The Daily Planet, Vol. 114

You can access all the past editions of The Daily Planet on the green Category bar on the top of each page under the heading PlanetPOV.

________________________________________

BUDGET

President Obama’s News Conference on Deficit Reduction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO34jERiMfw

WH Blog: President Obama on Deficit Reduction: “If Not Now, When?”

Transcript of press conference and video

The questions below are paraphrased from the questions asked by reporters during the news conference:

• What is your plan if Republicans continue to oppose any tax increases? If Congress passed a short-term, stop-gap measure would you veto it?
• Do you see any path to a deal if Republicans don’t budge on taxes?
• The latest CBS News poll showed that only 24 percent of Americans said you should raise the debt limit to avoid an economic catastrophe and 69 percent oppose raising the debt limit. Isn’t the problem that you and others have failed to convince the American people that we have a crisis, and how are you going to change that?
• Do you think Speaker Boehner come back to the $4 trillion deal?
• In the $4 trillion deal, it seems to be now at about four-to-one spending to taxes. Why are we at that level? Can you clarify your Social Security position — would any of the money from Social Security go toward the deficit as opposed to back into the trust fund?
• With unemployment now at 9.2 percent and a large chunk of those lost jobs coming from the private sector, is now a really good time to cut trillions of dollars in spending? How will we still create jobs? What do you say to members of your own party who say it doesn’t contribute to the deficit?
• Have you worked with new U.S. business leaders at all to lobby Congress to raise the debt ceiling? And if so, who are you talking to?
• As the clock ticks down, is the administration working on any sort of contingency plans if things don’t happen by August?
• You said that the Speaker faces tough politics in his caucus. Do you have complete confidence that he can deliver the votes on anything that he agrees to? Is he in control of his caucus?
• Your confidence in Speaker Boehner wasn’t shaken by him walking away from the big deal he said he wanted?
• What say you about Congressman Chaka Fattah’s bill, the Debt Free America Act? Do you support that bill? Are you supporting the Republican bill that is similar to his, modeled after Congressman Fattah’s bill?

Debt Ceiling, Crystal Balls, and Kabuki Theater

Karoli:

For weeks now we’ve heard about how urgent it is to get a debt ceiling deal done — a deal that should include only spending cuts according to Republicans, and should include tax increases according to Democrats. Here’s a key piece of the President’s press conference today:

OBAMA: If not now, when? We keep on talking about this stuff, and, you know, we have these high-minded pronouncements about how we’ve got to get control of the deficit and how we owe it to our children and our grandchildren. Well, let’s step up. Let’s do it.

I’m prepared to do it. I’m prepared to take on significant heat from my party to get something done. And I expect the other side should be willing to do the same thing if they mean what they say, that this is important.

And let me just then comment on this whole issue of tax increases, because there’s been a lot of information floating around there. I want to be crystal clear: Nobody has talked about increasing taxes now, nobody has talked about increases — increasing taxes next year.

What we have talked about is that starting in 2013 that we have gotten rid of some of these egregious loopholes that are benefiting corporate jet owners or oil companies at a time where they’re making billions of dollars of profits.

What we have said is, as part of a broader package, we should have revenues.

OBAMA: And the best place to get those revenues are from folks like me who have been extraordinarily fortunate, and that millionaires and billionaires can afford to pay a little bit more, going back to the Bush tax rates.

And, what I’ve also said to the Republicans is, if you don’t like that formulation, then I’m happy to work with you on tax reform that could potentially lower everybody’s rates and broaden the base, as long as that package was sufficiently progressive so that we weren’t balancing the budget on the backs of middle-class families and working-class families, and we weren’t letting hedge fund managers or authors of best-selling books off the hook.

That is a reasonable proposition.

So when — when you hear folks saying, “Well, you know, the president shouldn’t want, you know, massive, job-killing tax increases when the economy’s this week, nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out-years.

That, along with this, laid out the boundaries for the meeting taking place in the White House right now:

So what I’ve said to the leaders is, bring back to me some ideas that you think can get the necessary number of votes in the House and in the Senate. I’m happy to consider all options, all alternatives that they’re looking at. The things that I will not consider are a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day or a 180-day temporary stopgap resolution to this problem.

That parameter was preceded by acknowledgement that all leaders agree that default is not an option. All leaders. Not just Democrats. All.

Forget about all the pundit and partisan noise for a minute and pay attention to what he just said. He laid out clear boundaries for the discussion. These are the options available to Republicans right now:

• Bifurcate budget/deficit discussions and approve an increase to the debt limit that will extend our credit for 12 months. Of course, doing such a thing means that the next discussion — barring any debt negotiations in the interim — lands right in the middle of the 2012 elections.
• Give up the Bush tax cuts or bring a package to the table that otherwise places the revenue burden on wealthy earners in the country.

That’s it, right there. For all of the sackcloth and ashes being worn by the left and right alike, those are the options. Period. And right now, the leverage is with Obama, not the Republicans. He reclaimed the hostage from the hostage-takers.

This is why, by the way, he is using Republican frames to discuss these issues. As frustrating as that might feel to many, the ones who need convincing right now are conservatives, and not fringe conservatives from the Tea Party. Despite the gnashing of teeth over the fact that he didn’t emphasize job creation or other worthy goals, the fact is that he has a House of Representatives which is, for the most part, irrational. I don’t think anyone expects them to get on board. The only way to deal with irrational voters is to go over their heads to their bosses. Their bosses aren’t the Tea Party at this point; they’re the independents who turned away from Obama to vote Republican because of the noise and heat generated by the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, and other legislation in the 111th Congress. Those independent voters want good-faith negotiation, and the President just let them know that there is none of that happening right now.

It’s easy to read online blogs and Facebook posts and Twitter streams and assume the entire world is all one ideology or the other, when in fact, most people come at things with mixed feelings. They like social security but are worried about the national debt, too. They’re worried about the economy and their jobs but can’t put their finger on exactly why the economy isn’t picking up, either. Then they look at Washington DC’s daily theater and say, well gosh…it’s gotta be their fault.

Wall Street isn’t going to countenance a default. Neither should we. So at this point, the options are to push hard for minimal adjustments to Social Security/Medicare spending while hammering the GOP for hanging onto tax cuts for the rich, or else start calling loud and clear for a clean vote to increase the debt ceiling substantially, while continuing to hammer out some kind of acceptable agreement for everything.

Today is July 11th. The date to have an agreement is July 22nd. A lot can happen between now and then, but right now I would say odds are pointing to a clean debt ceiling vote with no strings attached, because in the end, progressives are going to be the deal makers, not the tea party. It’s up to them to grab the ring and use it.

If Republicans stand firm against any and all tax increases, they could miss the chance for their biggest victory yet on spending cuts.

National Journal:

[…] But even $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years would be historic. The budget deal passed by President George H.W. Bush and a Democratic Congress in 1991 netted $482 billion in savings over 10 years by cutting spending by $265 billion and increasing taxes by $168 billion. In 1993, President Clinton’s Democrats appeased the bond markets with $433 billion in savings over five years by combining spending cuts and tax increases. In 1997, Clinton brokered a deal with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to cut the deficit by $180 billion over five years. […]

Once more, with feeling: There was no ‘deficit commission report’

The Very Serious People seem to be Very Seriously Committed to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson and their catfood commission. To the point that they continue to spread Very Serious Lies about that commission.

There was no report from President Obama’s deficit commission. The rules under which the commission could issue a report were very clear. It had to have the support of 14 of the 18 members in a vote that took place by December 1, 2010. There was no vote taken by that date, although 12 of the 18 members did indicate their support for a report produced by the commission co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, on December 2.

This means that there was no commission report. Therefore, when Dan Balz tells Washington Post readers about the recommendations of the deficit commission, he either has no clue what he is talking about or he is deliberately deceiving Washington Post readers. If he wants to be honest, he is welcome to refer to it as a report of the co-chairs and to even point out that the report had support of 12 of the 18 commissioners, but it is simply not accurate to describe it as a report of the commission.

It’s not just Dan Balz and his buddy punditry. It’s every politician who wants to sound Very Serious about the deficit, so that they can do things like raise the eligibility age for Medicare, or the retirement age for Social Security. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a lie.

BUSINESS

Want a free credit score? Get rejected

As part of an effort to pull back the curtain on how creditors go about making their lending decisions, consumers are soon going to find out exactly why they got rejected for a credit card or loan.

Beginning later this month, lenders and creditors who deny a consumer’s application for a loan or credit card — or who give less favorable terms for one of these products — will be required to disclose the credit score and other factors that they used to make their decision. […]

Part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the new rules will go into effect July 21 — when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officially takes over the reins on enforcing new regulation.

Your bank is profiling you!

In addition to the credit score and several other factors on their credit report that the lender used to make their decision, the consumer will also be notified about the date of the inquiry and the name of the consumer reporting agency the lender used. If a lender uses its own credit-scoring model instead of FICO, the consumer will be told that the score doesn’t come from a reporting agency and will be given the range of the scoring model the lender used.

The new disclosures amend rules that were put in place earlier this year that required lenders to notify consumers when they weren’t given the best terms on a loan or credit card. The notices didn’t include credit scores unless the lender chose to include them.

ECONOMY

Amazingly, a smaller % of Americans experienced unemployment in 2009 than in early 60s — and much less than in early 80s

Leonhardt, NYT:

[…]One set of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics makes the case. In 1982, the unemployment rate averaged between 9 and 10 percent — and fully 22 percent of the labor force experienced unemployment at some point during the year. In 2009 (the most recent year of data), the unemployment rate also averaged between 9 and 10 percent, but only (or maybe “only”) 16.4 percent of the labor force experienced unemployment at some point during the year.

Just as surprising, the share of the labor force that experienced unemployment in 2009 was lower than in the early 1960s, when the unemployment rate was generally below 7 percent. Why? Among other things, temporary layoffs were more common in the past than today.

[…]In 1982, the share of people who experienced unemployment was more than one-third larger than in 2009.

I discussed the phenomenon in more detail in two previous columns, including one in 2009:

Instead of doing lots of firing and some hiring, many companies have done only some firing and virtually no hiring, the statistics show. And that isn’t all bad.

Try thinking of it this way: All of the unemployed people in the country are gathered in a huge gymnasium that’s been turned into a job search center. The fact that this recession is the worst in a generation means that there are many, many people in the gym. The fact that the economy is churning so slowly means that there is not much traffic into and out of the gym.

If you’re inside, you will have a hard time getting out. Yet if you’re lucky enough to be outside the gym, you will probably be able to stay there. The consequences of a job loss are terribly high, but — given that the unemployment rate is almost 10 percent — the odds of job loss are surprisingly low.

The reasons for the slow churn are obviously complex. The baby boomers are moving out of the ages at which people typically start businesses. The economy has shifted away from sectors, like manufacturing, in which temporary layoffs are common. Educational gains have slowed, which affects innovation. And the federal government was not willing, at least until recently, to make the kind of investments that spurred entrepreneurship in the past — building the highway system, supporting scientific research, creating the Pentagon computer network that turned into the Internet.

But whatever the causes, the effects of the slow churn are clear: the pain of this recession has been concentrated.

WSJ: 94% of the world millionaires worry about “global unrest” among masses

[…] A new survey from Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of those with liquid assets of $1 million or more found that 94% of respondents are concerned about the global unrest around the world today.

Fully 90% of respondents have a negative view of the current global economic climate and 41% say they have little or no faith that the U.S. will be able to right itself in this fiscal climate.

More than a third said security concerns have negatively affected business or investment plans.

“The survey found a seismic shift in the attitudes of the wealthy and how they are living their lives, the way they travel and how they are running their businesses,” said Christopher Falkenberg, President of Insite Security.

Of course, Insite has an interest in getting the paranoid rich to beef up their security. Still, the numbers are backed up by other trends seen throughout the world of wealth today: the rich keeping a lower profile, hiring $230,000 guard dogs, and arming their yachts, planes and cars with military-style security features.

Granted, America isn’t a country conducive to class wars in the streets (even a mention by the President of rolling back the private-jet tax breaks sparked denunciations of class warfare). But at a time when most of the country is mired in unemployment, weak housing prices and a stack of bills from the bailouts, the rich have reason to fear public resentment. And some fear even worse.

JUSTICE

Obama administration approves ATF rule to crackdown on gun trafficking

Amid ongoing probes of the ATF Fast and Furious scandal, the Obama administration announced Monday that they are asking gun dealers in four border states to report when they sell two or more semi-automatic weapons to an individual in a period of five business days.

The rule, enforced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), is meant to slow the trafficking of weapons across the Southern border and into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

“The international expansion and increased violence of transnational criminal networks pose a significant threat to the United States,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole said in a statement.

“This new reporting measure — tailored to focus only on multiple sales of these types of rifles to the same person within a five-day period — will improve the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to detect and disrupt the illegal weapons trafficking networks responsible for diverting firearms from lawful commerce to criminals and criminal organizations,” Cole said.

Cole said the “targeted information requests” would occur in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. The administration sought comments on the rule in the Federal Register in April.

“Federal, state and foreign law enforcement agencies have determined that certain types of semi-automatic rifles – greater than .22 caliber and with the ability to accept a detachable magazine – are highly sought after by dangerous drug trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest Border,” Cole said.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) quickly slammed the new measure, calling it the “height of hypocrisy for the Obama administration to restrict the gun rights of border state citizens, when the administration itself knowingly and intentionally allowed guns to be trafficked into Mexico.”

MEDIA

Coverage of Jobs vs. Deficit

I’ve suggested several different explanations for why the jobs crisis has gotten so little attention in Washington, especially compared to the deficit. In response, a lot of frustrated readers e-mailed me to argue that I’d left out one other explanation: the media. Major news organizations have devoted much more air time, ink and pixels to America’s debt concerns than to the 14-million-person army of jobless workers, they argued.

As a reader named Cindy writes:

If any of these big media conglomerates really cared about the millions of people that are being tossed like road kill, they would be doing something to help us organize and give us the coverage we need to be heard once and for all.

Another reader, Virgil, writes:

People hear in the media that it is not that bad out there, so they turn on their friends that are unemployed and call them deadbeats and state that their taxes are so high because they have to pay for those that won’t get a job.

Complaints about media coverage do appear to be supported by a cursory review of articles from the last two years.

In May, the National Journal published a report on economic coverage in the five largest newspapers in the country by print circulation: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and The Washington Post. They did this by searching for the words “unemployment” and “deficit” (excluding articles that also used the words “Europe,” “European,” “Greece” or “Greek”). This was not the most scientific (or comprehensive) study ever conducted, but it did show that over the last two years, the number of articles on “unemployment” had fallen while those on the “deficit” had exploded.

One can argue about the extent to which policy makers guide news coverage, and whether news coverage guides policy makers. Whichever way (or ways) you think that relationship works, it appears that both Washington and news organizations have been emphasizing long-term debt reduction over near-term job growth.

That balance may change, though, in light of Friday’s weak employment report, and as more workers exhaust their jobless benefits.

Dear media: Time to define the term “fiscal conservative.”

Perhaps the most irritating aspect of the ongoing battle over the debt ceiling is that Republicans who remain intransigent about tax hikes continue to be referred to in the media as “fiscal conservatives.”

Jonathan Bernstein noted over the weekend that this is a perennial problem in the media. Exhibit A: A Washington Post article that said this:

Democrats were demanding more than $800 billion in new tax revenue, causing heartburn among the hard-line fiscal conservatives who dominate the House Republican caucus.

Bernstein replied that their opposition to new tax revenue doesn’t make them fiscal conservatives: “Fiscal conservatives are deficit hawks. They don’t want the federal budget to run a deficit. That’s what fiscal conservative has pretty much always meant.” The opposition to new revenues makes it more likely that the federal budget will run a deficit.

Another misuse of the term “fiscal conservatives” can be found here, courtesy of Time’s Jay Newton-Small.

The GOP of today isn’t so much committed to not running a deficit as it is to cutting the social safety net, which is why the debt ceiling talks are stalling over tax increases. It’s a miracle of messaging that Republicans have managed to persuade reporters to continue referring to them as “fiscal conservatives, ”since the label implies a level of responsibility that the GOP simply hasn’t shown. Republicans refuse to raise taxes at all despite the fact that rates are at historically low levels.

Meanwhile, the Post also reports today that the president continues to want a $4 trillion deficit reduction deal, which would include politically disastrous cuts to entitlement programs:

His proposal, which he has said would bring certainty to an economy constrained by anxiety over the nation’s fiscal condition, would involve spending cuts to agency budgets, including the Pentagon’s; ending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; and changing entitlement programs in ways his party has traditionally opposed.

Now, I’m not one to find the label “fiscal conservative” particularly impressive since I think there are times the government needs to run a deficit. But to the extent there’s someone operating with a “fiscal conservative” viewpoint in these negotiations, it’s the president. That’s much to the chagrin of liberals, who argue correctly that the last thing the country’s anemic recovery needs is more cuts to government spending. But if we are going to continue to use terms like “fiscal conservative,” we should be clearer about what they actually mean.

Amy Lee Firing by Huffington Post Exposes Hypocrisy When it Comes to Site’s News-Stealing Business Model

LA Weekly:

It only took us a matter of seconds to find a story on the Huffington Post’s Los Angeles page that is based on the work of another news organization and contains no link to said organization.

In its piece on a proposal for a SoCal breakaway state the Huffington Post seems to rely mostly on a Los Angeles Times piece (with a little AP thrown in for good measure). But there were no links that we could find.

Now, that’s not unusual in blogland (ahem). What is unusual, or perhaps unseemly, is that the Post today claimed that it has …

” … zero tolerance for this sort of conduct,” according to a statement by HuffPo executive business editor Peter Goodman, sent to Romenesko.

This after a business writer, Amy Lee, was caught liberally rewriting an AdAge article (six grafs or so) before linking. So what?

Goodman continued:

We have made a very substantial investment in original reporting here, bringing in dozens of new writers in recent months. And while we will continue to curate the news for our audience, what occurred in this instance is entirely unacceptable and collides directly with the values that are at work in our newsroom.

Really now, Peter. Seems to us that every other time we tune in to HuffPo we see such aggressive aggregation, e.g. other peoples’ stories rewritten with substantially buried links toward the end.

Now, that’s a staple in blogland. Love it or hate it. Let’s debate it by saying it’s a prominent model and we all do it. We’ve been the beneficiary of HuffPo aggregation, and we’re fine with it.

But let’s not bullshit our way out of it and claim that it has no part in the business when in fact the Huffington Post built its $300 million ass mostly on this kind of aggregation.

In fact, Gawker gets an ex-HuffPo writer to say that the aggressive aggregation is the company model:

That is what we were taught and told to do at HuffPost. Arianna and the higher ups made a decision to stop linking out directly as much and rewrite stories “the way the AP does.” They even hired people specifically to rewrite other people’s work. Whenever they get caught they just blame an underling. These poor kids right out of school who have no experience get told to do XY and Z and then get punished for doing it.

And it gives other examples of HuffPo’s liberal usage of others’ reportage.

It’s unconscionable for the HuffPo to have build itself up via other news org’s reporting and then burn kids for towing the company line (and then, on top of all that, being dishonest about it).

No wonder kids think the corporate world sucks.

Newsweek.com Will Cease to Exist on July 19

Right now if you go to newsweek.com, you’ll see a basic magazine website, updated with content from the print version of the mag and a top navigation bar that directs you to content on its sister site, dailybeast.com. But starting July 19, we hear, newsweek.com will no longer exist. Instead that URL will redirect users to a channel on the Daily Beast site, like its current “politics,” “entertainment,” and “fashion” verticals. The Newsweek channel will still have all the archived magazine content from before (unlike Time, Newsweek puts all of its print content online), and it will be edited and updated once a day to rotate features. Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown and Chief Digital Officer Daniel Blackman decided it made the most sense to have all-new non-magazine content appear on the Beast homepage. As it is, that’s how the system has been working for some weeks now, but the death of the newsweek.com URL marks the official end of what was once a fully staffed and hugely trafficked site in its own right.

Why won’t the NYTimes call George Tiller ‘s assassination terrorism?

Slate:

[…] The words “terrorism”, “terrorist” or even the grating term “terror” never crop up once in this article, even though it’s a story about a woman facing down threats of domestic terrorism from the same community that produced a man who walked into a church and shot a man in the head in order to stop him from performing legal abortions.  By any reasonable measure, the assassination of Dr. Tiller was an act of domestic terrorism, defined here and pretty much anywhere else as acts of violence committed to intimidate a civilian population or a government into changing policy.  Both are true in the case of Dr. Tiller’s murder.  And as Sulzberger makes incredibly clear in this piece, the anti-choice community of Wichita is eager to frame the murder as sending a signal to other providers that they, too, risk their lives if they dare perform abortions in Wichita.  There’s some official, half-hearted denunciations of Roeder’s actual crime, but then those denunciations are framed in this way:

Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, based in Wichita, said that abortion opponents were committed to blocking another clinic here, and that the level of protest facing anyone who participated in such an efforts [sic] would be “beyond anything anyone could imagine.” He spoke with particular disdain for Dr. Means.

“We will ensure that this community remains abortion free,” he said.

I’m trying to imagine what would happen if a Muslim terrorist killed a specific target, and a local Muslim group said, “While we don’t think he should have shot the target, we’re glad the target is dead and hope that anyone else who intends to do the work the target was doing thinks twice about it.  If they persist, we will ensure they are unable to continue in this work.”  Not only would they be called, bare minimum, “terrorist sympathizers,” the FBI would be all over them and there would probably be some arrests made in short order.  Especially if, as has happened in the case of Dr. Means, the members of the group started showing up at the second target’s house, researching and publicizing her movements amongst the group, and sending death threats to the second target.  If the government shrugged its shoulders and said there was nothing it could do about this, the country would be in uproar.

But if our radical fundamentalists who embrace violence and threats in order to get their way make sure to call themselves “Christian,” I guess all bets are off.

Turner Classic Movies Host to Take a Break

Robert Osborne, the longtime host of the Turner Classic Movies channel, plans to take a three-month leave of absence, the channel said in a statement Monday. Mr. Osborne, 79, will be undergoing minor surgery, the channel said, without specifying for what, as well as taking a vacation.

Perhaps assuaging viewers’ concerns, the channel noted that Mr. Osborne, who has been the channel’s host since 1994, recently renewed his contract. In his place, guest hosts including Robert Wagner, Jane Powell and Tippi Hedren will step in, with others to be announced “in the coming weeks,” the statement said. In the interim, Mr. Osborne will still appear in taped features like the channel’s guest programmer series and “The Essentials,” a weekly showing of a must-see film.

MILITARY

Military Leaders From U.S. and China Meet

The leaders of China’s and America’s militaries sought on Monday to cast aside decades of hostility between the two establishments, pledging at a joint news conference here to pursue what they separately called a “great opportunity” to create a “shared vision” of cooperation.

But neither indicated that his government was willing to alter positions on issues like Taiwan and the South China Sea that have long hamstrung better relations. And the Chinese leader, Gen. Chen Bingde, quickly voiced a string of complaints about American military policies that suggested their shared vision remained a distant dream.

General Chen and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were midway through three days of talks on Monday, following up on a visit to Washington in May by General Chen, the chief of the People’s Liberation Army general staff. Both men are under orders to improve the military relationship, one outcome of a summit last January between President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao of China.

POLITICS

Bachmann was a tax collector for what she’s called “the most heartless organization that anyone knows of”

Roll Call Politics: Club for Growth Warns Lugar, Hatch on Debt Ceiling

Schumer and DSCC chair Murray privately warn fellow Dems: Deep Medicare cuts risk squandering major advantage

Top Democrats in charge of keeping the Senate in Dem hands and maintaining the political health of the party — DSCC chair Patty Murray and messaging chief Chuck Schumer — have privately expressed frustration that deep Medicare cuts risk squandering the major political advantage Democrats have built up on the issue, people familiar with internal discussions say.

Senators Murray and Schumer, along with other Dems like Debbie Stabenow and Mark Begich, have warned against deep cuts in recent leadership meetings, a source familiar with the meetings says, another sign of the unrest that the possibility of serious entitlements cuts is creating among Congressional Democrats.

“We shouldn’t be giving away our advantage on Medicare,” said a source familiar with Murray’s thinking, in characterizing her objections in private meetings. “We should be very careful about giving away the biggest advantage we’ve had as Democrats in some time.”

“For the first time in the past two and a half years we have an unmitigated advantage on a single issue where our entire caucus is united,” the source continues. “This is a case where the whole morale of our party was lifted by the fact that we were taking the fight to Republicans.”

The frustration on the Senate side is mirrored on the House side. Sam Stein reported on Friday that DCCC chair Steve Israel privately vented his frustration that serious Medicare cuts would hamper his ability to recruit good Dem candidates to challenge House GOP incumbents. And a number of Dem challengers have already launched their campaigns by alluding to the GOP’s unpopular Medicare plan, a reminder of just how central top Dem strategists want it to remain through 2012.

In red states like Montana, Nebraska, and Missouri, one key to good Dem performance is maintaining good standing among seniors. The Dems took a shellacking in 2010 in part because of the swing in seniors in such states. One measure of this is that Ben Nelson, a conservative Dem who opposes tax hikes as part of any deficit deal, has also come out against any cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

“Schumer has consistently expressed the most concern,” a source familiar with recent leadership meetings says. “Schumer has been on this bandwagon for weeks.” The source adds that a recent meeting at which Stabenow and Begich sounded the alarm about cuts ”got pretty heated.”

Concludes the source: “There’s a high degree of frustration within the caucus.”

So far 25 House Dems and counting have signed that letter from Friday drawing a hard line against any entitlements benefits cuts, a House Dem source says.

GOP Leaders Say Raising Debt Limit Is Imperative, But Also A Concession On Their Part

[…] Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) agreed that this is what he considers a “balanced” agreement: “Most Americans would say that a balanced approach is a simple one: the administration gets its debt limit increase, and the American people get their spending cuts.” In fact, a recent Pew poll found that 60 percent of Americans — and 50 percent of Republicans — say it is more important to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are than to reduce the deficit.

Boehner and Cantor’s justification is extraordinary since GOP leaders have conceded that raising the debt ceiling is an economic imperative. At the same press conference today, Boehner said, “I agree with the President we can not allow our nation to default on our debt.” Just days ago, he said that failing to raise the limit by Aug. 2 “puts our economy in jeopardy, risking even more jobs.” Just yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claimed “no one is talking about not raising the debt ceiling.”

So how can it be both an imperative and a gift that Republicans deign to give?

During the Bush presidency, Republicans voted to increase the debt limit 19 times without ever demanding cuts in exchange for their votes.

To Those Who Consider President Obama a Disappointment; You’re Just NOT Paying Attention!

One of the most comprehensive list of President Obama’s accomplishments, with links to sources.

If you think President Obama is a failure, or you’re “disappointed” in him, the problem pretty much has to be you. So far, this president has done most of what he said he would do, and he’s only halfway through his first term. Not only is he NOT a “failure,” he’s pretty much the opposite. Hell; he even took out Osama bin Laden, something Bush couldn’t do in eight years. Of course, Bush also said several times that he really didn’t care bout bin Laden, anyway…

Is he perfect? No, he’s human. Does he deserve some criticism? Sure. But criticism about certain specific problems is one thing; taking on an overall “Obama sucks” meme not only has the potential to put another Bush into power, but it’s also a lie to say, or even imply, he’s a lousy president.

Here is a PARTIAL list of Obama’s accomplishments so far. Unlike many lists, I actually include a link to details. I also update this list regularly, so check back often.

Anytime someone, right OR left, tells you Obama sucks, or is a “disappointment,” show them this list and tell them to kiss a part of your body not usually considered pleasant to kiss.

The first section alone should make them sit down and shut up.

MORE>>>

Democrats like compromise. Independents like compromise. Republicans don’t like compromise.

Ezra Klein:

Substantively, I’d want to see everything in the $4 trillion deal before making a global comment on how good or bad it is. But politically, a deal that raised less than half as much in taxes as the fiscal commission, lifted the Medicare eligibility age and cut Social Security benefits by more than $200 billion would lead to a liberal backlash that dwarfs anything we’ve seen so far. I think it might well spark a (futile) primary challenge.

Which is not to say it wouldn’t be good politics for the White House. Whenever you think about the Obama administration’s political incentives, you need to keep this graph in mind:

Democrats like compromise. Independents like compromise. Republicans don’t. That’s an asymmetry between the two parties that the White House would be very happy to exploit going into 2012.

POLLS

New WaPo poll: 42% more worried about impact of not raising debt ceiling, 47% more worried about impact of raising it.

Gallup: Congress’ Approval Entrenched at 18% as Debt Talks Continue

Pew: Public Now Divided on Debt Limit Debate

Default Concerns Rise among Independents

[…] The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post, conducted July 7-10 among 1,007 adults, finds that independents are now evenly divided in concerns over the debt limit: 46% say their greater concern is that raising the limit would lead to higher government spending while 45% say their bigger concern is that not raising the limit will lead to a default. Two months ago, independents by 49% to 34% expressed more concern over raising the debt limit.

[…] The new survey finds that many Americans continue to say they do not have a good understanding of what would happen if the government does not raise the debt limit. A narrow majority (55%) say they understand the consequences very (18%) or fairly well (37%). This is little changed from May (50% very/fairly well). Those who say they understand this issue at least fairly well are divided in their concerns: 49% express more concern about raising the debt limit while 46% say they are more concerned over not raising the debt limit. In May, those who felt they understood the issue, on balance, were more concerned about raising the debt limit (by 52% to 37%).

SCIENCE

NOVA: Newton’s Dark Secrets

In 1936, a huge collection of scientific documents and personal papers was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in London. These papers had never been seen by the public, and a large number of them were bought by the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes. Many were written in secret code, and for six years, Keynes struggled to decipher them. […]

But what Keynes found shattered his image of Isaac Newton. For, in these manuscripts, Keynes discovered an Isaac Newton unknown to the rest of the world, an Isaac Newton who seemed obsessed with religion and devoted to the occult.

STEPHEN SNOBELEN (University of King’s College): He is known, today, as a sort of a high priest of the Age of Reason, but this is a misconstruction of Newton.

MORE>>>

AND IN OTHER NEWS…

Hasidic Sleuth’s Beat: Mean Streets of Brooklyn

JOE LEVIN, a private investigator in Brooklyn, was waiting to meet a new client in the parking lot of a kosher supermarket in Borough Park one recent morning. Glancing in the side-view mirror of his chauffeured sport utility vehicle, Mr. Levin said he liked this particular spot because he knew the manager, the delivery man and the security guard, who lets him borrow footage from the lot’s surveillance equipment.

Most of the time, though, Mr. Levin does his own snooping. On his iPad, he scrolled through photographs of people he was being paid about $100 an hour to follow, including a rebellious Hasidic girl in a white miniskirt and a long-bearded rabbi lighting a cigarette on the sidewalk.

“He’s a bad guy,” Mr. Levin said, enlarging the rabbi’s image. “A very bad guy.”

Not your usual private eye, Mr. Levin is a practicing Orthodox Jew, a member of the Bobov Hasidic sect and the founder of T.O.T. Private Investigation and Consulting, a New York-based company that specializes in Orthodox-related cases worldwide. The company, whose focus is uncommon — and perhaps unique in the United States — hires forensic experts, former homicide detectives, photographers and even pilots, mostly on a per-case basis. Its services range from investigations into international banks and Israeli investment companies to local background checks for prospective Shidduchim, or Orthodox marital arrangements.

Since Mr. Levin started the business 12 years ago, his life has often resembled the plot of a TV crime drama. He has trailed unwitting subjects into synagogues and strip clubs, sat beside them on international flights and tracked them down in remote areas of Puerto Rico and Brazil.

While he usually wears the black frock coat and fedora of the Hasidim, when undercover he has donned stocking caps and Yankees jerseys to conceal his brown knit skullcap and tzitzit, the ritual fringes worn by observant Jews.

His organization’s mission is encoded in the name T.O.T., an acronym for the Yiddish expression “Tuchis afn tish.”

“It means ‘Put your tuchis on the table,’ ” said Mr. Levin, a bearded, powerfully built man in his late 30s, who shaved off his side locks years ago out of personal preference. “In other words, ‘Show me the proof.’ And that’s what I do. I bring my proof to the people.”

MORE>>>

An instructional video for cowboy hip-hop dancing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOacUWjHgiE&feature=player_embedded#at=45

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to

fetch a child of five.
Groucho Marx