WH to Bloggers: Drop Dead (Again).

“[T]o the extent that the ‘liberal left’ is upset at the President, it’s because they are seeing a great opportunity slip away in real time. The only one that told the base that they could change America from the bottom up and bring forth a transformative new era of leadership is Barack Obama. If he didn’t want one, he shouldn’t have said anything.“

In response to the most recent disparaging of liberal and progressive blogs by “senior administrative official” to his or her media lap dog of choice, FDL’s Dave Dayen gets to the heart of progressive consternation with Team Obama: “Nobody had a bigger challenge coming into office than Barack Obama but nobody had a bigger opportunity. And liberals like myself are generally peeved that the opportunity has been squandered. Yes, squandered.” Yep, sounds about right.

In very related news, with the passage of financial reform in the Senate today, The Prospect‘s Kevin Drum gets off a zinger about Obama’s legislative accomplishments thus far. I think, overall, this president could have accomplished much more than Drum’s biting joke suggests — most obviously on executive power issues like torture and indefinite detention. (Or, put another way, I just get irritated with people who throw up their hands and say the problem with our politics is entirely structural when you have an ostensibly-lefty president saying patently dumb things like this. Choices matter, and this administration makes terrible ones.) All that being said, Drum’s comment was still worth a (rueful) laugh regardless.

Code Orange.

“‘They’re snuffing out the America that I grew up in,’ Boehner said. ‘Right now, we’ve got more Americans engaged in their government than at any time in our history. There’s a political rebellion brewing, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it since 1776.” In case you missed GOP leader John Boehner’s inadvisable, Barton-like unveiling of his true thoughts this morning, the Minority Leader gave an interview to the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune, and it’s actually an open question what the dumbest thing he said was. Was it:

1) Arguing that the avarice and fraud-fueled Wall Street meltdown that destroyed 8 million jobs was merely an “ant” Dems were trying to kill with a nuclear weapon? (Say what you will about this financial reform legislation, I wouldn’t call it nuclear-powered.)

2) Suggesting we should fund the highly-suspect–at-this-point war in Afghanistan by forcing Americans to work five more years? or…

3) The pathetic dabbling in Tea Party self-aggrandizement posted above? From what I remember of the history books, 1861 was a pretty banner year for political rebellion. Also, here’s a tip, Mr. Boehner: Read Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. The Tea Party is not only not a new phenomenon, it’s not even a particularly special one. The only difference now is the media covers these John Birch Society wannabes like they’re actually a real political force in America. For shame.

And I’ve even skipped over stuff like the usual “repeal health care reform” inanities. Once again, the Majority Leader proves that one of the best assets Democrats have going into the fall midterms are the Republicans themselves. They’re just not ready for prime-time anymore, if in fact they ever were.

West Virginia Granite (This Byrd has Flown.)

“Mr. Byrd…said he had no illusions that his oratory was going to change the outcome of the final vote. So why was he on the floor day after day? What was he accomplishing? ‘To me, that question misses the point, with all due respect to you for asking it,’ he said. ‘To me, the matter is there for a thousand years in the record. I stood for the Constitution. I stood for the institution. If it isn’t heard today, there’ll be some future member who will come through and will comb these tomes.‘”

Senator Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, 1917-2010. Known as a fierce defender of Senate prerogative and a legislator with a penchant for pork, Senator Byrd, we all know, held some indefensible positions in his day. But at least he got on the right side of history before his time came. Rest well, Senator.

Barton Fink.

“According to a GOP leadership aide, Barton met with House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) Thursday afternoon, and was told, ‘Apologize, immediately. Or you will lose your [subcommittee] position, immediately. Now that he has apologized, we’ll see what happens going forward.“

Republican Rep. Joe Barton, the Ranking Member of the Energy & Commerce committee, decides to use the out-loud voice and genuflects before BP’s Tony Hayward, causing all kinds of messaging trouble for Republicans today. (Then again, if they had a problem with Barton openly professing his fealty to his biggest donor, maybe they shouldn’t have put it in today’s talking points.) In any case, this one was right over the middle of the plate for the WH today. [Pic via Greg Greene.]

The Deficit Witchhunt: Self-Immolation Time.

“The terms on which the U.S. government can borrow now are exceptionally advantageous. And because of high unemployment the benefits of boosting government purchases and cutting taxes right now are exceptionally large…[R]ight now, as best we can tell, an increase in federal spending or a cut in taxes will produce (in the short run) no increase in interest rates and hence no crowding-out of productivity — increasing private investment. Indeed, government spending that adds to firms’ current cash flow may well boost private investment and so leave us, dollar for dollar, richer after the effect of the stimulus ebbs.“

As the recent wave of deficit hysteria hits the G20, prompting a frightening and idiotic retreat back into Hooverism (As Krugman put it: “Utter folly posing as wisdom“), economist Brad DeLong explains once more the the case for deficit spending during a recession. THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, people (which is why 3/4ths of voters already get it.)

The Representatives from K-St.

“Members of this Shadow Congress — not all of whom are registered lobbyists — hail from 41 of 50 states (Texas has the most, with 17) and they’re almost as likely to be Democrats as Republicans. Some, like Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, were powerful congressional leaders, whose presence on K Street has drawn scrutiny in the past. But far more are low-profile back-benchers we’d never heard of and we doubt you had either:“

TPM’s Justin Elliot and Zachary Roth try to ascertain a head-count of the representatives from K-Street: “We’ve compiled a close-to-comprehensive list of former members of Congress currently working on behalf of private interests in Washington’s influence-peddling industry. We count 172 of them — almost one-third the number of current members of Congress.” (They deem them the “Shadow Congress,” but I think that name is, quite frankly, far too awesome to be used in reference to a bunch of bought-and-paid-for-lobbyists. See also: Shadow Broker, Shadow Proclamation, etc. etc.)

The picture above, by the way, is Joseph Keppler’s The Bosses of the Senate, from the January 1889 issue of Puck. Consider also David Graham Phillips’ “Treason of the Senate” from 1906, and the problem of corporate control over our republican institutions is sadly not-so-new. But back then, alas, they were just getting warmed up.

Krugman: Enough with the Deficit Panic.

“What’s the greatest threat to our still-fragile economic recovery? Dangers abound, of course. But what I currently find most ominous is the spread of a destructive idea: the view that now, less than a year into a weak recovery from the worst slump since World War II, is the time for policy makers to stop helping the jobless and start inflicting pain.” The NYT’s Paul Krugman weighs in on the deficit hysteria afflicting Washington right now. Honestly, this is Keynes 101, people — you don’t dial back government spending at a moment of incipient recovery, or else you end up with things like the 1937 Roosevelt Recession.

FWIW, the deficit witchhunt may be rolling in DC, but the bond markets aren’t listening. “On Friday, they were willing to hand over their cash to the Treasury for 10 years for 3.3 percent interest, a level so low it implies they consider the United States among the safest investments in the world.“

GOP, meet 4chan.

“We need to train an army of Ninja Cats. Cats are natural born hunters and predators, and it is known that they indeed have 9 lives, many more than the typical human life (being one). They are also excellent at hiding themselves and would be ideal for sneaking into countries and assassinating communist leaders to lessen the ever growing threat of communism, finding key terrorist leaders and shattering the global terrorist network.”

As a highly entertaining Reddit thread well put it, “House Republicans turn to the Internets for suggestions on new legislation. Internets reacts exactly how you’d expect.” The lack of their own ideas aside, the fact that nobody on the GOP saw this egregious messaging #fail coming from a mile away speaks volumes about their Internet savvy. Series of tubes! (FWIW, here’s the counter-argument — More than anything, it’s a list-builder.)

Spitting on a Gift Horse.

“They’re not accustomed to being engaged in politics this way,” says a private-equity investor. ‘Their skin isn’t toughened. They actually take [the attacks by Obama] personally. This is a profession with a lot of smart people, but who aren’t necessarily terribly introspective. They think they actually deserve to make all this money. So any attack on their livelihood is, ahem, unpleasant.’“

In the wake of the Senate’s 59-39 passage of financial reform last week (not to mention increasing evidence of rampant and pervasive fraud at Goldman, Morgan, and elsewhere), New York‘s John Heilemann surveys the bruised egos of Wall Street’s would-be robber barons. (In very related news, Paul Krugman and the WP note that Wall Street is now betting heavily on the GOP again.)

Keep in mind: Wall Street is angry with the administration despite the fact that “Geithner’s team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping…kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats.” [Change we can believe in!] Heilemann writes: “Whatever the effects of the bill, among them will be neither an end to the too-big-too-fail doctrine nor any curb on what the sharpest Wall Streeters see as the central threat to the system’s stability: excessive financial leverage. Geithner, Summers, and Obama had little interest in tackling those matters, not because they are indentured servants to Wall Street but because at heart they are all technocrats who believe the system doesn’t need to be rebooted or downsized, merely better supervised.“

Still, on the bright side and despite the ambivalence (or open opposition) from folks in high places, this bill did get significantly stronger on the Senate floor, and in some ways is now stronger than the House version passed last year. Let’s hope this welcome progressive trend continues in conference.

Cut Corners Kill Coasts.

“We had this gradual discovery during Hurricane Katrina, where a natural disaster eventually became seen as what it was, a man-made failure. And now, what was called an ‘act of God’ and a freak accident by the defenders of the pollution industry is now being labeled, proof positive, as the consequence of design failure. Not only did the blowout preventer under the Deepwater Horizon well have a leak in it, not only did it include a dead battery, not only were the tests on it falsified for years, but when engineers actually needed to use it and tried to activate it, they didn’t have the right schematics.“

As the Gulf runs black, it’s the same old story: FDL’s David Dayen brings us up-to-date on the idiotic and/or corrupt shenanigans coming to light in the wake of the (still-gushing) Deepwater Horizon gusher. “This is all a consequence of aggressive deregulation by industry, the maneuvers whereby powerful interests save billions in safety costs. They follow the rules at their discretion, they practically own the regulatory agency. It’s amazing how much this mirrors the problems on Wall Street. And just like with Goldman Sachs, the criminal justice system may get involved.” (Pic via TBP.)

Update: “‘We don’t have any idea how to stop this,’ Simmons said of the Gulf leak. Some of the proposed strategies — such as temporarily plugging the leaking pipe with a jet of golf balls and other material — are a ‘joke,’ he added. ‘We really are in unprecedented waters.’“