Good morning, one and all, and welcome to another edition of your Sunday Morning liveblog of the demented political chat shows. My name is Jason, and I think this tweet basically sums up this week.

So a bunch of senators testified before Jamie Dimon today bit.ly/LX1vs4

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) June 13, 2012

Yes, this was the kind of week where you really got a feel the future of America -- Jamie Dimon will be regularly holding taxpayers to accounts for their failure to serve his interests as your public servant use emergency collagen injections to plump up their tongues so they do not lose their softness as they bathe Dimon's backside, while Sheldon Adelson skips around the room in a harlequin costume setting his own money on fire. That sounds about right to me.

Against that horoscope, watching these shows seems like an eminently tolerable thing to do. And last week, I was pleasantly surprised by the way they delved into the national security leak story when I thought it would be too much for them. I'm guessing that was an outlier, but we'll see. I live in hope. I also live inside the Beltway. So I know from hopelessness. (This week, MEET THE PRESS is airing what I am assuming is a MEET THE PRESS parody, because the guests include John McCain, Mark Halperin, and Harold Ford, Jr. We will not be watching that. That's a lot of human wreckage on one show.)

As usual, folks, you are welcome to join one another in the comments. You may also drop me a line if you like, or follow me on Twitter if that's your thing. Over at my Rebel Mouse page, I've taken some of my favorite stories of the week and marked them as "SUNDAY READS," so if you get bored of these shows or my liveblog and want to read something cool just so you can have a different sort of conversation this morning, please feel free.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

More on leaky leaks, with David Plouffe and Joe Lieberman and General Michael Hayden, plus paneling, is what's on store for today. By the way, your week of leaks continued this week, with a document from the White House's trade negotiations. It's pretty certain that this won't be discussed on any of these shows today, so be sure to read about it, if you haven't already.

We begin with David Plouffe, which is sort of not the person I'd have expected to represent the White House on this, but, okay. Did the President declassify any of the information that appeared in the "kill list" artice or the story on the cyberwar campaign against Iran? Plouffe says that President Obama has "zero tolerance" for the leaks and has committed to an investigation through the Justice Department, who has assigned two investigators to the matter (one of whom, Plouffe emphasizes is a Bush appointee), and we get the assurances that "no one in the White House provided this information." Wallace immediately interrupts and says, nope, sorry: "David Sanger said he did talk to top White House officials...he says it wasn't leaks, but he did talk to people in the White House." Plouffe says that there will be an investigation.

Wallace's question didn't get an answer though, and so he circles back to whether any of the information declassified the material. I think Plouffe gets in a teeny-tiny "no," at the beginning of his response, but his response is essentially an empty calorie filibuster. Wallace tries a third time, and finally Plouffe says, "Of course he didn't," as if Wallace could have surmised that from the outset without help.

Moving on. Wallace goes over the brief bullet points on what was leaked, and the named individuals in the articles, which include key White House officials. "The President really has no ideal who divulged these secrets?" Wallace asks. Plouffe says that all key White House advisors have done is discuss the broad strokes of the national security agenda with reporters, not classified information. Plouffe and Wallace go back and forth a little bit, and Plouffe suddenly veers into what amounts to an accusation that Republicans in Congress just want to have a bunch of ongoing investigations of the White House during an election year.

That is not where I would have taken this defense! Sure, there's some truth to that, but everyone's OBVIOUS interest in these matters stems from the appearance of these articles -- all of which, in an election year, did a lot to burnish the President's national security cred. The Iran cyberattack story helps Obama in numerous ways -- it shows that he's teaming with Israel and on the offensive against the Iranian regime. He might have otherwise had to spend the entire election season without a material defense to the charges that he's given that a low priority.

Plouffe says that there will be an investigation, and that will serve to eliminate the "distraction" of these leaks. He goes on to say that Congressional GOP have declared publicly that they won't be doing anything on the economy until after the election, lest the economy suddenly get healthy. Again, that's a good point, but it's a pretty obviously forced attempt at changing the subject.

Has Obama ordered his staff to come forward with information about who leaked this material? Plouffe says that there's an investigation. "Everyone is going to participate in the investigation." Wallace wants to know if Obama will be interrogated by the investigators, citing the precedent of the Valerie Plame investigation, which he says included "thorough interrogations of President Bush," but I seem to recall these interrogations were not under oath. Plouffe says, "I'm not going to get into that right now." He says, after a fashion, that Obama will cooperate fully with that investigation.

Meanwhile, why not an independent prosecutor? In the past, Obama has voiced support for such things. Plouffe says, blah blah investigation very serious two investigators one is a Bush appointee it's proceeding let's let it proceed blah blah.

Moving on to the new immigration policy change. Wallace points out that a year ago, Obama was telling the National Council of La Raza that he could not make a change to immigration policy without using Congress, but now, he's going to bypass Congress and begin halting the deportation of young undocumented immigrants and get them permits to work in the United States.

So, what's changed? Plouffe says that nothing has changed, including the fact that the underlying law is not fixed. As Plouffe explains, this is Obama using the leeway he is (presumably) entitled to under the concept of prosecutorial discretion -- the idea being that the Department of Homeland Security prioritizes the enforcement of certain undocumented immigrants over others, and those priorities are set by the White House. Plouffe says that all that's being offered here are two-year work permits. He notes that Romney has announced that he would veto the immigration reform that Obama has proposed -- a mix of immigration reform and DREAM act enaction.

Moving on to the economy, and the President's speech on the same this week. Is the President's total agenda going to be constant calls for his Jobs Act to be passed? Plouffe says that Obama will keep on trying to implement an agenda of infrastructure improvement, higher education, and tax fairness, while the GOP blocks it. Plouffe says that the President's plan is the "fair and balanced" one. Wallace quips, "I like that you're calling it that."

Plouffe reminds everyone that Romney's policies are reminiscent of the pre-crash White House policies and that he wasn't any great shakes as the Governor of Massachusetts (except for, presumably, that time Romney came up with the Affordable Care Act).

Moving on to messaging, and the various Democrats who either have suggestions about it, or the Democrats who are doomsaying bedwetters who anonymously tell reporters that everything is going to hell and that someone had better hire them. Wallace wants to know if they'll take the advice of Carville/Greenberg and start "talking about a new agenda," and stop talking about progress. Plouffe says that there's no daylight between what they are doing and what these Democrats are suggesting, but he ends up his soliloquy by talking about the progress that has been made.

Wallace says that the economic trajectory has not been terrific. Plouffe says it's better than before. He insists that this is the choice: a return to the pre-crash economy. Basically, we have the answer to this question -- it won't be a year of a "new agenda," it will be a "don't change horses" campaign that emphasizes the pre-crash conditions.

Will Plouffe leave the White House and return to Chicago to run the campaign? Plouffe says that the campaign is being ably run by Jim Messina and David Axelrod. He goes on to emphasize that Obama is raising money, and not through Super PACs, like Romney. Wallace says that Romney's raised more money than Obama even without Super PACs. Plouffe concedes that "Romney had a good month raising money," but insists that Obama is doing better on the "grassroots level."

Eventually, Wallace has to end the segment. "I have to let the panel talk." No you don't! We won't miss the panel. We don't actually ever have to have a panel!

Now here is Joe Lieberman and former CIA director General Michael Hayden, to talk about leaks leaks leaks.

Lieberman says that the leaks have caused "an enormous amount of damage" to our national security. He is especially upset about the Iranian cyberwarfare leak, because it exposed methodology and "could legitimize a cyberwarfare attack on us." He is also concerned that future collaborations with foreign intelligence agencies and agents will be had to come by, as helpful folks worry that assisting the United States could result in their death or imprisonment.

Hayden says that the leaks "do not need to be true to be harmful," and that true or false, it makes a response legitimate.

Hayden says that he did not confirm the leak, when he noted that the cyberwar attack "crossed the Rubicon" of a physical attack on foreign infrastructure during peacetime.

Lieberman says that he "does not have any thoughts" about who the leakers were, just that there needs to be an investigation. Leaks are "nothing new," he says, but these leaks were the worst in a while and there needs to be "accountability" for leakers. And he's not happy with the 1917 Espionage Act and all its wiggle room. He just wants leaking classified information to be a crime, period.

Hayden says that the sort of information that ended up in the article is definitely "closely held" information and the leaks pertained to "covert action," which is self-explanatory.

Were the leaks intended as a means of shining up the president during an election year? Hayden says that he's reluctant to pass judgement, and on the Sanger piece, he thinks it's clear that was the result of very good reporting, not the stenography of a campaign year PR campaign.

Lieberman says that Obama should order his staff to come forward if they have information. He says that the administration "should do whatever it can to eliminate any appearance that his White House had anything to do with this," including sitting down and talking to the investigators assigned to this matter. Finally, he says that a special counsel is needed, for the preservation of independence in the investigation. He adds that he "has no reason to distrust" either of the prosectors who have been appointed to the investigation by AG Eric Holder -- but the Democrat who was assigned is an Obama campaign contributor, so there will be a cloud of doubt over his conclusions, unfair or not.

"Frankly, I think the attorney general would do himself, and the President, a favor by appointing a special counsel," he says.

And now, it's panel time with Bill Kristol and Joe Trippi and Karl Rove and Juan Williams.

We begin with the immigration policy change that was announced this week. Kristol says that the change is "sensible policy" that should be the "law of the land." Obama is, he says, "pushing the edges of prosecutorial discretion" by doing it in this way, but in his opinion, it's "the right thing to do." Trippi agrees that the policy is "the right one," and that the deportations now get much more targeted and sensible as well.

Rove says that the Bush administration concluded that they could not take the statutory authority to do this, and isn't sure the Obama White House has or can make this case. (This has to be one of the two three things Rover and the Bush administration actually surmised that they could not legally do from the Executive Branch.)

"The DREAM Act is significantly different from this," Rove says. And that's true. It's actually pretty important to understand that while this change in policy impacts the sorts of people who'd be eligible for benefit under the DREAM Act, the decision itself is not a substitute for it, nor is it really fair to call it "DREAM Act lite." ("DREAM Act curious," we'll allow.)

Williams says that the obstacle to comprehensive immigration reform are GOP congresscritters and certain talk-show hosts, and that the big obstacle now remains the same -- GOP lawmakers who have "distorted the marketplace" on this issue.

Will the action win him Hispanic voters? Trippi says that he's already largely got that cohort won, this just solidifies it. He says that more importantly, you get a start to seeing the way Obama's policymaking gets articulated in the contest, and this is an issue in which he draws a contrast with Romney. Can Romney counter this move, perhaps peel back some Hispanic voters? Rove would rather talk about the Obama administration's failure to advance comprehensive immigration reform. (Of course, this is largely because he can't get things passed in Congress anymore.)

Regardless, Rove says that this issue gets "overridden by jobs and the economy" and that's true. Nevertheless, Wallace wants his question answered, so he turns to Kristol and asks of Romney goes all in for an embrace of Marco Rubio's version of the DREAM Act. Kristol says that it pressures Romney to both come behind Rubio's plan, and perhaps even name him to the V.P. slot. Kristol says that he'd have liked Rubio to have gone ahead with his bill, but "not every Republican was on board."

Kristol says that he disagrees with Rove, and that this is a "big problem for Romney."

Moving to the economy and this week's duelling speeches from Romney and Obama. Wallace wants to know if the two candidates are going to be able to simply keep having a philosophical debate about the economy for the rest of the election season. Rove says that won't be enough. At the moment, voters are looking at the "general arc of the argument" but will eventually want "more meat" in the argument.

Trippi says that the Obama campaign is starting to make an argument about what Romney is all about, and that what Romney stands for will remind voters of why "they went to Obama in the first place." Wallace notes that in 2010, the argument did not work. Trippi really doesn't have a great answer for that, other than to say that it's a choice now between a future with the Obama administration or "a guy from Bain Capitol."

Kristol agrees up to a point: there will be a debate about the path forward, and that Obama did start to articulate that path forward. "It didn't convince me," he says, "But you can't beat something with nothing and Mitt Romney needs to lay out his plan" better sooner than later. "Romney has to have a forward-looking vision," he says, or he won't be competitive.

Williams goes on a long pro-Obama jag, affording Fox the opportunity to use the "gritting on Juan Williams" camera shot, with Rove giving Williams the head-shake and the side-eye.

And now Rove and Williams are fighting with each other. Boring.

THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW

Today at the genius bar, we are talking about corrupt money and the kooky political discourse and Watergate, I think? And the 2012 horsey race. And probably Matthews will show a video he thinks is funny. Today's panel is our own Howard Fineman, Liz Marlantes of the Christian Science Monitor, NBC News' Kelly O'Donnell, and David Ignatius. Let's commence the blah-blah!

Matthews says that the shadow of Watergate extends over the horsey race today, because way back when, there was a movie where Deep Throat said, "Follow the money," and today you cannot follow that money because it's all secret and funding Super PACs and what not. Also, Watergate made everyone really love investigating people, and it made everyone very distrustful of politicians. Another thing Watergate did was make it so you now have to add the word "gate" to everything that even sniffs of scandal, to the point that I am sure one day someone will shorthand "The Teapot Dome Scandal" to "TeapotDomeGate."

The only way to break the cycle is for someone else in politics to commit a crime at the Watergate and then try to cover it up, which will hopefully lead to someone trying to call that Watergategate and thus force it all to stop. So, please, someone, break into the Watergate and jack that place up, real good.

Anyway, Chris Matthews is gonna set it straight, this Watergate, and determine the way those memories illuminate "today in politics." Fineman says that there was "an era before Nixon in which people believed in government out of necessity." "Vietnam and Watergate broke that consensus," he says. This inevitably put Sally Quinn on a path to self-torture and the existential crisis that she and her husband, Ben Bradlee (Washington DC's answer to Bruce Jenner), endured at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Fineman goes on to explain what a shocking thing it was to learn that your president valued ruthlessness and the sowing of division -- this is something that Woodward and Bernstein said last week was still surprising them, years later, as they listened to Nixon's famous recordings.

Matthews notes, however, that Congress is terribly hated as well. O'Donnell says that Congress' self-awareness of this is "pervasive" on Capitol Hill, and it manifests itself in the "wary" way Congresscritters engage with the press. (So: Congress is very self-aware of their myriad problems, and stand foursquare and united to not doing anything about it other than eluding the press -- and the inevitable -- for as long as they can. Bring back the stocks, please.)

Matthews says that everyone thought, post-Watergate, that the corruption of money in Washington had been totally cleaned out. Oh, look, my TiVo just sent me a pop-up message on the screen that reads, "Would you like to pause to laugh at that, for like, 20 minutes?" Sure thing, TiVo! Thank you!

Matthews is pretty sure that the people who are giving millions of dollars to campaigns "want stuff." I mean: I'm guessing? They probably want whores, mainly?

Marlantes points out that the puzzling thing is that rich liberals seem to be declining to participate in the Super PAC frenzy. (This is because there aren't many of them, and they find this process distasteful, at least for the moment. Eventually, however, they too will realize that they "want stuff.")

Fineman says that we're back to the era of "naked exchanges." What? Okay! That sounds like something -- "...naked exchanges of money." Oh. Disappoint.

Marlantes wants to make one more point! "We're talking about Sheldon Adelson because of disclosure." Sure, but I have the feeling that Adelson is one of those nutters who wouldn't be able to abide people not knowing that his cash was purchasing exclusive access to Romney's short-hairs.

Matthews says, "Everything good that came out of Watergate has been blown away." OMG, Matthews is really having a sad over this today! Ignatius says, "Sometimes it seems that the ghost of four years ago is re-enveloping us" and that every new generation needs to re-leard the lesson that their leaders are lying fartfaces with terrible combovers and the morals of a demon-lamprey suckling at the teats of Asmodeus that they wouldn't thing twice about shunning socially if they didn't hold some sort of powerful office. (Ignatius does not use those terms specifically, he mostly just murmurs and stammers.) He big ups Ben Bradlee, for his Watergate-era work. (This is why I compare him to Bruce Jenner, who also used to not be a shambling wreck of his former self, haunting the community like a sad wraith.)

Ignatius says that maybe the media should not always get all bouncy-bounce-jackass-hammer-shiny-shiny-eyepop-wow over every piddly little piece of political nonsense.

Fineman says that Nixon "corrupted the idea of leadership," and that corruption has spread like a toxin.

Now everyone is remembering the post-Watergate unity that spread throughout the land like a holy note sounded by the lute of the angel Gabriel, lo and there did go forth a spirit of healing! Yes, it's almost as if people should suspend their debates on the long-term policy trajectory to deal with terrible crises.

Matthews' pals believe that Romney's treatment by the press is going to improve over time. I don't know how the press approves on "constantly passing on the examination of easily disprovable lies told by a guy who said from the outset he was going to constantly lie to the press as a component of his strategy." How do you get nicer, from there? (They will find a way!)

Fineman says that "one way the coverage for Romney will improve is that he has a better chance of being President." That scenario actually went in reverse for John McCain, who the media LOVED until they realized that they had to start taking him seriously. But what the press corps won't be able to do is keep reporting on the GOP in disarray -- slowly, they are coming to terms with Romney, and so the constant frustration with Romney is fading.

Ignatius says he hopes that the media will hold Romney to accounts. Gosh, if only Ignatius knew some journalists he could talk to/is a journalist himself!

Now for some reason, a long clip from Forrest Gump.

Meanwhile, June: it has not been the best month to be Barack Obama, especially if we forget that he's a fantastically affluent political figure who is going to live well and die happy no matter what happens. June has been bad because of a disastrous job number (again, this was worse for just about everybody not named "Barack Obama"), and losing the Wisconsin recall, and the uproar over leaks, and the "private sector is fine" gaffe. Just terrible!

Meanwhile, Ol' Mittens. He's just cold criss-crossing the country straight up ignoring reporters, who want to ask him dumb questions. "They can ride out the clock for a little while, during this spring period," O'Donnell explains, which makes you wonder why the press just doesn't let Romney and Obama have the summer. They can all go to places like central Ohio or California's Inland Empire or south Florida or coal country or the Western ranch states and find out how ordinary people are living, and then come back in the fall with no end of well-informed inquiries about the country to put to the candidates.

Or we can just have the "Mitt Romney gets weird when someone gives him a doughnut" story every week until we die.

"I think the whole lens through which everything is being viewed is that jobs report," says Marlantes, who adds that if the jobs report had been better, it would have been treated as great news for Obama. What does that tell you, though, Liz? The jobs report would have still "reported" that the country is in a perilous unemployment crisis, in any event. What does it say that it could have been graded as "great," in some way?

How will Obama "up his game?" Fineman figures that he'll have to explain the way the economic recovery has not been perfect. "I see him improving his performance between now and November because he's facing the possibility of defeat," he says. (I mean, he could get inspired to do a better job because his constituents aren't doing well at the moment?)

Here are some things that Matthews doesn't know: that the Virginia Senate race is going to be "the pivotal thing" because it's a big Tim Kaine/George Allen tilt, and because it meshes so well with the national race; if the SCOTUS strikes down Obamacare there will be a silver lining because the "politics will be defused" and because small businesses might start hiring and thus improve the economy (also lots of people will sicken and die); the Romney campaign doesn't know if they'll announce their V.P. pick before or after the Olympics; and in Cairo, everyone is anxious about the whole nation going crackers again after the election.

Can Obama win re-election without giving voters a clear idea what his second-term plans will be? Everyone says no. The general consensus is that a "vision" is what's necessary, Marlantes says (accurately, in my opinion) that the more specifics you mention, the more you open yourself up to criticism. (Also, "specifics" require the support of Congress.)

FACE THE NATION

Bob Schieffer managed to get Mitt Romney to appear on his show today, so we'll watch.

Schieffer is out with Romney on his current bus tour, which is definitely an improvement over the last regional political celebrity bus tour, which muddied the historical record over Paul Revere's derring-do.

Schieffer starts off with the Presidents recent change in immigration policy, and asks if Romney would repeal this order if he was elected. Romney begins by dodging the question: "First of all, we have to secure the border, we need to have an employment verification system, to make sure that those that are working here in this country are here legally...And then, with regards to these kids who were brought in by their parents through no fault of their own, there needs to be a long-term solution so they know what their status is."

Romney goes on to talk about how Marco Rubio was TOTALLY going to do something, you know, immigrationish, but the President was like, "Intercepted!" (There are political lessons to be drawn from Choom Gang etiquette after all.)

Schieffer winds up, and tries it again: "What would you do about it?" Romney just keeps talking about Obama and the opportunities he supposedly had to try to pass comprehensive immigration reform. (This would have led to Obama being able to say he tried, but nothing getting actually done, because Congress, Waterloo, etc.)

One more time. Schieffer is all "Aguywhohasnotansweredmyfirstquestionaboutwhetheryouwouldrepealthisorder says what?"

Romney says that it "would be overtaken by events," specifically, "my putting in a long-term solution' with legislation which creates law that relates to these individuals such that they know what their setting is going to be, not just for the term of a president but on a permanent basis."

Well, it's good to know that Romney grasps the important details, like the fact that "legislation creates law." Essentially, though, he does not want to answer the question, other than to say that "stuff" would be passively "overtaken" by "other stuff" and then hey, sit back and watch the nebulous swirls of vague in the sky! Whoa-hoo-whee! What happens to the immigrants affected by the policy? SOMETHING! Maybe something cool! Maybe something terrible! Maybe they all become swans?

Schieffer is going to try one...more...time...for...the...love...of...God. "Would you leave this in place, while you worked out a long term solution?" Romney says, "We'll look at that setting as we reach that, but my anticipation is I'd come into office and say we need to get this done, on a long-term basis, not this kind of stop-gap measure."

So basically, Romney is pretty sure that at some point in the future, some stuff will happen. He anticipates the happening of stuff. He won't admit to having any agency, that might personally cause some stuff to happen, only that he is pretty sure that he will continue to exist and during that period of existence there will be things that happen, and he will "look at that."

"The President should have worked on these things years ago," he says, and Romney has been working on being President for many years. "The timing is pretty clear," Romney says, referring to the fact that Obama probably did this in a cynical attempt to "win" the "election," which is not fair.

Moving to health care. The SCOTUS ruling on the Affordable Care Act is imminent, and the law may get thrown out. If that happens, what will Romney do? I am guessing wait for a future in which stuff happens? "I will continue to describe the plan that I would provide," says Romney, not referring to the plan he actually did once provide, to Massachusetts, but a second, magical plan, in which people don't lose their insurance because of pre-existing conditions (without a mandate, this is a tough lift). Also there will be a "race to the bottom" as every state sells out to have the cheapest and most worthless health insurance. And there will be block grants to the states, which the state governments will do what they typically do. (Mismanage the money badly.)

Anyway, Romney promises less healthcare, more tenther crackpot wisdom, and tiny American flags for everyone not currently immortal and inpervious to injury and disease.

What should we be doing about the European economy right now to protect us against their coming crisis? Romney don't know! He just figured that the past three and a half years have been a period where we aren't on a strong footing, economically. Cool, okay, but what about Europe? "I'd strengthen the basis of America's economic might." Schieffer asks, "How would you do that?" The better question is, "What are you talking about?" Unless of course, the "basis of America's economic might" is "giving constant voice to glib platitudes about America's economic might."

Romney would "take advantage of our energy resources," by fracking the bejeezus out of your neighborhood. Schieffer is all, can that help us right now? "That's going to take a while." (And remember, his question was about insulating ourselves from Europe's pending woes.) Schieffer tries again to get a question answered, again. This time Romney says, "Well we are not going to send checks to Europe," unless he said, "we are not going to send Czechs to Europe," unless he said, "We are not going to send Chex to Europe." I mention all of these possibilities, because Romney is the sort of Eddie Haskell-type of guy who might become President, bail out the Eurozone, and when you call him on it, have him say, "You misheard me. I distinctly recall saying that I would, under no circumstances, send the Europeans any of our delicious snack mixes."

Instead, we will be "poised to support our economy" and Romney is "very much in favor of the fundamental things one does to strengthen the economic footings of a nation."

So, specifically, Romney is totally in favor of the stuff that makes other good stuff happen, and if he's elected, he will totally be "poised to support" that good stuff. Well, you know, if Romney could just show some courage and come out against the stuff that everyone hates and is totally bad, I'll be totally convinced!

Now Romney is saying that "our banks are much stronger now" than they were during the economic crisis and they have rebuilt "their capital base and their equity base." Now, I do not believe any of that is true -- banks are still marking their toxic assets to fantasy, so the illusion of solvency literally rests on the ability of everyone to pretend that things are going to have more future value than they inevitably will -- but if Romney really believes that, that undercuts his point that Obama's policies have led to a shaky economy.

What does Romney think about further quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve? Not much about it! He is worried about inflation, like everyone is. He is aware that this is the sort of thing that politicians do to boost themselves in an election year.

Romney goes on a lengthy monologue of aggregate demand crisis denialism.

Romney is against America "exposing themselves to the vagaries of the European banking crisis." He knows we're actually sort of way past that, right?

Romney signed the Grover Norquist pledge, Schieffer reminds Romney. Does Romney still feel inclined toward being a total anti-revenue crackpot? Sure does! Romney compares the federal fiscal situation to California, and that's pretty inapt -- California's status as "well-and-rightly-fracked" has more to do with their insane citizens referenda system and the way they have, over time, systematically hamstrung their state government into this tortured place where theye have all sorts of demands but no real agency to act on them. (California needs to get rid of those citizens referenda, but you'd probably need an effing citizens referenda to do it.)

Romney goes on to say that he thinks he can get revenue from getting rid of loopholes and exemptions. All of which exist because of powerful lobbies. And that plan violates the Norquist pledge. Romney also says something about the Simpson-Bowles plan, which smart and regular readers understand is not a thing that actually exists -- Simpson-Bowles never agrees to a plan. The titular chairment did release a "Chairman's Mark," and if Romney is citing that as a guidestar then he needs to understand that it also increased taxes and would violate the Norquist pledge.

Just to be sure, Romney says that the wealthy will continue to be taxed at historically low rates, only he says this in a way that makes it sound like he's extending some great burden upon them: "I think it's important to say, look, I'm not looking to reduce the burden paid by the wealthiest. I'm looking to keep the burden paid by the wealthiest the same share as it is today." Good thing he clarified this!

Bill Kristol, as per usual, thinks it's time for us to start bombing Iran. Romney says Kristol is right and we should do some stuff to make Iran recognize that we are willing to take military action against them. See, this is the sort of stuff that unauthorized leak defuses! I can't help but notice that damaging their infrastructure with computer viruses basically sends that message. (Because of the leak, we may not be able to continue doing so, of course.)

Still, Romney's "everything is on the table" is the same stuff that everyone says, and everyone's objections to everyone else is just over the relative quality of the metaphoric stuff that it on this theoretical table.

Romney caps things off with a monologue of campaign platitudes, which Schieffer interrupts because he wants to know what Romney thinks he can do to bring people together. Romney says that he can do it -- by not having a political career. Huh? "I don't care about re-election." What? He's...not...an incumbent to anything, so...

And then, more platitudes and campaign talking points. First question dodged, last question dodged.

"We have got to have people who are willing to put aside the partisanship," Romney says, referring to none of the people who have endorsed or funded his presidency.

Oh, now Romney and Schieffer are riding around on the bus. Schieffer has more really tough questions, like, "Do you love your dad?" Romney says "yes." This goes on, sentimentally, for a few hundred million hours of our time. They also talk about the horse they have in the Olympics, but he's got a campaign to tend to, and won't be able to spend too much time thinking about this up-from-nowhere middle class success story.

And now, Howard Dean is here, to yell at and be yelled at by Lindsey Graham. Hey, that means that with McCain being on Meet The Press, and Lieberman getting on Fox, that the old Senate warmongerin' crew notched another Sunday trifecta, in a pretty good example of what being easy to book and totally predictable will get you in Washington.

Howard Dean literally looks like the just stapled another man's hairstyle to his head three minutes ago.

Oh well! Dean says, of Romney, "Same old, same old." Romney doesn't say what he's going to do, and Dean thinks he won't win. Dean is enthusiastic about Obama making this move on immigration, because it leaves Romney "holding the bag." And in that bag? Snakes! Probably!

"This is the end of the road for Romney on the Latino front," says Dean, "unless he puts a Latino on the ticket." In which case, keep going strong, on the "Latino front."

Meanwhile Lindsay Graham disagrees, which is remarkable and you couldn't have seen it coming. "I don't think it's a brilliant move when a President tells an agency to stop enforcing the law." Graham does not like Congress being bypassed, because by bypassing Congress, Graham does not get to play his traditional role as the guy who gums up the entire legislative process when things are not done to his liking and the schedule of legislative actions does not tailor itself specifically to Graham's secret demands.

"Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh," Graham says, for what seems like forty minutes.

Schieffer asks Graham if Obama helped his party and hurt the GOP, and Graham just says that he hurt the country, and did nothing good for anyone, and there's no way that the Hispanic community that was already going to vote for him is going to continue to vote for him, just because he did something relatively humane for that community.

Dean says he thinks it is hilarious to hear the "Senator who had a hand in killing immigration reform" doing all of this complaining. And it is hilarious. Maybe not "Ha ha" hilarious, but a jaded sort of "early Woody Allen" hilarious. But yes, like Pareene said:

Say you support immigration reform and comprehensive climate legislation. If you’re Lindsey Graham, you announce that you will un-support the climate bill you helped craft with your good friend Joe Lieberman, because:

“What I have withdrawn from is a bill that basically restricts drilling in a way that is never going to happen in the future,” Graham said. “I wanted it to safely occur in the future; I don’t want to take it off the table.”

But of course the real reason Graham withdrew from the climate bill was because Reid announced his intention to make immigration reform a priority, and Graham wanted to do climate first. Doing things in the wrong order is one of Lindsey Graham’s biggest turnoffs.

Of course, three months earlier, Graham was peeved that the White House and Democrats weren’t leading the charge to craft immigration legislation. “At the end of the day, the president needs to step it up a little bit,” he told Politico.

But apparently Harry Reid was not supposed to do the stepping — and that’s why eventually Graham came out against the DREAM Act, a far-from-comprehensive bill that would’ve provided a path to citizenship solely for children who spend a decade or more on their very best behavior.

Where some saw the bill as a small, painfully gradual step toward a just outcome for people who came to this country as children and have never known another home, Graham saw “a silly, stupid game.”

[...]

Legislation is entirely about feelings and deal-making for Graham. He’ll join in apparently good-faith efforts to craft pragmatic solutions to complex problems, but the second anyone looks at him the wrong way he’ll dive off the bandwagon and accuse everyone else of ruining the compromise by not following some bizarre script that exists solely in Lindsey Graham’s head to the letter.

Graham’s personal rules of order are a magnitude more insane and complex than “Riddick’s Senate Procedure” could ever hope to be. Almost every senator makes obnoxious “process” arguments when they cast votes against things they ostensibly support (Oh, I want to give homeless orphans hot Thanksgiving meals, sure, but unless my colleague Senator Inhofe is allowed to attach an amendment excluding orphans who don’t speak English — an amendment that will fail and that I will not actually vote for — I simply can’t vote for cloture at this time), but Graham’s made it an art. If you can call narcissism an art.

This is why I actually don't mind Graham being on these Sunday shows, because while he's occupied, other Americans have a fighting chance to unconstipate America. I am working on some way of tricking Graham into believing there are Sunday shows on everyday, but so far no luck.

Anyway, Dean still thinks this idea is great. So much so that he calls it an "idee-yer." He also praises Graham for going against Grover Norquist. Grahan says, "You're killing me, Howard."

Schieffer takes up the matter of the pledge, because Jeb Bush has criticized it as well. Graham believes that there is a connection between the Simpson-Bowles Commission and the "Gang of Six" and the "Supercommittee." Total widespread failure? Yes. But in addition to that, Graham sees a "formula" of revenue and cuts that makes sense. Graham is confident that Romney would embrace that.

Dean says that he agrees, mostly, with Graham's idea to get rid of most tax exemptions and raise revenue in exchange for entitlement cuts, with the exception that Dean would use a greater share of the revenue to pay down the debt. (The difference between the two men is obviously unstated here -- Graham wouldn't pay as much of the debt because he needs that overhang to make huge slashes to the safety net. Dean would pay more of the debt off through tax reform because the smaller overhang would not lead to as much widespread impoverishment.)

Okay, a little bit of paneling and we can all get on with our lives. Today, FTN has Peggy Noonan and Rich Lowry and John Dickerson and Jan Crawford. (This is one of those "reporters versus conservative pundits" panels that frequently passes for "balanced.")

Anyway, Dickerson points out that what didn't come out of the Romney interview was that he had pretty well defined himself as an immigration hardliner (to the right of Rick Perry), who believed in self-deportation (creating conditions that would inspire undocumented immigrants to leave) and was against policies that could serve as a "magnet." So, "primary Romney" is pretty fully against this change to policy, and has also promised to veto the DREAM Act (sorry Marco Rubio), but post-primary Romney needs to keep that under wraps or otherwise shoved in the direction of the memory hole.

Noonan, who once saw a Mexican, says there are a "bunch of ironies here." Like the one where we tune in to the television to have Peggy Noonan explain irony to us. Noonan goes on to say that this is very "Obamaesque" in that it is "crassly political." Is there someone in politics today who isn't engaged in crassness? Point them out to me -- I will make a sweater from their fur.

Crawford says that Obama doesn't want to talk about today's economy, today. And Romney doesn't want to talk about tomorrow's policy specifics, today. So, we should all probably stop covering this election for a few months. Take up a hobby, maybe. Meet new and interesting people. Do bath salts. Try to figure out what was going on with the character of David in Prometheus.

Rich Lowry figures that eventually, Romney will have to endorse Rubio's plan in lieu of calling for a repeal of this popular thing Obama has done. (Rubio will have to stop pretending to be working on a plan and actually deliver a plan, for that to work.)

Schieffer is pretty baffled with Romney's responses to the European crisis. "Basically, he says we just have to stand here and hope nothing bad happens." Peggy says that she doesn't "know what's right" but if you're "going for president right now" and "Europe is trying to get its house in order" you have to tell Europe not to look to us for help. (So, there is some level of self-interested political "crassness" that Noonan is willing to tolerate.)

Dickerson says that you "can't be in favor of a bailout" and be in the GOP at the same time. On the economy, Romney has to cross his fingers and hope that things work out. Dickerson adds, "Businessman Romney would never go for a deal as vague as the one candidate Romney is making, trust me to make loophole closures." And Dickerson notes what we've already noted: that having signed the Norquist pledge, the plans that Romney sort of elucidated today aren't things he can follow through on, without breaking that promise.

(And Norquist, let's recall, expects Romney to keep that promise. He expects Romney to check his brain and his autonomy at the door to the Oval Office, and render unto Norquist but the movements of his signing hand.)

Lowry adds that Romney has a "great allergy to specifics and details," a lesson learned from his unsuccessful run against Ted Kennedy. He credits Romney for plotting a direction, but adds, "it is extremely vague."

Crawford points out that Herman Cain at least had the 9-9-9 Plan, which people "responded to," despite the fact that it was "bonkers." (It was not developed by the Rich Lowry who is on this panel, by the way.)

Now Noonan is criticizing people using applause lines in speeches, as well as speeches that are long and verbose. The lack of self-awareness here could power the solar system.

Lowry notes that the difficult bind Obama is in is that he can neither praise the economy, nor disparage it, without it being a reflection on his Presidency. Now can he be too "full-throated" about further Keynesian efforts to spur the economy out of its hole.

Crawford thinks that Romney will pick someone safe for Vice President. Dickerson adds that Terry Branstad wants Romney to position himself as the "candidate who fixes stuff," and he needs a teammate that goes along with this. Noonan likes Thune. Lowry likes Portman and Pawlenty, and figures Rubio isn't quite there yet.

Are we not done yet? No, John Dickerson hosted a Google Hangout. So there is a few minutes of grainy footage of people in blank rooms wearing headphones, and proving that the next generation of bland political hacks are apparently being trained in "Google Hangouts." It is about as exciting as it sounds.

Yeah, well, that's another Sunday of our political culture, distilled to it's sour and unfeeling essence. Next week, we will return, of course, but here is an IMPORTANT PROGRAMMING ANNOUNCEMENT: your Sunday Morning Liveblog will be taking the week of July 1, 2012 off. We will return -- tanned, rested, fearful -- on July 8. Have a great week, all of you!

[Your Sunday morning liveblog will be back next week. But, as noted above, while you wait for that day to come, your reading pleasure continues with my Rebel Mouse page's "Sunday Reads."]

Hello everybody, and welcome to your weekly ad-hoc, fast-typed, snaply judged, prickly thorn, but sweetly worn liveblog of Sunday morning political grunting and yelling. My name is Jason, and this is one of the best Sundays of the year, if not THE best (except for maybe some of you Wisconsinites) of the year because this is the one day each year that NBC does not show MEET THE PRESS and instead shows the French Open at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris. Bravo, you brave clay court specialists. Thank you, and of course, "Hello."

I am also very excited to share this Sunday with you today for another reason -- today is going to be one of those great acid-test weekends for the media. As you know, most Sundays, the people who put these shows together...well, you get the feeling that they are doing their utmost to talk about painfully trivial crap, when they could be doing something valuable with this time. This week we're going to see how serious these shows can be, by seeing how they cover a news conference that happened this past Friday.

As you know, President Obama gave one of those very rare press availabilities, where he took questions from the White House Press Corps. Now, I was watching the presser with an eye toward something interesting and substantive. The way I experienced the presser basically went like this -- there was a long and generic part where there were inquiries about the economy, and a bunch of seriously generic answers that were given in response.

And then, someone asked Obama about the recent national security stories -- the "kill list" story and the Stuxnet virus story -- and the leaks that enabled that enabled them. And suddenly things got interesting -- Obama did one of those "let me make a long series of disconnected phrases while I figure out what I'm going to say about this" moves, and a lot of long pausing, and finally, he talked at great length about how no one in the White House authorized anyone to be the sources of those stories and of course, no one had any idea who leaked them, no no! And it was total transparent crap, and fascinating, because he probably met with the leaker that morning, and they were probably all, "Hey man, nice leak!" And someone on twitter -- I forget who, probably one of those conscientious foreign policy guys like Joshua Foust -- tweeted something to the effect that Obama's response to the leak question was going to totally be "THE" story, post-presser. And I peeped the tweet and nodded and though, "Frack, yes, it will." And then David Wood and I had a brief little conversation about the leak question that was basically:

ME: Seriously, Obama?

WOOD: I mean.

Only it was a little bit smarter. (I mean, Dave was smart, anyway.)

Anyway, I was totally wrong. In just a few minutes, everyone was squawking about Obama's "remarks on the private sector." And I was totally confused. Obama had said very little about the private sector, only that it was doing better than the public sector, which is one of the most objectively true things in the world. Record profits don't exactly suck!. Here are charts that document what I'm talking about. What had I missed? OH MY! He used the word "fine," not "better." Oy. Didn't catch that. "Here we go," I thought.

It's pretty amazing how that story took off, and became more important than the part where Obama was pretty transparently BSing the press about the leaks. Because you know what, no amount of inquiry or analysis or discussion or opinion or examination or criticism of something someone says about the economy is going to affect the economy or impact anyone's lives. The economy is on its course now, probably headed in the direction of short-to-medium-term sucking, for a lot of people that never get to be on the news. Someone went off message though! Chanced upon the wrong word! SO SHINY. Must talk all day long about it, or else our brains might start working again.

On the other hand, there's actualy WORK the media can do on the whole leak story. Questions can be asked, sourced run to ground, a timeline established, logic applied. It's a serious and substantive discussion that can be had, you can bring real discomfort to powerful people, you can perhaps save lives -- but OH MY GOD it would take so much effort! Better to discuss how a permanently affluent political celebrity ruined his horse-race news-cycle news for a week because he used the wrong word.

I've often talked about how the media stays studiously disengaged from the lives of normal people, and almost always chooses the path of overhyped, arm-up-to-the-elbow alimentary canal-plumbing over doing even a tiny shred of good for our poor, bruised world. Today, I am guessing that we're going to hear a whole lot about how the way the word "fine" was used this week is a total embarrassment to a guy who'll never want for anything a day in his life, and not so much about how the same guy probably leaked a bunch of war-on-terror glory stories to a friendly press to burnish his cred for an election year at the possible expense of those secret programs' continued success.

We'll see, I guess!

Sunday! It makes our cynicism fun, and then we get sad, and then we go see "The Avengers" or something, and learn to hug again. Anyway, this is the part where I recommend that you all comfort one another in the comments and to feel free to drop me a line. As always, you can also follow me on Twitter, but I'll also recommend that you might prefer to follow me on RebelMouse -- the new social sharing tool developed by our pal, Paul Berry. Twitter, let's face it, gets a little bit silly at times. But if you go to \my Rebel Mouse page, you'll get the best of what I'm doing on Twitter and a big share of news stories that I've read and enjoyed. It's the perfect thing for those times you are waiting, in boredom, for this liveblog to refresh. So give it a try, if you want. If you don't want, don't do it! It's your life! I'm lucky to have you even reading this! Thank you, actually, for doing that!

You're great.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

Fox has Mitch Daniels and Dennis Van Roekel (of the NEA) and Thea Lee (of the AFL-CIO) to talk about labor unions. And, let's credit Fox New Sunday right off the bat -- they make no mention of "the private sector is fine" but they DO preview their panel discussion by noting that they are going to talk about the leak story. So it looks like we'll have one potential acid-test pass today.

Meanwhile, labor unions are having a no good very bad week, after they failed to oust Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Tom Barrett, of course, didn't really seem like the ideal candidate to carry a torch for public sector union employees (in fact, the things Walker did in Wisconsin helped Barrett balance his budget in Milwaukee). In my Friday piece, I recommended that people take in what Doug Henwood had to say about the matter. Here's how he bottom-lined it:

Most labor people, including some fairly radical ones, detest Bob Fitch’s analysis of labor’s torpor. By all means, read his book Solidarity for Sale for the full analysis. But a taste of it can be gotten here, from his interview with Michael Yates of Monthly Review. A choice excerpt:

Essentially, the American labor movement consists of 20,000 semi-autonomous local unions. Like feudal vassals, local leaders get their exclusive jurisdiction from a higher level organization and pass on a share of their dues. The ordinary members are like the serfs who pay compulsory dues and come with the territory. The union bosses control jobs—staff jobs or hiring hall jobs—the coin of the political realm. Those who get the jobs—the clients—give back their unconditional loyalty. The politics of loyalty produces, systematically, poles of corruption and apathy. The privileged minority who turn the union into their personal business. And the vast majority who ignore the union as none of their business.

Bob thought that the whole model of American unionism, in which unions were given exclusive rights to bargain over contracts in closed shops, was a major long-term source of weakness. I find it persuasive; many don’t. But whatever you think of that analysis of the past is rapidly becoming irrelevant. Collective bargaining has mostly disappeared in the private sector, and now looks doomed in the public sector. There are something like 23 states with Republican governors and legislative majorities ready to imitate Walker who will be emboldened by his victory. And there are a lot of Dems ready to do a Walker Lite. If they don’t disappear, public sector unions will soon become powerless.

That means that if unions ever want to turn things around—and I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that we’ll never have a better society without a reborn labor movement—they have to learn to operate in this new reality. Which means learning to act politically, to agitate on behalf of the entire working class and not just a privileged subset with membership cards.

Fox has Mitch Daniels and Dennis Van Roekel (of the NEA) and Thea Lee (of the AFL-CIO) to talk about labor unions. And, let's credit Fox New Sunday right off the bat -- they make no mention of "the private sector is fine" but they DO preview their panel discussion by noting that they are going to talk about the leak story. So it looks like we'll have one potential acid-test pass today.

Meanwhile, labor unions are having a no good very bad week, after they failed to oust Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Tom Barrett, of course, didn't really seem like the ideal candidate to carry a torch for public sector union employees (in fact, the things Walker did in Wisconsin helped Barrett balance his budget in Milwaukee). In my Friday piece, I recommended that people take in what Doug Henwood had to say about the matter. Here's how he bottom-lined it:

Most labor people, including some fairly radical ones, detest Bob Fitch’s analysis of labor’s torpor. By all means, read his book Solidarity for Sale for the full analysis. But a taste of it can be gotten here, from his interview with Michael Yates of Monthly Review. A choice excerpt:

Essentially, the American labor movement consists of 20,000 semi-autonomous local unions. Like feudal vassals, local leaders get their exclusive jurisdiction from a higher level organization and pass on a share of their dues. The ordinary members are like the serfs who pay compulsory dues and come with the territory. The union bosses control jobs—staff jobs or hiring hall jobs—the coin of the political realm. Those who get the jobs—the clients—give back their unconditional loyalty. The politics of loyalty produces, systematically, poles of corruption and apathy. The privileged minority who turn the union into their personal business. And the vast majority who ignore the union as none of their business.

Bob thought that the whole model of American unionism, in which unions were given exclusive rights to bargain over contracts in closed shops, was a major long-term source of weakness. I find it persuasive; many don’t. But whatever you think of that analysis of the past is rapidly becoming irrelevant. Collective bargaining has mostly disappeared in the private sector, and now looks doomed in the public sector. There are something like 23 states with Republican governors and legislative majorities ready to imitate Walker who will be emboldened by his victory. And there are a lot of Dems ready to do a Walker Lite. If they don’t disappear, public sector unions will soon become powerless.

That means that if unions ever want to turn things around—and I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that we’ll never have a better society without a reborn labor movement—they have to learn to operate in this new reality. Which means learning to act politically, to agitate on behalf of the entire working class and not just a privileged subset with membership cards.

First up, Mitch Daniels says that it's fundamentally unfair for government unions to essentially sit on both sides of the table, and then gets to the whole divide and conquer part, where he reminds one group of have-nots that teachers and policemen all earn really high salaries that they don't, and wouldn't you like to see those people impoverished, like you?

Are voters giving governors a green light to "go after unions?" Daniels says, "I hope that nobody sees it that way," which is weird, because he just saw it that way himself. He says that unions aren't a bad idea in the private sector, not that he's particularly interested in private sector unions doing any better. He would prefer there be no public sector unions at any time, and insists that services are being delivered in Indiana without collective bargaining. Wallace asks for examples, and Daniels says that tax refunds are coming back faster, and "state parks" are in "dramatically better shape" and their DMVs are awesome.

Wallace says that Daniels' actions "looks like a pretty concerted effort to break public and private sector unions." Daniels says he "doesn't see it that way." "We're not going after anybody," he insists. Nevertheless, Wallace points out that government workers in Indiana "have taken a hit" -- the state ranks 46th in gross salaries and pay more for health care. Daniels says it isn't true -- apparently they get compensated in "praise," and who knows, maybe area landlords and grocers have a program where rent and food get paid for by Mitch Daniels saying nice things.

Wallace is all, "what about the figures I gave you?" Daniels is like, "I dunno?" He says, "We believe we have an effective state government" and "we believe we have a strong health care plan." So, keep all your statistics, Wallace. Because Mitch Daniels BELIEVES.

"We're not really believing that we've done anything other than improve the lives of Indiana's employees," says Daniels, who is now, somehow a "we." Indiana public employees -- greater impoverishment has made their lives better -- BELIEVE IT!

Wallace asks, "Don't unions simply have a place in this country, to ensure that management doesn't run roughshod over them?" Daniels says, "We differentiate between the two sectors." Daniels is apparently cool with some people being run roughshod over. Daniels adds that unions haven't changed much, or kept up with the times, and that, I think is true. And he's also right when he says that unions have had worse problems, long before Scott Walker came around.

Is there a danger for the GOP, becoming known as the enemy of working people? Daniels says he's concluded that Obama "doesn't understand where jobs come from." I know! Stupid Obama! He probably thinks that jobs are created when businesses become profitable and they need to add personnel to continue expanding on profits, when really jobs are created on very magical, special days where rich people wake up feeling super-awesome and think, "I am going to hire fifteen people today, to do some random stuff, for no reason! I am Willy Wonka! Come swim in my waterfall of nougat!"

Anyway, government is terrible, says Daniels, who runs a government, and usually wants credit for it.

Wallace points out that Walker critiqued Romney for not offering a plan of his own, of reform. Daniels agrees that Romney has to offer some sort of agenda, and use his candidacy to build a consensus. "It would be a mistake for Republicans to misread Wisconsin as some sort of harbinger. I don't see it that way at all," Daniels says.

This is a pretty special Mitch Daniels appearance, in that nobody asks him if he wants to be president or vice president.

Drat! My coffee maker is suddenly not working, like, ever again. That's a tremendous disappointment to me. I will have to light matches and gently sear my fingertips to stay awake during the rest of this.

So, now we have Dennis Van Roekel (of the NEA) and Thea Lee (of the AFL-CIO) to talk about things.

Is the recall vote sending a message? Van Roekel points out that the balance of power changed in the Senate in Wisconsin. It is now Democrat-controlled. It is also now out-of-session for the year. He also says that the election sends a message about unlimited corporate donations in the political arena. Lee adds that these are tough times for people who are rightly tightening their budgets, but doesn't see how balance cannot be struck at the bargaining table. "We have to figure out how to fund [pay and pensions] and make them viable," she says, but she doesn't think that the solutions isn't something the American people oppose.

Wallace notes that public workers have greater access to pensions, health benefits, and higher wages than private sector workers. He asks why private sector workers should pay taxes to fund these things that they, themselves are not getting. The better question, of course, is why aren't private sector workers getting these things.

Lee is reading my mind: "I think we have to turn that question around." Rather than take people's pensions away, everyone should have a decent pension. Of course, this gets to what was discussed by Henwood, above. If you believe that, you have to work for it beyond your own membership. Wallace just wants to know if she agrees with the figures. If I had my druthers, we'd be talking about how private sector employees restrain benefits and worker rights through all sorts of tricks and traps. The use of "temporary workers," for example. Read anything that Mac McClelland has written about this stuff.

Lee is attempting to explain to Wallace that "salary" and "benefits" put together forms something called "compensation." It's not going well!

Van Roekel adds that what's left out of the equation are the qualifications/accreditation that are required for the job. Wallace notes that a teaching degree isn't too marketable in the wider private sector. Van Roekel points out that the employees pay into these pensions, they are not free rides, and in some cases, the workers aren't even getting the money they paid in returned to them.

Union households, of course, went 1 in 3 for Walker. As Henwood noted: Union households =/= Union votes. But this seeming contradiction happens every day. How many union members buy their household goods at Walmart?

The basic conclusion Van Roekel is sort of arriving at is that getting involved in a recall election was not the most productive uses of their time and money. In Ohio, where there was a broader campaign of citizen outreach, unions (public and private) prevailed. In the recall election, they did not. Promoting public policy, as it turns out, is a more productive project than ousting an errant government official. Insert something here about the false promise of quck fixes.

What's more important to the NEA, Wallace asks, securing pay for teachers or providing services to students. This is what is known as a "false choice." Van Roekel points out that the teachers in Wisconsin volunteered to pay more of their own pensions, to save the state money. It wasn't deemed good enough. Wallace thinks that this means students prevailed. It really means that highly skilled teachers will leave, or not come to, places like Madison, Wisconsin, and the quality of that school system will deteriorate via brain drain.

Lee: "I think it's a false choice." She is like, totally reading my mind today! She also correctly notes that Wisconsin did not have all these terrible budget shortfalls until Walker created them by giving away taxpayer money to his private sector patrons.

(Eventually, all Wisconsin students will be able to do is take a single multiple choice test, and theri college instructors will be left to wonder why none of them can write or form ideas."

Wallace insists there isn't enough money to go around. Lee says, well, it's going to downgrade America's overall competitiveness. If you want to have a strong and capable workforce, you have to pay for it, it isn't free and it doesn't come about through magic. If you don't want to pay for it, awesome, but don't whine years down the road when people can no longer pave roads.

Wallace doesn't consider this an answer to his question. Lee says that when you lack revenues, you find new ones. "We could raise taxes," says lee, saying the most obvious thing in the world that is also complete un-American anathema in some circles, for some reason.

Is Lee disappointed that Obama didn't show up? Lee lets him off the hook. "I'm not going to second guess the President." Well, of course not! The standard Democratic Party way of doing things is coming out in favor of stuff they are certain to win, and staying away from anywhere they might lose, because long ago they decided that any sort of "losing" is bad -- bad enough that when it matters most, they don't actually stand for anything at all. What is the point of being "for" something, if it doesn't "win?" Right? PROFILES IN COURAGE-LIKE SUBSTANCE!

Panel time, with Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney and Charles Lane and Mara Liasson. Let's get our leak discussion on!

Kristol says that the leaks are "very damaging" just like Senator Dianne Feinstein says, and the bipartisan outrage over this matter is "startling" and "beyond simple politics." Wallace notes that the New York Times, two weeks in a row, got richly-detailed stories that were obviously very well sourced about classified "war on terror" matters.

Lane says that "as a journalist" he's "of two minds about it," and that there is stuff in those reports that the public should know. But one thing the public should know is whether or not the Obama administration "pushed back" on the disclosure of these matters. Let me add, of course, that I am VERY PRO-LEAK. Please leak away, everyone! (Whistleblowers: I know this is crazy, but email me maybe, okay?) But no one should ignore the possibility that leaks are made because somebody wants to get re-elected. And we can still make note of the fact that a leak of classified information may materially compromise something or someone. And journalists should be judicious in the balancing of interests. But I'd rather they be judicious with all kinds of information leaked to them, than no information.

Cheney says she'd like to know if the President authorized his aides to leak this information. She and her dad are going to have a lot of hearty laughs about that answer!

Liasson says that she cannot "even imagine" what the NYT "held back" about the Stuxnet story.

Will the White House appoint a special counsel? Kristol says that would perhaps clarify the legal ramifications, but it won't answer the question of the public interest. Kristol surmises, through Sanger's reporting on SEC DEF Bob Gates' agitation with Charles Donilon, that the leaks came from the National Security Adviser's office. (At the same time, Kristol notes that it's very out of character for Gates to use words like, "Shut the f--k up.")

I wonder who would leak information to Fox News Sunday? And under what circumstances would they report that information?

Wallace asks Cheney about that little old leak that led to Valerie Plame's career ending. Would she like to see a repeat of the independent counsel? She says she'd prefer an "independent investigation" into the matter. Wallace doesn't understand what she means by that. She doesn't go on to explain the concept any better. It is a distinction without a difference. But, she offers that the public has the right to know if Obama authorized someone to spell out these classified stories to reporters, and that is very much true.

Now FNS will spoil all the goodwill they might have accumulated talking about this matter with a panel discussion on the horsey-race implications of the "private sector is fine" comment.

The lead question is: one a scale of 1 to 10, how big a blunder is this. Liasson's answer basically demonstrates how worthless the discussion is through her answer, which I'll diagram.

1. It is a six out of ten.
2. It is terrible!
3. (Only a six out of ten, though?)
4. But it won't matter.
5. And it will, at the same time, matter.
6. Though not.
7. Romney also has gaffes.
8. They will matter and not matter.
9. And ultimately, the economy is bad, and isn't affected by this.
10. But this thing that won't ultimately impact the economy is still "a pretty big deal."

I mean, folks, that is some free-range, grass-fed artisanal high-proof blather, right there.

More blather continues, everyone's rather intelligent wrestling with the leak question is buried in it.

Lane notes that Walker didn't lay anyone off, so it's weird that the President is touting his layoff saving measures as an alternative. But this is part of the brilliance of Walker's plan. He didn't lay anyone off, he just made it pretty clear that the jobs would suck out loud from now on. This is similar to Romney's immigration plan -- encouraging self-deportation. Why, these Wisconsinites will simply lay themselves off!

Wallace asks a question of Cheney, despite knowing that he already knows what her answer will be. Why ask then?

Now, Wallace is asking, "Let's forget about the policy side of this, let's talk about the political side." You haven't been talking about the policy side of this, though! You've just been talking about the horsey-race, news-cycle, shiny shiny spinning lights side of this.

Brief question about the Eurozone crisis, how much of a drag will it be on the U.S. economy, and does Obama have the clout to do something about it. Kristol insists that Europe's problems have had zero effect on the United States' economy. Okay, then!

THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS

Okay, my problem with household appliances continues! My internet just went out for like, twenty minutes, and somehow or another, my TiVo did not record the first thirteen minutes of this show. So, I'm getting the last part of Rick Santorum's interview, where GSteph is asking him if he wants to be vice president, to which Santorum says, "-----." Yes, I'm going to leave you in suspense, because why not? Anyway, to recap, David Axelrod and Rick Santorum were apparently on this show this morning. I'm an guessing that David Axelrod was very pro-Obama, and Rick Santorum was, perhaps, not. I'm geniunely uncurious about what I missed. I'm sure I've captured it correctly.

Ha, and now the show is going to have a panel discussion that I am sure will be very daffy, because it will feature Mike Huckabee, Ed Rendell, Van Jones, and the comic stylings of Ann Coulter.

"How do you watch these shows, without shooting yourself repeatedly in the eyes?" is the question I most often get from people. It is a tough question to face, frankly.

Anyway, Mike Huckabee doesn't think the private sector is fine, and that we'll see that line in campaign ads over and over again. Van Jones says that there will be ads that feature the dumb things that Romney says, too.

Jones says that Wisconsin should be a wake up call to progressives, because OMG, progressives! Y'all do not have a lot of money.

Ann Coulter is...kind of trembling all over as she speaks? Maybe this isn't the actual live-action Ann Coulter, but an animated character created by those people who made "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist?" Anyway, she would like to be able to fire the people who work for Expedia, or something. She wants public schoolteachers to know that they are bad people who should feel bad.

Rendell points out all of the "Republican ideas" that Obama has proposed that the Congress will not pass, probably because they would prefer to pass them under a Republican.

Now, Mike Huckabee and Ann Coulter are yelling at Rendell. Actually, Huckabee is "patiently discussing" things. Van Jones says that he was taught to look up to public sector employees and not treat them as threats. He goes on to note that the GOP won't pass their own bills, because they want "more pain." Stephanopoulos briefly questions this contention, but Rendell grabs the conch instead (yes, I am now getting to the point where I am imagining these people on a remote desert island) and says something generic about how awesome policemen and firefighters are.

Ann Coulter picks it up and has a pretty addled discussion about the stimulus package, and how money for firemen end up paying for "diversity coordinators," and Ed Rendell is all, "So you want less firemen? So you want less firemen?" and Mike Huckabee is all, "I thought states did that stuff" and I'm like, you ran for President and you aren't sure about the role the federal government plays in assisting states in a down economy? And now everyone is sort of talking past each other.

Next topic: the Bain attacks. Are they working? The Beltway consensus is that they don't. Polls of actual human Americans say differently. But lets give a bunch of Sunday morning pundits another stab at this.

Rendell says, "Oh well, these new commercials are working, I was talking about the old commercials." His objection is that some normal person who Rendell's never met called Romney a vampire, and I guess you should never call people names. Unless you are Ed Rendell, and you just put out a book that calls people names. Ed Rendell! Kind of a dolt!

Mike Huckabee says that he was not talking about Mitt Romney when he made that crack about how "I want to be a president who reminds you of the guy you work with, not the guy who laid you off.” He says, "I was just talking about sometimes an opponent."

Everyone laughs! Because har-dee-har, no one has actual convictions about anything and it's hilarious! Glory to Panem!

Coulter insists that Romney has had a "Midas Touch" with everything. EVERYTHING. You must have ridiculous expectations about Mitt Romney, at all times. (She does not want to discuss RomneyCare though.)

We go to commercial. I go to the medicine cabinet, hoping to find some Klonopin.

Now it's time to talk about Bill Clinton and how wildly off message he gets! Whoa! Roller coaster ride with that guy! So out of control. Whoo! Loop-de-loops all over the place when he gets going. The great thing about Clinton is that even if he doesn't go off-message, everyone has agreed that they will just report he said totally different things than he actually said.

It's all a fun game of shiny lights and narratives about people and their characters that were decided on long ago. Joe Biden believes in justice for the LGBT community, but the words that come out of his mouth, we have decided, are "gaffes," and so Biden doesn't get credit for winning an argument, he just has a terrible mistake that falls upward.

Huckabee says Clinton was an awesome president, and that Republicans miss him so much! (If you don't recall the "Clinton administration," I was there, and it featured all sorts of howling derangement about Clinton running a drug ring in Arkansas and killing Vince Foster and nonsense like that.)

Ed Rendell says that the GOP is terrible and keep obstructing Obama's attempts to improve the economy. He says that Clinton will be an awesome surrogate for Obama in October, he promises! Watch him in October! Bill Clinton is the October Surprise of words!

Jones and Coulter fall out over everyone Waterlooing everyone else, and she just wants people to cut taxes. She also remembers Clinton as a "moderate," which is not the case she ever made while he was actually in office.

I am pretty sure we did not learn anything new about America's fiscal situation, except for the fact that Bill Clinton sure provided the punditocracy with some laughs.

Mike Huckabee will not be Romney's vice president. He is sure that the eventual vice presidential pick will be awesome! "One thing I admire about Mitt Romney is that he is not impetuous...he's methodical." That's a fancy way of saying, "Romney probably won't pick a flashy, charismatic moron, like John McCain did."

"Whoever he selects will be the product of a very thoughtful process," Huckabee says. Coulter agrees that it will be totally thoughtful and methodical! She thinks that he'll methodically choose Chris Christie because Christie will do all of Romney's yelling, and also has "ethnic appeal." (With what ethnicity?)

Rendell says that nobody votes based upon who becomes vice-president. And the best possible person for no one to base their vote on is Rob Portman, who inspires so much non-wonder everywhere he goes.

Now, we're actually going to get to the story-leak leak-story!

Huckabee notes that the NYT had three dozen sources for the articles, and that Democratic Senators are just as concerned as anyone else. Charitably (perhaps too charitably!), he says that he doesn't believe that Obama had anything, personally, to do with the leaks, and he believes Obama has a right to be angry. (GSteph has sort of made it a given that Obama's anger over the leak was expressed sincerely.)

Jones says there is a "grab-bag of hypocrisy" here because many of the same GOP critics weren't too critical of similar leaks during the Bush administration, and anyway, why isn't anyone talking about "the facts we learned from the leaks themselves," which is that the President has granted himself the authority kill people in 120 foreign countries. "We should be concerned about that," he says, and it's more important than "who leaked what to who."

"If the President, without oversight, has a kill list," Jones says, "that is what we should talk about." GSteph says, "but the administration would argue that there is oversight." Sure, they would ARGUE that! "We'll just police ourselves," say all Too Big To Fail banks.

GSteph says that there is "due process." There is like, due process-like substance, maybe!

Coulter makes the point I would make, that there is actually no reason to believe that Obama doesn't have anything to do with these stories' existence. "It is not so obvious he had nothing to do with them." True! GSteph just sort of decided that this was an immutable ground rule for the discussion. She then berates people for criticizing Bush's detention policy and shrugging off Obama's extrajudicial killing. "Now, it's all 'we're at war,' where were you then?" Well, Ed Rendell, who now approves of Obama being able to cap whoever he likes, was somewhere probably being a dolt.

Van Jones is all, "Hey, I'm right here, I believe in human rights and junk!" But Jones also says he really doubts Obama "engineered" these stories. Why would a President who has no problem deciding what people live and die (on "Terror Tuesdays," which sounds like something you print on a high-school cafeteria menu!) get suddenly all pearl-clutchy at the thought of setting up a glorifying story in the paper when he's running for re-election?

(It wasn't immediately clear that Jones was actually talking about "engineering" the stories. Coulter had been talking about the "kill list," in and of itself. This caused some momentary confusion, as every wondered if Jones had missed the fact that Obama actually did have this extensive process of extra-judicial "miltant" killing.)

Now there is a discussion about the Supreme Court. Jones points out that the big story is that a Heritage Foundation/Mitt Romney plan that Obama signed onto instead of a single-payer/public option program favored by progressives is now, bizarrely, considered "socialism." Everyone yells, Stephanopoulos mercifully brings this to an end.

FACE THE NATION

Just when I'm wondering if I should make some sort of cough syrup/Fernet-Branca concoction to take the pain away, the show ends, and we're on to FACE THE NATION, where we will have Scott Walker and Martin O'Malley. By the way, the last time we watched this show, I wondered by Bob Schieffer's editorial comment was coming in the middle of the show, it was pointed out to me that FTN, in its new hour-long format, hasn't been picked up for the entire hour everywhere yet. So that's why that happened.

Face The Nation is making it something of an open question as to what story there are going to take more seriously -- the "private sector fine" story or the national security leak story. Schieffer is talking about the latter with more gravitas and good guests, here at the top of the show, but the show seems to have done some preparation around the former story.

I'm hopeful! So far, I'll give Fox New Sunday credit for the right proportional mix and This Week the side-eye.

First up, however, we have Scott Walker. Schieffer asks about the "private sector is fine" remark. Romney said some stuff in retaliation, and namechecked Wisconsin. "So there you have it Governor, is that the message?" Is that the question? Sorry, I mean, is that a question? I guess we're pretending it is.

Anyway, Walker says that the voters said that they wanted people to "take on the tough issues." For the time being, be pro-impoverishment of people is "tough." So that's a relief, I guess! Walker says that Romney will have to prove that the "R next to his name" stands for "reformer."

Is Romney talking about getting rid of the public sector, Walker says no, and insists that he "protected" public sector workers, by making them poorer and more subject to budgetary manipulation. And, of course, anytime you depose citizens of their share in the democratic process, that totally protects them! We don't need people thinking all sorts of crazy things, like they possess political power.

Once everyone has a private sector job in an Amazon shipping warehouse, they won't miss having political power at all.

Schieffer notes that Walker doesn't seem to be all that confident in Romney's ability to hew to the sort of politics that Walker prefers. Walker says that "he's got the capacity to do it" he just hopes he does what Reagan did and "lay out a clear plan." This is, by the way, the new face of GOP establishment worry about Romney -- they aren't worried that his past precludes him from winning, but they are wondering when he will identify his priorities and make plans.

Walker says it again: Romney must clearly identify a "reform agenda." Of course, Team Obama Re-Elect is hoping that Romney will define himself, too, because they'd like to mount attacks on Romney's tangible plans, and turn the election into a "choice election." Romney, by not putting his neck out there, keeps this a "referendum election." His own party may force the issue.

Will Romney win Wisconsin? Walker has already said the Romney is the underdog in Wisconsin but that it's surely not outside the realm of possibility that it will be competitive. So, why Schieffer is asking him again is beyond me. He gives, in essence, the same answer, wrapped in more of this concern-trolling over Romney's plans.

Walker clearly understands that he is the captain of the team right now. Who'd have thought, when he beat Tom Barrett in 2010, that he's one day be dictating terms to his party's Presidential candidate? In terms of political "heroball," Romney has a long way to go before he gets to be the party's Kevin Durant.

Now we will have Martin O'Malley and Richard Trumka respond to all of this.

Trumka tries to bright-side this: Walker had to spend money! He lost control of the state Senate! The problem here is that Walker's backers can raise all that money several times over tomorrow, if they want or need to. It isn't even a big deal. As for the now Democrat controlled state Senate, they are out of session unless Walker or the GOP-led State Assembly call them back into session. So...he hasn't exactly lost control of it yet.

Trumka's on better ground criticizing Walker's job creation record, which is not good. "We wish he'd have the best job creation record in the country, and we wish he'd let us help him get there."

O'Malley says that he thinks that Democrats in Wisconsin weren't all that in to using the recall mechanism for something that wasn't de facto legal wrongdoing, and to a significant extent, that's true. He goes on to say that the private sector, compared to the public sector, is doing fine, and this is causing a "drag on the economy." (The "drag" is called "insufficient aggregate demand.")

Schieffer says that the traditional union efforts didn't work in Wisconsin this time. Trumka says, "I disagree with you completely." Oh, really? Do tell, because I read a lot of newspapers on Wednesday morning that said Walker won? Trumka says that the "money edge is really dangerous to democracy," which means he doesn't have the money edge over corporations. He says that now, they can mobilize workers of all kinds, all year round. (Except on Tuesday, June 5 of this year, I guess!)

Is it a wake up call? "Not just that," he says. So, things aren't all peaches and cream.

Now, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are here because this is the 40th anniversary of Watergate, and Richard Nixon is still bad. or something?

Are they really excited about having a co-byline in the paper again? Woodward says yes. Bernstein says yes. Schieffer says he enjoyed reading it. Everyone totally loves the fact that two guys who had a newspaper story that one time, now have another newspaper story another time. Schieffer says his takeaway is that "it's worse than we thought it was," which is funny, because the two guys to co-authored a book titled, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks" -- Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein -- have had tremendous trouble getting booked on Sunday shows (MSNBC's Chris Hayes brought an end to the blackout), because Mann and Ornstein have said that the biggest problem in Washington is that the GOP has taken complete leave of their senses, and that is too HOT FOR WASHINGTON, where "both sides" must ever be equally to blame for everything.

Nixon was bad, says Woodward, author of a famous story about how bad Nixon was. Bernstein says that their whole point, forty years later, is that they want to remind people that Nixon's crimes really were worse than Nixon's cover-up, and that the Nixon White House was a "criminal enterprise."

Schieffer shows them a video of Mark Felt denying he was "Deep Throat," and they think it's really neat, but there's a lot of de-mythologizing to do -- Felt was a critical help at critical times, Woodward says, but there were a lot of other sources and the two of them did a lot of additional reporting.

Now, because of the aforementioned problem I mentioned with the way FACE THE NATION's new hour-long format has not been widely embraced, Schieffer has to bisect his discussion with Woodward and Bernstein in order to do his editorial comment. He says that when Watergate broke, he bolted town because ironically enough, he didn't want to end up assigned to the story after achieving his dream of getting to anchor the convention coverage. He recalls that he couldn't figure out why anyone would break into a campaign headquarters. In retrospect, however, he says he now understands that he "made the worst decision a reporter can make: I just assumed it wouldn't amount to anything." And, naturally, it did.

We return to the Woodward and Bernstein story. Bernstein says that they realized they were on to something important very early on -- they surmised quickly that what they had was a bunch of impeachable offenses. Bernstein says that they kept themselves from using the word "impeach" though, because it would immediately cause them to be labelled as "agenda-havers."

"We just wanted to find out what happened," Woodward says, "we were as empirical as can be." What would have happened to the Washington Post if they'd been wrong? Bernstein says, "It would have been awful." He points out that it took a long time before people actually believed what they were writing -- their own colleagues doubted them -- and it was Walter Cronkite who finally gave them some backing by taking the story to CBS.

Woodward points out that we can all listen to the famous tapes of Nixon railing against the Post and his enemies and, as Schieffer points out, Jewish people in generally. Bernstein points out that yeah, he really hated them! He tried to break in to Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. (We don't get into Nixon's famous "Jew counter," Fred Malek, which is unforttunate because Malek is apparently still allowed to have a career working for supposedly respectable politicians.)

What continues to surprise them, forty years later? Both agree that the famous tapes are always astounding to listen to -- Woodward notes that Nixon doesn't spend much time on those tapes talking about ways to move the country forward: "It was always 'let's screw someone,'" says Woodward. Bernstein adds that it was as if Nixon had no political strategies at all, other than criminal ones.

What about Ford's pardon? Woodward says that Ford said he did it to bring the country back together, having decided that it served the national interest. And it cost Ford greatly. But that's the contrast, I guess, with a guy who never actually considered the country during the time he was president. Charles Ferguson's great new book, Predator Nation, gets around to talking about how all the incentives run the wrong way in America -- the despicable get big payouts and honest men become history's patsies. You can sort of see the beginnings of that with Watergate. It was maybe the last time the head of a powerful institution failed to "get away with it." Now game protects game.

What do they think about today's leaks -- ones that the White House probably did want reporters to have? Bernstein says that one danger is that it creates an environment where a witch hunt against sources and reporters is acceptable. Woodward agrees, saying that it's always a challenge for journalists to modulate between getting the truth before the public while avoiding a greater harm to the public at the same time. It's something that takes "great delicacy," in a time where few others demonstrate an appreciation for delicacy.

"Journalists are actually quite good at not revealing genuine national security secrets," Bernstein says. "Think about the things in your head, Bob!" Now I want to know, though!

Woodward says it's sort of amazing that Nixon could go out on a note of not letting "hate" get to him, when there are hours of tape that recorded his hatred for people at great length. He compares it to comments he'd make in public, during his late-in-life battle to restore some of his repuation -- an example is his claim that he "never authorized hush money." As Woodward points out, there were twelve separate examples on publicly available recordings of Nixon offering hush money. "Did he not think anyone would check?" Woodward asks. I think it's safe to say that Nixon was a complete sociopath.

Staying on the leak story now, with Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers, who chair the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively.

Is it enough that the DOJ has appointed investigators in this case? "Hopefully," she says. She notes that we're in a very different situation now then we were during Watergate. These are matters of dealing with enemies -- in her estimation, the "war on terror" aspect makes an investigation, if not a "witch hunt" appropriate. Rogers says he agrees with Feinstein, and that both were concerned about the "parade of leaks" that formed the basis of these stories. He notes that some of the sources placed themselves at various times in the Situation Room, which means that we're talking about a "small but powerful" cohort of people. Rogers says that Justice's response was "a good start," but want more assurances of independence.

Schieffer points out that Rogers has held that this matter is "one hundred times more serious than the Valerie Plame case." Rogers stands by that, and that's why he wants at least the same consideration given to this investigation. He tells Schieffer that he's had people from various agencies come to Intelligence Committee hearings profess to him that these leaks have really hurt them do their jobs.

Both Rogers and Feinstein profess that they want a non-partisan investigation, though I'm guessing that only Feinstein, for the time being is willing to take Obama's professions of anger over the leaks at "face value," as she says today. Nevertheless, Feinstein already has some serious things to say about the potential fall-out from these leaks. She noted that in Yemen, terrorists have created a bomb that is "non-metallic and can go through magnetometers" that would take a "very invasive body search" to detect. Our intelligence agencies got a jump on this development, and the news of it was supposed to be "very closely held." But the news leaked, "and now the person who helped us" is in danger for his life.

Schieffer asks Rogers if his interest in this isn't at least a little bit tied to the notion that these leaks led to stories that made Obama look strong on defense. Rogers insists again, that it has no bearing: "I hope that ideology and politics don't settle into this...if you want to get to the bottom of this...don't go in with a conclusion, follow your leads."

Well, what can I say? Sunday morning teevee, for once, I misjudged you. By and large, you all made attempts to cover what I thought was the big story from the Obama news conference, and Fox and CBS actually attached a real, discernible preponderance of importance to the leak story, instead of the horse-race frivolity. I was wrong, today, and I'm actually very delighted about that!

Of course, maybe this just goes to demonstrate how badly MEET THE PRESS is dragging down our average expectations. Kudos to you French Open, for making out political discourse slightly better than usual!

Have a great week, everybody! (I am off to buy a new coffeemaker or three.)

[The Sunday morning liveblog returns next week. Like I said, check out my RebelMouse page, for good stuff to read.]

Last week, the people behind GOOD -- a media organization dedicated to covering philanthropy and the people who work at "moving the world forward" -- laid off most of the staff that had been editing and creating content for the organization's eponymous magazine.

Now, print media layoffs are a fairly common (and depressing!) occurrence these days, but what was most striking about how GOOD handled the matter is that they seemed to be trying to set some sort of land-speed record for dickery.

The announcement that most of the staff -- including the magazine's much-heralded executive editor, Ann Friedman -- were being cashiered came the day after the same staff celebrated a launch party for their most recent issue, which did make it to newsstands. Later, the organization sent out a tweet, professing sadness that they had "lost great people." Sure. They weren't so much disposed of as they were tragically misplaced. From there, GOOD celebrated having notched their 200,000th Facebook friend by producing a video which contained testimonials from their staff -- including some of the people they'd kicked to the curb only days before.

So if the short-term goal was to sow a ton of ill will in as short a time as possible, then mission accomplished. We must never forget, however, that all of this tactlessness was done for a good cause -- GOOD says that they are taking a different path now, and want to become a "Reddit for social good."

Now, I do not know precisely what that means. And I have to imagine there are a number of Redditors who think that the "Reddit for social good" is Reddit. But the consensus speculation on the matter is that GOOD is scaling back on all this effort to publish a magazine in order to move to some new, off-the-shelf social media platform that harvests the good intentions of its network of supporters for cheap content to sell ads against. In so doing, GOOD will allow big brand names the chance to burnish their reputation by being associated with people who are "moving the world forward."

But if the treatment of their former colleagues gives one pause about whether GOOD is in this for the "good," consider the story of the one person from the magazine who was not cut adrift at the end of last week. Alysia Santo of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote:

The only editorial employee left now is the education page editor, Liz Dwyer. The education portal on GOOD says that the “page is sponsored by University of Phoenix,” so one could easily infer that’s why she was the one spared, though this could not be confirmed. Interview requests to upper management went unanswered.

Oh, well, allow me to do some inferring then!

Curious thing, this coincidence, where the one person who is sticking around comes to GOOD subsidized by the University of Phoenix, one of the most notorious predators in the subprime-education scam game. This is the organization that Bloomberg Businessweek famously caught recruiting students at homeless shelters, hooking drug addicts and the mentally ill into long-term loans they can't afford to pay off, while giving them substandard education and little personal support. The University of Phoenix is routinely under investigation, its officials frequently lie, and its only real success comes in the form of extracting taxpayer dollars from Congress and training up the next wave of people to execute this con.

In short, this isn't a brand with whom anyone sincerely interested in "social good" would want to be associated. But if you want to shine up the University of Phoenix's turd in exchange for cash money, that's a totally different story.

At any rate, it's going to be awesome to see what GOOD does next with their social platform, their Facebook pals and their commitment to better serving the needs of high-toned private education confidence men. Maybe next week, GOOD will create an awesome Pinterest page about all the ways the world is "moving forward" after the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, Education and Related Agencies slashes IDEA Part C and IDEA Part B special education funding.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Remember how last week, Politico wrote this mammoth indictment about how The New York Times and the Washington Post were engaged in a seedy practice of being pointlessly and frivolously critical of the Romney campaign, and it wasn't fair? Which, in turn, led, to observers noting some obvious things, like the fact that at "every point in the past 10 months, Obama has received more negative coverage than positive coverage" and that when it came to "cheap voyeurism" masquerading as political critique, no one does it better than Politico themselves? Yes, that was all a thing that happened, in our lives, and it was all good for a few laughs.

But evidently, someone at The New York Times -- who, like the Post, defended themselves against Politico's charges -- decided that maybe they ought to go out and prove that Politico was right about them all along. And so today we have this dispatch from Michael Barbaro, in the paper's "Home & Garden" section, about how all of Mitt Romney's neighbors in La Jolla, Calif. really don't like him. It has all the political salience of a sack of dog leavings.

"Bellyaching over the arrival of an irritating new neighbor is a suburban cliché," Barbaro writes, before proceeding to go on for over 1,700 more words about it, instead of doing what most people would do in this situation, which is to type "CTRL-A" and "DELETE."

If we recall from previous reports, Romney's La Jolla home is the one where he is famously installing a "car garage." (He does have a lot of these homes, so it's useful to know about this, if only to keep track of Romney's widely sprawled domestic empire.) This story, titled "The Candidate Next Door," seems to be an attempt to take a third or fourth bite of the "car garage" story -- which, by the way, was broken by Politico's Reid Epstein, to the great consternation of the Romney camp. (You might notice that Epstein isn't doing much Romney coverage lately, which brings us right back around to Politico's ongoing attempts to "make nice" with the Romney campaign.)

Okay, well, what's to be learned about Romney's neighbors? Well, for one thing, he doesn't quite fit in -- see, the people in Romney's neighborhood "[evoke] 'Modern Family' far more than 'All in the Family.'" Har-dee-har.

Barbaro talks to a a pair of gay couples from the neighborhood, who he treats as intriguing, exotic novelties, and who each fantasize about having some sort of extremely passive-aggressive confrontation with the candidate. Romney is also accused of harshing the locals' mellow: "A young man in town recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked marijuana and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop." Well, once upon a time he probably would have gone at this young beach hippie with a pair of scissors, so maybe Romney is actually meeting his neighbors halfway?

For a while, the piece sort of strives to keep this "Modern Family" idea alive -- Romney is a conservative celebrity living alongside a collection of typical California liberals! It is slightly undercut by the demographic breakdown the article includes: "The La Jolla of 2012 is as purple a precinct as they come, with 7,764 registered Republicans and 7,024 Democrats." So when, in the very next line, a resident muses, “It’s odd that this is where Romney picked [this] place [to live] — it’s so progressive," you think, "Is it though? Because I can add."

Eventually, however, it really shifts into gear, and you learn that the more important takeaway is Romney has apparently moved in alongside a gaggle of affluent, backbiting NIMBYs who are just mad that he is threatening their property values -- through both the extensive, ongoing renovations to his home and ... well, by just being around, and having a large group of security personnel traveling in his wake. They are sad that their road is blocked up, and their "ocean views are in jeopardy," and their favorite "dog walking routes" have been "disrupted."

It truly is a collection of first world problems. And one thing that reading this story offers is the chance to imagine the other, more politically relevant stories that could have been written. Sure, it's not exactly news that Romney is titanically wealthy and routinely indifferent to those of lesser station. But that indifference would be better set off by California's ongoing foreclosure crisis, relief for which Romney opposes.

And at another point in the piece, one of Romney's neighbors tells Barbaro that if it were President Barack Obama causing all this neighborhood disruption, "I'd probably be fine with it." You could say the same thing about Obama supporters' reactions to the president's "kill list," only that would have been a more interesting story.

At any rate, way to make Politico look prophetic, New York Times. Great job. Good effort.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Dylan Byers today channels the pain of everyone trying to watch cable news reports on the Wisconsin recall last night, in a post titled "The worst night on cable news." How acute was this pain felt? The first instant message I received this morning read as follows: "Should I watch cable news right now? This is a real question I am asking myself."

Byers quickly notes the rather aggressively partisan tone taken by Fox, who stopped just short of wheeling out champagne and strippers to celebrate the Walker win, and MSNBC, who had Ed Schultz -- essentially a Tom Barrett surrogate -- anchor the evening. I had some misgivings about the lead role Schultz was taking going into the night. Sure, he's well-sourced within the activist community that inspired the lion's share of the anti-Walker sentiment, but as it was pretty clear going into the night that Walker would prevail, having Schultz anchor the coverage was like watching a small child receive a lump of coal from Santa in slow motion.

But Byers showers the most contempt on CNN -- naturally! -- for spending the evening rerunning its coverage of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee. Byers doesn't dally with any delicate knife twisting: He just shows what the three networks were doing when the call for Walker came in and notes that Wolf Blitzer was eight minutes late to the story. (Call me crazy, but I sort of think being merely eight minutes behind is a Wolf Blitzer personal best.)

But you know what? Screw it. I am actually feeling pretty good about CNN's decision. I know that some time ago, my colleague Elyse Siegel and I went all upside CNN's head, pointing out all the floats in its parade of horribles and suggesting that CNN should do something to fix itself. But what we didn't consider was that it always had another option. It could always do what it does best, and just give up.

As Byers notes, "CNN has no obligation to cover the Wisconsin recall, and one could argue that CNN doesn't need to break that political news, or spend the 10 o'clock hour speculating on the potential political ramifications of the various outcomes."

When I read that, it forced me to imagine what it might have been like if CNN had not chosen to stick with the Queen's Jubilee. And in all likelihood, it would have been a repeat of its previous attempts to "cover politics," which always seems to be the same -- it puts a bunch of people in a room together, gives them a bunch of toys, and asks them to run around doing stuff.

That appears to be CNN's entire strategy where covering political outcomes is concerned: everyone run around the room like a bunch of pissed-off chimps on salvia, doing stuff, doing it harder, doing it faster, doing it until everyone drops dead of exhaustion or secures a note from a therapist, excusing them from the activity. I'm pretty sure it will be revealed that CNN's political coverage will be the reason that the big bad guys in the movie "Prometheus" are coming to wipe out humanity.

If the end result of an evening spent watching CNN "do" politics is just the depressing feeling you get watching all that human wreckage frenetically destroying its own dignity, then I say, give me the Queen! Give me Piers Morgan, randomly exulting at the sight of barges on the Thames. Let these poor CNN people numb themselves forever, in slack-jawed appreciation of the royal family's collection of fascinators and epaulets. Let CNN play to its strengths. Let's save the human race from the "Prometheus" monsters.

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Via Twitter, here is what I gather is Governor Scott Walker's "closing argument:"

As a retweeter points out, this is the same Ronald Reagan who said, "Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost," so it's not a particularly convincing argument, as it turns out.

Meanwhile, Reagan's widow, Nancy Reagan, marked the occasion with the solemnity it deserves.

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Back when Mitt Romney was campaigning in Michigan, he had this weird phrase about his one-time home state that he kept robotically repeating: "The trees are the right height." Well, I can't say for sure what "the right height" is to Mitt Romney. And Michiganders -- who, yes, were polled as to their trees' height -- came back with mixed reviews on how their trees measure up. But as it turns out, the height of trees -- and how many of them you can see from space -- reveals a lot about the health and wealth of an urban community. And when the trees are wrong, that's actually an indicator of a larger problem.

Over at Per Square Mile, Tim de Chant has done yeoman's work in studying the trees and what they mean, and he's found that if you want to measure income inquality in an urban neighborhood, you should look for the available shade:

Research published a few years ago shows a tight relationship between per capita income and forest cover. The study’s authors tallied total forest cover for 210 cities over 100,000 people in the contiguous United States using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s natural resource inventory and satellite imagery. They also gathered economic data, including income, land prices, and disposable income.

They found that for every 1 percent increase in per capita income, demand for forest cover increased by 1.76 percent. But when income dropped by the same amount, demand decreased by 1.26 percent. That’s a pretty tight correlation. The researchers reason that wealthier cities can afford more trees, both on private and public property. The well-to-do can afford larger lots, which in turn can support more trees.

De Chant subsequently found that this phenomenon comes to life when you look at various communities using Google Earth. A fine example is seen in comparing Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood (predominantly African American, with median income of about $13,000) to the more tony Hyde Park, just to the north (more racially diverse, with median income about $44,000):

According to de Chant, trees provide unsung benefits to urbanites: "They shade houses in the summer, reducing cooling bills. They scrub the air of pollution, especially of the particulate variety, which in many poor neighborhoods is responsible for increased asthma rates and other health problems." He also noted that the trees-to-affluence ratio correlates to economic conditions all over the world.

[Hat tip: Boing Boing]

READ THE WHOLE THING:
Urban trees reveal income inequality [Per Square Mile]
Income inequality, as seen from space [Per Square Mile]

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Good morning to everybody and thanks for once again coming on by for this swiftly spat but never pat recap which you may use to supplement your Sunday Morning political chat-show experience or use in lieu of that experience, which actually falls at the bottom of a long list of experiences you probably wouldn't care to have like having your fingernails peeled back or eating lamprey pie -- though on the latter score, that is something the Queen of England may, at some point today, do.

My name is Jason, and I almost can't even with England sometimes, but traditions are traditions and who am I to speak, given that one of my traditions is waking up on Sundays, brewing many pots of coffee, and then staring at this nonsense for many hours. It is, I suppose, a kind of love. Still, England...that pie.

Okay, well, everyone get comfy as I peel my eyes back and stretch my TiVo finger. As per usual, you all are welcome to mix it up in the comments and catch up with one another. I'm available by email, and if you absolutely need to, you can always follow me on Twitter.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

Apparently we're going to talk mainly about whether the rising unemployment rate means the recovery is stalling (YES) and if the Wisconsin recall race is a preview of the presidential election (NO). I mean, that's how easy it is to answer those questions, and yet we're going to point a camera at flapping gums for like, an hour.

But first, we'll have Romney surrogate Ed Gillespie. He'll be followed by Obama surrogate Steve Rattner -- who sort of looks like Mark McKinney of the Kids In The Hall. It's too bad Lindsey Graham isn't on today. They could do sketches together! Anyway, I am guessing the Gillespie will say that the unemployment rate shows we need to have Mitt Romney and more tax cuts, and Rattner will say that we've come considerably far under Obama and Romney will return us to the bottom of the gutter again, economically speaking.

Like I said: we actually do not need more than a minute to find out what these men have to say about this. (Though the frisson with Rattner is that he's a private equity man, himself. WHAT COULD HAPPEN if Chris Wallace brings it up? He COULD go OFF-MESSAGE, WHOOOAA.)

Anyway, May was a terrible month, jobs-wise. What does Gillespie think is the problem? The Obama administration. You should all now take a ten minute break, because this will be all ostinato from here. Specifically, Gillespie says that universal health care is bad for jobs and the Keystone pipeline would "have had an immediate effect on job creation." (About 7,000 jobs tops; many in Canada, for Canadian people. No, I do not know why Republicans want so badly to put Canadians back to work in Canada.)

Also, job creators need more of your tax dollars, because they are so uncertain! (Presumably about the profits they are or are not making, or the products they are or are not moving that typically lead people to hire other people, as a matter of last resort?)

Gillespie also hates the stimulus, because it kept teachers and police officers and firefighters in jobs, and doesn't like Dodd-Frank, even though it carved out big loopholes so that Wall Street could go back to trading derivatives like daffy morons again. It's seriously the quick litany, talking point throwdown, and Wallace is now all: "Wait, wait, wait, hold on."

What does Gillespie think that Romney think about maybe the House passing some of Obama's jobs initiatives now, and what's to happen when "Taxmageddon" hits (besides the fact that we start paying down the deficit that everyone supposedly hates?). Gillespie says that Romney will do more "leadership" stuff, and why is Obama campaigning? It's like Obama thinks it is a campaign season! But, no, Romney wants nothing specific and has nothing in mind: "I think he'll wait to see what they come up with," says Gillespie, about Romney, referring to Romney waiting for someone else to do something, which he will then laud or condemn, because LEADERSHIP.

Wallace wants to know where does Romney specifically differ from Bush 43 on the economy. Gillespie says that Romney has a different stance on China's currency manipulation. He also has a stance on "entitlement reform" that's "different in nature" from Bush's. (How is it different? Gillespie won't say.) Gillespie says that the whole point is that Romney is different from Obama, but that's expected. They are RUNNING AGAINST EACH OTHER. Gillespie is made by Wallace to "get specific on taxes and spending," and Gillespie just says, that Romney is different.

Wallace shifts to Romney's terrible record as a job creator in Massachusetts. Gillespie just says he disagrees with the data, and he has got some data of his own that's different. Wallace says, "I think you're wrong." Gillespie is all, "No you're wrong." And I guess this is the whole Scott Walker technique, where you just go out and find some way of making the statistics look good and shove it down everyone's throats. Anyway, Wallace doesn't much care for this, and stands firm on Romney's 47th place finish, and gives Gillespie the side-eye during this monologue.

Wallace moves to the "public equity" argument that Romney is making about Solyndra, pointing out that while Romney was governor, he moved public money into private sector companies (including TWO solar companies that failed). Gillespie says that there's a difference! Other people made the decisions to invest in these places! Wallace argues that Romney had "sign off," and Gillespie contests that, saying that Romney said at the time that the state should not invest in private enterprise.

Wallace asks the question that immediately pops in my head: what about tax breaks and subsidies for private companies? What's really dumb about the latest talking point about "picking winners and losers" is that we pick winners and losers all the time! Even long before our beloved bank bailouts, we had made Big Oil the Big Winner Of All Time. And when Abacus Federal Savings Bank commits mortgage fraud? THEY LOSE. They lose despite the fact that Bank Of America perpetrates the same fraud on a massive scale. Bank of America WINS.

But I digress! The point is, yes, that's right, Chris Wallace. Gillespie says that Massachusetts is different, and Romney doesn't have control over all those investments. Wallace seems pretty unconvinced that this was all activity that Romney disapproved of.

Wallace moves to Romney's opposition to the auto industry rescue. Again, Wallace has done his homework, pointing out that the current Republican governor of Michigan supported the rescue and has pointed out that Romney's weird explanation for how it came to be that he simultaneously opposed and supported this rescue does not make sense -- Rommey says he wanted a "managed bankruptcy" and has insisted from time to time that what Obama did was not a managed bankruptcy, only to say on alternate weeks that it was a "managed bankruptcy" and that Romney will "take a lot of credit for it."

There's only one salient difference between Romney and Obama's position -- Romney seems to think that private money should have been used and was available to manage the bankruptcy. The White House position was that private money would have OBVIOUSLY been preferable, but there was, as you could imagine, nobody who was particularly hot to pony up the scratch. So the federal government did, after the executives successfully jumped through a bunch of hoops. If we're being honest here, Romney played his hand back when it was still uncertain that the auto rescue would work, his gamble didn't pay off, and now he's having to spit a bunch of circuitous garbage about it to keep from simply admitting he was wrong.

It seems to me that he'd actually be better off if he just conceded the Detroit bailout to Obama, like Michigan's governor has, and just move to another point of critique. But in for a penny, I guess?

Gillespie doesn't have much of an answer, except to say that there was a debate and many people had different point of view. Gillespie says that a managed bankruptcy was Romney's idea. Wallace says, sure, but not with public money. Gillespie says that it's still a managed bankruptcy. Wallace counters, saying that doing it Romney's way would have actually led to a Chapter 7 liquidation. And around and around. "I understand that is an opinion," Gillespie says. He says that Romney's "belief" is that a private bailout would have been better. He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

Gillespie eventually gets around to being slightly more honest -- Romney believes that the bondholders who made terrible investments in these companies should have been bailed out ahead of the middle class people who built the cars. That's really the only worthwhile thing to remember from this discussion.

Wallace asks if it's true that the Obama campaign is not as good as Romney thought at one point, and Gillespie says, duh, Romney is going to win, and win easily.

What happens if Scott Walker wins? Does Romney win Wisconsin? Gillespie says that the recall is "about Wisconsin" and "at the end of the day" he doesn't know if it will translate to a win in the election. He is pretty sure that the Great Lakes are moving in a more conservative direction, and he thinks unions are "greedy." So there's that, then!

We talked about the Wisconsin Recall in our Friday wrap-up, and as we said, we think there are some fundamentals involved that will make it hard for Tom Barrett to win. But this part is the most important thing to take away from Wisconsin:

Maybe we have to admit that the GOP's experiment worked: Let's remember that Walker was one of many Republican governors who executed a cynical post-recession plan: with America's middle class feeling high anxiety and facing extreme economic dislocation after the financial crash, Walker successfully managed to get all of that populist anger redirected away from the Wall Streeters who'd caused the crash. Instead, he got the members of the middle class at each others' throats, turning that anger and angst into a battle between all the have-nots over who had more of a shrinking portion of pie. We've since seen a video unearthed about Walker's intention to wedge private and public sector unions from one another, but will that be the antidote to the widespread poison?

Post-crash, it was really important for ordinary people to stick together, and in Wisconsin, Walker managed to create a toxic divide between the people at the bottom of the economic totem pole. And that's why it's going to suck to be in the lower or middle class in Wisconsin for a good long while.

Okay, now, here's Steve Rattner, to defend Obama. He says that Obama inherited a terrible economy. He says that the bulk of the job losses that took place during the Obama term happened pre-stimulus and since then things have been better. All well and good, but job growth hasn't kept up with monthly additions to the labor force in quite some time. I shouldn't be surprised if you could count the months we successfully did so in the 21st century on one hand.

Rattner says that nobody is happy with the rate of job growth. (You think?) But we wouldn't be doing as well as we are doing without the Obama policies.

Wallace wants to know if those Obama policies just haven't added to the debt, without doing much beyond earning us anemic growth and an 8.3% unemployment rate. Rattner says that the important thing is to think, "Compared to what?" Well, it would be nice to have a window into the sad America that got John McCain's pro-cyclical austerity plan. Though actually, that window is called "Europe" and if you look at it today you'll see they are having a "Diamond Jubilee" which sounds awfully posh!

Rattner says that Marc Zandi and Alan Blinder both totally love the stimulus, and it's been amply studied and approved of. He also points out that there was bipartisan agreement on extending the Bush-era tax cuts, way at the beginning of the Obama term, so it's on everyone.

How do you explain the way job growth was better two months ago? Rattner doesn't have an answer to that, beyond the fact that there seems to be a spring slowdown every year now.

Wallace asks, How seriously is the threat of another recession, and what about "taxmageddon?" Rattner says that the probability of another recession is quite low, but the reason that growth remains anemic is because we have sectors that haven't been restored in our economy yet -- government and housing and finance (the problem with the financial sector, is that all the big banks are pretending to be solvent).

If something bad happens in Europe, Rattner concedes, we could have another recession. Well, why worry, then? God, is there anything more firm and stable than the Eurozone right now? Oh, hey, look! A sofa cushion made from Faberge Eggs! Looks comfortable!

As for "taxmageddon?" Rattner says, "It would be great if everyone could get together early on a plan." Yes! That would be GREAT. I mean, let's form a Super DUPER Committee to decide on what sandwiches will be served at the "taxmageddon early planning committee meeting." OH WHAT'S THAT? Oh, sorry folks, I hear the Super Duper Sandwich Committee got bogged down in their own crap and now Moody's had downgraded our credit rating to "Go Get Stuffed."

Why is the president always bashing Wall Street? Rattner insists that he's "found the right balance." I'll say! No one has been punished for destroying the economy, and all the banks got to buy lobbyists to water down Dodd-Frank with their taxpayer bailout money. That's a pretty big win for Wall Street, on balance.

Rattner says that Obama spent "three years in the trenches" fighting the ad economy, and that he deserves credit for having done so, alongside whatever "business experience" Romney has had.

Rattner says, on the deficit, that while no one disagrees that the deficit is too high, it should remain high until there is an economic recovery, after whick, paring down to the lean and mean won't be such a shock to the economy. He says Romney has no plan to pay for his proposed tax cuts, and would end Medicare by signing onto Paul Ryan's plan, which is a plan to stop paying for Medicare entirely by allowing the premium support/voucher given to recipients to lag further and further behind the growing cost of healthcare, until having it isn't worth having anymore. (It is like using "Disney dollars" for health insurance.)

But how specific has Obama been on entitlements? "I do not think he has been specific," Rattner says. Wallace is all O RLY? And Rattner says, "Well, I think this has only been a ripe issue in the last year or so." No, dude. Like it or not, it's been a "ripe issue" forever.

Wallace is all EYE ROLL, COME ON. Rattner reroutes his strategy: health care, stimulus, financial reform, were all more immediately important in 2009 than entitlements.

Wallace says that the "Ryan plan has been changed and is now a compromise with Ron Wyden." Hold on, there, chief. That is an idea that's been talked about but no one has presented it as a bill. It's all theoretical, up in the air, and I suggest that Ryan is using poor Mr. Wyden as a smokescreen. Rattner agrees with me: "I think it's a little bit of a Trojan horse, that plan."

Wallace points out that Rattner seems to nominally agree with Romney in that the government should not "pick winners and losers," and that Rattner even said so, on NPR this week. WHATCHA GOT TO SAY, RATTNER? He says: whatever, Romney did that stuff too, is the point. He says that the government "has a role to play" in directing energy initiatives and that it's not something the Obama administration invented. Wallace says, "But he embraced it." Rattner says, sure, but Solyndra was not a "political decision."

Rattner concludes by saying Gillespie's take on the auto rescue was complete nonsense, and that there's nothing hypothetical about there being no private capital available for a managed bankruptcy, "that is a fact." And it's a fact that everyone recognized back in the Bush administration. Rattner tells Wallace he had it right, that the alternative to a government intervention was liquidation and layoffs. (It would have been nice, though, if Rattner had mentioned the job-losses lower on the supply chain, because that's everyone's local economy taking a cricket bat to the face.)

And the third-string Fox panels keep on coming. Today we have Juan Williams matching off against A.B. Stoddard, Chip Saltsman, and David Brody. This could get bloodbathy!

This has become my bad habit as a recapper -- I lean heavy on the TiVo pause for the first hour of watching and then it's 11:07 and I'm like, "Wow. I can't believe I invested so much in Ed Gillespie and Steve Rattner!" So, now I start giving everyone short shrift for the next hour. That okay with everyone? It's just panels. And not particularly good ones, either.

Anyway: the horsey race! How is that going? Saltsman says that the Obama campaign is terrible and that everyone who thought they were going to cruise to re-election, but no. Wallace says that it was also a terrible gaffe for Anna Wintour to host a fundraiser for Obama, and honestly...Anna Wintour, I just can't even. But Anna Wintour is, at least, not a Birther-mad scalp-wisp farmer like the Romney analogue, Donald Trump. Juan Williams can make this obvious point, but he doesn't because he's an idiot.

Brody says that the Obama campaign has an opportunity to keep reminding voters that Romney doesn't connect with voters, and that this is a more fertile attack than bringing up Bain specifically, or his Massaschusetts record (which, to be fair, includes a health care reform that the Obama administration borrowed). Brody says there's a whole huge narrative to be constructed about Romney's inability to converse and connect with ordinary people.

AB Stoddard says that it is time for the Obama team to panic and she's wrong: this is a low-engagement period of the election, and the stuff that both candidates are doing right now will be largely forgotten by the end of the summer. Frankly, this is the best time to make mistakes. This is a rehearsal for the high-engagement part of the election season that comes later. (Fundamentally, what matters right now isn't what the candidates do, it's what the economy does.) Stoddard eventually gets back to that, but there's no real reason to worry about anything else. The "messaging" from the campaigns in May is utterly irrelevant.

Saltsman sort of understands this: that the Obama campaign were just taking some ideas out for a walk, and that in the coming weeks they'll take what they've learned and come up with something specific to do or say at summer's end. Williams predicts there will be some sort of "stick with us" and "don't change horses in midstream."

Moving to the Wisconsin recall election. Wallace notices that there hasn't been a lot of discussion about collective bargaining of late. Williams says that the issue wasn't an effective one for Barrett, but it's more accurate to say that Barrett isn't really an effective leader on the issues that animated to anxiety in Wisconsin in the first place. Williams notes this, adding that he still thinks that the liberal side of Wisconsin has been animated, at the very least. Saltsman disagrees, saying that labor overplayed their hand and now the national Dems are skittish. (National Democrats being skittish is like saying cats are meowy.)

Brody says that Wisconsin should probably be seen as a sign of Tea Party strength against Unions. And that's sort of what I was saying -- the Walker victory isn't an electoral victory or a victory over a recall election. He got various groups of poor people fighting with each other. That's the sort of condition you need to get, say, the Paul Ryan Hunger Games budget passed.

THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW

Okay, today at the genius bar Chris Matthews is joined by John Heilemann, Andrea Mitchell, Katty Kay, and Andrew Sullivan.

Is unemployment so bad that Romney could win without being particularly well-liked? Honestly, sure, why not? But let's hear what all these other people have to say, I guess. Heilemann says it's possible, and that while the Obama team continually points to the likeability factors they routinely win, the economy remains a millstone. Meanwhile, he notes that the Romney team isn't even trying to pretend that Romney's problem can be fixed. Romney is definitely going to be America's first post-conviction candidate.

Mitchell says that the jobs report is terrible, no silver lining, and that's bad. "Just so bad!" she says, referring to the electoral conditions of a guy who will be affluent and well-liked whether he beats Romney or not.

Katty Kay, at the very least, uses the word "succour." Sullivan, at least, thinks that people need to ask what Romney would do, as president, and whether or not it differs in any way from Bush's. Sullivan says that Obama's prescriptions are still more popular in the public eye than Romney's.

But all of this ignores what I think Romney would actually DO as President. And I think that Romney is a Keynesian and the GOP like running big deficits, and so what I see happening is that Romney asks Congress to do the same things Obama asked, only a GOP led Congress says yes instead of no, the economy improves, the GOP gets the credit and they use their reputation as saviors to win a few more elections. I don't honestly believe that the GOP was all that against the stuff Obama's suggested these past four years, it was just very important that Obama not get credit for doing anything good.

Kay notes that it's still a tough arena for Obama to make the argument: "Things would be even worse if I hadn't done what I've done." Heilemann, however, says that all of the various attacks of the past few months have led to an overarching idea that the Obama campaign intends to use against Romney, "He's never been in it for you." Heilemann says that where FDR and JFK were rich guys who made themselves look like they cared about normal people, Romney has a problem in that area.

All of Chris Matthews' friends think that Obama will be held responsible for negative attacks on Romney. (No one held him particularly responsible for negative attacks on McCain, though!)

I often wonder what you are supposed to do, in politics, if you are never allowed to criticize your opponent! It's like the argument is that Obama should go out and say, "Guys, Romney is awesome and I wouldn't be put out if you wanted this wonderful guy to be President," and than everyone says, "Wow, that is so self-sacrificing" and they all vote for Obama. (And then Obama is all, "WTF, I actually wanted out of this job! I've been elbow deep in y'alls flaming turd sandwich and now I can't even critique the mofeaux who wants to back up the industrial strength fecal folder? I was being sincere! Get me the hell out of here!")

At least that's what happens in the extremely cynical sitcom I am writing about America in its final years on earth.

Back to Heilemann, who says that the President also has to activate his base, and his base believes that Obama has "a right to fight back."

Can Obama make Romney "scary?" Sullivan says that Obama can make the policies scary, and that would allow people to start having a negative impression of Romney without making it ABOUT Romney. Kay thinks this will work with woman and Hispanics. Heilemann says that if Obama can make "Romney own the Republican brand," then it will work even beyond those groups.

Now, for whatever reason, we're going to talk about Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee. And we'll have some clips of Helen Mirren playing Liz, so that's nice.

Anyway, corgis and swans, corgis and swans. This is life. We are all sometimes fluffy and adorable and sitting on the laps of our loved ones, and other times we are angry and squawking and unreasonable and ruining other people's picnics in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Oh, wow. This show really is going to talk about the Diamond Jubilee? Okay. Well. Kay says that Brits love Liz because she's steady and calm and not some mood-swinging psychopath. She also "makes the British people feel special" and eccentric. Sullivan says in the U.K., the monarchy is a place where women have historically shined. He also makes an interesting argument that the benefit of monarchy is that you can channel all of your nationalism into this family and this set of symbols, and in doing so, you get less polarization.

And now John Heileman is quoting the Sex Pistols, which gives me a great opportunity to embed the video:

Things Chris Matthews does not know include: Heilemann says John Edwards is not going to be retried, but the likelihood of him returning to politics is as likely as him "ending up in a sanitarium." Obama still feels he can cut a deal with Putin, says Mitchell, but Russia's involvement in Syria points to a re-emergence of the adversarial relationship (and that maybe Romney was right to make Russia into the Big Bad). Kay suggests that Rob Portman will be painted as the man "who turned surpluses into deficits" if he is picked as Veep. (It is not possible that Matthews did not know this.) Finally, Sullivan says that Cardinal Dolan is in trouble because he authorized payoffs to priest-rapists.

Finally, will Obama be risking any trouble by "pointing to George W. Bush," as the campaign goes on? Heilemann suggests that he is really "pointing to the financial crisis" and they want to remind people of the depth of the hole he inherited. Kay says that it's unlikely we'll have Obama and Bush in the same room together again, like they were this week. Sullivan says, "It is Bush's fault. All of it is."

MEET THE PRESS

Ahh, Meet The Press time. This actually allows me the excuse to embed another Sex Pistols classic:

Meet The Press is SO CONCERNED ABOUT THE ECONOMY, Y'ALL. It really could have an enormously slight effect on the rich and powerful people who sometimes live in Washington! Today's surrogate battle features Deval Patrick and John Kasich. And then there will be interminable paneling with Alex Castellanos, Kevin Madden, Kasim Reed, and Neera Tanden. And finally, Bill Bradley will be here, to promote a book.

Ha, ha. David Gregory! The dullest man in the toolshed sets the tone straightaway, noting how TERRIBLE it must have been for the Obama campaign that the stock market fell on Friday. Reflects so poorly on them! What I guess they don't get any credit for is that before Friday's teetering, the stock market had returned to its pre-recession height.

Okay. Let's see if the last 58 minutes of this show are worth not using a cats paw and some ammonia to destroy my eyes once and for all.

We'll start with Deval Patrick and John Kasich, yelling at each other, for freedom. (Patrick and Kasich do, at one point, suggest that they might just turn on David Gregory, together, to which I say, GOD SPEED YOU, GENTLEMEN.)

Deval Patrick: "Isn't it funny that we talk about the economy in political terms...without talking about the impact working people and families and the communities they live in?"

BOOM, thank you, Deval Patrick. That will be the moment this show peaks, however, he moves right to saying that we need to pass the Jobs Act and Gregory asks the obvious question, "And that's the silver bullet, how?"

Kasich says that he agrees that the jobs numbers are terrible, and that it is about families. Gregory is all: "NO NO I WANT TO HAVE THE HORSEY RACE." And so Kasich unpacks the "UNCERTAINTY" talking points and somewhere, Barry Ritholtz is rolling his eyes.

Patrick says that the "uncertainty" has to do with GOP obstruction, and that the Congress has taken political advantage from stifling legislative action. Kasich says pooh-pooh, Obama needs to do more to "lead" and get Congress to do things. (Kasich then provides an example of what Obama could do, and it boils down to "just pass lots of Paul Ryan stuff.")

Patrick says that the president has "bucked the trend" and created jobs against both headwinds and a hostile Congress, and that Romney failed while "riding the trend." Kasich says, no, Romney created jobs. And now he's decrying the entire "attacking Romney's Massachusetts record thing." I'm guessing that Kasich would have preferred to come on teevee and not have to defend that record?

Kasich says that the "whole town is dysfunctional" and "both sides do it" and blah blah. Oh, Lord, now he is off and running about how he won't vote for anyone for President who hasn't been a business executive. I mean, business executives have done a pretty lousy job over the last decade. I find it laughable that Kasich is basically saying that Angelo Mozilo and Jamie Dimon have the stuff to run a nation.

Patrick says that we have "sclerotic" politics in DC. Sigh. These two guys are just both here to spit platitudes about "Beltway culture" while pretending that neither benefit from it.

Patrick is now trying unspinning the spin on Bain that got Team Obama Re-Elect all spun out. It's pretty hard for Obama to continue to simultaneously woo private equity donors while also making hay with Romney's record at Bain. Sorry! You have to pick one! This whole, "Private equity is great, and Romney's business career was sterling, but he was also an awful unfeeling weirdo bastard" argument feels like oh, I see the wind is westerly now, so the hawk is handsaw, BOO HANDSAW.

Anyway, Kasich wants everything to be deregulated, forever. He is also "not here to criticize the auto bailout." Gregory really wants him to, though! Kasich is also saying that Ohio is doing great because things are stable, which sort of undermines his whole "blah, boo, uncertainty" argument of 45 seconds ago.

I can basically sum up the next five minutes by saying that Deval Patrick thinks Obama is awesome and yay, auto bailouts. Kasich says that it was nice that Obama said he would help with his state's tornadoes, but BOOOO, UNCERTAINTY. But both guys don't hate government! And now they are bro-ing out and touching each other's hands.

More terrific surprises, for viewers of this crap. Kasich likes Scott Walker. Patrick likes Elizabeth Warren. Kasich thinks Walker is going to win. Patrick thinks Warren is going to win. And they make some jokes, about Lebron James. Because it's all about the working people, in their communities, who are unemployed.

Okay now it's time to panel ourselves to death with Castellanos, Tanden, Reed, and Madden.

Does Reed think that the jobs report was a "low moment" that will benefit Romney? Reed says no, and the Romney is terrible, and ha ha, remember that time he put out an iPhone app that spelled "America" wrong? That is all a symbol of how terrible Romney is, and so here's five solid minutes of Grade-A surrogacy. Who's up?

Kevin Madden is up, and he thinks Romney is awesome, of course. Especially at jobs. But really, he's just so great at "changing the culture" and "transforming malfunctioning organizations," and everyone is so let down that Obama did manage to change the culture of Washington.

If anything, I think Obama spent way too much time trying to change the culture...so much so that, for example, he was still trying to pander to Chuck Grassley on health care reform, even while Grassley was telling reporters, "Ha, ha, Obama thinks I am going to compromise with him, LOL." Washington's culture is not going to get changed unless we manage to unleash some sort of plague.

Neera Tanden says that Americans want a "real debate on the policies" and Obama wants to have that debate, and Romney wants Bush administration stuff. And did you hear that Romney's got a few Solyndras of his own? (Yes. We already covered it.)

Gregory asks Alex Castellanos to "be more counterintuitive." Anything to make this solid, four-way talking point regurgitation interesting, I guess! Castellanos says that Obama is making a mistake by campaigning against Romney, and now he's got to be "Moses" and lead people to the "Promised Land." He also thinks it was pretty dumb to have David Axelrod lead a rally, and I have to say I agree -- Axelrod's charms are the sort that lose their impact if he has to raise his voice. He is the "quiet room political fixer," not the man at the barricades, and it looked weird to have him out there.

Kasim Reed says that the Bain Capital attacks are not new, because Ted Kennedy used them. Note: this doesn't mean that these attacks are always going to be successful, though! Mitt Romney has had decades to figure out how to defuse those attacks. Madden sort of makes this point by not making it -- he says, that Democrats are still talking, in 2012, about things that mattered decades ago. That's the "Bain attack defuser" right there.

"Governor Romney," Madden says, "has talked very acutely about what he would do to move the country forward." Bzzzzzt. Incorrect, Kevin. This is something that Peggy Noonan actually got right:

Mr. Romney has to give us a plan. He has to tell us his priorities. To lead is to prioritize, to choose: "We will take this path, at this speed, toward this end." He hasn't done this yet. He told me last week of some immediate intentions: repeal ObamaCare, and move boldly to unleash America's energy resources—he called them "newly discovered and extraordinary."

Fine. But afterward I realized these issues are immediately and personally associated with President Obama. They are not associated with the president I suspect Mr. Romney really has on his mind, George W. Bush.

Mr. Romney should be talking about the big things, taxing and spending, and offering a plan on both, a hierarchal declaration of needs. But taxes and spending are issues that are associated with Mr. Bush, and not happily. That, I suspect, is a reason Mr. Romney avoids addressing them at length or in a way that's easily understood. He doesn't want the Obama campaign to accuse him of being "just more Bush," of peddling the same medicine that helped make us sick. That was Ronald Reagan's 1984 charge against Walter Mondale, that all he offered was the empty, warmed-over liberalism of the past.

The Romney camp doesn't want to be accused of warmed-over Bushism. So they shy away from clarity on central issues. But you can't avoid central issues. If you try, your candidacy and message will be robbed of vividness, made a blur.

Right now, the only thing Romney has done "acutely" is put off having to take a firm stand on anything. It may be that ultimately, he just wants to be Grover Norquist's amanuensis. Or, maybe he shows up for work and suddenly he has a set of very "Massachusetts moderate" policies and he unites the country in the middle after staring down the House GOP's ragtag collection of freaks and geeks. (Believe me: this is John Boehner's wet dream.) But the salient point is this, Romney is actually, at the moment, verya adroitly NOT doing the thing Kevin Madden wants us to believe he is doing. LOL, Kevin, nice try, but come on.

Now we have a long and valueless colloquy about who is being more like George Bush and who is being less like Bill Clinton.

Castellanos seems to think that the "Obama economy" is tax money, driving top-down job growth, and if that was true, we'd see much less private sector job growth and much less private sector profitability and much more public sector job growth in the past three years. But, in fact, the facts invert this:

Oh, and we've discussed how amazing corporate profits have been only about a half a billion times. Turns out, all of this can happen without recovery actually touching the people who need it the most. Lots of arguments to be had there, but "OMGZ SOCIALISM" is not one of them.

The discussion continues, though. Obama partisans say Obama is awesome and will continue to improve things. Romney partisans say that nothing Obama has done works. Gregory sort of acts like all these answers are surprising. All of his statements seem rooted in the notion that he did not expect a conversation between Kasim Reed, Neera Tanden, Alex Castellanos, and Kevin Madden to go like this.

This was an actual topic for discussion: Will Romney do something stupid like pick Palin as his vice-president. Castellanos actually does a good job to make the conversation interesting. Castellanos says that picking Rob Portman brings bad Bush mojo, but he'll still pick someone boring and heavily-vetted like Bobby Jindal. Tanden says that Romney picks Paul Ryan as the vice-president, it will give Democrats an opportunity to tie Romney to all of Ryan's unpopular ideas.

By the way, Paul Ryan will not be Romney's vice president, unless Paul Ryan hits his head very hard on something and becomes insane. Why on earth would anyone think that Ryan is stupid enough to give up all of the power he currently holds, as the holder of a very easy to defend House seat, to become the Seamus of Mitt Romney's White House? It is just the most preposterous idea I've ever heard. Anyone who has Paul Ryan on their shortlists for vice president just hasn't thought it through.

David Gregory and the panel are all now reflecting on how nice Obama and Bush were to each other during the portrait hanging ceremony in the White House, and gosh why can't Washington always be like that? Oh, I don't know, guys. Maybe it's because there is PRECISELY NOTHING AT STAKE when Bush comes to town to hang a portrait. Maybe you guys shouldn't be all amazed and capable of being knocked into a sentimental reverie when it turns out that partisans can get along when the only thing to worry about is a portrait being hung.

Will there be a second act for John Edwards? No. And no one thinks so. OMG, we have bipartisan comity on another no-stakes matter! Maybe there is a trend emerging.

Two minutes on Donald Trump conclude the panel. That's followed by five minutes of Bill Bradley shilling his book, and I'm not particularly interested in recapping that, Go by his book, if you have already read all other books and you life depends on reading another book, I guess.

Okay, well, that is a wrap on this Sunday's long dark elevensies of the soul. Thanks to everyone who joined us today. I've got a reall good feeling about this first week in June, folks, so I hope it proves to be seven days that all of you can enjoy. (If it's not, let me know, and I'll file the appropriate complaints on your behalf!)

As she did last week, Guardian columnist Ana Marie Cox joins me today for a discussion of the Politico story that has everyone picking ants from their pants. This week, we learn that that the GOP and the Romney campaign don't like The New York Times or the Washington Post, because of bias. Uhm ... "breaking," I guess?

Ana Marie Cox: Hello, again!

Jason Linkins: Thank you for joining me again. So, you know, after we did our little spit-take on that Allen/VandeHei joint from last week, there were lots of people (well our pal @delrayser, anyway) who wanted us to keep talking about the Politico feature stories that capture our imagination. By which I mean, they LITERALLY grab our imagination and imprison it, in hell.

Ana Marie: Where we are joined by the editorial staff of Politico, ironically. And I don't mean "ironically joined by them," like with them winking at us. Though they may do that, too.

Jason: True enough. So today, we have a long story, that is -- I guess? -- about how Republicans do not care for The New York Times, and also the Washington Post, because: BIAS. [As Michael Calderone reported earlier today, the Times and the Post reject the implication. As expected.] Which I didn't think was a new story, frankly. I think what is "new" here is that Politico is sending out some sub-rosa valentine to the Romney campaign. "Bring us your grievances, please." At least that's how many are interpreting it, among other uncharitable but not ill-founded interpretations.

Ana Marie: This must be different than the WHITE HOUSE MIND MELD that Mike Allen sometimes channels. But I would also quibble with the valentine being a sign of a new relationship. It is simply a new valentine. "HAPPY OFFICIAL NOMINATION GUYS HERE'S A REMINDER OF OUR ABILITY TO REPEAT YOUR MESSAGE. VERBATIM. FOREVER."

Jason: Yes, I think that's a fairer way of interpreting it. Still, there are things that I find strange about Politico's take. Start with their assertion that Ann Romney's equestrian adventures got more media attention, thanks to The New York Times, than Barack Obama's adventures with the "Choom Gang," thanks to the Washington Post, which put that story on page A6 or whatever, instead of going full "CHOOM OMGZ" on the front page. First up: did Ann Romney's horseplay get more media attention? This is the first I've heard of this story. I feel no urge or compulsion to read about this, even now. But the "Choom Gang" story was EVERYWHERE last week. That story went crazy viral.

Ana Marie: Also I'd point out that Obama was the first person to talk about Obama's drug use. Have the Romneys been touting Ann's horseyness? (By which I mean simply riding horses. Ann Romney herself is quite attractive in the facial region.) None of this is to say the horse tale should have been on the front page. We can disagree with the Times' news-sense. I do all the time! Like, when they told us Iraq had WMDs! But I think it's fair to say that the Romney story's placement was probably not the result of mischievous collusion with the Obama campaign.

Jason: As for the NYT's "michievous collusion with the Obama administration," we can see that in the recent story about his "kill list" (which maybe didn't play the way the administration had hoped, among liberals).

Ana Marie: More likely, a lot of Times readers just ride horses? Or have opinions about people that do.

Jason: That brings up an interesting point, made by Dave Weigel last week, when he recalled that the last time Obama was semi-scandalized by his past drug use, the accusation was that he was exaggerating his druggy past for dramatic effect, and that it was hard to believe he was that much of a weed-head. The paper that made this accusation? The New York Times. Now, we learn that he was a total cheeba-fiend, and the problem is that we've not learned it HARD ENOUGH.

Ana Marie: Also, and this may get me in trouble, but it's not like Obama is spending $200k* on weed TODAY, right NOW. (*That was just on one horse, right? The numbers were so high they felt made up, so I might be getting them wrong.)

Jason: Not only is Obama not spending that much money on weed, he's been fairly antithetical to the interests of other would-be Choom Gangs, all across the nation. He basically treats pro-legalization advocacy like a silly joke. But I don't see, say, Silvestre Reyes laughing!

Ana Marie: I would point out that, right now, as we chat, Obama and George Bush are making jokes with each other at the unveiling of the Bush presidential portrait. Here's the thing: I am not sure they would necessarily find a lot to disagree about.

Jason: No, I think those two are pretty chill about overarching, unimpeded executive power. Maybe David Yoo is all, "Wow, now this really is too bloodthirsty!"

Ana Marie: Obama is killing maybe-terrorists, not joints. Both still extra-legal!

Jason: Ha, yes. "Intercepted!" he yells, to innocent bystanders in Pakistan.

Ana Marie: Smoking up vans, still, but with drones! But yes, one of things that amuses me on a consistent basis is the conviction on the right that Obama is somehow *too liberal* for the vast majority of Americans. He is actually probably just about right, on the spectrum of what voters actually believe. On gay marriage, even.

Jason: I'd agree with that. As for the Washington Post, the accusation is this: the post played up Jason Horowitz's reportage of Romney's life at Cranbrook -- especially his brief adventures as a coiffeur -- while David Maraniss' story did not receive the same real estate, in terms of where it was placed on dead trees.

Ana Marie: For a news organization that has so fully embraced social media as the platform of choice, that is a kind of willfully ignorant analysis that Politico is making.

Jason: Isn't it, though? It's getting really hard to keep bitching about A1 versus A12 these days, when in the end, any hot scoop gets HuffPosted or BuzzFed or Memeorandumbed.

Ana Marie: Not to mention Twittified. Facebooked. Put in Mike Allen's ridiculously influential tip sheet.

Jason: I also sort of wonder if David Maraniss necessarily desired the entirety of his book to be boiled down into a bunch a weed comedy vignettes. I could easily see him saying, "Well, run what you have to run, but if you could not make a huge obscene deal about it, because I have this whole entire book I'm trying to sell."

Ana Marie: Or even, "I have this pride I'm trying to keep intact."

Jason: This is something about Maraniss that even Politico once asserted. These are their own words: "Maraniss is a biographer in search of real insight, not Drudge links or Colbert appearances, a writer and researcher who can’t be dismissed as a cheap hack or fortune hunter, a label Obama’s aides hang on lesser writers with regularity. If ever anyone could find the strand that unravels the sweater, it’s Maraniss, a Washington Post associate editor who defies the news cycle."

Now they are arguing that Romney has a case, in the way the Post didn't serve Maraniss up explicitly for Matt Drudge and Stephen Colbert. If the Post wants to avoid bias, it really should have done more to present Maraniss' reporting as the work of a cheap hack.

Ana Marie: How did Politico present Maraniss' reporting, by the way? I'm sure they treated the Choom Gang story with polite disdain.

Jason: Well, they got onto the Maraniss biography with a bunch of weird concern-troll articles about the "composite characters" that Obama used in his own autobiography, to flesh out his romantic life. They sort of wanted to make that into a big deal -- "Obama never revealed that these were composite characters!" Only this led to immediate mockery when it was pointed out that this was, in fact, revealed, in a publisher's note at the beginning of Obama's book. That led to a series of hack semi-corrections designed to preserve their reasoning against the simple fact that their premise was complete crap. Eventually, I had Glenn Thrush intimating at me on Twitter that I was ignoring some larger issues about memoirs. I didn't think I was, though! So I went out for drinks with a pal of mine who used to work in publishing, and she told me that Politico's concern was "to laugh." As she explained, if memoir writers did NOT use composite characters, then every memoir would be long and disjointed and unpleasant to read. (I am quite sure that I am the only person who covered that dust-up who actually talked to someone in publishing.)

Ana Marie: OH I REMEMBER THAT. The time when Politico took up a Drudge-baiting story only to have it crumble into a pile of "meh." There was that time.

Jason: I think that it was basically an attempt to sort of slide Mike Daisey's silhouette over the Obama autobiographies.

Ana Marie: When I heard about the "composite character" scandal, my thought was "Huh, those books came out how many years ago? Could Hillary's people really have missed that? The team that tried to make an issue of his kindergarten aspirations?"

Jason: Yes! That was a story about Obama that got covered with an air of disdain.

Ana Marie: I wonder what Hillary staffers think when they hear the right say Obama has not been "properly vetted." I think they tend to bang their head against the wall because the issue isn't whether or not people know stuff about Obama, it's whether they *care.*

Jason: Now, it's not exactly news that the Romney campaign doesn't like The New York Times, and would appreciate it if they'd run more "probing, sneering stories" -- to use Ari Fleischer's words -- about Obama. Personally, I think we got a lot of probing stories in 2008. Maybe they weren't sneering enough! But if Romney has a good case, it's to be made in the way the Times occasionally covered John McCain. I'm thinking of their weird election year correction, about how they were no longer going to call McCain a "fighter pilot." And I'm especially thinking of the Vicki Iseman story, which -- I'm sure you know -- is a story that I thought was straight up journalistic malpractice.

Ana Marie: Yes. Really, it's hard to find people who are straight-up fans of the NYT on either side. I don't, by the way, buy into the journalistic canard that having critics on both sides means you're "doing something right." It often means you're doing a lot of things wrong.

Jason: I think it's strange to think that the "Choom Gang" story should have done MORE damage to Obama, and if it had been put on the front page, it would have been a "sneering" story. The fact is, if you think drug use is a disqualifer, there's an obvious choice in this election: Mitt Romney, whose vices include ... what -- chocolate milk? Meanwhile, lots of people smoke weed. Lots of people do college stuff, in college. Those who would be turned off by Obama's "Choom Gang" exploits represented a sunk cost to him, politically, anyway. Find me the story where Obama held a guy down on the ground and went at him with scissors, and I'll say, "Run that sucker."

Ana Marie: I think the real criticism here may be that both the Romney story and the Choom Gang stories are probably not relevant to the presidential selection of a vast majority of Americans. I feel like we say that a lot. About political coverage.

Jason: Now and forever. Beyond that, what Romney maybe doesn't recognize (and what Politico, institutionally, would never admit) is that we're in the period of the election season where everyone's gone on vacation from this coverage. The American people are going to rejoin this moveable feast in late August. Peace out until then, they say, to the political media. Which means that Romney got a big break from his haircut story running when it did. And he's going to get a big break that all of his activity with Donald Trump is happening in May. He'll squeeze Trump for the cash he can garner, weather his clownish escapades, and by the time normal human Americans get back into political news, Trump will be a forgotten story. Unless, of course, Trump insists on being otherwise. And if that happens, who knows, maybe we'll learn that Eric Fehrnstrom has a "kill list" of his own.

What normal human Americans are going to fixate on, for the next few months, is their own economic fortunes. (Political science proves this!) And chances are, when everyone returns to the conversation, Romney will have his shot at making the argument he wants to make about the economy. And we'll hear Obama's defense. The stories of springtime are likely to be far from the minds of voters. And frankly, if the Romney campaign gets its wish and the Times runs a bunch of "sneering" stories about Obama, it's going to keep the conversation away from where Romney wants it.

Ana Marie: They will say it themselves: "Every day we are not talking about the economy is a losing day for us." Arguably, it's a losing day for voters as well.

Jason: Call me crazy, but there's a good chance that come September, Team Romney is going to be quoting Paul Krugman an awful lot. Albeit selectively. I want to close by pointing out that Politico has also done that thing where it has a Politico EXCLUSIVE about all the news it made, today. Shove your face down our meta-hole, America, and suck deeply!

Ana Marie: Oh, the synergy!

[Ana Marie and I would also urge you to read John Cook's take on the matter, which implies that there is, perhaps, some vestige of humanity within VandeHei and Allen that is crying out in warning that nobody should actually read Politico, if not a straight up cry for help in general.]

[Ana Marie Cox is the founding editor of Wonkette and current Guardian columnist. She is also on Twitter.]

As she did last week, Guardian columnist Ana Marie Cox joins me today for a discussion of the Politico story that has everyone picking ants from their pants. This week, we learn that that the GOP and the Romney campaign don't like The New York Times or the Washington Post, because of bias. Uhm ... "breaking," I guess?

Ana Marie Cox: Hello, again!

Jason Linkins: Thank you for joining me again. So, you know, after we did our little spit-take on that Allen/VandeHei joint from last week, there were lots of people (well our pal @delrayser, anyway) who wanted us to keep talking about the Politico feature stories that capture our imagination. By which I mean, they LITERALLY grab our imagination and imprison it, in hell.

Ana Marie: Where we are joined by the editorial staff of Politico, ironically. And I don't mean "ironically joined by them," like with them winking at us. Though they may do that, too.

Jason: True enough. So today, we have a long story, that is -- I guess? -- about how Republicans do not care for The New York Times, and also the Washington Post, because: BIAS. [As Michael Calderone reported earlier today, the Times and the Post reject the implication. As expected.] Which I didn't think was a new story, frankly. I think what is "new" here is that Politico is sending out some sub-rosa valentine to the Romney campaign. "Bring us your grievances, please." At least that's how many are interpreting it, among other uncharitable but not ill-founded interpretations.

Ana Marie: This must be different than the WHITE HOUSE MIND MELD that Mike Allen sometimes channels. But I would also quibble with the valentine being a sign of a new relationship. It is simply a new valentine. "HAPPY OFFICIAL NOMINATION GUYS HERE'S A REMINDER OF OUR ABILITY TO REPEAT YOUR MESSAGE. VERBATIM. FOREVER."

Jason: Yes, I think that's a fairer way of interpreting it. Still, there are things that I find strange about Politico's take. Start with their assertion that Ann Romney's equestrian adventures got more media attention, thanks to The New York Times, than Barack Obama's adventures with the "Choom Gang," thanks to the Washington Post, which put that story on page A6 or whatever, instead of going full "CHOOM OMGZ" on the front page. First up: did Ann Romney's horseplay get more media attention? This is the first I've heard of this story. I feel no urge or compulsion to read about this, even now. But the "Choom Gang" story was EVERYWHERE last week. That story went crazy viral.

Ana Marie: Also I'd point out that Obama was the first person to talk about Obama's drug use. Have the Romneys been touting Ann's horseyness? (By which I mean simply riding horses. Ann Romney herself is quite attractive in the facial region.) None of this is to say the horse tale should have been on the front page. We can disagree with the Times' news-sense. I do all the time! Like, when they told us Iraq had WMDs! But I think it's fair to say that the Romney story's placement was probably not the result of mischievous collusion with the Obama campaign.

Jason: As for the NYT's "michievous collusion with the Obama administration," we can see that in the recent story about his "kill list" (which maybe didn't play the way the administration had hoped, among liberals).

Ana Marie: More likely, a lot of Times readers just ride horses? Or have opinions about people that do.

Jason: That brings up an interesting point, made by Dave Weigel last week, when he recalled that the last time Obama was semi-scandalized by his past drug use, the accusation was that he was exaggerating his druggy past for dramatic effect, and that it was hard to believe he was that much of a weed-head. The paper that made this accusation? The New York Times. Now, we learn that he was a total cheeba-fiend, and the problem is that we've not learned it HARD ENOUGH.

Ana Marie: Also, and this may get me in trouble, but it's not like Obama is spending $200k* on weed TODAY, right NOW. (*That was just on one horse, right? The numbers were so high they felt made up, so I might be getting them wrong.)

Jason: Not only is Obama not spending that much money on weed, he's been fairly antithetical to the interests of other would-be Choom Gangs, all across the nation. He basically treats pro-legalization advocacy like a silly joke. But I don't see, say, Silvestre Reyes laughing!

Ana Marie: I would point out that, right now, as we chat, Obama and George Bush are making jokes with each other at the unveiling of the Bush presidential portrait. Here's the thing: I am not sure they would necessarily find a lot to disagree about.

Jason: No, I think those two are pretty chill about overarching, unimpeded executive power. Maybe David Yoo is all, "Wow, now this really is too bloodthirsty!"

Ana Marie: Obama is killing maybe-terrorists, not joints. Both still extra-legal!

Jason: Ha, yes. "Intercepted!" he yells, to innocent bystanders in Pakistan.

Ana Marie: Smoking up vans, still, but with drones! But yes, one of things that amuses me on a consistent basis is the conviction on the right that Obama is somehow *too liberal* for the vast majority of Americans. He is actually probably just about right, on the spectrum of what voters actually believe. On gay marriage, even.

Jason: I'd agree with that. As for the Washington Post, the accusation is this: the post played up Jason Horowitz's reportage of Romney's life at Cranbrook -- especially his brief adventures as a coiffeur -- while David Maraniss' story did not receive the same real estate, in terms of where it was placed on dead trees.

Ana Marie: For a news organization that has so fully embraced social media as the platform of choice, that is a kind of willfully ignorant analysis that Politico is making.

Jason: Isn't it, though? It's getting really hard to keep bitching about A1 versus A12 these days, when in the end, any hot scoop gets HuffPosted or BuzzFed or Memeorandumbed.

Ana Marie: Not to mention Twittified. Facebooked. Put in Mike Allen's ridiculously influential tip sheet.

Jason: I also sort of wonder if David Maraniss necessarily desired the entirety of his book to be boiled down into a bunch a weed comedy vignettes. I could easily see him saying, "Well, run what you have to run, but if you could not make a huge obscene deal about it, because I have this whole entire book I'm trying to sell."

Ana Marie: Or even, "I have this pride I'm trying to keep intact."

Jason: This is something about Maraniss that even Politico once asserted. These are their own words: "Maraniss is a biographer in search of real insight, not Drudge links or Colbert appearances, a writer and researcher who can’t be dismissed as a cheap hack or fortune hunter, a label Obama’s aides hang on lesser writers with regularity. If ever anyone could find the strand that unravels the sweater, it’s Maraniss, a Washington Post associate editor who defies the news cycle."

Now they are arguing that Romney has a case, in the way the Post didn't serve Maraniss up explicitly for Matt Drudge and Stephen Colbert. If the Post wants to avoid bias, it really should have done more to present Maraniss' reporting as the work of a cheap hack.

Ana Marie: How did Politico present Maraniss' reporting, by the way? I'm sure they treated the Choom Gang story with polite disdain.

Jason: Well, they got onto the Maraniss biography with a bunch of weird concern-troll articles about the "composite characters" that Obama used in his own autobiography, to flesh out his romantic life. They sort of wanted to make that into a big deal -- "Obama never revealed that these were composite characters!" Only this led to immediate mockery when it was pointed out that this was, in fact, revealed, in a publisher's note at the beginning of Obama's book. That led to a series of hack semi-corrections designed to preserve their reasoning against the simple fact that their premise was complete crap. Eventually, I had Glenn Thrush intimating at me on Twitter that I was ignoring some larger issues about memoirs. I didn't think I was, though! So I went out for drinks with a pal of mine who used to work in publishing, and she told me that Politico's concern was "to laugh." As she explained, if memoir writers did NOT use composite characters, then every memoir would be long and disjointed and unpleasant to read. (I am quite sure that I am the only person who covered that dust-up who actually talked to someone in publishing.)

Ana Marie: OH I REMEMBER THAT. The time when Politico took up a Drudge-baiting story only to have it crumble into a pile of "meh." There was that time.

Jason: I think that it was basically an attempt to sort of slide Mike Daisey's silhouette over the Obama autobiographies.

Ana Marie: When I heard about the "composite character" scandal, my thought was "Huh, those books came out how many years ago? Could Hillary's people really have missed that? The team that tried to make an issue of his kindergarten aspirations?"

Jason: Yes! That was a story about Obama that got covered with an air of disdain.

Ana Marie: I wonder what Hillary staffers think when they hear the right say Obama has not been "properly vetted." I think they tend to bang their head against the wall because the issue isn't whether or not people know stuff about Obama, it's whether they *care.*

Jason: Now, it's not exactly news that the Romney campaign doesn't like The New York Times, and would appreciate it if they'd run more "probing, sneering stories" -- to use Ari Fleischer's words -- about Obama. Personally, I think we got a lot of probing stories in 2008. Maybe they weren't sneering enough! But if Romney has a good case, it's to be made in the way the Times occasionally covered John McCain. I'm thinking of their weird election year correction, about how they were no longer going to call McCain a "fighter pilot." And I'm especially thinking of the Vicki Iseman story, which -- I'm sure you know -- is a story that I thought was straight up journalistic malpractice.

Ana Marie: Yes. Really, it's hard to find people who are straight-up fans of the NYT on either side. I don't, by the way, buy into the journalistic canard that having critics on both sides means you're "doing something right." It often means you're doing a lot of things wrong.

Jason: I think it's strange to think that the "Choom Gang" story should have done MORE damage to Obama, and if it had been put on the front page, it would have been a "sneering" story. The fact is, if you think drug use is a disqualifer, there's an obvious choice in this election: Mitt Romney, whose vices include ... what -- chocolate milk? Meanwhile, lots of people smoke weed. Lots of people do college stuff, in college. Those who would be turned off by Obama's "Choom Gang" exploits represented a sunk cost to him, politically, anyway. Find me the story where Obama held a guy down on the ground and went at him with scissors, and I'll say, "Run that sucker."

Ana Marie: I think the real criticism here may be that both the Romney story and the Choom Gang stories are probably not relevant to the presidential selection of a vast majority of Americans. I feel like we say that a lot. About political coverage.

Jason: Now and forever. Beyond that, what Romney maybe doesn't recognize (and what Politico, institutionally, would never admit) is that we're in the period of the election season where everyone's gone on vacation from this coverage. The American people are going to rejoin this moveable feast in late August. Peace out until then, they say, to the political media. Which means that Romney got a big break from his haircut story running when it did. And he's going to get a big break that all of his activity with Donald Trump is happening in May. He'll squeeze Trump for the cash he can garner, weather his clownish escapades, and by the time normal human Americans get back into political news, Trump will be a forgotten story. Unless, of course, Trump insists on being otherwise. And if that happens, who knows, maybe we'll learn that Eric Fehrnstrom has a "kill list" of his own.

What normal human Americans are going to fixate on, for the next few months, is their own economic fortunes. (Political science proves this!) And chances are, when everyone returns to the conversation, Romney will have his shot at making the argument he wants to make about the economy. And we'll hear Obama's defense. The stories of springtime are likely to be far from the minds of voters. And frankly, if the Romney campaign gets its wish and the Times runs a bunch of "sneering" stories about Obama, it's going to keep the conversation away from where Romney wants it.

Ana Marie: They will say it themselves: "Every day we are not talking about the economy is a losing day for us." Arguably, it's a losing day for voters as well.

Jason: Call me crazy, but there's a good chance that come September, Team Romney is going to be quoting Paul Krugman an awful lot. Albeit selectively. I want to close by pointing out that Politico has also done that thing where it has a Politico EXCLUSIVE about all the news it made, today. Shove your face down our meta-hole, America, and suck deeply!

Ana Marie: Oh, the synergy!

[Ana Marie and I would also urge you to read John Cook's take on the matter, which implies that there is, perhaps, some vestige of humanity within VandeHei and Allen that is crying out in warning that nobody should actually read Politico, if not a straight up cry for help in general.]

[Ana Marie Cox is the founding editor of Wonkette and current Guardian columnist. She is also on Twitter.]

On Tuesday, The New York Times published a lengthy article on the process by which the Obama White House decides whom to dispatch from this earth with robot drones. There's a couple of things worth noting upfront.

First, given the access the Times was accorded to write this story, it's pretty much a certainty that the White House is pretty happy with the finished product. Second ... wow, is there ever some cause for concern! Just check out the way the White House defines "militants" for the purpose of after-action review of these drone strikes:

... Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. "Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization -- innocent neighbors don't hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs," said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.

"This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths," the Times reports. I'll say! It's a "counting method" that various characters created by Joseph Heller could love, in that it removes the word "count" from the word "accountability." These drone strikes only kill militants because "militants," strictly defined, means "military-aged males who are killed by drone strikes." (Not that anyone is performing rigorous background checks on these piles of corpses.)

Well, in response to this, one concerned citizen has taken to the White House's "We The People" petitions portal to request the creation of a "Do Not Kill" list, which perhaps should be known as the "Please Consider According Me the Due Process of Law That I'm Constitutionally Entitled to Before You Allow Me to Be Summarily Executed by Joystick-Wielding Sociopaths" list. The proposed petition is presented thusly:

The New York Times reports that President Obama has created an official "kill list" that he uses to personally order the assassination of American citizens. Considering that the government already has a "Do Not Call" list and a "No Fly" list, we hereby request that the White House create a "Do Not Kill" list in which American citizens can sign up to avoid being put on the president's "kill list" and therefore avoid being executed without indictment, judge, jury, trial or due process of law.

The petition, which was posted Wednesday, requires 25,000 signatures by June 29 in order to be "reviewed by the Administration" and receive an official response. (Which will probably be something like, "LOL, sorry.") The petition currently has 272 signatures.

Well, it can't hurt, right? Unless, of course, signing the petition gets you one step closer to being put on the kill list.

RELATED:
"Militants": media propaganda [Glenn Greenwald @ Salon]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

For as long as politicians have been using Twitter, politicians have been embarrassing themselves on Twitter.

This is because they're mostly dimwits who have only gotten where they've gotten in life because smarter people purchase them with special interest money, point them to where they can buy turd polish by the vat on Amazon and teach them how to lather up.

But Twitter allows them to seamlessly connect with people, with no filter between their busted-up brainpans and social media. And so you have the phenomenon of Chuck Grassley, tweeting messages like "Xtra delite of #99countytour: gr8 per4mance byWSioux Vocal jazz&DirktorJimG; at Haywarden Hoso Tues nite I really njoy" and "I now h v an iphone." See also Anthony Weiner, obviously.

Of course, every once in a while there might be someone standing near a computer screen who sees a tweet and then tells the errant pol, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't say that, out loud, on the Internet," and relatively smarter heads prevail.

Well, now the Sunlight Foundation is doing its part to ensure that the tweets that politicians hope we didn't see are remembered for all time, with a new tool called "Politwoops." Yes, this unfortunately advances that subgenus of social media jargon that abuses the "tw" in Twitter, but I'll allow it in this case.

The press release explained as follows:

The Sunlight Foundation today announces a new web tool that reviews the tweets of elected officials and identifies when one goes missing or is edited. The tool, called Politwoops, monitors Twitter’s API and archives tweets from U.S. politicians that get removed. On the site at Politwoops.sunlightfoundation.com, you can view the latest deleted tweets in near-real time or check out deleted tweets for a particular politician. Politwoops follows the official Twitter account for members of Congress, as well as President Obama and Mitt Romney, 435 in all.

“In politics, Twitter is part of the ever-present ‘spin room’ of the digital age. But unlike other mediums, the record of events can be edited; tweets deleted from twitter.com are hard or impossible to see after the fact,” said Tom Lee, director of Sunlight Labs. “Politwoops identifies when politicians or their staffs are editing errors or rephrasing a tweet, providing a window into what politicians are thinking and how campaigns hone their social media messaging.”

Politwoops includes more than 3,000 tweets (and counting) removed by politicians’ accounts in the past six months. Some instances were reported, such as when Sen. Chuck Grassley’s account was hacked earlier this year. Others deletions are humorous such as when the Twitter account of Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN) compared reality television show The Bachelor to the popular The Hunger Games book series, or Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) reaction [http://politwoops.sunlightfoundation.com/tweet/176637687145562112] to political protests in Russia.

Already making the rounds today, thanks to Sunlight's press release, is this example of a "potentially embarrassing" tweet, a gem from Florida's 1st District Rep. Jeff Miller, who 12 days ago asked, "Was Obama born in the United States?" The tweet was deleted after 55 minutes, but during that time, Miller added this to his Facebook account:

Jeremy Stahl reported that Miller's chief-of-staff, Dan McFaul, said that Miller did not write the tweet in question, which is actually fairly plausible. Sometimes our dumb Congress critters -- who have come to the dumb conclusion that they need to be using Twitter -- delegate that work to staffers who are just as dumb as they are. McFaul went on to say something, however, that fits solidly within this overall theme of dumbness that I am hopefully managing to construct: “It was not a question that we were asking. It was a question regarding a news story.”

This creates the impression that when "news stories" happen, congressional back-benchers have no choice but to construct a Facebook poll about it. Stahl went on to report that McFaul insisted that this Facebook poll was eventually deleted because "it’s standard practice in the office to delete Facebook polls once the news topics go stale."

If you honestly believe that this should be a "standard practice," then you really aren't smart enough to use tools like Facebook. Please, please, back away from the social media.

Politwoops: Deleted Tweets From Politicians [Sunlight Foundation]

Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?

Hello, everyone! Welcome once more to this ever-continuing saga of Sunday morning political shows and my attempts to provide a poorly-spelled, nonsensical alternative so that you might live a free and happy life. My name is Jason, and I'd like to wish all of you a very happy Memorial Day and beginning of summer. Hope you are doing well on this three-day weekend, and I'll remind you that if you are reading this, that weekend will be halfway over by the time you finish. So choose wisely, okay? I mean John McCain is on one of these shows today. That alone should lay the sad, dead-inside enterprise of political talk shows for what they really are.

The sooner I begin, the sooner we can all move on, so let's commence with the beginning, and speed to the part where it's over. As always, y'all should take some time to wish each other well in the comments. You can feel free to drop me a line. And, if you're into that sort of thing, you can follow me on twitter.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

So, today, McCain is here to talk about bombing places, and some Catholic Cardinal, Donald Wuerl, will discuss the Catholic Church's plan to push back on President Barack Obama's attempts to make it so that women aren't the societal equivalent of chattel. Then there will a C-team Fox panel and then we can move on to the next thing.

But first, John McCain, who shuffles like a haint between Sunday morning politics shows, looking for his lost crust of bread. "Thanks for having me on, especially on Memorial Day," he says, as if people were clamoring to be booked on Sunday shows this weekend. Yeah, we just managed to squeeze you in between some dead air and ten more minutes of Kimberly Strassel. This was a really tough gig to secure.

We begin with Syria, where violence continues and where conditions do not meet the qualifications for a Libyan-style intervention. (Those qualifications are basically: "must be super EASY and involve a minimum of personnel and money, because we've neither in any great abundance.) McCain, of course, thinks we should be doing more in Syria and that this is a "shameful episode in American history" that all began with that time Obama did not publicly embrace the Iranian dissident movement and ensure all of their immediate deaths.

McCain does not want to "vet" any Syrian resistance fighters, we should just do "more stuff." Then, Iran would fall.

Is it likely that Russo-U.S. efforts to remove Assad would work? McCain says no, because...for some reason. He figures that Obama is just kicking these matters down the road until the election is over. McCain says there is a "pattern," and the pattern is a bunch of countries doing things John McCain doesn't like, and then us not fighting back with "American Exceptionalism." He is upset that we've negotiated with anyone, and upset that we might one day leave Afghanistan.

Why would Pakistan capture and jail that doctor who helped us find Osama bin Laden? McCain figures it's because the Pakistanis believe Obama is weak. In reality, it's because Pakistan is a corrupt government with al Qaeda sympathizers swimming throughout its intelligence apparatus.

I am pretty grateful that the "what if McCain won the election" counterhistorical just writes itself. Many dead Iranians, over-deployed troops, and no money. Leaves little subtlety.

Wallace finally interrupts what amounts to McCain reading aloud from his new softcore collection, 50 Shades Of Masturbatory Bombing Sprees, to ask questions about Iran and whether it's "time to give up on diplomacy." McCain says it's "time to draw red lines." (Which has been done, only they need to be even redder, like crimson or incardadine!) We need to tell Iran, NO! Only do it with AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM. "EXPELLIARMUS!" we say, and Iran says, "CRAP! Consider us deterred!"

And when you cross those redlines, McCain says, then, "All options are on the table." See, that's why all of this is so silly. We talk about the present moment as a moment where all options are on the table, as a means of deterring Iran from edging up to a "red line." If they cross a line, however, we point EVEN HARDER at the table. "Did you forget, Iran? About the table? So many options, strewn atop?"

The essential difference between what's being done now and what McCain would do differently is that McCain would strip down to an American flag onesie and do a strutting Mick Jagger imitation in front of the table. That's why I get so bored, by all the war talk that's done in comfortable teevee studios by soft men.

Moving to Egypt -- where we have democracy attempting to stir, and nary a bomb dropped. But the election is boiling down to a guy from the Muslim Brotherhood and a former toady of Hosni Mubarak. Wallace asks McCain who we'd back -- presumably the Mubarak toady. McCain says that we can't weigh in on who we prefer this because it would benefit the other person. Yes! Exactly. America picks a side and everyone rushes to do the opposite. ONLY THAT'S THE SAME POLICY WE TOOK WITH THE IRANIAN DISSIDENT MOVEMENT.

If you had "eight minutes" as the time it would take McCain to go inconsistent on us, congratulate yourself.

Moving to Afghanistan, where we'll be down to 60,000 troops, hopefully, by the end of the summer. McCain, of course, is against this. Wallace asks about out ongoing attempts to train the Afghan forces, and why it is that the Taliban don't need training to fight. (Actually, I am pretty sure that the Taliban had ample opportunities to train themselves back when they were the de facto ruling class of the country.)

McCain says that "insurgency warfare" and "counterinsurgency" need differing levels of training, but look that's not what's important, what's important is that we set a deadline on the calendar. We picked a date where we say, "Okay we're going to stop spending money and degrading our military in the graveyard of empires," and McCain is against that.

He also mentions Pakistani corruption and the way their ISI works with al Qaeda to kill Americans, all of which might have better informed his previous comments.

Moving to the horserace. McCain once said that Mitt Romney was a terrible vulture capitalist and his campaign manager thought Bain Capital was just awful. McCain says that his campaign manager doesn't speak for him, which is just so terrifically brave. I mean, the courage it takes to distance oneself from the person who decided he would give up his time and run your presidential campaign should really inspire awe. More to the point, McCain doesn't think that his criticism of Romney and Bain qualifies as the same terrible class warfare as criticism that's coming from a Democrat.

Basically, he was running for office against Romney, for Pete's sake!

Now we will get to the whole contraception battle with the Catholic Church, who are suing because all this lady-freedom is making women more uppity and assertive. Of course, lots of women use contraception, and the combination oral contraceptive -- among other useful things -- helps to keep women from having painful ovarian cysts which, left unchecked, could require surgery.

So the Catholic dude, whose name I've already forgotten so we'll just call him Cardinal...I don't know...Richelieu has a nice ring? Anyway, Richelieu, says that this is about religious freedom and his religion's freedom in particular in defining what constitutes freedom for other people, especially women with cysts, but also the people they hire and occasionally serve soup to, in kitchens.

Richelieu isn't having any of this talk that there will be a "public comment" period where the law can be tweaked, because he knows from personal experience that the public comment period never goes anywhere. He probably has personal experience with this sort of bureaucracy, seeing that the Catholic Church is, organizationally speaking, profoundly good at ignoring the suggestions of those who would "tweak" its policies.

Wallace asks Richelieu to respond to the limited coverage of his organization's lawsuit on broadcast news networks. "What do you make of that?" Probably there was some actual news, who knows? But Richelieu finds it puzzling, and suggests that we "have to take a much larger look at this." Richelieu understands that people have different points of view, he just wants to discount those, because religious liberty.

Though, as Wallace points out, there seems to be a schism in the Catholic Church, whose diosceses (I've no idea what the plural is, and I don't feel like waking my wife up to ask), are largely NOT suing. Richelieu says that his fellow bishops totally support him! He doesn't know why Wallace is hearing differently!

Also, this guy, Cardinal Richelieu, or whatever his real name is? He is a terrible spokesman for this lawsuit, because he has this stilted, breathy way of speaking that plays up his condescending tone and his nose-in-the-air elitism, which is bad enough, but he also looks a LOT like a younger Anthony Hopkins, so the overall effect is that it kind of feels like Wallace is interviewing Hannibal Lecter. Whatever Catholic Bishop is taking a neutral stance on this contraception battle had better watch his back, because Cardinal Anthony Hopkins (let's call him that, now) is going to eat his liver with some Communion wafers and a nice Chee-yant-tee.

I've sort of lost the thread of this conversation, but now Cardinal Anthony Hopkins is hissing menacingly about getting more kids into Catholic schools. He will not take a stand on Mitt Romney's Mormonism.

And now they are talking about the Pope's Butler, who leaked the DaVinci Code or something? Oh -- ha, ha! -- he leaked documents that showed "cronyism and corruption inside the Vatican." How did this happen? Cardinal Anthony Hopkins says, "I wouldn't worry too much about what I'm reading in the newspapers about something someone says is going on." Well, of course you wouldn't.

Anyway, that's your appearance from Cardinal Parseltongue, or whoever that whispering, creepy guy was. (Maybe that last segment was an elaborate prank? That was one very puzzling choice, in terms of spokespersons -- the strangest I've seen in a while.)

Okay, well, it's Panel Time, with Brit Hume and a slate of third-stringers, including Kimberly Strassel and Kirsten Powers and Jeff Zeleny.

Anyway, Strassel is really sure that it's Obama who is the super Vulture capitalist, because Solyndra. The central part of her thesis appears to be that when "government runs business" which is "the way Obama wants to do it," you get stuff she doesn't like, so poop on all of that. Strassel might be ignoring this, or just too dim to put it together, but another feature of the Obama term is record corporate profits while the recovery for everyone else has sputtered along, but Obama never gave a big speech about how special corporate mavens are, so it's WAR, FOREVER.

Strassel is also pretty upset that auto workers were "put ahead of bondholders," because yes, why not punish the people who did nothing but work an assembly line? The people who should get bailed out are those who said, "Hey, look at THESE cars that no one wants to buy! Let's invest our money in this!"

Anyway, pooh, pooh, Pecksniff, pooh. Kirsten Powers offers some half-hearted defense of the notion that Mitt Romney's record should be critiqued. Hume says that he once thought Romney would need to offer a strong defense of his Bain years, but now that so many Democrats are kvetching about the Bain attacks, maybe he doesn't. What Hume doesn't understand -- and honestly, he's not alone in this, this applies to just about every clapped-out Beltway bubble dwellers -- is that these attacks on Bain? Other elite politicians are not their intended audience! These attacks are pitched toward the heartland. Factory towns, middle class folks from the Rust Belt swing states, west of coal alley.

If the attacks work, they'll work there. No one thinks there's any special significance in Harold Ford, Jr. being upset with Barack Obama over this. If you put Harold Ford Jr. on the cover of Time right now, he'd be standing on a tiny chair gumming the teat of some banker.

Hume says that one of the reasons he knows the attacks aren't working is because of what he read in Strassel's column. No normal human Americans are reading Kim Strassel's columns, though, Those are the printed thought-farts of and for Acelastan elites.

Zeleny gets it right -- the Obama campaign isn't quite as up-to-speed on the campaigning tip as you'd imagine they would be, having so long to prepare for Romney. Romney's just fought his way through a primary and still has that lean, mean, campaign muscle tone. That's where you can account for the sort of lumpen limpness. That said, Zeleny notes that it's too early to tell if these attacks aren't working: "What really matters is how all of this is being internalized by voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan." DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER. "I think the ups and downs of the week are not as important," he says, earning mad bonus points!

Wallace asks if the "brand of Obama as a uniter something they can no longer afford?" Uhm, "uniting" people is nice, but at some point you sort of have to say that your political opponent is crappy. Not for the first time, I'll say this -- don't be dumb, like Obama, and ever promise to be a different sort of politician. It doesn't work! (It's especially dumb if all it gets you is a political media that wants to believe you made it to the White House on a cloud of positivity, when you were really just as cutthroat as everyone else.)

Zeleny says that the brand has to be that of a "fighter," which "is what some Democrats have wanted all along." Ha, ha. Yeah, sort of!

Strassel seems to think it's a bad thing that the Obama administration keeps successfully changing the subject about the unemployment rate and the economy. It's almost as if the Obama administration understands that the media can be perpetually led by the nose from one shiny ball to the next, cooing and kvelling over the latest dumb story, and forcing Romney into the mode where he's just responding and reacting. Hey, everyone! Obama will stop trolling you guys the moment y'all prove yourselves to be resistant to trolling. Till then, enjoy your summer!

Oh, wait, there's more panel? That would have been a good place to end this.

Hume notes that the Obama administration is being inconsistent in Syria because no one is making the case for an intervention there, on the standard established by Libya. Again, this is just cynical me talking, but it seems that the real standard established in Libya is that the United States will fight for freedom and prevent bloodshed anywhere it is cheap and easy to do so. A Syrian intervention falls outside that scope, because it's not "easy."

Strassel says that in Egypt, not that the "primary season" has yielded a former Mubarak suck-pump and a guy from the Muslim Brotherhood, both candidates are "pivoting toward the center." So the same old crap that happens here happens everywhere. Everyone watch Egypt closely, for when the mayor of Cairo goes "off message!"

Zeleny says that the Obama administration is "probably right" in the way he's gauged public sentiment as being against a Syrian military intervention and wanting to get out of Afghanistan, and imagines that by the time the general election gets into its later months, we could be in for a large debate on foreign policy.

Hume says that if the region goes south in Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran, the Obama administration could suffer from negative public sentiment. Basically, the American voters could be crazily inconsistent -- "We're tired of war! Why didn't we have more of it, though?"

And more arguments about Syria and how the world should just be lent the United States' ATM card on a permanent basis, buy Chris Wallace's wife's book about soup, the end.

THIS WEEK, WITH SOMEBODY

Once again, George Stephanopoulos is taking a "well-deserved morning off," as he always seems to be doing when I watch this show. In his stead is Jake Tapper, who sets up our Memorial Day scene with a reminder of everyone who is still fighting abroad and "monitoring hotspots" all over the globe, including "on war ships in the Persian Gulf amidst the nuclear standoff with Iran." That's a bit melodramatic, isn't it? I mean, that's supposed to be melodramatic, right?

Also, everything is going to hell in Yemean and Pakistan and China, and who knows? Maybe Vancouver, too. Time to talk with Leon Panetta, our Secretary of Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Jake starts off with the ultimate in getting-to-know-you question: "How often does a terrifying message come on your desk about some threat, and you just think, oh my God?"

HAHAHA, Panetta says, the things that I get in my morning email WOULD CURL YOUR PRETTY TOES, JAKE. Your BRAIN would turn to fire, and you would stumble from the room and beg me. YES, JAKE, YOU WOULD BEG ME! To tell you that everything would be okay. WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO JAKE? You wanna get DARK, BROTHER? OKAY! LET'S GET DARK.

Actually, he just said, "Well, you don't get a hell of a lot of sleep, let's put it that way." But I like to think that's what he meant. At any rate, it's challenging, he gets intelligence, he's probably watched you while you slept.

Moving to Afghanistan, and the fact that President Obama wants to end the combat mission there by the end of 2014. Tapper points out that the "chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees just returned from Afghanistan and they say that from their briefings there, they believe that the Taliban is actually stronger now than since the surge began." This is not something that we actually needed these Reps and Senators to tell us, but hey, it's more polite to do it this way than to slap us on the forehead and shout, "No fecal matter, Sherlock!"

So, what's the plan if, when we decide to skedaddle, parts of Afghanistan end up back into the hands of the Taliban?

Please say no we're skedaddling. Please say no we're skedaddling. Please say no we're skedaddling. Please say no we're skedaddling. Please say no we're skedaddling. "Well the most important point is that we're not going anyplace." Damn it! "We're gonna, we have an enduring presence that will be in Afghanistan. We'll continue to work with them on counterterrorism. We'll continue to provide training, assistance, guidance. We'll continue to provide support."

Panetta says we're making good progress and the Taliban has totally been weakened and violence is going down and the Afghan army is getting awesome. Tapper wants to interject, and after a fashion, he does, saying, "But you're not naive." Panetta says, sure, we've a "fight on our hands." He says that twice, actually! And the Taliban are "resilient," but we're on the "right track," totally. Pretty soon, this weird country and it's corrupt government and it's illiterate police force and its people who quite smartly switch sides depending on who has the bigger guns are gonna be okay!

Tapper brings up General Allen at the NATO Summit, responding to questions about the Afghan security forces tendency to, you know, occasionally attack the U.S. forces. "That does not seem like a good news story to me," Tapper says, "that there are 160 Afghan security forces that were considered to be threats. That seems like a lot."

Pannetta says that progress is being made, and it's a concern, sure. But the Taliban can't get their act together to do much more than frighten us, doesn't that make you feel good? I guess?

Tapper dips into the horsey race, pointing out that Mitt Romney has criticized this whole, "Let's not just stay in Afghanistan until we're all dead and broke" plan that Obama seems to have. Panetta insists that the plan is to "take us to a point where we draw down by the end of 2014."
"That is the plan that has been agreed to. And it's a plan that is working." And these timelines? he says they are needed so that the Afghan government knows that they have to be on the ball by a certain time.

Tapper doesn't spend too much time dwelling on the 2012iness of it all, shifting to this poor Pakistani doctor who assisted the U.S. in the bin Laden raid, who's no facing a 33 year prison sentence for not being sufficiently shady like the rest of Pakistan. Panetta says that it's "disturbing" that this happened because the "doctor was not working against Pakistan." Rather, he was fighting al Qaeda. (Of course, there's been considerable evidence that to "fight al Qaeda" is to fight Pakistan's ISI, so, it may be sort of the same concept.

Tapper isn't sure that we can "call Pakistan an ally when they do something like this." He's right! Panetta writes it off to a "complicated relationship" and, by the way, they have nukes, so, you know..."our responsibility here is to keep pushing them to understand how important it is for them to work with us to try to deal with the common threats we both face." Panetta says that "what they did with this doctor doesn't help in the effort to try to do that." You think?

We are also sort of getting ripped off on trucks, or something? Basically Pakistan is totally that guy who says he's your pal, only he nickels and dimes you to death and also throws your doctor in jail? GREAT FRIEND, this Pakistan.

Moving to Yemen, where we have suicide bombings and attacks on U.S. planes. Why aren't we sending more troops? (Because we only have so many of them, I think?) Panetta says that we've been successful in Yemen, and we'll continue to do so, but "the operations we're conducting, require the kind of capabilities that don't necessarily involve boots on the ground." Rather, they require "the kind of capabilities that target those that we're after who are threats to the United States." I am not at all sure what that means.

Tapper switches to our drone wars: "Is there not a serious risk that this approach to counterterrorism, because of its imprecision, because of its civilian casualties, is creating more enemy than it is killing?" Y'all, Jake is way up on this stuff. Panetta says that these drones are precise, and anyway, look, we have to defend the United States! (By occasionally killing innocent people and turning the people who love them against us.)

In Iran we are attempting to forge a deal that would forestall the Iranian government from creating nuclear weapons. Tapper brings up an NYT piece in which an Iranian diplomat bragged about out-negotiating us. Panetta says that the U.S. has no intention to "'allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon" and that we will "do everything we can to prevent them from developing a weapon."

War, though?

TAPPER: The American Ambassador to Israel said a few days ago that the U.S. is quote "ready from a military perspective to carry out a strike on Iran." That's true? PANETTA: One of the things that we do at the Defense Department, Jake, is plan. And we have - we have plans to be able to implement any contingency we have to in order to defend ourselves.

Tapper asks after the news that Kathryn Bigelow and Michael Boal, who are making a movie about Osama bin Laden and his eventual capture, and whether anything "inappropriate was shared with these filmmakers" when they came to the government for information and insight into the mission. Panetta says, "nothing inappropriate was shared with them" and that it was all part of the same process by which filmmakers and reporters get information.

Is Panetta comfortable with the Obama administration's "chest-thumping" over the bin Laden capture? Panetta says that it was a "very special" thing to have been a part of, and "whether you're Republicans, whether you're Democrats, whether you're Independents, I think this country ought to be proud of what our intelligence and military community did."

But that's not exactly what Tapper was after, so he rephrases: "Well, obviously it was a successful mission but the politicization of it, that doesn't make you uncomfortable at all?" Panetta sticks to his guns: "I would hope that both Republicans and Democrats would be justly proud of what was accomplished."

Moving to the budget cuts that are fixing to come down on the Pentagon, as a result of the "trigger cuts" from the Budget Control Act. Panetta says that "defense has to play a role in trying to be able to achieve fiscal responsibility" and that they gave a budget that both provides fiscal discipline as well as a "strong national defense for this country." He is, however, concerned, about the trigger cuts "which involves another $500 billion in defense cuts." These, he says, would be "disastrous in terms of our national defense."

Will Panetta stick around for a possible second Obama term? Sure. Will he stay on if Mitt Romney asks? "I don't engage in hypotheticals," he says. So no.

Panel time, now, with George Will and Liz Claman and Ron Brownstein and Nia-Malika Henderson and Jennifer Granholm.

Will says that the Bain attacks depend on whether the American people buy into it, and if they do, they are stupid, because Solyndra. That's the entire argument! Claman is a bit more nuanced, saying that private equity has never been the greatest calling card where job creation is concerned, but that said, the industry is not the caricature they are being described as. That's true, but the caricature that Obama would prefer to deploy is Romney as a leverage buyout maven, and private equity left alone. Team Obama Re-Elect would prefer this gets to a place where Romney is in the firing line, and private equity -- whose money Obama wants very badly -- feels like they aren't the target of hostility.

While we're on the subject though, a personal thing I've been wondering is this: How much do other people in the private equity industry look at Mitt Romney and say, "Oh, yeah, I respect the hell out of that guy!" It seems to me that Romney's whole history at Bain Capital probably is an alienating thing for other people in similar industries. Not because of what Bain did, mind you, but the whole how-Romney-got-there part. Romney did not want to head up Bain Capital, after all, and only did so after assurances were made that if everything went south, Romney would not lose any of his own money, he'd be re-installed at his own job with all the pay and bonuses his missed, and he would never be publicly blamed for anything going wrong.

Now, who wouldn't want that deal? Still, there are guys all over the financial sector who actually go to work all day and put their reputations on the line to risk something, and I can't imagine that they are all that impressed with Romney's lack of balls.

At any rate, "private equity is part about creating profit and less about creating jobs," Claman says, and whoever can work their side of the argument to the satisfaction of voters will win that argument. That's a pretty realistic way of explaining how this works, but the panel is going to uselessly yammer about the matter for about five more minutes.

Jennfier Granholm, Tapper says, was an incumbent who defeated a businessman for re-election during a down economy by making sure that people thought her opponent was a scary vulture capitalist. She successfully turned a "referendum" election into a "choice" election, and won big after being underwater, in terms of favorability. Brownstein says that at the moment, we have a "double negative," where there is neither a majority of people who want to vote for Obama or a majority that want Romney to take over.

Will doesn't understand the whole notion between "choice" and "referendum" and thinks it all boils down to he question, "Is this the best we can do?" It takes a minute before I realize he is not referring to previous columns about Romney's insufficient conservatism. Rather he is talking about the economy, and the recovery that is not happening. (Though Claman notes another rceent "green shoot" -- consumer sentiment hit a new high, which she says, "translates directly into how people are feeling about the economy"...can they buy new goods, are they feeling upbeat about getting a new job.

Brownstein says that Obama has to keep saying that we are "moving in the right direction" -- a very fragile argument in a very fragile time. Granholm notes that if you have the luxury to claim victory, it's always better. (I think that if Obama had managed to completely reverse our economic fortunes, we'd all be okay with him "spiking the football.")

Brownstein notes that the segment of the population that Obama is struggling with are blue-college whites, a population group that's going to personally know and care about friend, family members, and the like, who have been laid off, or who have been out of work for a long while. That's a key population of people that Romney could grab for himself. Granholm counters that by saying that the Millenial Generation is likely to stay home for Obama, but what if they're all so busy contributing articles entitled, "Bird That Make Me Sad" to Though Catalog, that they forget to vote?

Will notes that the Democrats are "flinching from their own President's agenda." Welcome to every single day of their lives? I'm pretty sure that Democratic lawmakers flinch at their own bowel movements.

Now Will is railing about how awful Donald Trump is, and he doesn't understand why Mitt Romney has glommed onto him. Claman notes the danger -- Trump has nothing to lose and can continue being a birther-weirdie forever because he's just a carnival act in the backwaters of American culture, but Romney has something at stake. "Mitt Romney and his people have to decide whether standing next to Trump means more votes or fewer votes, and right now," she says, voters are saying that they care about "putting food on their families' table, getting an upwardly mobile jobs, and putting their kids through college."

Brownstein says that you shouldn't expect Romney to risk pissing off the extremists, because he is "spooked" by them and is worried that they will mobilize against him. (And do what, exactly? Vote for Constitution Party hopeful Virgil Goode?)

Henderson says that it's not likely that Trump will end up on a Sunday show. That might be somewhat hilarious, though!

And there's a lot of silly crosstalk about this.

Claman says that right now, voters want to skip to the "main act." But that's not until September. So unless the media takes the summer off (PLEASE DO THIS PLEASE DO THIS) we're going to have all these puppies chasing down shiny balls. (Granholm says that the "Bain attacks" aren't part of the sideshow.)

Now we're going to talk about the Facebook IPO, which Claman calls a "categorical disaster" that will "leave egg on a select group of people's faces." (She actually makes a terrible attempt at a pun here, but I'll give her a break because she's been one of those rarely-if-ever panelists who's actually a little data-driven, as opposed to, "here is what I think, now that I've smelt my own flatulence.") The key takeaway -- people realized days before the IPO that most users were accessing Facebook on their smartphones, which aren't sorted for advertising, and so are well short of being monetizable.

Now, the question is, how early did the institutional investors get this information and did retail investors have a right to it? And also, why the NASDAQ seize up and nearly die when the trading on this start?

Nia-Malika Henderson says, "People poke me." That's basically my favorite part of this whole conversation.

EVERYBODY GO POKE NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON.

MEET THE PRESS

Considering responding to weekly PR blasts from Sunday shows with "THIS IS THE MOST BORING LINEUP EVER" instead of just deleting them.

-- Alex Pareene (@pareene) May 24, 2012

What a depressing job, to have to pretend to convey excitement about an E.J. Dionne/David Brooks panel, in an email

-- Alex Pareene (@pareene) May 24, 2012

@pareene I usually reply: "Thanks for making this extra painful for me. TTFN, See You In Hell, xoxoxoxo."

-- Jason Linkins (@dceiver) May 24, 2012

That's my way of previewing the fact that this is going to be a pretty bad show, today.

So today, Newt Gingrich -- who's just spent the last two nights at NBC News' studio, sleeping by the nacho bar, ever since his appearance on Meet The Press, where he and Chris Matthews announced their new line of bath salts -- is here to yell at Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, about horsey-race stuff. (I figure, also, that O'Malley is here to be put to the "can he stay on message" test that Booker failed last week.)

Also, that terrible panel also features terrible businesswoman Carly Fiorina.

But first, O'Malley and Gingrich, blahing at one another, and by extension, us.

Gingrich is totally committed to Mitt Romney now, and Romney's going to win, because he's "tough" and "prepared to do what it takes to win," which means "sucking up millions of dollars to match Obama in yet another election in which two dudes polish turds and hurl them at each other, forever." Gingrich could not have done that, because he is poor. He would have had to manufacture those turds "artisanally."

Also, Romney pulled off the amazing feat to come back from the devastation of losing South Carolina to Newt Gingrich!

O'Malley says that Obama is not going to come off as "anti-business" by attacking Romney's record, and notes that he agrees with the criticism that was levied against Romney's record by...Newt Gingrich. He goes on to note that there are two things in Romney's record that recommend him to be president -- one is Bain Capital, and the other is his record as governor, which includes RomneyCare.

But Gregory passes the ball back to Gingrich, who basically says that Gingrich can make attacks on Romney while Obama can't because Solyndra. (Who knew that "because Solyndra" would be Memorial Day 2012's Cheap Conversation Shortener?) And, Gingrich says that Obama is going after all of capitalism, and not just Romney, despite the fact that we just saw a video in which he said that there was nothing wrong with private equity...it just isn't an industry whose concerns translate into the skill-set needed at the White House.

Gingrich does, accurately note that there are many Democrats that are clapped-out Wall Street cash co-dependent nimrods.

O'Malley defends the economic record of the Obama administration by noting the reduction in unemployment, foreclosures, and overall privation, noting that the record assembled is one that's "on the right track." (I think the argument is very vulnerable on the foreclosure issue.)

O'Malley is being SO CAREFUL not to go off-message! It's so ADORABLE. He is going to get a GOLD STAR and a HEAD PAT!

Gingrich says that unemployment is low because fewer people are participating and has run up debt, and Romney's "straightforward case" is that this is the wrong track. O'Malley counters by noting that Romney drove up debt in Massachusetts to record highs and that his only job creation was in the public sector. Also, Bain was terrible. Gingrich says, yeah but Staples. And for a hot second, I think that Gingrich might go at Obama's record on foreclosures, but he pulls back, probably because he only talks about housing after someone pays him many millions of dollars to talk about it, as a historian.

O'Malley, so careful, says that the attacks on Romney's record have nothing to do with character -- it's about his qualifications. Private equity is awesome, just maybe not a thing that leads to knowing how to run a country.

Gingrich counters by saying, "Reagan, yadda yadda."

Now we'll talk to O'Malley and Gingrich about Latinos. Very useful! As Gingrich points out, the Democrats passed on an opportunity to do comprehensive immigration reform, because they thought it would be more politically costly to LOSE the vote than to come out in favor of something. (They were wrong about this, by the way, they are always wrong about this.)

Gingrich predicts that Romney will take 40% of the Hispanic vote, which Gregory calls bold.

Now, Gregory is reading Ron Brownstein's National Journal column out loud to everybody.

O'Malley is basically getting worked by Gregory and Gingrich, because "maintaining bridges" to DC elites means "more debt," while to state governors it means, "fewer human beings dying in tragic infrastructural accidents."

From there, Gingrich just sort of does a monologue of tautology: this Romney education plan is good because it's a Romney education plan, and anyone who says otherwise is against goodness.

Okay, now, for some reason, we are learning that O'Malley and Gingrich were "chosen for a reason" to appear on Meet The Press. I just naturally assumed they were booked because the show felt no one could better help viewers relate to the politics of the week! You mean there's a special reason? Apparently so, and it is because...O'Malley might one day run for president, and maybe Gingrich has some advice? Gingrich says that you should race money and prepare to spend a few years on the road. His own plan -- be the impoverished guy who hangs out on Google Plus -- didn't exactly pan out.

Oh, and I'm reminded that Gingrich is $4.5 million in debt and his inability to pay off some of his vendors might cause some of them to go out of business, forever, so it's totally just the best thing in the world to have him on, opining on the relative job-creation/debt-reduction abilities of other people.

Okay, now we'll try to survive a half an hour with E.J. Dionne, David Brooks, Carly Fiorina, and Antonio Villaraigosa.

David Gregory says his heart is divided by the first place Los Angeles Dodgers and the first place Washington Nationals, a situation that could be resolved by just rooting for the Cardinals.

But we digress! Gregory lists some of the shiny stuff that the media has been obsessed about, and Brooks says that he "questions Obama's decision to start off going negative." Obama has always been a negative campaigner, Brooks is just someone who convinced himself otherwise. Dionne points out that George W. Bush attacked John Kerry very early in that election...I guess because he thinks it's best to emulate Bush? Gah, this is going to be a looooong panel discussion.

Dionne says that the "Bain attacks" raise the question about what sort of capitalism we should have. Gregory isn't sure that voters in 2012 want to have a referendum on capitalism and its discontents, and I'm inclined to agree with that. What I am not inclined to agree with this the affected way Gregory pronounces the word "financiers," which he pronounced "FEE-nan-seers." Anyway, he basically says, "Hey, Carly Fiorina, would you like to attack Obama?" and she says sure. A highlight: "Failing companies destroy jobs." Like the ones that Carly Fiorina runs, into rather deep ditches.

Villaraigosa is also being VERY CAREFUL and trying to get the same gold star that O'Malley is going to get for staying on message and not being a big old Cory Booker. His salient point is that no one is defaming private equity, just saying that Romney is terrible, blah blah.

Now, we'll peep some polls, including the way that many demographics seem to be tilting in the Democrat's direction. Brooks notes that these demographic shifts have been underway for some time. He then goes off on some tangent about how our politics is going to become "like the New Orleans Saints." What does that mean? "Both sides are going to go off into bounty hunting."

Right, because of that whole period of American politics in which everyone was a total Pollyanna and the Marquis of Queensbury Rules were strictly observed, that happened in David Brooks' head and nowhere else in America, ever? Brooks says that all of this will hurt Obama's favorability ratings, which are higher than Romney's (but only started edging higher since he begun attacking Romney, so...)

Fiorina says it's sad when politics "gets reduced to questioning people's motives." Keep in mind that she was the one who dressed her political opponent up in a sheep costume, with glowing red eyes, at the outset of her most recent foray into politics, because we should be having very lofty arguments!

Gregory points out that Latinos support Obama, and wants to know if anything could change that. Villaraigosa, says that sure, if Rubio ends up on the ticket, it could shift votes, but what really needs to happen in order to shift their votes back to the GOP is for the GOP to stop being extreme in such a way that Latino voters are terrified and/or deeply offended. (Though in bringing up the lust for deportation, Villaraigosa blinks past the fact that Obama has set new records in that area.)

Brooks says that as this is a "referendum" election and not a "choice" election, the effects of these demographics will not hamper GOP ambitions in the short term.

Now, David Gregory is just passing balls around the table? Brooks says that he doesn't like the way Scott Walker tried to reform the welfare state, but he did so successfully. (Walker actually didn't reform the welfare state: he successfully rechanneled the populist rage at wealthy elites in a way that got middle class Wisconsites fighting one another instead of working together. This wasn't a sincere, reform effort. This was about securing and maintaining political power by turning your opponents into enemies of one another.)

Dionne draws a question about Trump. "Trump, boy, I don't know," is a summary of his response.

Fiorina is asked if the GOP will make an argument that they are better at foreign policy. She says they will. This is all very fascinating, and I'm glad that money was spent broadcasting this, on the teevee.

Meet The Press ends with Maria Shriver and Michael Lewis, talking for twenty minutes about the stuff they are saying or will say or have said at commencement addresses. I can't even with this. I'll say that Katie Couric gave some good advice last weekend at UVa's Final Exercises when she made fun of some Darden School graduate for bringing his mother to a job interview. To summarize: don't do that.

Okay, well, that's Sunday morning chatshow recaps for Memorial Day weekend. Congratulations to Martin O'Malley and Antonio Villaraigoso fro managing to do "Obama surrogate stuff" without going off-message! You won't spend the rest of your weekend "walking it back" on YouTube! As for all you readers, I wish you an enjoyable holiday weekend, and a wonderful week in general. See y'all later!

Ana Marie Cox, columnist for the Guardian, joins me today for a brief conversation.

ANA MARIE: Hey, you there?

JASON: Sure, what's up?

ANA MARIE: I need to complain about a Politico thing!

JASON: Okay, I am here for you.

ANA MARIE: Today's feature story, by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, has this lede: "Nothing inspires Democrats like the Barack Obama swagger — the supreme self-confidence on stage, the self-certainty in private." Is that true? Really? That is their lede.

JASON: Uhm...I would like to get somebody's on-the-record quote on that.

ANA MARIE: I mean, really. Personally, I think Democrats get really nervous about his swagger, and if they are inspired by him, it's on those occasions where he speaks for the unspoken-for, so to speak.

JASON: I think you're actually more likely to find Democrats -- at least actual lawmaking Democrats -- are rather unnerved by the way Obama's "swagger" manifests itself in aloofness. That whole, "Don't worry I got this" thing that Obama is reputed to have? Well, guess what? I'm gonna worry, I think? I think that maybe you AREN'T actually going to get Chuck Grassley's vote on health care reform, for example? Just a hunch.

ANA MARIE: Yes! The notion that the swagger itself is "inspiring?" I doubt you could find some suburban starry-eyed city-council activist who thinks that. It's just an assertion that exists to validate the rest of the story. Which is also dumb, by the way! Here's the next sentence: "So nothing inspires more angst than when that same Obama stumbles, as he has leaving the gate in 2012."

JASON: Ha! Yeah, well, I similarly don't think anyone is of the mind that his re-election hopes are doomed. It's May.

ANA MARIE: Also, please define "stumble." Gay marriage: was that the "stumble"?

JASON: This all pertains to Cory Booker's inability to "stay on message" on "Meet The Press."

ANA MARIE: Surely! Oh, and look: this sentence is in the sixth paragraph: "Surely, all of this could prove to be ephemeral and meaningless in the arc of a long presidential contest."

JASON: aksdfjkafdgjadljasdfjklsd

ANA MARIE: Let's just put that sentence in every Politico story ever.

JASON: I am imagining the scene right now. Jim VandeHei leans over Mike Allen and asks, "Did you write the sixth-paragraph premise-negater, like I asked you to?"

ANA MARIE: Maybe Mike Allen has a Word Macro for that.

JASON: Politico should just put that on their banner. You know how Elizabeth Spiers put "Nothing sacred but the truth" back on the front page of the New York Observer? Politico's print edition should have the tagline, "Surely, all of this could prove to be ephemeral and meaningless."

ANA MARIE: I would like that on a T-shirt, please. They get things all on track two paragraphs later: "But for now, it’s impossible to overlook the early struggles of a White House and political team notorious for discipline and effectiveness."

JASON: I don't know, I question the use of the word "impossible" there. Were there no other Politico stories today?

ANA MARIE: It is "nearly impossible," I guess.

JASON: Somewhat plausible, though unlikely.

ANA MARIE: Unless it proves to be ephemeral and meaningless!

[Ana Marie Cox is the founding editor of Wonkette and current Guardian columnist. She is also on Twitter.]