The Commentariat -- June 14

I've posted an Open Thread on today's Off Times Square. Do read yesterday's reader comments, most of which are very good and/or challenging. ...

     ... Update: the comments on yesterday's thread go on to page 2; I just posted another response to Dr. Zee which I think is pretty good, but then I would think so, wouldn't I? You should be able to get to it directly by clicking on this link.

So long as we expect our presidential candidates to come up with the better part of a billion dollars to finance their campaigns, then like Willie Sutton, they’re going to have to go where the money is. And in our country, right now, the money is on Wall Street. If we don’t want them kowtowing before bankers and hedge-fund managers, well, we have to change the laws governing our elections.... -- Ezra Klein ...

... Glenn Greenwald elaborates. He's hoping Romney wins the Republican nomination: "Thus, what we would very possibly have in 2012 are two presidential candidates who endlessly tout their populist credentials while doing everything in reality to compete with one another over who can best serve the nation's oligarchs."

We’ll get rid of you. -- Tom Donohue, President of the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce to members of Congress who vote against raising the debt ceiling

The New York Times Editors on Republican obstruction of qualified nominees to head financial regulation agencies. On the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "Why go with a compromise candidate when Republicans have vowed to block any nominee? Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats should back Ms. Warren and expose to American voters just exactly whose interests the Republicans put first."

Aaron Wiener of TPM presents his "Chart of the Day," which speaks for itself, though Wiener elaborates here:

... So while we're charting stuff, let's see how things look for the financial industry:

... Now, isn't that special. Felix Salmon of Reuters, who provides us with the financial industry chart, & does some more numbers crunching, concludes, "Banks are still extracting enormous rents from the economy, and profits which should be flowing to productive industries are instead being captured by financial intermediaries. We’re back near boom-era levels of profitability now, and no one seems to worry that the flipside of higher returns is higher risk.... And the big rebound in corporate profits since the crisis turns out to be largely a function of the one sector which we didn’t want to recover to its former size." ...

... Jonathan Cohn: "Waiting for the national political conversation to 'pivot' away from deficits and towards jobs? It looks like President Obama wants to help." Please read Cohn's whole post. It might be the only encouraging note of the day, even if the evidence for his optimism remains somewhat slim. ...

... Meanwhile, the Congressional Progressive Caucus keeps on hammering its message that real people want to work:

Guess What Else Dubya Can't Find? Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times: "despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash.... For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be 'the largest theft of funds in national history.'"

Nelson Schwartz & Eric Dash of the New York Times: "Using the Citigroup customer Web site as a gateway to bypass traditional safeguards and impersonate actual credit card holders, a team of sophisticated thieves cracked into the bank’s vast reservoir of personal financial data, until they were detected in a routine check in early May. That allowed them to capture the names, account numbers, e-mail addresses and transaction histories of more than 200,000 Citi customers, security experts said, revealing for the first time details of one of the most brazen bank hacking attacks in recent years."

Pundits Pontificate on the GOP Show-and-Tell

Dana Milbank: "Eleven minutes into the debate, Michele Bachmann stole the show, and she didn’t return it in the subsequent hour and 49 minutes.... Bachmann was the one who emerged as the anti-Romney from the otherwise drab field." ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Mitt Romney easily survived his first test of the 2012 campaign here Monday night, cruising through a debate with six Republican rivals who were more interested in attacking President Obama than in turning their fire on the former Massachusetts governor.... Through two hours of questioning, [Romney] delivered a steady performance, made no obvious errors and stuck to his campaign game plan of focusing his message on the president and the economy." ...

... Dan Amira of New York Magazine has a snarky rundown of the highlights you (and I) missed by not watching the debate. Here's a good one: "Time Rick Santorum Spent Looking Like He Was One Second Away From Snapping, Taking Out His Rage by Destroying the Podium With His Fists: The whole debate." ...

... Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post also has a humorous take on elements of the proceedings. ...

... Wave Buh-Bye, Sarah Palin. Nate Silver weighs in on several fronts. Here he is on Bachmann v. Palin: "If there is a constituency of voters trying to decide between the two, Ms. Bachmann has a lot to offer. She’s considerably sharper on her feet than Ms. Palin, and has more discipline. She does not have the baggage of 'blood libel,' a reality show, or having prematurely quit her term as governor. Her family story — a mother to 23 foster children, as she frequently reminded us — is every bit as compelling. She has considerably better favorability ratings — Americans who are familiar with her split about evenly on whether they like her or not, which is not true for Ms. Palin. She has a geographic advantage in Iowa, has devoted more time to her presidential campaign and has a reputation as a strong fundraiser." ...

... Lies, Lies and Damned Statistics. Glenn Kessler fact-checks a few of the candidates' well-worn lines which have already been discredited, a circumstance that does not dissuade them from repeating the lies in a nationally-televised forum. ...

... Ron Brownstein of the National Journal says the attractive gentleman on the right (way on the right) is the big winner of the debate: "... there may be only modest differences between the proposals of the major candidates; all of them are operating in a policy framework shaped by the tea party push to retrench government, as interpreted above all by the House GOP budget resolution authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis." ...

... Finally, James Barnes reports on the National Journal's poll of the pundits. Big winner -- Romney; big loser -- Pawlenty. So who cares what anybody else thinks. ...

... Why, Our Mister Brooks considers himself a "pundit under protest," held hostage by uinspiring candidates on both sides.

Dahlia Lithwick: "Today (Monday), a court in San Francisco heard arguments about one of the most contemptible legal claims advanced in decades: that Vaughn Walker, the federal judge who voted last spring to strike down California's ban on gay marriage, was too gay to decide the case fairly." CW: Lithwick makes the same argument I did some time back: that no judge is qualified to rule in this case because every judge has a sexual orientation & could potential "benefit" from her or his decision.

This is actually a pretty good discussion on "Morning Joe" about Anthony Weiner. Scarborough, a Republican, says Reince Priebus, the RNC chair, should "shut up," especially since Democratic party leaders have dealt much more quickly with Weiner than Republican leaders dealt with their own scandals (CW: as in -- in a number of cases -- not at all). One aspect that struck me about this was having Steve Rattner sitting their discussing Weiner's indiscretions. Rattner, formerly Obama's "car czar," has settled "pay-to-play" charges by the SEC by paying $6.2 million in disgorgement and penalties & $10 million in restitution in a deal with New York AG Andrew Cuomo. Rattner has vehemently maintained he is innocence.

... Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast: "We need a new rulebook. Credible allegations of nonconsensual sex—the kind of thing Dominique Strauss-Kahn is alleged to have done — are absolutely fair game. But when it comes to adultery and virtual adultery between consenting adults, it's way past time that prominent figures in the media loudly declare that it is none of their business, and they won't join the scrum." ...

... Josh Marshall agrees. ...

... CW: Neither of them seriously addresses the part that got my goat: Weiner lied to ME. Until I found out he lied to the public, I agreed with Marshall -- this was a non-story that the press was all over because it sold papers. But I trusted Weiner to tell the public the truth, and I defended him based on his false assertions. It's none of my business if a politician humiliates his spouse as long as the humiliating behavior is legal. It is my business when he humiliates me. Anthony Weiner humiliated me.

Right Wing World *

Ha Ha Ha. The Seven Dwarfs debate aside, my favorite candidate story has to be this one by Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones: Fred Karger, a "lesser-known" (CW: I'll say!) candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, AND the only openly-gay GOP presidential candidate (no kidding!), AND a long-time Mitt Romney tormenter, AND a veteran of oppo research -- has been sleuthing Mitt's voting history. Karger has now filed a complaint with the Massachusetts board of elections alleging Mitt violated state law (the crime can garner a $10,000 fine & up to five years in jail) by voting in Massachusetts local elections when he was not a resident. Karger is not buying Mitt's claim that multimillionaire Mitt & family lived in their son's Massachusetts basement, & Karger's investigation finds plenty of evidence that Mitt & family were not Massachusetts moles; rather, they were living it up in a La Jolla, California sea-front mansion so Mitt "could hear the waves." Read the whole story. 

The Recession is God's Plan. Marie Diamond of Think Progress: Texas Gov. Rick "Perry twists a famous Biblical story into a bizarre anti-government tirade, comparing the U.S. government to slave masters in ancient Egypt. Skewing religion to reinforce his personal political ideology, Perry chastises people not to rely on government for help in hard times, and suggests those who are suffering have no one but themselves to blame for not making adequate preparations." Perry is flirting with a presidential run. With video. CW: so why are Republicans criticizing President Obama for the bad economy if the recession is "God's plan"? Under the Perry School of Theology, Obama is akin to the Prophet Moses. Republicans should be bowing down to him and asking him if he's got any commandments for them.

* Where facts seldom intrude, but if they do, they could leave would-be President Romney in jail.

News Ledes

President Obama arrives in Puerto Rico:

New York Times: "Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials. Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan."

ABC News: "The Senate Democratic leadership came out today and reaffirmed that Medicare cuts should not be on the table during the debt ceiling discussions."

New York Times: "David C. Baldus, whose pioneering research on race and the death penalty came within a vote of persuading the Supreme Court to make fundamental changes in the capital justice system, died on Monday at his home in Iowa City. He was 75." Read the story. It's more than an obituary.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated Gov. Scott Walker's plan to all but end collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers. The court found a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state's open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when they hastily approved the measure and made it possible for the Senate to take it up. In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled a Dane County judge who had struck down the legislation, ending one challenge to the law even as new challenges are likely to emerge." CW: not surprisingly, one of those in the 4-3 majority was David Prosser, who won a close election in April. Elections matter.

Los Angeles Times: "A federal judge on Tuesday refused to invalidate last year's ruling against Proposition 8, deciding the gay jurist who overturned the same-sex marriage ban had no obligation to step aside because of a possible conflict of interest. The decision by Chief Judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco left the ruling by retired Judge Vaughn R. Walker in place. Walker’s decision remains on hold pending a separate appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals." Includes link to Judge Ware's ruling. ...

... New York Times: "A bankruptcy court in California has declared that the 1996 law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage [DOMA] is unconstitutional, increasing pressure against the law.

News You Can Use. New York Times: "After 33 years of consideration, the Food and Drug Administration took steps on Tuesday to sort out the confusing world of sunscreens, with new rules that specify which lotions provide the best protection against the sun and ending claims that they are truly waterproof."

Los Angeles Times: "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faced fresh political uncertainty Tuesday after suffering a crushing loss at the polls that will make it more difficult for the longtime leader to keep his fragile government intact."

Here's the New York Times report on last night's Republican debate in New Hampshire.