The challenge is that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell may construct a package that is unacceptable to the GOP House just because it contains no credible reductions or disciplines, and that the GOP House will be obliged either to vote for the unacceptable or else reject it logically and stand accused and derided by the campaigning White House as "rejectionists."  Mitch McConnell immediately rejects Harry Reid's first construction that pushes the next decision date past November 2012 -- the prime aim for the White House because it does not want debt to be part of the POTUS campaign questioning.  In sum, the game of the debt limit is now a contest between the crusading GOP and the electioneering POTUS. The lone correction in the Senate is that Harry Reid is trying to protect 23 vulnerable senators up for re-election next year, and that the Tea Party will awaken in the Red States against any Democratic senator who ignores the problem of unsustainable debt and the ratings downgrade.   Meanwhile, John Boehner and Eric Cantor cannot discipline their 240 votes the more and must hope for a bill that is credible.  Unlikely at this point, but after several failures, after Harry Reid provokes the House into rejecting his package, there may be a construction that no one in either House or Party likes that can get the POTUS signature by Tuesday.  The Democrats are playing this for default brinksmanship in order to blame the GOP for the economy.  After the Friday GDP report for Q2, the blame game for the economy is futile.  The surprise disappointment of 1.3% for Q2 was matched with a shocking revision of the Q1 down from 1.9% to 0.4%.  Stunner.  This indicates that the Q2 will be revised downward, as well, once the inventory is accounted for (there is a lag); and the full extent of the slowdown in government spending (stimulus, contracts, transfers) is computed.  My report during the week was that the Q2 could be 0.0%.  Not yet.  But John Taylor, Hoover, told Larry Kudlow and me on Tuesday that even a 1.5% was the same as 0.0.  A year from now, it may be that we will learn we slipped into recession in Q2 of 2011 -- and that the fiddling we are watching in Washington will stand as a marker for the despair.  Devin Nunes, CA-19, says we've never left recession since 2009.  The depths of that hole are now measured not at 4.1% negative, but at a stunning 5.1% negative.  We were so far down into a crater, there is reason to believe that we have never climbed out.  The debt games in DC will end, and yet the GDP cloud will continue.  Capitol Economics from Toronto gives the best estimate for 2012 at 2.0% GDP.  This means no recovery for the jobless and a dreadfully vulnerable nation that cannot handle macro-squalls such as another tsunami off of an industrial state, or another series of wars in the oil states, or any failure of governance in Europe -- and all these are just as likely as not.  POTUS must run in 2012 as the president who did not cause and yet could not solve the Great Recession.  When is this equation baked into the election cycle?  For the Independents, POTUS is regarded as handsome, amiable, ambitious, cool, smart, capable, but just not up to the task at hand and pretty much out of fresh ideas.  The choice comes to: do you want a caretaker who is pleasant, or do you want to try the other crowd's chump?

Am told that the Rules Committee met Thursday evening late in order to bring a rule that the House will remain in order on Friday through Monday, and that the vote for the Boehner plan could well work through these days of whipping. House GOP caucus meets at 10 AM Friday 29 to discuss the plans and how to get them moving. Am told that the obstacle for the Boehner plan is not the Tea Party freshman. Am told that the obstacle is the veteran House members who are running for higher office, or fear a primary from the right in redistricting states.  Three plans will come under discussion in the GOP caucus:  The Boehner plan, which no one likes.  The McConnell plan to give the authority to POTUS, which no one likes.  And then a plan to extend the debt limit to September 30, the end of the fiscal year.  All tricky maneuvering ahead.  Again, the Tea Party is not a problem.  The veterans, who are incoherent, are the problem.

  

How close is the vote in the House for the Boehner plan for raising the national debt limit and controlling spending without raising taxes during this Great Recession and Minor Recovery? The magic number is 217 votes to carry the House. The opinion of the House majority leadership is that there are zero Democratic votes. "Mrs. Pelosi is making certain of that," says a Republican agent with working knowledge of the Whip count. The total must come from the Republican caucus alone, which has 240 voting members. 

The Tea Party frosh class of 87 or 89 no longer signifies, because it has already fractured in many directions. For example, freshmen Tea Party victors Daniel Webster of Florida, Steve Pearce of New Mexico, and Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania have indicated, after resonant lobbying by the Chamber of Commerce and others, that they will vote with Speaker Boehner. The Tea Party candidates of 2010 are no longer speaking or acting with one voice.

It comes down to having only 23 Republican votes to lose before the bill fails. Now you see what the House GOP leadership sees and what the whip count has yet to solve. How many "No's" are there? Actually, the question is broken into two parts before the vote: How many "Hell, No's," and how many plain "No's?" - because the "Hell, No's cannot be moved any time before Hell freezes over.

"If we get the vote in the House," continues the Republican agent, "then Speaker Boehner is sure that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell can jam it through the Senate." Not that there won't be trouble in the Senate. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Jim DeMint of South Carolina have already indicated that they will lead a filibuster in the Senate even if the Boehner plan passes, and Rand Paul repeated his certainty on my show within these last hours when asked if he would filibuster. "Yes." 

The filibuster will complicate the clock management for the August 2 deadline when the credit card of the US is exhausted. It will take at least three calendar days to play out the filibuster and move to cloture vote. I am told that "It will be close" -- presuming the House GOP can pass the Boehner bill on Thursday evening 28 so the Senate can start the debate clock on Friday 29. 

Is August 2 critical? On one hand, Binyamin Appelbaum of the NYT tells me that the Treasury likely has enough revenue coming in to extend the government check-writing until about August 10. On the other hand, I am told that the Republican House leadership does not want to risk passing the August 2 date. "We tell our members," says a Republican with knowledge of the whipping, "that if this fails, or if we don't get this done by August 2, then the president is going to blame the terrible economy on us. And every day we don't get this done, he is going to repeat that we've wrecked the ecomony again." 

So what is the best-case scenario for the Bohener plan and the Reid and McConnell Senate to work together to deliver a bill the the White House for signing on August 2? The House must pass the Boehner plan with at least 217 votes, likely all Republican. Then the Senate must outlast the filibuster debate and vote cloture by Monday August 1. Then the Senate must pass its version of the Behner plan, likely "tweaked" I am told by a close observer, with goodies that the Senate Democrats favor. It must then go back to the House for approval again, and because some Senate Democrats wil have voted in favor of the adjusted Boehner plan, this will give political cover to some House Democrats to vote with the Republican 217. 

Still, it comes down to how many "Hell no's" and how man plain "no's" there are as we begin the final twelve hours or so to the vote. The Wall Street Journal reports, from an excellent House leadership source, that the "Hell no's" are 16. My information is that this number is low, and that as of this late hour, the "Hell, no's" are easily as many as the close-to-scary 23. Nightmare scenario for the House leadership and John Boehner in these last hours till showdown, when Boehner 's speakership and the Republcian House are at risk of losing everything gained in November 2010? The nightmare is what you think it is. That the "Hell no's" are much higher than 23, and the clock strikes failure.

Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford arrive just in time to lasso my attention away from the contrived Congressional showdown with the arbitrary and in-denial POTUS.  The jobs story is miserable and getting worse.  Walked through the big mall in Westchester, New York, and saw more than half the storefronts offering summer markdowns of 30-70%, with some just adding sales to already on-sale items.  The consumers will not spend with the old abandon.  The Apple Store was reasonably hopping, though the attention was for browsing with the gizmos, not buying.  I did get small items (a plastic wrap cover, a keyboard transparency) while son and pal chatted at the Genius Bar about Boot Camp; however, there was no line at the checkout station, and I did not observe any hectic shopping.  No big boxes leaving.  Lots of repair manual stuff and replacement  parts.  The big-ticket stuff is moved to the web.  But this is Apple, where all the consumption has come to rest by the young and yearing (with 75% unemployment).  The other mall stuff (clothes, fashion, accessories, housing appointments) was sparse to none.  Brooks had five shoppers, none at Abercrombie; Nike had seven shoppers; none at Ann Taylor or Louis Vuitton (no sale).  We need Cowboys and Aliens to give us something to celebrate away from the grinding stagflation.  Can Indy Jones and James Bond defeat the alien Hitlerite Blofelds?  You bet.  Can Congress get through the phony hoop of a debt limit -- a totally make-believe and self-inflicted barrier that has no purpose or Constitutional meaning?  Yes; but will it?  Considering a table of Reid and McConnell and Boehner and Pelosi, in causal Saturday dress-down (no ties), it is fun to imagine the Alien lasso yanking them through the window.  Would we want them back?  Not "Take me to your leader," but rather, "Take our leaders, please!"  POTUS Obama presides over a waiting game, as the jobless ranks will swell until Election Day 2012, like an army of brooding and tricky aliens who astutely regard Washington as indigenous life-forms who need disciplining.

Desperate pols tell many tales. The so-called debt limit talks remain entirely and only about both parties preparing for the 2012 election, and the winner will be the side and the op who needs immediate poll gratification least. In sum, whoever blinks first to get a compromised deal for his side is the loser. Jim McTague, Barron's, tells me that the White House is delusional about the significance of the debt limit talks: Jay Carney maintains that a successful conclusion on reducing debt over the next ten years will awaken the jobs market. McTague says this makes no historical or economical sense, however, because the White House no longer maintains an economics team that can figure out the stagflation and the joblessness; because the White House is overrun with political gamers, the magic-bullet theory of policy to solve the economy is treated as rational. The GOP has fewer policies to explain. The Tea Party election of 2010 sent freshly partisan Republicans to Washington to accomplish the narrow and necessary job of cutting spending and cutting taxes and cutting down the fledgling European welfare state.  Simple. Less government is a party mantra. John Boehner has no elbow room to maneuver: the party is uninterested in maintaining a sluggish maître d' and old Gingrich bagman as a leader for the 21st Century. What is especially fun is to watch POTUS Obama, who owes his job to his militant partisanship, kvetch and whine that the GOP is unwilling to meet him halfway. What goes around comes around, Mr. Obama; and the lesson of your swift rise to power is that you never met anyone halfway, including the one time you voted against raising the debt limit during your 15 minutes in Congress in between trolling for bucks with Tony Rezko, backstair dealing to secure Mrs. Obama the mansion, and launching your glamorous campaign in December '06. Compromise is for chumps and losers, Mr. President, and your presidency is Example Premier of "Why not compromise?"

Why are these men smiling? Am told the deal is done: they are gaming their troops. Lots of papering over differences and chatter about out years, not much change: each side exhausted the patience of the other. It is all about the election of 2012. POTUS seeks advantage. Boehner seeks to deny POTUS advantage. Result is spin.  The apparent Greek settlement encourages Washington to construct an apparent American settlement.  Draw.  Markets to rally.  No change in jobs or consumers or the sluggish recovery.  Spoke Connor Dougherty, WSJ, about the large count of layoffs coast to coast in the last weeks.  Lockheed, Cisco, Cracker Barrel, Borders, all pointing to caution and retreat for the second half.  The markets will rally.  Joblessness will drift.

 

David Cameron on the attack and on the defensive in PM Question time in Parliament these last hours, and what a joy it is to review the UK tradition in comparison to the American. The presenting question is, what did Cameron say or hear from the flame-haired femme fatale Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs with regard the potential BSkyB deal?  This topic is a useful weapon for Labour and others to hammer David Cameron for his bad luck to have been so reckless as to socialize with characters who have now fallen to the level of blackguards, highwaymen and Jacobins.  Rupert Murdoch's obsequious and eccentric performance along with his heir, the troubled hot-head James Murdoch, before the Parliamentary committee on Tuesday is now generally regarded as a display of coached humility and wisely convenient amnesia.  The inquiries go forward in all directions to ferret out the influence-peddling, back-scratching, plain cronyism practiced by Cameron and News Corps on their way to No. 10 Downing and also during the collective supremacies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.  In sum, News Corp seems to have done a workmanlike job of splashing all possible major politicians with affection in exchange for a seat at the table when it comes to BSkyB and the other treats of power.   A keen observation is that the Brits have done such a good job of legislating and ruling private cash out of public campaigning (super McCain-Feingoldism), and they have so limited their election process to five weeks of blithering promises in newsprint, that the handful of press lords, led by the Murdochs, have gained overwhelming mastery of the process.  Why would the PM socialize with a tabloid editor and her cronies?  Because the PM wants to maintain good headlines in the Murdochian Times and Sun and on BSkyB coverage.  Now Cameron must answer for a tradition that has always been easily manipulated  -- and everyone in the Commons debate with Cameron knows that he or she has enjoyed the fruits of influence-peddling.  Gee.  It comes now to raw power grab: does Labour Leader Ed Miliband have the muscle to push Cameron from his chair because of the public disgust with the villainous Murdochians?  Unknown.

What does it come to, this melodrama in Old Blighty, with regard Fox and the Murdochians of America? The News Corp board is slow and reluctant to react.  They will try to buy off the shareholders with givebacks and fruit baskets.  The pressure on the WSJ is minor compared to the risk of the TV licenses before the FCC panel.  The charge of hacking is not enough: there must be demonstration of bribery and cover-up and conspiracy to corrupt.  Men and women must make public confessions before the executioner's block.  Long way to go before the tangled web comes here, unless there is something in the suspicion that News Corp-tabloid types used similar tactics to obtain information here from significant innocent players, such as the 9/11 families.  So far, that is only an allegation and it's not backed up with a single fact -- though Justice issued a statement that the Attorney General is "open" to meeting with 9/11 families to discuss the allegation without facts that the FBI is now investigating.  And the newly-elected Attorney General of New York, Norman Siegel, working for the White House-ambitious Governor Andrew Cuomo, is reportedly representing the concerns of the families.  Uncle Sugar, game on.

Gilbert & Sullivan rise to the task and take over the incoherent News Corp scandal by adding clowns, a shaving cream pie, the quick reflexes of the Tiger Mom Wendi Murdoch, international live television coverage of a pie-in-the-face attack, and the genius of laughter.  The last days have seen a turn toward darkness in the adventures of the great bad man Rupert Murdoch when the apparent suicide of a whistle-blowing journalist involved in the original hacking tale introduced the themes of remorse and ruin.  The Parliamentary hearings are an attempt to regain the music of law and incoherence.  With the PM David Cameron said to be rushing home to answer questions of his integrity with regard his social dinner guests (Rebekah Brooks and other coverup artists), with Parliament's recess delayed to confront the cancer of the scandal, with the US audience showing up via live TV feed to cables including FNC, the proceedings need to introduce pomposity, sluggishness, opacity, exhaustion, repetition and, most of all,elitism in order to slow the game down so we can have time to work on the storyboards for the Masterpiece Theater version before G&S take it to the West End.  The G&S rewrite artists will certainly throw out all this tedious bit and English phlegm when they get to staging for Broadway.   The music will out.  What is critical today is that the News Corp scandal, facing the possibility of turning into a teachable tragedy of the decline and fall of an antique press lord's empire, has rescued itself from preachiness and now heads serenely toward a guffawing comedy of manners.  #Shakespeare4murdoch is the right tone.  But the Shakespeare comedies, not the tragedies.  As You Like It, not Hamlet.  Or contrarily, Lear staged as light opera. Meanwhile, the hipsters at Boing Boing are calling the cream pie attack a "hack."  Lovely irony and quick with language. Rupert Murdoch "hacked."

The big winner of the day is Wendi Murdoch, who sprang like a tiger to defend her Rupert from the attack.  A moment like no other, Jackie Kennedy's Dallas moment as theater of the absurd, Chinese style.  Cheers of "Wendi! Wendi!" said to have erupted from the WSJ newsroom floor as the hacker was fended off.  And now the red-headed witch of Rebekah Brooks, resigned, arrested, compromised, and defamed, mutters on about what she knew and when she knew it -- the new standard of betrayal on TV is a scarlet-haired woman of influence in the witness chair trying to choose between saving herself or saving the PM.

 

Is this the end of the Press Lords Murdoch? The answer looks more and more to be affirmative.  The latest bulletins from London, thanks to live blogs being kept by both the Daily Telegraph and the Manchester Guardian, point to massacres, dagger thrusts, lawyering up, prisoner's dilemma (sell him before he sells you); betrayal, poison, shredding, desperate measures to save government; wild sword thrusts by Labour; riotous laughter by the mob.  London begins its televised investigation next week when both Rupert and James Murdoch will answer questions under oath.  The US investigations are more iffy and foggy at the moment, but in the possible mix so far are Congress, the SEC, the FBI and the FCC -- a witch's brew of law enforcement and regulatory inquisitors.  Michael Wolff, the Murdoch biographer who is now at ADWeek, asserts that the Murdochs will abandon their London assets and flee the noose; however, losing control of BSkyB is not certain. The Dauphin James Murdoch is spoiled goods, according to the well-informed Michael Wolff (above); and it is difficult to figure a scenario where investors and regulators permit James Murdoch to continue as chair of BSkyB and heir apparent of News Corp.  What of DowJones and WSJ?  Bagman Les Hinton's bloody, footprinted exit from the building on Friday 15 July exposes the WSJ to the long knives of the market, and sources point to either Bloomberg or Reuters moving on the properties, which are nothing but money-losers for the way the Murdochs overpaid and bullied these last four years.  The gems in the US are the 27 TV licenses, and those will come before the FCC licensing review, with that inconvenient and rarely used "good character" clause.  Does the White House have a dog in this hunt?  Does the Democratic Party have a motive for pressing the case?  (The GOP is silent so far, save for the scrupulous maverick Pete King of New York; and it is a measure of the Party disarray that strong voices do not demand a full reviw of who know what and when about hacking of UK citizens and suggestive spying on US citizens.)  Does Justice have a grand jury weapon?  There is the shoe leather of the FBI's New York office.  The Murodchs's US newspapers will likely be jettisoned like so much tonnage from a merchantmen fleeing a chase frigate.  Does it go so far that Rupert and James Murdoch's US citizenship papers are reviewed, and we speak of deportation to Australia?  The joy is in the anticipation of the inquisitional torture of the loony Rupert -- in Conrad Black's keen phrase, "a good bad man" -- and the said-to-be-usefully-arrogant James.  The joy of the moment is the twitter site #shakespeare4murdoch.  My contribution this morning: "Nothing in his life Became him like the lying of it." Hacbeth Act 1. Scene 4. #shakespeare4murdoch #batchelorshow #cawdor.  And for those who fret that FNC "will suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles?" consider that what goes around, comes around.  The GOP is mightier than the Murdoch tomfoolery and will prosper from the exit of the feckless and the foul.  Also, my certain opinion of the celebrities of FNC is that it is long past time to move on.  More soon.

From London: Latest

19.00 The New York Times has published a detailed summary of the questionable relationship between News International and senior officers at Scotland Yard.

Headlined "Taint From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard", Don Van Natta Jnr's report can only serve to further damage the reputation of both the Metropolitan Police and Rupert Murdoch's company across the Atlantic.

The Murdoch inquiry turns dark as dried blood as Rupert Murdoch -- whom the doomed Conrad Black calls "like Napoleon, a great bad man' -- mocks the facts and calls the accusations against him and New Corps "total lies."  The game is afoot, as the US starts inquiries with the FBI, the Congress, the SEC and likely the FCC.  Spoke Felix Gillette, Bloomberg Businessweek, who spoke to an expert on the FCC re the "good character" clause of the FCC licenses.  The aim is to break News Corp in London and Washington; and the Murdochs have handed their enemies the weapon.  What did Rupert and James Murdoch know, and when did they know it?  The facts so far suggest a cunning coverup of the 2006 revelation of hacking in the UK.  Now there is an allegation that a News Corps agent was poking around in 9/11 victims' privacy. The contest is to intimidate the Murdochs into making more unforced errors.  Names calling for heads to roll so far include Boxer, Rockefeller, Lautenberg, Menendez, King.   Rupert Murdoch is lost, deaf, in denial, helpless, unaided, adrift, doomed like Conrad Black, exceopt that the fall will be supremely farther.  The joy of this is that it will drag on for at least sixteen months.  How long?  Until Election Day 2012.  Fox News Network is caged.  The WSJ is caged.  The New York Post is caged.  Those 27 TV station licenses that Rupert Murdoch owns are in the target zone.  There will be blood.  Place de la Guillotine comes to mind.

  

Thaddeus McCotter last weekend in New Hampshire in Rye, Rockingham County, with as smooth and eloquent a challenge to the GOP as imaginable in less than two and a half-minutes. McCotter has the wit, voice, smarts and energy to command attention. On the stage with the other Republican candidates, McCotter will demonstrate a range that sets him apart and ahead of his rivals. The campaign is a long trail, and there will be at least one shot at stepping up in the race, and it is easy to guess ahead that McCotter will make the most of his chance. For now, McCotter is much on air speaking to those he calls the "virtuous citizens," about the famous "Wide-Awakes" of 1860.  A classy, accurate, romantic connection.  The voice will out.  The voice does not conceal: the voice exposes the fraud and validates the trustworthy.  I know something of what the voice can do, since that is what I have to work with; and the voice will always out.  Thaddeus McCotter has the voice.

Spoke Larry Kudlow, Jon Hilsenrath, Steve Moore, John Fund, and Devin Nunes, re the debt limit contest in Washington, and learned that the Democrats and GOP are farther apart now than when they started in June, and that there is no chance for a settlement by August 2. Devin Nunes added that the rumor in DC is that POTUS will back up the hysterical remark that Social Security checks will stop after August 2 by ordering letters sent out next week to the recipients.  Social Security Babylon.   And also the rumor includes a letter to the military personnel that they will not be paid after August 2. In sum, POTUS is out of ideas and plans.  Still, all POTUS can do is threaten and sign and intimidate and pout.  The polling from Florida shows that 54% of 1000 likely voters disapprove of the POTUS job performance.  The White House is in denial.  The jobs number last Friday 8 was so weak that it will take 30,000 jobs added each month for the next year to bring the unemployment rate down from 9.2 to 8.2 -- and that is unacceptable ground for reelection.  The debt limit contest is about the sinking ship of the Obama reelect.  Asked John Fund, is there screaming at the White House?  Answer: complete denial while blame-shifting onto the GOP.  Will it work?  Nah.

 

McCotter just pokes the Big Fat Giant Romney, and the wailing starts.  McCotter mentions with some wit that it might be best to understand that POTUS and his Big Government are running mates with Romney and his Big Banking?  This isn't hard to imagine.  Romney's wobbly cred as a Republican starts from when he rented the Massachusetts GOP (heavily discounted) to challenge Ted Kennedy in 1994 -- and Romney found it useful to deny Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush before the cock crowed three times.  Romney rented the party again in 2002 for his flimsy win (riding a Bush-era GOP rush for the midterm election on war-fighting news) over a frail Democratic candidate.  Romney fell far short in 2008 against the random and incoherent ("Bomb Iran!")  McCain.  Romney aims to rent the party again for his vague nostrums about jobs and budgets.  The Big Fat Giant Romney cannot take a punch.  McCotter is just practicing.  The big stuff comes soon enough.  Themes: Ampad, China, manufacturing, banks too big to fail, and the Detroit Tigers.  (Bryan Curtis, Daily Beast, tells me that Big Fat Giant Romney claims he was a Tigers and Al Kaline fan when growing up in Detroit, and that he switched to the Red Sox and Yaz in 1972 while he was at Harvard Law School.  Believe it at your peril.  Did BFGR root for Kaline in the first place? and what kind of a Tigers fan can switch to the Red Sox at Harvard Law?  Answer: a phony fan who rented the Red Sox for advantage.)  (Any kid who betrays Al Kaline can easily betray anything else he claims to believe in.)

Romney 2008: 

Goldman Sachs $234,275; Citigroup Inc $178,200; Merrill Lynch $173,025; Morgan Stanley $170,350; Lehman Brothers $144,100; UBS AG $123,850; Bain Capital $123,150; Bain & Co $121,475; Marriott International $121,150; Kirkland & Ellis $109,400; Compuware Corp $103,550; Credit Suisse Group $102,600; Huron Consulting $102,050; The Villages $102,000; PricewaterhouseCoopers $92,250; JPMorgan Chase & Co $84,300; Affiliated Managers Group $82,112; Cerberus Capital Management $79,450;American Financial Group $78,350; Wachovia Corp $77,200

POTUS use of the word "constructive" is the story.  No change.  Am told the Tea Party members of the House will not agree to tax hikes or any other palaver that increases fees or uses asset sales as a source of revenue. Am told the contest is between the House leadership and the House membership.  Devin Nunes remarks best when he says that they are "getting that TARP feeling again."  Meaning the leadership is trying to pump up the crisis along with the White House in order to force members to vote for a half-measure.  POTUS cannot deliver the House vote until and if he delivers reductions in entitlements such as Medicare -- a position that would weaken Mediscare for the 2012 cycle.  In sum, neither side can find gain in compromise.  Is there a deal?  Not today.  Waiting on the jobless number for leverage for one side or the other.  Expectations of 90-100k gained, and a 9.1% rate, unch.

The jobs report for June is a nuke disaster, with 18K jobs added and revisions down for jobs in May and April.  The panic hits the analysts, who are busy downgrading earnings estimates for the S&P 500 and especially for the banks too big to fail.  Speaking Jon Hilsenrath of WSJ on Tuesday 12, and he writes today that the loss of 19k temp jobs in all since April points to worse ahead, since Temp jobs are a leading indicator.  The loss was 12k in June alone.  Icebergs ahead.  Joseph Brusuelas of Bloomberg Economics writes: 

D B Norton of Frank Capra's "Meet John Doe," a/k/a Mitt Romney, assures the elderly audience in NH that he will study Dodd-Frank at a later date, but that he is sure that his friends in the "financial community" are unhappy.  The "financial community" is sometimes called the banks too big to fail, a/k/a Wall Street, a/k/a the TARP babies of 2008.  Romney presents himself candidly as the TARP candidate of 2012.  What this means is that Romney aims to attract the TARPette money for the campaign cycle, yet so far he is falling short.  Wall Street is keeping its checks unwritten, so Romney falls way short of the preposterous goal of $50 million for the first two quarters.  Nan Hayworth (R-NY) tells me that the whisper number in Romneyville was $30 million for Q2.  Way short at $18.5.  However, there is the Super PAC Romney fund at $12 million.  This is composed of friends of Mitt who aim to use the cash to intimidate Rick Perry and keep the other candidates unloved.  D B Norton used the John Doe Clubs.  Romney aims to use the Super PAC and the cronies.  Not working so far.  The Tea Party appears hip to the Romney game.  The web is transparent.  Team Romney not swift enough to counter the doubts.  The London fundraising dinner (last night; $2,500 a plate)  is bad optics.  Will aim to control my mockery (I erred in blurting out, "Romney is a Democrat!" during a satirical confab with Kudlow and Drucker), because the fact is that Romney is a nothing, what used to be called an Independent.  This means he is renting the GOP apparatus from Utah and so forth.  Romney is still not ready to fight for Michigan; and that is why I am watching McCotter's ground game in Detroit.  The Bachmann boom is an anti-Romney surge; and so is a Perry boom (if he gets in: he may be scared off by the Super PAC and by the fact that he was a Democrat during Reagan and voted for Carter and Mondale and Dukakis (and probably Clinton).

Romney's primary campaign message is reduced to repeating the word "failed" about almost anything and to remarking that the recession is (was?) worse "because of our president" and that the recovery is "anemic" "because of our president."  This video from July 4th contradicts the chatter of the days before when Romney reversed his remarks that POTUS had made the recession worse.  Does Romney know he is flipping and flopping?  Romney speaks in simple terms about the economy and jobs -- suspiciously and condescendingly simple.   Was he rattled by his illogical statements about the recession and the recovery?  Is he listening to what he says?  Does it signify?  Romney resembles a stick figure walking through the sunshine and repeating memorized cant.  The expensive campaign staff he has around him has taught him to perform as a one-trick squirrel: Repeat no matter what you are asked: "Romney equals real change; Obama equals failed."  Now walk on.  Is this what the GOP voters of New Hampshire accept as political discourse?  No.  Rather, the simplicity stuff is what the campaign has decided in order to run out the clock till next January without making too many mistakes.  Romney does not feel tested by his competition so far.  Bachmann and Cain and Pawlenty are allowing Romney to walk through events without sweating over his goofs; and no one is holding him accountable for his meaningless palaver.

Game on.  Consider the leading GOP candidate, Willard ("Call me, Mitt, though it isn't my name") Romney, a man who has taken three sides of every major GOP issue for the last twenty years.  Consider that Ted Kennedy used the Ampad leveraged buyout wizardry to win against Romney in 1994; and that the major Bain looting of Ampad took place after '94: with the Chapter 11 in 2000 and the Chapter 7 liquidation in 2001.  Romney's record as a looter was celebrated in the '90s.  Romney was not obliged to defend his record in 2002, when he ran for Massachusetts governor as a turn-around guy.  Romney added no jobs and left behind an indifferent state.  Romney's genius is to present himself as a reformer who will clean up Wall Street and grow the American manufacturing base.  Shame on me, fool me twice.  Mention Ampad and watch the Romney supporters (there may be fifteen of them who do not write big checks) squirm.  And the Ronald Reagan put-down above is classic Romney snootiness -- a Harvard Law and Harvard Business looter from the Blackrock school of banks too big to fail that like to do business with looters.

Thaddeus McCotter announces for his campaign for the GOP nomination for president. Hometown crowd, lightning storms in the neighborhood; certain, easy-going speech: modest, forthright, transparent, earnest, smart, focused, the first step in a campaign of wit, concision, endurance, nimbleness, and most importantly of philosophy.  Thaddeus McCotter is a recognizable hard-working American husband and dad who happens to work for the people of the 11th CD of Michigan.    McCotter is not backed by a fortune, a celebrity name, a machine or apparatus, or clique.  McCotter connects the GOP intimately to the Reagan Democrats of Michigan and the Midwest, without whom the GOP cannot win in 2012.  The work ahead is for McCotter to introduce himself to the primary voters of Iowa and New Hampshire and through them to the GOP.  The landscape is not intimidating.  Romney is presumptive; Pawlenty is reluctant; Bachmann is effervescent; Cain is promoted; Santorum is angry; Paul is removed; Johnson is obtuse; Gingrich is arrogant; Huntsman is elitist.   Not one of this list is dangerous on the debate stage or nimble on the campaign stump.    Romney aims to win with the power of insider money.  Bachmann's fresh boom is a novelty without shape.  Pawlenty has misplayed his experience.  And so forth.  Long campaign between now and Iowa in January.  I watched the sniffy John Kerry charge out of third place two days before the Iowa caucus and pass the booming Howard Dean.  Forty-eight hours of media-savvy noise-making in January 2004, and Dean was elbowed out after leading for the whole of 2003.  The Iowa caucus, and the New Hampshire vote, will turn on electability, not novelty; on message not money, on rhythm not weight.  Game on.

Mitt Romney channels John Kerry and gains an early lead in the flip-flop circus for the 2012 GOP nomination. Romney is a recognizably cautious senior who has lost touch with (or never had) a sense of dramatic certitude. Romney presents what he is told that day. Information is that Romney says exactly what the last person told him before he takes the stage. Information is that he has no natural feel for the stage. Information is that he is genuinely ignorant of his reversals, flubs, plain errors of logic. The unforced error of statements about POTUS making the economy worse than in January 2009 is a textbook example of sloppy exaggeration, inadvertent pomposity, double-talking condescension. Romney is the eldest candidate after Rushmore figure of Ron Paul; and Romney's inability to handle a mult-tracked argument shows early. This flub of a slap at POTUS will bite intp his reputation for precision and courtliness. Also, the new question: Is Romney capable of grace under fire? Electability also means agility.  Not.  More completely, is Romney's campaign full trained on the swiftness and transparency of YouTube and Twitter?  The above mash-up (capped by the climb-down) is just now racing through cyberspace.  Twitter rules. No surrender.  Beyond viral is (death spiral) (flameout) (flat spin)... (thanks MD Eastern Shore for the guidance).