution Center support limits on the amount of money given to groups that are trying to influence U.S. elections. But they might have to change the Constitution first."

Abby Goodnough of the New York Times: "California -- home to seven million uninsured people, more than any other state -- is at the forefront of preparations for January 2014, when a controversial requirement that most Americans have medical coverage or pay a penalty takes effect.... The California Health Benefit Exchange has already hired 50 employees and is poised to hire 50 more. Construction of the Web portal through which some three million people are expected to buy insurance by 2019, and through which many others will likely enroll in Medicaid, is under way."

Gail Collins on the fine art of bamboozling teenagers into taking on huge, nearly life-long debt. ...

... The underlying story, by Andrew Martin of the New York Times (May 2012): "With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country, crippling debt is no longer confined to dropouts from for-profit colleges or graduate students who owe on many years of education, some of the overextended debtors in years past. As prices soar, a college degree statistically remains a good lifetime investment, but it often comes with an unprecedented financial burden."

Presidential Race

Jeff Zeleny & Megan Thee-Brenan of the New York Times: "President Obama has taken away Mitt Romney's longstanding advantage as the candidate voters say is most likely to restore the economy and create jobs, according to the latest poll by The New York Times and CBS News, which found a modest sense of optimism among Americans that White House policies are working."

A new Obama ad answering the question, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" The ad will air in seven swing states:

Norm Ornstein in the Washington Post: Bob Woodward & other pundits want Obama to be more like Bill Clinton. "But ... Clinton's open and enveloping approach [did little] to improve his presidential performance.... All of the phone calls, flattery and schmoozing did not stop Republicans in both houses from voting in unison against the Clinton economic plan, and for almost eight months ... he did not have enough votes from his own Democrats." By contrast, "The accomplishments of the 111th Congress rivaled those of the Great Society Congress of Lyndon Johnson's era. And they were achieved without the midnight phone calls or warm interactions with allies and adversaries that characterized Clinton."

Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: in his interview with George Stephanopoulos, Mitt Romney confirmed that he's "not going to balance the budget by raising taxes or by cutting spending; we're going to have presto-chango-magico growth. Exactly the way that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush 'balanced' the budget by projecting magical growth rates." ...

... George Made Him Do It. Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "... Mitt Romney found himself at odds with his own foreign policy advisers. While two of his advisers in interviews said that Mr. Romney had a different 'red line' on Iran from President Obama, Mr. Romney told ABC News that his red line is the same as that of the president." The Romney campaign later blamed Stephanopoulos for mischaracterizing Romney's stance even though Romney agreed clearly -- twice -- that his 'red line' on Iran was the same as Obama's. CW: Parker pretty much calls Romney's people liars; this is breaking new ground for her. Maybe the worm has turned. ...

... During the Stephanopoulos interview, Romney also revealed he agrees with the embassy statement; which he twice characterized as evidence President Obama "sympathized" with violent protesters. In fact, Romney goes beyond the embassy statement to condemn the video that inspired the riots & murders. Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "This whole thing would be crazy enough if Romney at least disagreed with the embassy's statement. But it's clear he agrees with it." Lewison thinks Romney might be insane.

Washington Post Editors: Mitt Romney should stop taking "cheap shots" at the President. He "needs to offer more substance and fewer slogans in foreign affairs."

Steve Benen reports that Mitt has the Mendacity train back up to speed. Week 34: 36 lies, most of which are doozies.

Jonathan Cohn the The New Republic on Romney's bad press: Romney can complain that the press is "biased," but "negative" doesn't mean "biased." Romney has earned most of those negative reports. (Cohn agrees that the horse-race stuff is over the top. It always is.) CW: Romney wasn't complaining when the horse-race reports showed him besting Obama.

The New Yorker's Steve Coll, Jon Lee Anderson & Ryan Lizza discuss the turmoil in the Middle East with Dorothy Wickenden:

Andrew Sprung of Xpostfactoid on "the Romney Doctrine": "Romney is not only denying the imperative that the U.S. be 'selective' in projecting its power -- his whole foreign policy is premised on a fantasy of unchallenged hegemony (albeit steered by Israel in one quarter) that never was.... Romney has surrounded himself with Bush administration hardliners and publicly positioned himself in pawn to Netanyahu, not to mention in the pay of Sheldon Adelson."

John Eligon of the New York Times: "Citing a wave of angry backlash, a Kansas man on Friday withdrew a petition in which he argued that President Obama should be removed from the state's election ballot because he did not meet citizenship requirements.... The state will continue to try to obtain the birth certificate, and officials will meet on Monday as scheduled to close the case officially. But without the petition, Mr. Obama will remain on the ballot, Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach told The Associated Press." CW: where is Mitt Romney in all this? Why isn't he telling Kobach, a Romney campaign advisor, associate, surrogate, friend or something, to STFU? Oh, I know; Romney "sympathizes" with birthers.

"I didn't know you had families." Scott Kearnan, writing for Boston Spirit & republished in the Boston Globe, recounts Gov. Mitt Romney's interactions with gay activists & high-level state employees. Via Jurassicpork of Brilliant at Breakfast. Even taking into consideration that the recollections are years old & they are accounts by people who opposed Romney's policies, Romney's remarks & actions were far beyond "insensitive." That is, you can bend over backwards to give Romney the benefit of the doubt, & he still comes across as a world-class jerk.

CW: I just read Paul Ryan's speech to the Values Voters Summit, a project of the Family Research Council. I hope you'll read it, too. The linked Politico site also has video of the full speech -- way too much for me to watch, but I'm sure it gives a good idea of the audience's reactions. The reason I'm suggesting you read Ryan's speech is that it is a masterpiece of propaganda that exposes the truly dark side of right-wing think. If Nazi comparisons weren't verboten, I'd make one. You will not recognize the Barack Obama depicted in the speech, because he is the Anti-Christ, the enemy of god, "peace, freedom and civilized values." When we attribute Obama hatred to racism -- as I have been inclined to do -- we are fooling ourselves. People who hate President Obama don't hate him because he's black -- they hate him because people like Paul Ryan have instilled in them true existential fear that his re-election would "set in motion things that can never be called back. It would be a choice to give up so many other choices.... If we renew the contract, we will get the same deal -- with only one difference: In a second term, he will never answer to you again." Re-electing Barack Obama is tantamount to the end of democracy, to the end of freedom, to the end of civilization. You don't have to be a birther to believe that Obama is the leader of an open conspiracy to attack the United States from within. Values Voters aren't specifically crazy; they are, to borrow a word from George Romney, "brainwashed."

CW: while searching for something else, I came across this terrific piece by Marcy Wheeler on Mitt Romney's convention speech. It's more than two weeks old, but it is still worth reading. Wheeler is an expert at bringing together little pieces of the puzzle to expose the whole. That's what she does here. Her bottom line is "to a large and increasing number of American people, Mitt's actually arguing that he should be President so he can solve the problem he got phenomenally rich by causing in the first place." It's the getting to the bottom line that's astounding.

Local News

Ed Treleven of the Wisconsin State Journal: "A Dane County [Madison] judge late Friday struck down Wisconsin's controversial 2011 collective bargaining law because he said it violates the state and U.S. constitutional guarantees of free speech and freedom of association." Thanks to Kate M. for the link.

Tom Brown & David Adams of Reuters: "An Iowa judge issued a temporary injunction on Friday blocking the state's plans to verify the citizenship status of voters before the November 6 election in the Midwestern swing state. The injunction was a setback for Iowa's Republican Governor Terry Branstad."

Laura Vozella of the Washington Post: "Virginia's Board of Health did an about-face on abortion regulations Friday, voting to impose strict, hospital-style building standards even on existing clinics and reversing its June decision. The reversal came two days after the office of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) sent a letter to board members advising them against grandfathering clinics -- and warning that they could be personally liable for legal fees if they were sued after ignoring his legal advice."

News Ledes

Reuters: "A California man convicted of bank fraud was taken in for questioning on Saturday by officers investigating possible probation violations stemming from the making of an anti-Islam film that triggered violent protests in the Muslim world. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, voluntarily left his home in the early hours of Saturday morning for the meeting in a sheriff's station in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos...." ...

... Reuters: "Afghanistan's Taliban claimed responsibility on Saturday for an attack on a base which U.S. officials said killed two American Marines, saying it was in response to a film that insults the Prophet Mohammad. Camp Bastion, in southern Helmand province, came under mortar, rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire late on Friday in an attack in which several servicemen were wounded." ...

... Reuters: "The Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda urged Muslims to step up protests and kill more U.S. diplomats in Muslim countries after a U.S.-made film mocking the Prophet Mohammad which it said was another chapter in the 'crusader wars' against Islam." ...

... AP: "The U.S. is sending more spies, Marines and drones to Libya, trying to speed the search for those who killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, but the investigation is complicated by a chaotic security picture in the post-revolutionary country, and limited American and Libyan intelligence resources."

Reuters: "Thousands of striking Chicago teachers will march again on Saturday to keep the pressure on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to wrap up an agreement with their union so they can end a strike that has closed the nation's third largest school district for a week. The 'Standing Strong with Chicago Teachers Rally' could be the largest demonstration against Emanuel's education reforms since the strike began in Chicago on September 10."

New York Times: "Federal and state authorities ... are beginning one of the most aggressive crackdowns on money-laundering in decades, intended to send a signal to the nation's biggest banks that weak compliance is unacceptable. Regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, are close to taking action against JPMorgan Chase for insufficient safeguards...."