If You Are Bearish On the Economy, Then You Need
To Own This Stock

Trading is in my blood. I vividly remember, as an elementary school student, trading baseball cards with my classmates. My trading interest blossomed as I learned how to buy low and sell high via various part-time business endeavors. These businesses included selling produce I got for free from my grandparent's garden door-to-door and . . . → Read More: If You Are Bearish On the Economy, Then You Need To Own This Stock

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-own-this-stock/

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The Al Qaeda Numbers Game in Yemen

Last month I wrote about the counterterrorism community's penchant for over-counting the number of al Qaeda militants in the world, by taking too seriously the supposed "links" and "mergers" between al Qaeda and local insurgencies, particularly in Yemen,[...]

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REPORT: Who Media Turns Its Back On Experts Who
Blame GOP For Political Gridlock

Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, are well-respected centrist congressional experts who are often cited by the media. But their recent conclusion that Republicans are responsible for political dysfunction -- laid out in an April 29 Washington Post op-ed and their recently released book -- has been largely ignored, with the top five national newspapers writing a total of zero news articles on their thesis.

Congressional Experts: Republicans At "The Core Of The Problem" Of A "Dysfunctional" Washington

Mann And Ornstein: "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are The Problem." In their April 29 Washington Post op-ed, the duo lay out the thesis of their latest book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges.

"Both sides do it" or "There is plenty of blame to go around" are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach. [The Washington Post, 4/29/2012]

Mann And Ornstein Are "A Brand" In Washington And Considered "The Two Most Respected, Committed Scholars" Studying The U.S. Congress. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote in regard to Mann's and Ornstein's recent op-ed:

In Washington, "Mann and Ornstein" are a brand. Mann works at the centrist Brookings Institution, Ornstein at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Over their four-decade partnership, they have established themselves as the two most respected, committed scholars -- and defenders -- of the U.S. Congress. They never tire of pointing out that the way the Founders designed the federal government, Congress came first, and it was intended to have an "institutional identity," not a partisan identity. It's that institutional identity, they now say, that is under threat, and more from one party than the other. [The Washington Post, 5/11/2012]

U.S. Newspapers Often Cite Mann And Ornstein But Largely Ignored Their Latest Thesis

During The Year Before Publishing Their Op-ed, Mann And Ornstein Were Cited 35 Times By The Top Five Newspapers. A Media Matters review of the top five national newspapers in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, between April 29, 2011 and April 29, 2012 reveals that the congressional experts were either cited by these papers or published articles within these papers 35 times.

A majority of these citations and authored articles -- 63 percent -- were news stories rather than opinion pieces.

But Only Five Articles Have Cited Mann And Ornstein's Thesis, All Authored By Opinion Writers. A Media Matters review of the top five national newspapers found only five mentions of Man's and Ornstein's thesis since the publication of their op-ed, all in opinion pieces.

• Four Of The Five Articles Mentioning The Experts' Thesis Were Published In The Washington Post, And All Four Were Written By The Paper's Columnists: Walter Pincus, who runs the Fine Print column, for "Don't Expect to Hear Much Truth-telling on Foreign Policy"; Robert G. Kaiser for his review of It's Even Worse Than It Looks titled, "How Partisan Republicans Bring America to Its Knees"; Ezra Klein, a regular Post columnist, for "GOP Elephant in the Room: Themselves"; and WashingtonPost.com blogger Greg Sargent's op-ed "A Topic No Sunday Show Will Tackle," which criticized the lack of coverage the experts have received.
• The New York Times' Single Article Was Paul Krugman's Column. Krugman discussed It's Even Worse Than It Looks in his May 3 column.
• Wall Street Journal Cited Mann's Expertise - But Not About His Recent Thesis. The Journal published an April 30 article about super political[[-]]action committees and 501(c) organizations made possible by new court rulings and Federal Election Commission decisions, but it does not reference the book at all (as a consequence, we have excluded this result from the chart below).Instead, it quotes commentary from Mann about these organizations' ability to raise money.

Experts' Thesis Also Ignored By Sunday Shows

Bob Somerby: "[T]he Pair Of Scholars Are Missing." From The Daily Howler on May 14:

Inside Washington, Ornstein and Mann have been famous for decades. (See The Daily Howler, 5/9/12.) Their recent cri de coeur ("cry of heart") hit a nerve, Klein says.

But now, the pair of scholars are missing--and no one is saying a word about it! Yesterday, for the third straight week since that book appeared, Ornstein failed to turn up on a Sunday news program. Mann was missing too. No one asked them about their book--the book which says that our current decline is the fault of only one party.

For decades, they were the most-quoted experts in Washington. Now, the Sunday programs can't find them! Bob Schieffer can't locate his trusted old friends. David Gregory is mystified too! [The Daily Howler, 5/14/2012]

Kevin Drum: "Norm Ornstein And Thomas Mann Are The Most Quoted Men In Washington." From Drum's Mother Jones blog on May 14:

Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann are the most quoted men in Washington. They have been for years. A couple of weeks ago they released a new book, and normally this would mean plenty of Sunday chat show bookings. But this book wasn't the usual pox-on-both-your-houses tome. Instead, they came right out and said it: Republicans are the big problem in American politics right now. [Mother Jones, 5/14/2012]

Greg Sargent: "[N]either Man Has Been Invited On To The Sunday Shows." From The Washington Post on May 14:

I ran this thesis by Ornstein himself, and he confirmed that the book's publicity people had tried to get the authors booked on the Sunday shows, with no success.

"Not a single one of the Sunday shows has indicated an interest, and I do find it curious," Ornstein told me, adding that the Op ed had well over 200,000 Facebook recommends and has been viral for weeks. "This is a level of attention for a book that we haven't received before. You would think it would attract some attention from the Sunday shows.'

Ornstein also noted another interesting point. Their thesis takes on the media for falling into a false equivalence mindset and maintaining the pretense that both sides are equally to blame. Yet despite the frequent self-obsession of the media, even that angle has failed to generate any interest. What's more, some reporters have privately indicated their frustration with their editorial overlords' apparent deafness to this idea.

"The piece focused on press culpability -- it would be hard to find a more sensitive issue for the media than the question of whether they're doing their job," Ornstein said. "We got tons of emails from some of the biggest reporters in the business, saying, `We've raised this in the newsroom, and editors just brush it aside.'"

Ornstein, while stressing that he wasn't casting any blame, noted that the topic hasn't come up on Howard Kurtz's weekend media show.

This is curious. Is "experts confirm that, yes, one side is more to blame than the other, and journalists should say so" really too hot a topic for the Sunday shows? Is it not relevant or interesting? [The Washington Post, 5/14/2012]

Paul Krugman: Mann And Ornstein "[C]an't Get On TV To Promote Their Book." From The New York Times on May 16:

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two highly respected Congressional analysts with a reputation for being nonpartisan, have a book documenting the fact that our political dysfunction is very one-sided -- it's Republican extremism, not "both sides do it", that's at fault. Sales of their book have been very good, and there's a lot of public interest. But guess what? They can't get on TV to promote their book. [The New York Times, 5/16/2012]

Methodology

Media Matters searched articles from the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post in the Nexis and Factiva databases between April 29, 2011 and May 17, 2012 for the following keywords: Thomas E. Mann, Thomas Mann, Norman J. Ornstein, or Norman Ornstein. Only articles that cited Mann or Ornstein or were authored by Mann or Ornstein were included in the analysis. Articles that cited both or were co-authored were only counted once. Mann and Ornstein's April 29, 2012 column, "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are The Problem," was not included in the data.

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High-Ranking Crazy

Astute readers may have noticed that over the past year or so, I've made an effort not to be too knee-jerk about my partisanship. Not that I've changed my beliefs about any substantive issues lately, but I've tried to be as thoughtful as I can about people on the other side, whether it's conservative writers or conservative politicians. I don't always succeed (the occasional insult still filters through now and then), but I'm doing my best. And I understand that writing about how the other side is evil can be satisfying. It's also popular; I've written or co-written four books, and the most partisan one sold the most, even though it's not a book I'd have much appetite to write again.

That being said, there are times when it isn't enough to say that conservatives are wrong about a particular matter. Being truthful requires saying that many of them are, in fact, nuts. Not all of them, but many of them. And there are both qualitative and quantitative differences in the nuttiness. One of the main differences is that holding absolutely insane ideas severely limits one's career prospects within the Democratic party. You might be able to find a politician here or there who holds some views people might consider extreme, but ask yourself: can you think of any prominent Democratic politicians who are complete whack jobs? Who believe things that no sane person could believe? I really can't think of any. Cynthia McKinney was a little out there, but she spent four years as a backbench member of Congress in the 90s, then disappeared. Anyone else come to mind?

On the other hand, one of the consequences of the Tea Party revolution within the GOP is it required in most places that you be very, very, very conservative to win a primary to anything, but it's also possible to be crazy, so long as you've met the requisite tests of conservatism. So for instance:

The man in charge of running Arizona?s elections has gone to the birthers. Secretary of State Ken Bennett now says he?s not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States and so he is threatening to keep the president off the ballot in November...

Bennett said he was following the lead of the state?s eccentric Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a fellow Republican who ordered an investigation into the president?s birth certificate last year and concluded the document released by the White House is a forgery. Bennett said he is now trying to get verification from state officials in Hawaii that the certificate is authentic.

You may not have heard of Bennett before, but he's the second-highest-ranking official in Arizona. If Governor Jan Brewer left office tomorrow, he'd become the governor (that's how Brewer, who is also not exactly the most reasonable person, got her job; she was Secretary of State when then-governor Janet Napolitano joined the Obama administration). And he's going to be running for governor in 2014.

So let me ask my conservative friends: Can you honestly say there are any high-ranking Democrats who go in for stuff like this? I can't think of any. In places where Democrats dominate, some people who get elected are more competent or skilled at governing than others, but the voters aren't putting the residents of the local asylum into office. They just aren't.

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Arizona's Secretary of State goes birther, says
Obama might not be on ballot

Arizona Secretary of State Ken BennettRepublicans say they have an emergency battle plan in place to make sure Arizona doesn't end up in President Obama's win column in November. Could it be this?

The man in charge of running Arizona?s elections has gone to the birthers. Secretary of State Ken Bennett now says he?s not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States and so he is threatening to keep the president off the ballot in November. [...]

Bennett said he was following the lead of the state?s eccentric Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a fellow Republican who ordered an investigation into the president?s birth certificate last year and concluded the document released by the White House is a forgery. Bennett said he is now trying to get verification from state officials in Hawaii that the certificate is authentic.

Bennett says it's nothing personal against Obama, it's just that he's gotten all these emails from people asking him to investigate Obama's birth and his eligibility to be on the ballot. He's not one of those crazies, he's just letting the crazies guide him.

?I?m not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii?or at least I hope he was,? Bennett said on the show. ?But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.?

That's one way of trying to make sure Obama doesn't take the state, however unlikely to hold up to any legal challenge. But it does seal Arizona's place at the top of the crazy state sweepstakes.

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Arizona Goes Birther: Secretary Of State Says
It's 'Possible' Obama Won't Be On Ballot

The man in charge of running Arizona's elections has gone to the birthers. Secretary of State Ken Bennett now says he's not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States and so he is threatening to keep the president off the ballot in November.

Bennett's comments came in an interview late Thursday with conservative radio talk show host Mike Broomhead on Phoenix station KFYI.

Bennett said he was following the lead of the state's eccentric Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a fellow Republican who ordered an investigation into the president's birth certificate last year and concluded the document released by the White House is a forgery. Bennett said he is now trying to get verification from state officials in Hawaii that the certificate is authentic.

In doing so, Bennett caved to a fringe group of activists and writers who believe in a conspiracy theory that just never seems to die no matter how much proof they get. Hawaiian officials have said time and again that Obama was born there in 1961, yet the theory persists.

Bennett, the state's No. 2 elected official just below Gov. Jan Brewer (R), said his investigation isn't personal. He said the reason he started looking into it is because he got more than 1,200 emails asking him to do so after Arpaio's investigation came out.

"I'm not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii — or at least I hope he was," Bennett said on the show. "But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking."

Bennett's newfound birtherism also breaks with Brewer, who led the secretary of state's office in 2008 when Obama last appeared on the Arizona ballot. Brewer said last year that despite her disagreements with Obama, she is fully convinced the president is eligible for office and believes the birth certificate issue is a "huge distraction."

"It's just something I believe is leading our country down a path of destruction and it just is not serving any good purpose," she told CNN's John King.

Meanwhile, Bennett is hoping to take Brewer's job when she becomes term limited in two years. The Arizona Capitol Times reported (paywall) earlier this week that he is already collecting signatures to get on the 2014 ballot for governor.

On Thursday, Bennett said he sent his request to Hawaii officials eight weeks ago but has yet to get the proof he was hoping for. He said he didn't want another copy of the birth certificate. He wants Hawaii to give him what he described as "a verification in lieu of a certified copy of a birth certificate."

In the weeks since then, Bennett said, Hawaii officials have forced him to provide proof that he is who he says he is. They asked him to send them copies of the Arizona laws that prove the secretary of state really is the person in charge of handling the ballots. Admittedly, Bennett said they told him they were "tired of all the requests." But he is continuing anyway.

Broomhead, the radio host, pressed Bennett on what he would do if he didn't get the right response back from Hawaii.

"If they won't comply, if they refuse to comply with this, will you remove the president from the ballot?" Broomhead asked. "Will you exclude him from the ballot?"

"That's possible," Bennett said. "Or the other option would be I would ask all of candidates, including the president, maybe to submit a certified copy of their birth certificate. But I don't want to do that."

Listen to the whole interview from KFYI:

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Unleash The Dragon

The first-ever mission to send a private commercial spacecraft to the International Space Station launches Saturday. Check out the Dragon. [...]

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Waters Challenges Khuzami on Securitization Fraud
Task Force, Gets Revealing Answers

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is in line to take over as the lead Democrat on the Committee, actually referenced the interview I did with Elizabeth Warren yesterday, in questioning of Robert Khuzami, who is both the head of enforcement at the SEC and a[...]

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Justice Dept. supports right to film police

It's one of the few good moves to come out of this Justice Department. Police forces across the US have increasingly been abusing their power during legitimate protests, including taking away video recordings that show abusive police behavior. While such tactics may be normal in some countries, we should never accept that behavior in the US. More via Wired:In a surprising letter (.pdf) sent...

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Super PAC Backpedals From Wright Attacks After
Sending Mixed Signals

The group of GOP strategists who were exposed for their race-baiting plan to attack President Obama on his relationship with Rev. Wright are trying to distance themselves from a proposal which sought to portray “Barack Hussein Obama” as a ?metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.?

Brian Baker, president and general counsel of the Ending Spending Action Fund — the Super PAC that considered the Wright attacks — appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday to argue that the PAC and chief financier Joe Ricketts were only interested in criticizing the administration’s handling of the economy and wanted to steer clear of “attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.”

But Baker’s comments to the New York Times before the controversy erupted on Thursday may complicate his attempts to distance the PAC from the proposal. Baker told the newspaper on Wednesday that no decision has been made on whether or not to dredge up Wright. Asked to clarify the remark this morning, Baker claimed that he meant to say that “we will not be doing this”:

MARK HALPERIN (TIME): Is that accurate? Did you tell the New York Times on Wednesday that you all had not made a decision about whether to go with this plan or not?

BAKER: Mark, what I said to the New York Times — and I tried to make very clear that I had not spoken to Mr. Ricketts on this — that when I got this thing on Thursday, I didn’t think it was anything worth consideration. Joe wasn’t at the meeting. I never spoke to Mr. Ricketts about it, and what I said to him very clearly was, ‘This was so far a field than what we wanted’ and I pointed him to the sentence in the report which says we know you wanted something related to spending and we’re giving you something related to character. So I said this is just one of many proposals. And when I said no decisions have been made, I was meaning we will not be doing this. Now, I could have been clearer. Yes, I should have been clearer. But when I meant no decisions have been made, I meant we’re not moving forward. That was what I was trying to communicate to the New York Times.

Watch it:

Baker and his colleagues are doing serious damage control, but Fred Davis — whose company drafted the proposal — insists that Baker did not shoot it down. In a statement yesterday, the firm said, “The Ricketts family never approved it, and nothing has happened on it since the presentation.”

While most Republicans — including Romney himself — are disavowing the smear campaign, at least one prominent party member has endorsed the Wright attacks. Herman Cain, former Presidential candidate and Romney endorser, told Greta van Susteren that Rev. Wright is “fair game.” “[Q]uite frankly, it wasn?t highlighted enough in 2008 when he was running for president the first time,? he added.

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