The Commentariat -- October 19

I have a comments page on the Repubican debate on Off Times Square, but you can write about something else.

Jake Tapper of ABC News interviews President Obama on the road:

... Michael Scherer of Time compares Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party. CW: He gets it mostly right, IMHO, but he gives too little credit to the Tea Party's super-rich & establishment backers.

Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas confronts NYPD officers using excessive force against Occupy Wall Street protesters. ABC News story here; Keith Olbermann interviews Sgt. Thomas here:

Barney Frank to OWS: Where were you in 2010?

... Oh, You Knew This Was Coming. Ashley Lopez of the Florida Independent: "In a video clip and blog post published today, a right-wing activist with ties to GOP Senate candidate Adam Hasner alleges that Occupy Orlando, a Central Florida group that has sprung up in solidarity with the New York-based Occupy Wall Street movement, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Occupy Orlando held its first event this past weekend....” Thanks to a reader, who summarizes & comments on the story:

YES! Fresh off their big win in Cairo earlier this year, the Muslim Brotherhood has decamped for sunny Florida and (after a quick trip to Disneyworld to frag Mickey) is behind the OWS protests in Orlando. The double super secret don't-tell-no-one plan is to use this platform to spread Shariah Law across the land. Pretty soon you'll all be wearing burqas and I'll have make sure I never shave my beard (oh-oh Memo to self. Stay out of Amish country!) Can this get any stupider? Sadly, yes.

Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "For Bank of America, it is the end of an era. With the bank shrinking its balance sheet and selling off assets, the company ... surrendered its title as the country’s biggest bank Tuesday, another sign of how a money-losing giant assembled over decades is being reshaped into a smaller and, investors hope, more profitable institution. Bank of America, with $2.22 trillion in assets reported Tuesday in its third-quarter earnings, is now second to JPMorgan Chase, which has $2.29 trillion assets. It also ranks second to JPMorgan Chase in terms of branches and total deposits."

Oops! CW: I should not have skipped over this New York Times story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, published Sunday, on Mitt Romney's career as a Mormon lay leader; in fact, "the highest-ranking lay leader in Boston.... He operated as clergyman, organization man and defender of the faith, guiding the church through a tumultuous period of rapid growth." Stolberg goes into some of the "pastoral guidance" Romney offered "on all manner of human affairs from marriage to divorce, abortion, adoption, addiction, unemployment and even business disputes.... A group of Mormon feminists demanding a greater role for women, found him condescending, doctrinaire or just plain bossy. He clashed with a married mother of four who sought to terminate a pregnancy; the incident made news years later, when Mr. Romney ran for United States Senate as a supporter of abortion rights — a position he has since abandoned." ...

... Maureen Dowd opines on some of Stolberg's findings in today's column.

The Republican Debate

Adam Nagourney & Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "A tax overhaul proposed by Herman Cain, the business leader running for president, came under fire from across the Republican presidential field at a debate Tuesday, as Mr. Cain encountered the toughest round of attacks yet on a proposal that has been the signature of his candidacy.... The discussion on stage quickly turned back to [Mitt] Romney, who faced the most stinging assault yet on the health care plan he signed into law in Massachusetts. Former Senator Rick Santorum started the criticism, saying, 'Mitt, you just don’t have the credibility.' The attacks elevated and quickly turned into a firing squad, with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and others piling onto Mr. Romney. ...

... Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post: "Well, it was the feistiest debate — Rick Perry even stayed awake for the whole thing, which was a nice change — and we had the welcome (at least for entertainment purposes) return of the Crazy GOP Audience thing, this time cheering for the idea that the unemployed were the ones to blame for unemployment. The debate to me had a clear loser ... Anderson Cooper.... Cooper, the CNN moderator, has no excuse: his claim that 47% of American pay no taxes was inexcusable. Just terrible." CW: How the hell would Cooper know? He's a multimillionaire from a long line of multimillionaires. ...

... Reid Epstein & Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Rick Perry went into Tuesday night’s debate looking to rattle Mitt Romney — and it worked. Perry’s been under fire for his own immigration record, and resurrecting the 2007 report that Romney had hired illegal workers helped him blunt the advantage Romney had been able to get on the issue.... Plus, according to a Perry source, there was an added bonus: by going after Romney personally — the accusation has to do with Romney’s own house — they saw the potential to make Romney react the hardest." ...

... And the Winner Is -- Barack Obama. E. J. Dionne: "The fact that Perry may have worked his way back into the mix and the likelihood that Romney and Perry will make life miserable for each other can only help the president. The candidates weren’t competing with each other to have the best attack lines against Obama to nearly the degree they had in the earlier encounters."

Susan Saulny of the New York Times: Herman Cain "could have a hard time being taken seriously, at least to the degree that he uses sarcasm and laughs to divert attention from what for another candidate could be disqualifying gaps in knowledge and experience. And while his casual style of racially inflected humor works to ingratiate him with mostly white audiences at campaign rallies, it has angered some black critics, who believe he uses age-old stereotypes."

Oops! At the top of this clip of an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mitt Romney criticized President Obama for slowing down home foreclosures. Yup, just can't get the deadbeats out of their homes fast enough so the devious bankers who made sometimes fraudulent loans can board up the houses & take down the neighborhood, too. And Nevada -- which has perhaps the highest percentage of underwater homes in the nation -- was a super place to make this point. He's all heart, isn't he? Steve Benen has more.

Dana Milbank: "The GOP "nominating process, controlled by the religious warriors and anti-government agitators who dominate straw polls, has reached its logical conclusion: The hottest candidate in the field is Herman Cain, a fast-food tycoon who never heard of neoconservatism, has never held office, has no foreign policy and a three-digit number for a domestic policy, and likes to joke about electrocuting illegal immigrants. By contrast, Jon Huntsman, governor, ambassador, the man who in a normal political environment would be the most qualified and formidable candidate in the race, wasn’t even on the stage. A system that rejects a Jon Huntsman in favor of a Herman Cain isn’t a primary process. It is a primal scream."

Right Wing World *

As President, Herman Cain Would Overturn the U.S. Policy against Negotiating with Terrorists:

** Charles Pierce of Esquire: "It's Tuesday, and David Brooks is happy — nay, ecstatic — that all of you out there are using your encroaching poverty to rediscover your moral compass. He calls it — and I am not kidding here — The Great Restoration, and he's awfully proud of each and every one of you peasants. (UPDATE: LINK FIXED)" (Brooks' "Great Restoration" is here.) ...

... CW: commenters far & wide are still scratching their heads over what Brooks meant by the "Great Restoration" of the 1820s. So I turned to Wikipedia:

The idea of restoring a 'primitive' form of Christianity grew in popularity in the U.S. after the American Revolution.[11]:89–94 This desire to restore a purer form of Christianity played a role in the development of many groups during the Second Great Awakening, including the Mormons, Baptists and Shakers.

      ... Yes, indeedy, what we really need now is a more primitive form of Christianity because the current fundamentalist version is just so science-y & sophisticated. Or maybe this is Brooks' lead-in to a Romney endorsement. ...

... CW: here's something I did not notice about Brooks' column but Reality Chex reader Diane F. did: as originally published, Brooks made reference to people in the 1820s making "changes away from the cameras."
Diane writes, "The last paragraph is now different.... The comments about being away from the cameras is gone." No link. Perhaps historian Brooks didn't realize that in the 1820s there were no cameras. Of any kind. Okay, maybe he was thinking of the camera obscura. ...

... Karen Garcia points to a few proofs -- all gleaned from one NYT column -- that David Brooks is insane: " According to him, people are having fewer children because they are pessimistic spoil-sports about the future, not because of financial hardship. They are cutting up their credit cards, not because their credit scores are in the toilet, but because they have experienced the sudden epiphany that thrift is a virtue in and of itself. And they're sticking with their jobs, not because they have no other choice, but because they have discovered the value of loyalty. It's a 'Values Restoration' to combat the OWS radicalism!" ...

... CW: I think Brooks and his former boss Bill Keller (Keller's column is here; see also Off Times Square for October 17) are crazy like a Fox. Greg Sargent: "Critics of Occupy Wall Street have a transparent objective: They want to persuade blue collar whites and ordinary middle class Americans to turn on the movement for cultural reasons — because its optics offend these voters’ cultural instincts — even if they broadly agree with its general principles and critique of what’s gone wrong." The object of Sargent's scorn is former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen -- now a right-wing hack -- but the object ls the same for Brooks & Keller: create an unnatural cultural divide among people in the same sinking economic boat. ...

... Judd Legum of Think Progress also lays into Schoen, a pollster who falsified his own findings in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, when he claimed -- contra his poll results -- that "Occupy Wall Street ... is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth…." And that was just for starters.

* Thoroughly committed to making up stuff about ordinary people who don't follow Right Wing World rules.

News Ledes

Reuters: "Citigroup Inc will pay $285 million to settle charges that it defrauded investors who bought toxic housing-related debt that the bank bet would fail, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday. The SEC said the bank's Citigroup Global Markets unit misled investors about a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation by failing to reveal it had "significant influence" over the selection of $500 million of underlying assets, and that it took a short position against those assets." New York Times story here.

President Obama spoke at a fire station in Chesterfield, Virginia, this afternoon. Video of his full speech is here.

President & Mrs. Obama will speak at Langley-Eustis naval base in Hampton, Virginia at 10:30 am ET. AP: "President Barack Obama is employing the services of the first lady on the final leg of his three-day bus tour as they tout proposals in the president's jobs bill that the White House says would put more of the nation's unemployed veterans back to work." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Trying to help veterans find work when they return home from war, and bolster his appeal to that constituency, President Obama announced a partnership with companies on Wednesday that aims to employ 25,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and military spouses within two years."

AP: "Turkish soldiers, air force bombers and helicopter gunships launched an incursion into Iraq on Wednesday, hours after Kurdish rebels killed 24 soldiers and wounded 18 others in multiple attacks along the border. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had launched large-scale operations, including 'a hot pursuit within the limits of international law.'"

AP: Gen. John Allen, "the top NATO commander in Afghanistan says the international coalition has unleashed a new offensive against one of the country's most lethal militant networks and will ramp up operations next year along the Pakistan border to better secure the Afghan capital before the U.S. drawdown gathers steam."

Guardian: "Naomi Wolf, the celebrated feminist author and campaigner, has been arrested at an Occupy Wall Street protest outside an awards ceremony held to honour New York's governor. Wolf and a companion were led away in handcuffs from the street in front of Skylight Studios in Manhattan. Inside, the New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo, was being presented with the 'game changer of the year' award from the Huffington Post website, for which Wolf is a contributor." ...

... New York Times: Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, "a New York police commander who pepper-sprayed protesters during the opening days of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations last month, faces an internal disciplinary charge that could cost him 10 vacation days, the police said Tuesday.... The inspector can accept the charge and plead guilty, or he can opt for a departmental trial. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly is the ultimate arbiter of punishment in such matters and has wide leeway in his decisions." CW Lesson: assaulting an innocent bystander could cost you a day at the beach.

AP: "A two-day general strike that unions vow will be the largest in years grounded flights, disrupted public transport and shut down everything from shops to schools in Greece on Wednesday, as at least 70,000 protesters converged in central Athens. All sectors, from dentists ... to ... dock workers walked off the job ahead of a Parliamentary vote Thursday on new austerity measures which include new taxes and the suspension of tens of thousands of civil servants."

Haaretz: "Forty-two released Palestinian prisoners arrived in Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar on Tuesday after being set free as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. The prisoners are considered the most notorious of 1,027 Palestinians and Israeli Arabs being released by Israel in exchange for abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip for five years and four months.... The rest will be released in two months time."

AP: "Libyan revolutionary forces fought building by building Wednesday against the final pocket of resistance in Moammar Gadhafi's hometown — the last major city in Libya to have been under the control of forces loyal to the fugitive leader. But while Libya's transitional leadership worked to consolidate control over the entire country, the country's acting prime minister warned in a newspaper interview that Gadhafi can still cause trouble from his hiding place."

The Commentariat -- October 18

I've put up a comments page on Off Times Square. Write on anything you want.

"I Am Not Moving." Video by Corey Ogilvie, uploaded October 11. Thanks to reader Bonnie:

Greg Sargent: "Working America, the affiliate of the AFL-CIO that organizes workers from non-union workplaces, has signed up approximately 25,000 new recruits in the last week alone, thanks largely to the high visibility of the protests." Karen Nussbaum, the director of Working America, "acknowledges that conservatives might have some success discrediting the movement 'if they can change the subject to what the occupiers are wearing. But if we keep the subject on jobs and democracy, we’ll keep those working class moderates in this fight." CW: seriously, kids, if you want maximum effectiveness, show up for marches dressed as if you're going for a job interview in a red state.

     ... For more info on Playing for Change, go here.

Nate Silver on where the protesters are -- as it turns out, there are more on the West Coast than in New York and the East Coast.

Annie Lowrey of Slate: Why does Wall Street hate President Obama? While the reasons likely include his policies, his perceived ideology and their own psychological aberrations, Lowrey suggests the recent sudden turn from "cautious ingratitude" to "angry opposition" may be plain ole economics: Wall Street is not as profitable as it was even six months ago, and as many Americans do, the cats blame the President when they're not getting fatter. ...

... BUT Wall Street Loves Mitt (in case you can't read the legend, the big tall violet cylinders represent financial sector contributions to Romney, the blue are Obama & the little teeny red ones are Perry)"

... AND why not? After all, President Obama is not doing enough for Jeff Immelt, Obama's jobs-cutting jobs czar who is the CEO of the non-taxpaying GE. Scott Malone of Reuters: Immelt "held out Germany -- home to one of GE's biggest rivals, Siemens AG (SIEGn.DE) -- as an example of a wealthy country that has been successful in pushing exports. 'Chancellor (Angela) Merkel flies from Berlin to Beijing, there's 25 German CEOs that go on the plane right behind her. And they connect the dots. They play hard, they play to win,' Immelt said. President Barack Obama, he added, 'has been out driving and pushing to try to double exports in the next five years. I think we can compete very well. But we're not all-in the same way that the Germans are all-in.'" CW: This is the same whine Immelt made in his "60 Minutes" interview, which I posted last week. It's all about Jeff. 

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Democrats in the Senate will this week start to advance elements of President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan piece-by-piece, challenging Republicans who have already nixed the package as a whole to likewise take vote after vote against its various planks."

David Crary of the AP: "As of Oct. 31, according to the U.N. Population Fund, there will be 7 billion people sharing Earth's land and resources.... Experts say most of Africa — and other high-growth developing nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan — will be hard-pressed to furnish enough food, water and jobs for their people, especially without major new family-planning initiatives. 'Extreme poverty and large families tend to reinforce each other,' says Lester Brown, the environmental analyst who heads the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. 'The challenge is to intervene in that cycle and accelerate the shift to smaller families.'"

You probably should not miss this -- Herman Cain, then CEO of Godfather's Pizza, at a 1991 Omaha Press Club meeting. Dave Weigel has the lyrics:

Right Wing World *

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: Chris Wallace of Fox "News" forgot where he worked Sunday & repeatedly pressed House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the economic analyses for the Republicans' so-called jobs plan. "Cantor kept dodging the question. He has no answer. Republican leaders in the House and Senate have each put out job plans. But the plans have slogans, not specifics: Less regulation, repeal Obamacare, cut taxes, and so on. Professional forecasters can't make serious estimates without more information." With video. ...

... Really, this is from Politico, not from The Onion. Jake Sherman: "Friday: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor ... is heading to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania to talk about income disparity and how Republicans believe the government could help fix it." CW: probable suggested "fixes": cut taxes on the rich & eliminate regulation of Wall Street. Oh, Eric Cantor feels your pain.

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine: Herman "Cain himself does, in fact, invoke race constantly. The context is almost always to absolve conservatives of racism, to assure them that they are less racist than the left. He ... [refers] to the "Democratic plantation." He ... [says] that, 'A lot of these liberal, leftist folk in this country, that are black, they're more racist than the white people that they're claiming to be racist.' He ... [announces] that 'most people have gotten past color, especially the Republican party.' Even if Cain decided midstream to switch from business plan pseudo-candidate to actual candidate, it is difficult to believe that many of his putative supporters would actually pull the lever for him."

Sick "Jokes" Have Consequences

We'll have a real fence, 20 ft. high with barbed wire, electrified, with a sign on the other side that says, 'It can kill you.' What do you mean insensitive? What is insensitive is when they come to the United States across our border and kill our citizens and kill our border-patrol people. -- Herman Cain, Saturday, to raucous applause

That is not a serious plan. I've also said America needs to get a sense of humor. That is a joke, O.K.? -- Herman Cain, Sunday, on "Meet the Press"

How can you joke about killing poor people who are searching for a better life? Jaime Carrillo, an accountant

Ioan Grillo of Time: "... when Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain joked about a killer electric fence to keep migrants out, political electric shocks surged rapidly south of the Rio Grande. From pulpits by the border to editorial offices in the capital [Mexico City], priests and editors vented their anger at comments they called 'stupid,' 'barbaric' and 'shameful.'"

CW: Playing "Can You Top This?" when it comes to identifying instances of Republican hypocrisy is a never-ending game in which the answer is always "Yes." Here's Alec MacGillis of The New Republic on Newt Gingrich & "death panels." Newt's duplicity is stunning, even for Newt.

* Where an interview is defined as saying something unrel ated to every question asked.

News Ledes

President Obama spoke at Greensville County High School in Emporia, Virginia this afternoon:

President Obama spoke at Guilford Technical College in Jamestown, North Carolina this morning. The video is here.

President Obama held a roundtable with educators in in Jamestown, North Carolina this morning. AP: "For President Barack Obama, the bus is back. That's the sleek, million-dollar, Secret Service-approved bus that's been carrying Obama along North Carolina's winding mountain roads, giving the president a chance to take in the fall foliage and bask in some small-town Southern hospitality."

New York Times: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton landed [in Tripoli] on Tuesday to demonstrate support for Libya’s new transitional government even as a senior administration official expressed concern that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi remained a 'lethal nuisance.' Mrs. Clinton, the administration’s most ardent champion of the NATO-led intervention year, arrived here from Malta at noon to meet with the country’s new leaders, including the chairman of the Transitional National Council, Mustafa Mohammed Abdul Jalil."

New York Times: "An Israeli soldier held for more than five years by the militant Palestinian group Hamas was traded on Tuesday for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in an elaborate exchange that could shake up regional politics.... The soldier, Sergeant First Class Gilad Shalit, was taken from Gaza, where he had been held since being abducted in a cross-border raid in 2006, into Egypt and from there to Israel, where he was given a quick medical check and declared in good health."

New York Times: "Just before the American-led strikes against Libya in March, the Obama administration intensely debated whether to open the mission with a new kind of warfare: a cyberoffensive to disrupt and even disable the Qaddafi government’s air-defense system, which threatened allied warplanes.... But administration officials and even some military officers balked, fearing that it might set a precedent for other nations, in particular Russia or China...."

AP: "Bank of America says it earned $6.2 billion in the third quarter, largely from accounting gains and the sale of a stake in a Chinese bank."

The Commentariat -- October 17

Paul Krugman: "... until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again. And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans." So now the Wizards of Wall Street are whining. ...

... I've added a page for comments to Krugman's column on Off Times Square. ...

... Groupthink. In commenting on this latest Rupert Murdoch scandal (which I also linked last week), Krugman offers an insight that I think many of us may have missed or not fully grasped:

My sense, after 11 years of punditizing, is that people are complicated, but gangs of people less so. Individuals are often mixed in their behavior: incorruptible politicians may cheat on their spouses, political scoundrels may have impeccable personal lives. But groups, like a politician’s inner circle or the management team of a media empire, tend to behave similarly on multiple fronts. If they lie and cheat routinely in one domain, they tend to do it in others as well.

     ... Krugman adds that this is how he knew the Bush team was making a fake case for war with Iraq; they had routinely made fake cases for their economic policies. ...

... ** Peter Beinart of the Daily Beast has an excellent analysis of how Occupy Wall Street fits into the recent (past 50 years) history of American protests and why it has such resonance. ...

... Off Times Square contributor Elizabeth Adams helped organize a 99 Percent rally in the small, conservative town of Marysville, California (north of Sacramento). Adams writes that her daughter, Olivia Key, is quoted in the local paper (story linked below), as is she. She says, "We plan to do this again next Sunday." ...

... Someone yelled, 'Take a shower.' It's not like we've been here for weeks. -- Elizabeth Adams ...

     ... Nancy Pasternack of the Appeal-Democrat: "Marysville, not generally known for street protests or liberal sentiment, attracted more than 50 demonstrators to Washington Square in support of the 'We are the 99 percent' movement during the peak of an afternoon rally Sunday.... They got some honks of support and a few drive-by cheering sections as well as some flipped middle fingers and derogatory remarks. ...

... ALSO see Off Times Square's weekend thread for reports from Meredith, who was in Times Square for the huge Occupy Wall Street event, and from Julie, who attended the Occupy Boston protest. ...

... Toilets of the Rich and Famous. Karen Garcia: "Alas, there are no toilet facilities in Zuccotti Park.... The New York Times broke the story about the bathroom crashers of OWS when the encampment was entering its third week. The paper of record still can't seem to make up its mind whether to jump on the revolutionary bandwagon and celebrate the movement, or continue siding with the oligarchs over how stressed the whole thing is making them feel.... But unlike the OWS'ers, the million dollar wunderkinds don't have to worry about their next bathroom break. Again, from the New York Times ... comes the story of a luxury toilet called the Numi," which costs 81 times the price of a Home Depot crapper. ...

Do you feel your cause is hurt by the fact that you’re dressed like a Viking? -- "Daily Show" correspondent John Oliver, interviewing a Zuccotti Park protester who was, well, dressed like a Viking ...

... TRIPOLI (The Borowitz Report) – As arrests mounted in the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City, Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) issued a stern statement today warning the NYPD to exercise restraint.... Libyan government officials also hinted that if the arrests continue, it would consider forming a NATO coalition'“to ensure the safety and security of the American people.' While it did not state it as an explicit goal, insiders believe that if the arrests continue Libya may seek the ouster of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose whereabouts remain unknown."

Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: "Despite the marketing pitch from the armed forces, which promises to prepare soldiers for the working world, recent veterans are more likely to be unemployed than their civilian counterparts. Veterans who left military service in the past decade have an unemployment rate of 11.7 percent, well above the overall jobless rate of 9.1 percent, according to fresh data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The elevated unemployment rate for new veterans has persisted despite repeated efforts to reduce it."

Adam Goldman & Mark Apuzzo of the AP: "Three months ago, one of the CIA's most experienced clandestine operatives started work inside the New York Police Department.... The CIA is prohibited from spying domestically, and its unusual partnership with the NYPD has troubled top lawmakers and prompted an internal investigation."

Nicholas Confessore & Griff Palmer of the New York Times: "Since the beginning of the year, [President] Obama and the Democratic National Committee, for which the president is helping raise money to finance his party’s grass-roots efforts, have spent close to $87 million in operating costs.... That amount is about as much as all the current Republican candidates together have raised so far in this campaign."

Mitt Romney, Vulture Capitalist. Steve Benen: "... literally all of the Republican [presidential] candidates ... want to eliminate all of the [financial regulatory] safeguards approved in 2010, but this seems to pose an even more acute problem for Mitt Romney. He not only wants to lift any measure of accountability for the financial industry, he’s also from that industry — Romney got very wealthy heading up a vulture capitalist fund, which made money by breaking up companies and firing their American workers.... By most measures, Romney is the strongest Republican candidate, but if voters are basing their decision in part on frustrations with Wall Street, a Romney nomination could very well be a gift to the Democratic Party."

New York Times Editors: Elizabeth "Warren talks about the nation’s growing income inequality in a way that channels the force of the Occupy Wall Street movement but makes it palatable and understandable to a far wider swath of voters. She is provocative and assertive in her critique of corporate power and the well-paid lobbyists who protect it in Washington, and eloquent in her defense of an eroding middle class. It is an informed and measured populism.... She is a remarkably eloquent and appealing Senate candidate." ...

... And allies of House Democrats are trying to climb onto the populist bandwagon, as evidenced by this negative spot against Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.) produced by the HouseMajorityPac:

Adam Cohen of Time: "Abortion opponents have a new weapon of choice: the 'heartbeat bill.' A coalition of anti-abortion groups told the Associate Press last week last week that it was pushing to enact laws in all 50 states that would make women listen to a fetus's heart beat before they could abort. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has introduced a similar federal bill, The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act, in Congress. When the Supreme Court decided Roe, critics of abortion vowed to get it overturned. They have not succeeded in that. But they have managed to pass a wide array of laws — some upheld by the courts, others struck down — making access to abortion more difficult."

Right Wing World *

Susan Saulny of the New York Times: "Herman Cain ... was pushed to admit that his signature economic plan, 9-9-9, would result in increased taxes for some people.... He also sought to back away from fiery comments he had made just hours earlier, saying he was only joking about killing people trying to cross the border from Mexico with an electrified fence.... Beyond that, Mr. Cain acknowledged that he was unfamiliar with the neoconservative movement, and was not exactly sure what the word 'neoconservative' meant. All this was in the space of a 20-minute interview....” Here's the interview featuring our favorite hard-hitting journalist:

Enemy of the Earth. Chris Tomlinson of the AP: Texas Gov. Rick "Perry has cut funding for clean air programs and sued the Environmental Protection Agency to avoid enforcing laws to make the air cleaner. As part of his Republican presidential campaign, he routinely blasts the White House for tightening environmental standards."

Note to Conservatives: the MSM Is Not Obama's PR Unit. Keach Hagey of Politico (yes, Politico!) The right constantly asserts that President Obama has the media "in his back pocket" (Sarah Palin's description) & there is a "longstanding complaints from conservatives that the mainstream media treated the tea party with contempt.... But a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, in the past five months, the reverse has actually been true: Obama has received the most unremittingly negative press of any of the presidential candidates by a wide margin, with negative assessments outweighing positive ones by four to one. Pew found that just 9 percent of the president’s coverage was positive, while 34 percent was negative — a stark contrast to the 32 percent positive coverage and 20 percent negative that it found Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the most covered Republican, received." CW: C'mon, Keach. Don't confuse us with the facts.

* Where one defense for saying you plan to kill people looking for work is to say, "I was only kidding."

News Ledes

President Obama spoke at West Wilkes High School in Millers Creek, North Carolina, this afternoon. Update: the video is here.

AP: "A lawyer for Dominique Strauss-Kahn says the former IMF chief wants to be questioned by police so that he can debunk claims he was linked to a suspected hotel prostitution ring."

President Obama speaks on the American Jobs Act in Ashville, North Carolina, & appropriately mocks the Republicans' "Real American Jobs Act," which would probably actually cut jobs:

Guardian: "A lawyer acting on behalf of an Occupy Wall Street protester who was allegedly assaulted by a New York police officer on Friday has called for an investigation into the behaviour of the deputy inspector involved after video evidence appeared to show the same officer [Johnny Cardona] engaging in the rough handling of a woman protester in an earlier incident." With videos which you really should watch; the NYPD look more like barroom brawlers than peace officers.

AP: "Greek unions lashed out at the government Monday with protests, strikes and ministry building sit-ins, intensifying resistance to more austerity cuts as both Greece and the 17-nation eurozone faced a crucially decisive week. Strikes halted ferries to the Greek islands and left rotting trash piling up on the streets of Athens for a 16th straight day. Tax collectors and customs officers walked off the job and protesting civil servants occupied the finance and labor ministry buildings in the Greek capital."

New York Times: "Three years after needing a federal bailout to survive, Citigroup reported its seventh-straight quarterly profit, with a 74 percent rise in the third quarter despite dismal results of its investment bank. Citigroup announced a profit of $3.8 billion, or $1.23 a share, beating analyst consensus estimates of 81 cents per share. The bank had reported a $2.2 billion profit, or 72 cents a share, a year ago in the third quarter."

Guardian: "Far from requesting that the 300-strong crowd be removed from [London's St. Paul's] Cathedral steps on Sunday , the Rev Dr Giles Fraser, canon chancellor of St Paul's, requested that the police themselves move on as the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest entered its second day."

New York Times: "The British oil company, BP, said Monday that a partner in a well that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, Anadarko Petroleum, had agreed to pay $4 billion to settle claims relating to last year’s oil spill. The settlement ends a long dispute between BP, which operated the well in the gulf, and Anadarko, which owned a 25 percent stake, about accepting responsibility for compensating those affected by one of the worst oil spills ever in the United States."