POTUS trash-talked the GOP in Congress in a concession that the debt ceiling negotiations have failed, and that POTUS lacks a message for the bad numbers from the economy for the second half of the year. POTUS also ticked off three non-starter bills from the Congress -- patents, shovel-ready loans, trade agreements -- that have zero chance of success unless POTUS Democrats change their stripes. POTUS press conference was a spontaneous scream of frustration by a chief executive.  Generous critics argue that POTUS aims to frame the debate for 2012.  Laughable.  POTUS is running against the GDP, not the GOP.  This performance was a new version of trash-talking.  Who is listening?  POTUS supporters are convinced.  POTUS opponents are convinced.  The independents will not decide upon 2012 until late October 2012.  Sound and fury signifying summertime in Washington.  Example of trash-talking from the presser below:

Mitt Romney stands as the establishment choice of the reluctant GOP.  His weaknesses are legion: healthcare, Michigan, Massachusetts, social conservatism, smaller government, spine, sand, personality.  There will be blood.  Spoke Larry Kudlow re Miit Romney, and the advice is to give him a chance, that he's not so bad.  Agree.  "Not so bad" is the best and worst that can be said of Governor Romney.  (And who is the separated-at-birth lookalike [below?])  POTUS Obama's weaknesses are also legion -- making the potential contest close and uninspiring.  Suppose they held an election and neither side attracted its partisans to the voting booth?

 

Spoke Joe Brusuelas, Bloomberg, and learned that the second half of the year is expected now to grow at 3%, which will put the year into the 2.5% GDP growth range, substandard by all measures. What is holding the hiring back are the debt load of the government, the troubles in Greece and the eurozone, the unknown of the Japanese recovery from the tsunami, the misfit of the US skill set to global jobs, and the general caution of employers to take on workers and debt while the consumer is cautious. Joe Brusuelas uses the metaphor "stuck in second gear."  POTUS error on camera and on stage to jest about the "shovel-ready" stimulus projects of 2009 looks to be the mistake of the first term; and we can anticipate seeing that laughter a thousand times before now and Election Day.  What was funny?  Anyone who experienced job loss and the fear of debt and obligations in the last four years (and I am one of the legion) does not forget that laugh.  The stimulus was a $1 Trillion boondoggle, and POTUS admits it.  The cynicism in the jest and the laugh are most damaging in the Blue states.  The image of POTUS shoveling at the White House is not easily explained eighteen months later. 

The choices for the Republican field are busy and at cross-purposes -- everyone preening as if he or she is the new Ronald Reagan -- which is useful for the process of choosing a candidate. As Peggy Noonan opines, ". . . the Republican field will take some time to shake out."  Good. My choice for intellect is Thaddeus McCotter, presuming he announces soon enough. The other fellows, and Mrs. Bachmann, have their moments, but none of their moments suits my temperament. I like candidates who speak with content and wit. This leaves out Mitt Romney, who I am told is as plastic and affectless in person as he appears on screen. Tim Pawlenty's caution is a draining flaw. Mrs. Bachmann is showy, glib, quick, exclusive and unusually pleased to speak to the make-believe rafters. Cain, Santorum, Gingrich, Johnson, do not stand out enough from wedge issues to comment -- perhaps Newt does, but only in a condescending and self-important way. The Texan Rick Perry is fun to weigh, and I am watching for the ten-gallon hat and the giddyup.  I am in no hurry to settle, and so far am enjoying the force multiplier effect of twitter on the campaigns.  Romney's team does not have the twitter game figured, nor does Pawlenty's.  Bachmann is sharp so far, but that might be volunteers.  Am training on tweeting McCotter news now.  Great sport and fresh.  The Obama team is just now learning how to do it.  There will be digital blood.  And the WSJ either leads or gets out of the way in keeping the issues hopping.  There is no answer: there is process.  The 2Q GDP is rumored at 1%.  Icebergs ahead. 

Good for Tim Pawlenty: after the sorry showing in the Manchester, New Hampshire, debate, when he failed to throw the high heater under Romney's chin, Mr. P. is back with a TV campaign in Iowa, seven weeks before the Iowa straw poll in Ames, Iowa, on August 13; and he is going for a win, no hedging or back-pedalling like Mitt Romney. It is Pawlenty vs the ferociously rhetorical Michele Bachmann in a state where the evangelical Christian vote is critical to what happens in the January caucuses.  Many of the caucuses take place in church gathering halls or facilities, and to have the evangelicals is to have a built-in advantage.  However, that event is on a brutally chill winter night, when all cameras will be aimed at the GOP winners and losers (Iowa 2004 was the death-knell for Howard Dean's sensational boom); and the straw poll in the heat of August corn will capture fleeting momentum for the winner.  But a win is a win; and Pawlenty needs a win over the Waterloo, Iowa, native Bachmann.  The non-evangelical Romney, Huntsman, and others will stay away.  Pawlenty's evangelical credentials may help him, but it is impossible to predict.  Battle of the evangelicals from Minnesota.   Before August 13, there will be fundraising figures for the Q2; and Romney is expected to dominate, with Pawlenty and Bachmann competing for second place.  The infamous scene of Pawlenty wimping out in New Hampshire will hurt the numbers.  How much?  And how much is Bachmann's skillfully sharp tongue worth?  Unknown.

Jon Huntsman enters the GOP nomination contest with a Regan reminder of a speech at the same place that Ronald Reagan started his 1980 campaign for POTUS.  Rick Santorum, the social values candidate from Pennsylvania, young and restless, responds with a YouTube ad mocking Jon Huntsman and swiping at Mitt Romney over the right to life narrative.  Right to life is not a determinative issue for the Electoral College.  More intriguing is that the Chicago campaign of POTUS responds to Huntsman's speech with a brief rhetorical challenge about the "economic security" of the middle-class:  

Does Obama 2012 actually fear Huntsman as a shepherd of the middle class, or is it gaming the GOP and trying to make Huntsman look robust?  More to learn, but the story of Huntsman's decision to quit his Beijing ambassadorship for a Democratic administration and return home to run for president is too good to be true.  Because a reporter asked him if he would?  Because he was thinking of 2016 and just decided to go for it now?  A GOP opinion is that Huntsman is a Trojan Horse, called forth by the White House to block Romney's sweep.   Two moderate-tempered Republican Mormons in the race, one from sort-of Michigan and the other from sort-of Utah?  Sure.  But which one does the Obama campaign want to run against?  Romney.  Does the Obama campaign want to run against Huntsman? Unknown.  Against Tim Pawlenty?  Unknown.  The Obama campaign in 2008 could make up any version of reality and get rewarded, because it was runniung again the glum Bush and the clumsy McCain.  Does the 2012 Obama campaign struggle to find a narrative to combat Romney and Hunstman?  Is the Obama campaign fearful of the GDP more than the GOP?

Seeing Jon Stewart play defense on TV without a script is surprising.  Why choose to go on FNC as a lone guest if not for this political scenario?   Why mention Anthony Weiner as evidence that the TV pundits are sensationalists and not political animals?  Stewart's relationship to Weiner makes this a poor example, too entangled with animosity and betrayal. Stewart is a self-decribed "comedian," by which he does not rule out the fact that he is a political actor.  Good for him.  But the defensiveness is unfunny.  Calling FNC host Chris Wallace (son of Mike Wallace)  "insane" is mild noise for Comedy Central; however, the declaration without a laugh track on the Newspeak Fox seems out or proportion to Sunday Morning Theater.  Stewart is wise to stay behind the curtain with the levers and smoke of Oz.  Does Hollywood have politics?  Sure.  Money politics.  The audience for Hollywood is 8-34 years old and likes to go to the same movie their older brothers and sisters did, and go to it two or more times.  Harry Potter and Green Lantern and Super 8 have politics?  Money politics.  This does not explain the default showbiz lurch to the Lefty Left of the Democratic Party.   Stewart knows that politics is the plain-dressed and plain-spoken pursuit of money.  What explains showbiz with the Democrats is historical accident.  The talkies (and the big money) came of age during FDR.  You stay with the fellah that brung ya.  New Deal was the golden age of boxoffice, and the long run of winners under Ike didn't change the formula.  Jack Kennedy played to it.  Ronald Reagan is one of the ensemble players who got away -- an FDR supporter who disdained the Stalinist toadyism of the Lefty Left after 1948,and the Berlin Crisis after 1950, and the Korean crisis.  Stewart knows all this.  Does he want to go to Washington?  Is this a dabble toward Jersey senator?  Puzzle?

  

The strange detail is that four government men make a peacock display of the game of golf in order to show common purpose with regard the fragile state of the US economy and the overbearing Federal debt load that threatens the national security.  What about golfing is sober?  It is a boy's game invented in Scotland for the royals and played by many presidents for one hundred years as a demonstration of athleticism in the White House.  TR preferred tennis, hunting, riding and camping.  Golf is not what is easy to associate with strength of conviction.  "Good walk spoiled" is the golfing definition of choice.  What do we learn from the theatrical exercise?  These four government men are not in the same economy as the rest of us working fellows: they take the Treasury's check, and we pay the Treasury's bills.  Stats show there are 30 million American males working full time between the ages of 15 and 45.  There are 15 million American men working full time between the ages of 46 and 65.  The younger, larger group is frustrated and stuck.  Spoke Mike Dorning, Bloomberg, to learn that one million fewer men and women are changing jobs each month now than before the Great R; and that is a reflection of fear, caution, lack of choice, frustration, drift, underemployment.  In addition, there are nearly 14 million unemployed; in addition, hourly wages year over year (2010-2011) have retreated 1.6%.  In sum, the youngest workers are going backward in the same job.   All this adds up to tens of millions of men and women who do not have the leisure, cash, temperament or desire to play golf on a Saturday in June.   It is the Protestant scold in me.  We work to live, and we live to work; endeavor is pleasure as much as it is mission.   Golfing is not working.  So what to conclude from the golf summit?  These four government men have too much down time and not enough anecdotal information to realize that the US is in existential trouble.  What happened in the Great Recession of 2007, 2008 and 2009 is that the US government took money from taxpayers and gave it to the the bankers and sharpies who crashed the economy with gambling dens and fraudulent markets.  TARP was theft from a generation of working men and women.  The US government (Bush approved and signed: Obama and Biden and Boehner voted yes; Kasich was out of office) colluded to take $1Trillion of TARP for the bankers and whatever else struck their fancy and whined loudly.  TARP was theft from a generation.  Now the TARP thieves can golf together to demonstrate purpose?  A golf ball on grass is meaningful?  This is the Republic for laughs? 

Missing Keith Olbermann and his creative (never only bombastic lite) disdain for the myriad sins and gaffes of the GOP, it is a pleasure to anticipate the return of the self-invented scold on Al Gore's Current TV channel. The economy has bottomed -- though it is also sitting on the bottom -- so it is time for Mr. Olbermann to tell us what is wrong with the party out of power.  His jeremiads are always a treat.  The news content on his show at MSNBC was usually comfortably slight and digestible in glances; however the outrage for celebrity politicians of the right, and the strangely dreamy veneration for celebrity politicians of the left, was always comforting to watch, like a black and white screwball comedy movie with lots of moving parts that don't fit and yet reliably delivers a happy ending: I'm thinking of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in (1938) "Bringing Up Baby."

Colleague Thaddeus McCotter fixes his sights on the front-running Mitt Romney, and in doing so challenges Romney's easy win over the other candidates in Manchester.  Spoke Larry Kudlow, an early and careful supporter of Tim Pawlenty and Romney; and Larry was disappointed with Pawlenty's non-performance in the debate; and Larry is usually disappointed in Romney's refusal to speak specifically.  John Fund reminded that Rick Perry is about to enter the contest along with Jon Hunstman, and both will alter the path for Romney.  Thaddeus McCotter will change the formula for Romney in the Midwest cauldron, where manufacturing and unionism and Reagan Democrats all dwell.

Mitt Romney played the safety first leader at the Manchester CNN debate and surprised no one with his measured responses and careful pacing. Romney is a safe candidate, and he acts and speaks with the confidence of a CEO who knows his quarterlies will please the board and the stockholders. Romney received an unexpected gift from Tim Pawlenty when the Minnesotan declined combat over the "Obamneycare" remark on Fox News on Sunday. Tim Pawlenty was the surprise loser for the evening. John Fund joked he went from Minnesota nice to Minnesota mice. Michele Bachmann won the Tea Party face-off with Rick Santorum and Herman Cain. Ron Paul is the grand old man of libertarian curmudgeonliness; and Newt Gingrich strolls through policy debates with an earned arrogance.  Taegan Goddard regards Sarah Palin a loser for the evening, just because Bachmann scored so well.  And Major Garrett opines that this competent, unexciting, cautious character tonight is the real Mitt Romney.

Tim Pawlenty goes after Mitt Romney and Obama healthcare work with his construction of "Obam-ney Care." Cute and cautious, like the speaker. "What I don't understand is that they both continue to defend it . . ." is punchless sarcasm, not combat-ready; just low-level trash-talking (more table scrap talking).  It may get Romney engaged; it may just float away with the same Alphonese and Gaston policy politeness these two have shared before, laughing and smiling at their self-infatuation (below).  POTUS sits out this news cycle, golfing in the rain with his pals, and waiting on better numbers from the summertime doldrums of the economy.  Will the numbers perk up?  Last year, the summer dragged until QE2 was launched late in August.  Healthcare is not the story; jobs and crony capitalism are the story.  Pawlenty speaks of 5% growth and lower corporate and personal tax margins and reducing Federal maternalism: at the same time, he must defend or explain his record as the twice-elected governor of a maternal Minnesota.  That was then; this is now.  Romney may need to sharpen his talons and slash away at Pawlenty's record of feeding at the Federal table.  The two significant candidates just now are the two GOP ex-governors from deeply Blue states won by Carter and Mondale once upon a time.  The GOP turned upside down.

Spoke Thaddeus McCotter, MI-R, re Mitt Romney's dart into the congressman's district of Livonia, in western Detroit, on Thursday 9. Thaddeus McCotter, our guitar-wielding rhetorician, is distinctly aiming to enter the presidential contest. Mitt Romney chose to travel to the 11th MI without explanation to the resident Republican congressman or the local GOP office. Romney's weakness as a GOP candidate -- McCotter observes that Romney is not POTUS's rival, rather that Obama and Romney should run together -- most outweigh his strengths, and in Detroit the Romney folly of writing a November 2008 NYT op-ed in favor of Motor City's destruction is now another iron cross around the candidate's neck: Romney to Motor City: Drop Dead. Combining the McCotter op with the Gingrich collapse with the Romney bail on the straw polls, with the noise from Giuliani and Rick Perry of Texas, the GOP field gets sketchier for the long road to Iowa and New Hampshire in January 2012. The economy looks laughably weak through the winter and into the spring of 2012 -- Las Vegas land is now worth 15% of its 2007 prices -- so there is plenty of room for maneuvering among the GOP wannabees.

The story was that the White House (POTUS) was all set to choose the former and defeated Ohio Governor Ted Strickland for DNC chair when the word came from Valerie Jarrett and the First Lady (and Chicago?) that the correct choice was Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida.   In these last few months, DWS, a/k/a "Debbie Downer," has freelanced in a Michael Steele fashion, and the result is a laughingstock of political fisticuffs.  Asserting that the Republicans aim "literally" to drag us back to Jim Crow, DWS quickly jumped the shark as a political op.  Learning on the job is tough.  Cannot at this point determine if she is Michael Steele oblivious to discourse or a genuinely clumsy person.  Karl Rove's Crossroads takes the easy shot; but then, DWS is the easy target.  The Democrats have no corner on knuckleheadedness, but they are the flavor of the month for folly.

Spoke Larry Kudlow, CNBC, and Patrick O'Connor, WSJ, re the Tim Pawlenty role out of a tax plan for growth for his presidential campaign. Pawlenty lays out a thoroughly supply-side case that would reduce corporate taxes to 15% and eliminate trinkets like the capital gains tax; it would also sharply reduce personal margins and throw away many strange or uneven deductions. Pawlenty speaks of a "Google test" that would close all federal programs that duplicate what can be found easily by googling a commercial    service, such as the post office and UPS.  Patrick O'Connor reports that he spoke with members of the GOP Senate who regard the plan as a dream come true if and when it ever exists.  Larry Kudlow remarks that this is a solid plan that requires the other candidates to respond in kind with detail on their own plans for tax reform.  Pawlenty has grabbed the golden ring of growth.  Nowhere in the Obama Administration is there a comprehensive growth plan for the economy; rather, POTUS and his Cabinet speak of revenue-based governmental reform, and speak of adjusting corporate taxes in exchange for other details, such as eliminating tax breaks.  Pawlenty aims at a 5% growth, which is high but credible and is the an immediate challenge to those economists who support the Obama Administration's models that have given the US under 2% growth and only dreaming of 3% by 2013.  Pawlenty aims very high.  (Pawlenty calls the tax code a "9,000-page monstrosity.")  If and when the US shakes out of the torpor of the Great Recession, it needs an ambitious growth plan something like Pawlenty's.  This plan could put Pawlenty back in contention with the leading default candidate, Mitt Romney.  The plan deserves a full airing by the candidate debates.  "Where's the growth?" is a major contest to be sorted out among the rivals.  Meanwhile, Ezra Klein, WaPo, a major young op for the Democratic status quo, responds to the Pawlenty 5% by using the cautious word "absurd.":

Colleague Thaddeus McCotter explains how it is possible that a celebrity journalist with feisty websites can take over a press conference by a disgraced politician and demand an apology before the politician takes the podium to weep his way through his self-humiliation: "In Washington, nuts is normal."  Spoke Nan Hayworth, NY-19, and she remarked that the Anthony Weiner fiasco is a sad piece of the overall tawdry business of Washington.  Weiner cannot be fired for what would land him on the street without a resume to use in any grown-up occupation, from school teaching to ship's captain.  What is wrong with Washington is that it cannot police itself while it insists that American needs regulation and command.  While the Weiner/Breitbart wars played out on the big screen, back at the White House the chair of the Council on Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee packed his bag and abandoned Washington for Chicago three days after the ruinous May jobless numbers hit the news.  The Obama administration is reduced to posturing about the auto bailout and blame-shifting to Paul Ryan's Medicare gambits.  How much longer can the Weiner silliness distract from the economic failures of the 111th and 112th Congress?  "In Washington, nuts is normal."

The PRC cadres deny that they are responsible for the gmail hacking of various US government VIPs (White House) and other critical nodes. Why do the cadres think their remarks have merit? The Chicom pack is holding on barely to the structure in the PRC and gaining no respect for its stubborness. There was an argument, ten years back, that the PRC represented a new form of authoritarian capitalism that would confront and surpass the crony capitalism of the US and Europe. That case is lost. Beijing is a protection racket run by the princes and their sons and daughters. No future. The cyberattacks are crude and obvious and lazy. No one is much in charge of the State. The cyberattacks are evidence of anarchy and piracy within the State.  Twenty-two years after Tian An Men, 75 thousand and more young people marched in a commemorative candlelight vigil (below)  in Hong Kong against the second generation Chicom's (Deng Xiaoping) regime's unmasked and 

unforgiven brutality.  The fifth generation of Chicom princelings are due to take charge in 2012.  Looking unlikely that there will be a sixth generation of chumps.  There's just no profit in it for the Chinese people to continue to pay the Party its gangster cut. 

  

Mitt Romney's announcement for the nomination is a long, drawn-out anti-climax to his careful planning in the 2008 cycle, when he lost to the troubled and erratic John McCain.  Romney leads an untested field and will remain the go-to default choice for the traditionally minded GOP.  No one much is thrilled by Romney.  Then again, Romney doesn't self-destruct.  Unusual events can unhorse front-runners.  In 2008, Hillary Clinton was the dominating front-runner approaching the Iowa caucus.  Then John Edwards gathered up money and buzz and drew enough of the undecided from HRC that Obama won the beauty contest and was off on his six-week sweep of caucus states to take a commanding lead over HRC and never look back up to the nomination, though he lost the vote in most of the major states.  John Edwards was the spoiler.  Now John Edwards is the target of a grand jury.   Who or what will spoil Romney?  Is that Sarah Palin's role?

The numbers support the general conclusion that housing prices have now retreated to 2002 and are headed lower. It is the long goodbye of the the 21st century. If you purchased a house in the last ten years, or refinanced a house on the basis of the appraisal, then you are living underwater. This is a major disappointment to American homeowners and their children.   Nor do the numbers support a turn-around in less than another three to seven years.  The GOP nomination must address the ruin.  It remains a curious detail that no banker too big too fail has yet to answer criminal charges for the suggested fraud, manipulation and cover-up of the boom years 2003-2008.  Spoke Joseph Brusuelas, Bloomberg, who remarks that weak economic numbers this week point to the soft patch that will leave the year a disappointment, the third year of sorrows in the Obama Administration.  Spoke Salena Zito, who reports that VPOTUS Biden is on a campaign swing where his pitch to donors is to admit that the first two years of the administration failed, and that the White House got too far left from the people,  And then Biden asks for money for re-election and reminds then to keep their wallets open for him in 2016.  Reminds me that the VPOTUS ain't bragging if he can avoid it.

The day's numbers on 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

manufacturing confirm that the national economy has slowed to the infamous "soft patch" for the second year in a row.  In 2010, Ben Bernanke responded with QE2, which is now scheduled to end at the close of June.  Soft Patch 2.  Is there s QE3 coming?  Speaking Paul Dales of Capital Economics (included below a note from behind the pay-wall), out of Toronto (the healthy Canadian economy), and he confirms that that US is stuck in stagflation, higher prices because of food and fuel prices, and no jobs growth.  The politics of this reversal of fortune are obvious, if and when the GOP has a candidate who can talk growth:

The sharp decline in the US ISM manufacturing index to a 19-month low of 53.5 in May, from 60.4, will only add to fears that the economy has hit another "soft patch". That decline mirrors the sharp deterioration in the corresponding ISM non-manufacturing survey in April and comes on the heels of the much weaker than expected ADP survey. The decline in the headline manufacturing index was led by a slump in the key new orders index to a 22-month low of 51.0, from 61.7. In addition, the production index fell to 54.0, from 63.8. The decline in the employment index was at least a little more modest, from 62.7 to 58.2. We suspect the temporary drop off in motor vehicle production was a factor, as manufacturers were hampered by parts shortages after the Japanese earthquake. That said, the ISM survey indicates that the transport equipment manufacturers in its survey reported growth last month. In addition, the supplier deliveries index actually declined suggesting that, although supply times are still rising, the pace of that appreciation has slowed. Surging commodity prices could be another factor behind the deterioration in manufacturing, but the drop back in the prices paid index to 76.5, from 85.5, suggests that the recent drop back in commodity prices is providing a little relief on that front. Overall, it looks like this recovery has hit its second "soft patch" which, for a recovery that is less than two years old, is troubling. Last year's "soft patch" ended up pushing the 10-year Treasury yield down to less than 2.5% and prompting the Fed to implement QE2. With the 10-year yield dropping back below 3.0% today, our forecast that yield will drop back to 2.5% later this year is on track.

and this from the AP on the sad numbers:

"As far as we can tell, employers have hugely overreacted to the surge in oil prices, which has slowed but not killed consumption," said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics. The weak ADP results pushed him to cut his forecast for overall job growth in Friday's report to 75,000. He earlier had forecast growth of 175,000 jobs.

The ADP report has been wrong before as an indicator for the Labor Department's job report. Last month, it underestimated growth. The private sector added 268,000 jobs in April, according to the government.