The Commentariat -- August 7

Still no Off Times Square, but I did finally get word that the techs are back working on it. Must be a complex problem!

** Prof. Drew Westen, in a New York Times op-ed, on the failed Obama presidency:

... the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks. ...

... Maureen Dowd on the failed Obama presidency: "'Yes, we can!' has devolved into 'Hey, we might.' ... The dissonance of his promise and his reality is jarring.” ...

... "The Madman Theory." Kurt Andersen of NPR: "... it's a pity Barack Obama isn't more like Richard Nixon." And another thing: Nixon was more liberal than Obama.

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. -- Standard & Poors (full report here [pdf]) ...

... Blame the Tea Party. Felix Salmon of Reuters: Treasury takes a shot at Standard & Poors, but oops! they missed the mark. "Whatever else S&P is doing here, it isn’t repeating its mistakes of the subprime bubble.... Any student of sovereign default knows that it is born of precisely the kind of failures of governance that we saw during the debt-ceiling debate. That is why the US cannot hold a triple-A rating from S&P: the chance of having a dysfunctional Congress in future is 100%, and a dysfunctional Congress, armed with a statutory debt ceiling, is an extremely dangerous thing, and very far from risk-free." ...

     ... Here's the Treasury shot at S&P Salmon discusses. ...

... Edmund Andrews of the National Journal agrees with Salmon: "The big new element on Friday was an official outside recognition that U.S. creditworthiness is being undermined by a new factor: political insanity. S&P didn’t base its downgrade on a change in the U.S. fiscal and economic outlook. It based it on the political game of chicken over the debt ceiling, a game that Republicans initiated and pushed to the limit, and on a growing gloom about the partisan deadlock. Part of S&P’s gloom, moreover, stemmed explicitly from what a new assessment of the GOP’s ability to block any and all tax increases." ...

... Ezra Klein: "... the credit-rating agency model is broken and, at times, dangerous, and investors need to pay less attention to their pronouncements. But that doesn’t make Standard Poor’s wrong in this particular case.

... Jamie Klatell of The Hill: So then Jay Carney, John Boehner & Harry Reid take their positions in a triangular firing squad with dueling statements. ...

... Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Liberals are growing frustrated with President Obama’s soft response to the Tea Party after fractious negotiations over the debt limit led to the loss of nation’s AAA credit rating on Friday. 'It’s hard to see how we avoid a Tea-Party recession if the president who has the biggest megaphone in the country is not willing to speak clearly on the issue,' Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, told The Hill." ...

... How Fucked Are We? Pretty Darned Fucked -- Christina Romer:

... The Cantor Coup. Lori Montgomery, et al., of the Washington Post: "The frantic showdown that followed, bringing the nation to the brink of default, looked like the haphazard escalation of a typical partisan standoff. It wasn’t." ...

... ** Southern Saboteurs. Michael Lind in Salon: "Today's Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white Southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way." CW: still think the Civil War was a good idea? P.S. If you don't think there's a new flavor of racism in Republican Tea Party attacks on Obama Administration policies, then you don't know the South. Thanks to a reader for the link.

Paul Starobin in a New York Times op-ed: Whatever happened to Harold Koh? As dean of the Yale Law School, he was "one of the country’s foremost defenders of the notion that the president of the United States can’t wage wars without the approval of Congress." But as legal advisor to Hillary Clinton, Koh "has become the administration’s defender of the right to stay engaged in a conflict against Libya without Congressional approval."

Right Wing World

Mystery Solved, Legal Case Pending. Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Edward Conrad, a former executive at Bain Capital, has revealed himself as the mystery donor who gave a $1 million corporate contribution to a special political action committee supporting Mitt Romney.... Campaign finance groups say the donation may have violated the law, which prohibits the use of straw donors to evade disclosure requirements."

News Ledes

Not Necessarily Good News. New York Times: "The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, has told President Obama that he will remain in his position for the time being, the department announced on Sunday, ending speculation that he might step down soon."

New York Times: "Hugh L. Carey, the governor who helped rescue New York from the brink of financial collapse in the 1970s and tamed a culture of ever-growing spending, died Sunday at his summer home on Shelter Island. He was 92."

New York Times: "The day after Standard & Poor’s took the unprecedented step of stripping the United States government of its top credit rating, the ratings agency offered a full-throated defense of its decision, calling the bitter stand-off between President Obama and Congress over raising the debt ceiling a 'debacle.'”

Guardian: "World leaders are battling to prevent panic from spreading across financial markets as the sudden downgrading of the US credit rating triggered fears of global turmoil when stock exchanges open. Finance ministers from the G7 leading industrial countries -- many of them away on summer holiday -- agreed to a series of urgent weekend telephone talks to try to prevent a loss of confidence in the world's biggest economy. But the uncertainty grew when the Saudi market dropped by a massive 5.5%." ...

     ... Desperately Seeking Something. New York Times Update: "As the shock of Friday’s downgrade of United States debt reverberated dangerously with anxiety about European liabilities, central bankers and national leaders were under pressure to try to do something to restore confidence before Asian markets opened, and to prevent an extension of the rout that began last week. As Group of 20 leaders conferred by phone, the governing council of the European Central Bank was holding an emergency conference call late Sunday." ...

     ... New York Times story has been updated with this new lede: "The European Central Bank signaled late Sunday it would intervene more aggressively in bond markets to protect Spain and Italy, part of an increasingly forceful campaign by policymakers around the world to prevent deteriorating public finances and slower growth from provoking another financial crisis."

Al Jazeera: "The Syrian army has launched fresh assaults, reportedly killing dozens of people, as international condemnation of the violence against protesters continues to mount. Activists said troops stormed parts of the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor before dawn on Sunday, killing at least 20 people." Al Jazeera has a liveblog here.

AP: "One police officer was hospitalized and seven others were injured during riots in the Tottenham area of London, police said Sunday, after a demonstration against the death of a local man turned violent and cars and shops were set ablaze. The area in London's north exploded in anger Saturday night after a gathering to protest the Thursday shooting by police of the 29-year-old." Guardian liveblog here.

Stagecoach Economics

What's Good for the Banks Is Good for the Country.
-- Henry Gatewood

AND now, for something completely different. I never saw John Ford's 1939 film "Stagecoach." I thought it was "just a Western." Well, no, it's a morality play masquerading as a Western. I come to it via Krugman here, who comes to it by Digby here, & blogger Jerry Kutner here.

What struck them all was the character of the banker Henry Gatewood. He appears early in the film when he declares, "What's good for the banks is good for the country." Not much later, Gatewood steals $50,000 -- the payroll for the local mining company, which arrives in a Wells Fargo strongbox on the Wells Fargo stagecoach. (Sounds familiar already, doesn't it?) Gatewood stuffs the payroll money in a valise & takes the stagecoach out of town. Along the way, Gatewood says of the soldiers: "Always gives me great pride in my country when I see such fighting men in the U.S. Army." He later complains they're not doing enough to protect him.

What caught the attention of Krugman, Digby & Kutner is, as Krugman puts it, a "speech by Jamie Dimon the corrupt, embezzling banker who is the real villain of the piece," a speech Gatewood delivers with the valise full of stolen money on his lap:

I don’t know what the government is coming to. Instead of protecting businessmen, it pokes its nose into business! Why, they’re even talking now about having bank examiners. As if we bankers don’t know how to run our own banks! Why, at home I have a letter from a popinjay official saying they were going to inspect my books.

I have a slogan that should be blazoned on every newspaper in this country: America for the Americans! The government must not interfere with business! Reduce taxes! Our national debt is something shocking. Over one billion dollars a year! What this country needs is a businessman for president!

The speech begins at 33:57 into the video. You might want to watch the entire film (if you do, supersize it), which presents stock Western characters in a nuanced, complex light -- all except the banker Gatewood, that is. As Kutner says,

All of the characters riding inside Ford’s STAGECOACH are transformed by the experience – class prejudices are dissolved, the prostitute recovers her innocence, the doctor recovers his dignity, the meek man discovers his courage.  All of the characters change, that is, except for one - banker Gatewood who remains as obnoxious, hypocritical, and self-serving at the end of his journey as he was at the beginning.

The Commentariat -- August 6

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

CW: Another day with no Off Times Square comments. My host Squarespace has not answered any of my e-mails today. I'm fairly pissed off.

Paul Krugman: inquiring minds want to know -- why doesn't Obama just extend the payroll tax cut "which Republicans, who love tax cuts, would support." Because "Republicans have already rejected a payroll tax cut." They had to be negotiated into accepting the cut authorized in December 2010 & they flat out rejected such a cut in the latest negotiations. Why, again? Because Republicans "love tax cuts for the rich. Tax cuts for ordinary workers, many of whom will be those hated lucky duckies whose incomes are too low to pay income tax, are if anything something Republicans dislike." CW: this is a stunning fact that every American voter should know, but they don't. Because Democrats -- including the DINO President -- won't tell them. A conspiracy theorist might think Congressional Democrats & Obama are covering for Republicans. ...

... BUT Maybe Not:

Republicans will have to explain to their constituents why they voted to end Medicare three times and raise seniors’ health care costs in order to protect tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires and Big Oil. Republicans will have to defend the indefensible. -- Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), DCCC Chairman ...

... Kyle Trygstad of Roll Call: "The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched an initiative Thursday to apply pressure to Republicans during the August recess for proposed cuts to entitlement programs.... Over the next month, the campaign will target 44 Republicans with some combination of radio ads, billboards, gas station advertising, community meetings, door-to-door canvasses, phone banks, virtual phone banks and automated calls.... Among the 44 Republicans are a long list of freshmen, Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.) and a total of 12 incumbents from California and Florida, where redistricting offers the party potential pickup opportunities." ...

... Here's an ad by the DCCC. Their Website MillionairesOverMedicare.com includes a petition you can sign "tell[ing] Republicans that ending Medicare is unacceptable":

... MEANWHILE, Karen Garcia reports on "the Incredible Pivoting President": "With a straight face and nary a peep from the corporate media -- just days after neglecting to extend longterm unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday -- [President Obama] is performing his umpteenth Pivot to Jobs! He will be touring middle America in a big bus, Palin-style.... He'll be spinning faster than an Olympian vying for the gold medal."

Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: John Boehner is urging his caucus to talk up a Balanced Budget Amendment because -- he's a canny politician. He knows it will never pass, he caters to his Tea Party members AND he deflects attention from the unpopular cuts Republicans actually want.

Greg Sargent: "... the Tea Party is declining in public support even as its influence in Washington has, if anything, peaked.... The numbers suggest the Tea Party is rapidly sliding back into fringe status — yet its disproportionate influence over the political conversation is as strong as ever. It’s yet another way that the Congressional debate is way to the right of public opinion."

In case the better-than-expected jobs report has lulled you into believing the fairy tale called "Prosperity Is Right around the Corner," Catherine Rampell of the New York Times will snap you out of Fairyland with this graph:

... AND there's this analysis from economist Dean Baker, writing in TruthOut: "This rate of job growth is below the 90,000 a month needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force. Consistent with this fact, the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) fell slightly to 58.1 percent, tying its previous low for the downturn." Read the whole analysis. ...

... AND Floyd Norris of the New York Times: corporate profits rise as workers' incomes decline. "... corporate profits accounted for 14 percent of the total national income in 2010, the highest proportion ever recorded.... Employees have always received more than half the total national income, until now. In 2010, the percentage of national income devoted to wages and salaries fell to 49.9 percent, and it slipped a little more to 49.6 percent in the first quarter of this year." ...

"The Decade of Lost Children." Charles Blow: One of the greatest casualties of the great recession may well be a decade of lost children. According to ... a report issued last month by the Children’s Defense Fund, the impact of the recession on children’s well-being has been catastrophic."

Coming to America? I Wish. Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: "The tent protest movement dominating Israel for three weeks focuses on the cost of living but is really about something deeper — the nature of the country’s social contract. Many Israelis feel that their sacrifices are not being repaid.... The shift from state-dominated quasi socialism to markets and privatization — a shift that arguably saved the country from economic collapse in the 1980s — has been accompanied by some sense of loss of community, spiking prices and the accumulation of great wealth in a few hands." More on the protest here.

Mark Greenbaum in the New York Times: "the [37th] Congress [1861-1863] was able to pass laws of incredible breadth and significance for both the immediate stability and future growth of the United States. Congress’s work in these early years of the Civil War helped lay the track not simply for the Union’s victory, but the groundwork for the nation’s educational, socio-economic and physical expansion. The 37th Congress, in the words of the historian Leonard Curry, set the 'blueprint for modern America.'”

Thank You, GOP. Jake Tapper of ABC News: "The federal government is expecting and preparing for bond rating agency Standard & Poor's to downgrade the rating of U.S. debt from its current AAA value, a government official told ABC News.... Reasons behind the possible downgrade ... would be the political confusion surrounding the process of raising the debt ceiling and lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reduction. According to a source, Republicans refusing to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal also likely would be part of the reason cited.... After the bill passed in the Senate, Moody's Investor Service affirmed its AAA rating on U.S. sovereign debt but lowered its outlook to 'negative.' ... A downgrade of U.S. debt likely will cause interest rates of all kinds to edge up and that would cost the U.S. and consumers billions of dollars." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Standard & Poor’s removed the United States government from its list of risk-free borrowers on Friday night, citing concern about the rising burden of the federal debt. The nation’s rating was reduced to AA-plus for its long-term debt, one notch below the top rating of triple-A." ...

     ... Paul Krugman: "... it’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies. The people who rated subprime-backed securities are now declaring that they are the judges of fiscal policy? Really? Just to make it perfect, it turns out that S&P got the math wrong by $2 trillion, and after much discussion conceded the point — then went ahead with the downgrade. More than that, everything I’ve heard about S&P’s demands suggests that it’s talking nonsense about the US fiscal situation."

When Bad Guys Do Good Things:

     ... As Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast writes, "Chris Christie is still a misogynistic bully who's going to ruin the state of New Jersey, but with conservatism being so characterized by anti-Muslim bigotry, he puts the 'guts' that make a thrill go up the leg of television pundits to good use." Thanks to reader Bonnie for the link. ...

     ... CW: BTW, in his remarks in the video, Christie said state senators from "both parties" asked nominee Sohail Mohammed irrelevant & inappropriate questions about his ties to terrorism & Hamas. But I checked news & opinion stories like this one, and didn't find any evidence of Democratic senators grilling Mohammed on his religion or questioning his patriotism. Quite the opposite. (If anybody finds a story citing Democrats, let me know, please.) So even in an otherwise "heroic" moment, Christie blows it, painting Democrats with the same Islamophobic brush as Republicans, when it just ain't so. This would not be the first time Gov. Christie flat-out lied.

Right Wing World *

Jed Lewison of DailyKos: "it seems that nobody wants to go to Rick Perry's campaign kickoff "Day of Prayer" religious revival rally scheduled for Saturday in Houston. The stadium ... seats just north of 70,000 ... but only 8,000 people have said they will come. Perry invited every governor of every state to attend his political cynical rally, but just one accepted his invitation: Sam Brownback of Kansas. And now Brownback is backing away.... It's not just his lack of respect for the idea behind the First Amendment, it's also that he's invited some genuinely crazy people to participate in his event." ...

... Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "Though Mr. Perry has been criticized for spearheading an event that burnishes his conservative Christian credentials as he considers running for president, the prayer rally is only the latest instance — albeit the highest profile one — of the governor of the nation’s second-largest state emphasizing his Christian beliefs and blurring the line between church and state." ...

... Prof. Paul Horwitz, in a New York Times op-ed: "Just as the Constitution allows Mr. Perry to stake his political future on 'The Response,' it allows the rest of us to answer back."

John Cohen of the Democratic National Committee on Mitt Romney's "Mystery $$ Million" (see also yesterday's Right Wing World): "A federal campaign finance law prohibits a straw donor from making a federal contribution through a corporate entity.... Two independent campaign finance watchdog organizations, Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, have called on the Justice Department to investigate possible criminal behavior surrounding the matter." ...

     ... Ben Smith: "The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, which favor stricter campaign finance regulation, file a complaint with the FEC.... They're also asking for a criminal investigation from the Justice Department."

... Uppity Blacks Eat Soul Food and Laugh While You Hunt for A Job You Can't Get Because of Welfare Queens, Affirmative Action, and Carjackers. -- Translation by Dave Weigel of Slate

Evidently 75-year-old Republican pilot Myrtle Rose thinks flying in air space restricted because the President was in town is something to joke about: "Oh, dear, maybe I should send him a belated birthday card and say, 'You should have stayed home and Michelle baked you a birthday cake.'" That is, it's Obama's fault. Two F-16s were deployed, which she thought came alongside her to "admire her vintage plane." CW: I hope she has to pay a fine equal to the $9,000/hour it costs to deploy each F-16, plus costs of the FAA investigation.

* The Land of Milk and Honey God and Money.

Local News

Andy Kroll of Mother Jones: "Amount spent on all [Wisconsin] state races in 2010: $3.75 million. Amount spent on recall elections targeting eight state senators: $31 million.... While the spending is more or less even, here's the big difference between the two sides: The left-leaning groups usually disclose their donors, while the right-leaning groups mostly don't."

News Ledes

Politico: "One day after lowering the nation's platinum triple-A credit rating, Standard & Poor's analysts warned Saturday that the U.S. government could face a second downgrade if the economy continues to struggle and the government fails to make the cuts outlined in the debt ceiling agreement."

Calling on Jesus, Flouting the Constitution. New York Times: "Standing on a stage surrounded by thousands of fellow Christians on Saturday morning, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas called on Jesus to bless and guide the nation’s military and political leaders and 'those who cannot see the light in the midst of all the darkness.' ... The governor ... delivering a message to the Lord at a Christian prayer rally he created, while using his office’s prestige, letterhead, Web site and other resources to promote it. Mr. Perry said he wanted people of all faiths to attend, but Christianity dominated the service and the religious affiliations of the crowd. The prayers were given in Jesus Christ’s name, and the many musical performers sang of Christian themes of repentance and salvation."

Washington Post: "Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, dealing a symbolic blow to the world’s economic superpower in what was a sharply worded critique of the American political system. Lowering the nation’s rating to one notch below AAA, the credit rating company said 'political brinkmanship' in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances 'less stable, less effective and less predictable.' It said the bipartisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings 'fell short' of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time and predicted that leaders would not be likely to achieve more savings in the future." See New York Times story & related content above. Guardian story here. ...

... New York Times: "China, the largest foreign holder of United States debt, said Saturday that Washington needed to 'cure its addiction to debts' and 'live within its means,' just hours after the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s long-term debt.... Though Beijing has few options other than to continue to purchase United States Treasury bonds, Chinese officials are clearly concerned that China’s substantial holdings of American debt, worth at least $1.1 trillion, is being devalued."

** New York Times: "The Shabab militant Islamist group withdrew on Saturday morning from Mogadishu, the bullet-ridden capital of Somalia, and the city is now under government control for the first time in years.... But in the last few months, the Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, have suffered heavy losses, both from American drone attacks on their leaders and from steady urban fighting against a superior, better-armed, 9,000-soldier strong African Union peacekeeping force." Al Jazeera story here, with video.

Washington Post: "A NATO helicopter crashed during an operation against the Taliban near the Afghan capital late Friday night, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said 31 U.S. troops and seven Afghan soldiers were killed." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "In the deadliest day for American forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans, American and Afghan officials said."

New York Times: "As European leaders on Friday tried to calm fears that the region’s sovereign debt problems were spinning beyond politicians’ control, Italy’s prime minister said finance ministers from the Group of 7 industrial nations would meet 'within days' to discuss the volatile financial crisis. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, whose nation has been viewed as the next potential debt-laden domino to fall, also announced a number of measures Italy would take to restore the confidence of investors and creditors."

Al Jazeera: "Dozens of people have been killed by security forces in Syria amid nationwide protests in support of the flashpoint city of Hama on the first Friday of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, reports say. The Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria, an activist organisation in the country, said 24 people had been killed across several cities."

Al Jazeera: "Andrzej Lepper, a Polish populist politician who rose from pig farmer to deputy prime minister, has died aged 57 in what police suspect to be a suicide. The PAP news agency said Lepper had hanged himself and that his body was discovered by a family member. Lepper was briefly deputy prime minister in a coalition government but was later disgraced by bribery and sex scandals."