Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 24 hours—and if you're reading this essay, chances are you haven't been—President Obama—and, more importantly, the American people—were handed a huge victory yesterday when the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. Deaniac will have an analysis of the decision in depth. I want to address the political impact of the decision going into November.

In my previous essay, I delved into my fascination with Roman history to draw a parallel with what I see as part of Obama's strategy. The way that the ACA case has played out confirms what I see as his strategy.

If you remember, Republicans were braying that the President was going to run a "billion dollar campaign" for re-election that would destroy democracy in the US forever. As usual, the Right was projecting its own sins onto its opponents. The fact is that the Obama campaign was never going to get near $1 billion in funding. Democrats, were aghast at the Citizens United ruling, and major donors like Warren Buffet will not donate to Democratic Super PACs as a matter of principle. We can argue the merits of such positions—I think as long as Citizens United is the law of the land it's more than short-sighted to unilaterally hamstring ourselves—but the fact remains that with that decision the floodgates opened for GOP donors. Those who donate to the GOP Super PACs see themselves as the most harmed by Democratic policies, and giving a small percentage of their wealth to defeat the socialist interloper in the White House and his compatriots all across the country is seen as a small but wise investment. The Republican campaign was always going to have more money than the Democrats once finance laws were struck down. Darkly warning that the Democrats were going to have hundreds of millions of dollars to impose their will upon an unwilling populace was the usual Republican strategy of deflecting their own intentions onto their enemies.

I am traveling today. I got on a flight before the Supreme Court decision was announced, and couldn't wait to land in the President's home city (hello, Chicago!) so I could turn on my phone and check for what happened. As I turned it on, a little breaking news alert came on, stating "Supreme Court Upholds Health Care Law." I let out sigh of relief, and I can't tell you how happy I have been since. Make no mistake: this is a major decision, and the Supreme Court, albeit by an odd combination of justices, just upheld the largest and broadest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare, if not since the original Social Security Act.

And as usual, the pundits were served a big plate of crow. It's instructive to remember how nearly the entire national media reacted at the conclusion of the oral arguments on health reform. CNN's "legal expert" Jeffrey Toobin couldn't come up with wrecking metaphors fast enough. The entire punditry's 'wisdom', if I might not-so-humbly point out, was debunked right here on TPV. So yes, I am going to proudly say it again: we told you so!



I haven't read the full decision in detail yet; that's my project while I'm on the next flight leaving Chicago. When I complete the reading, expect a more detailed piece on the actual decision. But I want to note some basics: the bottom line of the decision, the utter impotency of our media "analysts", and what this will mean going forward.

Wanna know why, despite the support of 7 in 10 Americans and two out of three independents, Mitt Romney and the Republican party won't come out in favor of the President's bold leadership to allow undocumented young people to be spared deportation? There's a lot of ways to explain the reasons, but here it is in a nutshell:

Decades of dangerous, often deadly, idealistic, brave, militant, organizing in the United States had failed to break the effects of government suppression of labor unions until the Laguardia/Norris act and then the Wagner Act of 1935. What followed was a decade of rapid growth for labor that came to a sudden halt when the Taft-Hartley Act passed over Truman's veto in 1947. Taft-Hartley had such a comprehensive effect on labor that its crippling effects are taken for granted:

• authorizing state "right to work" for less laws.
• forbidding secondary boycotts (can't picket Bain Capital for looting your employer)
• excluding supervisors and independent contractors from unions
•  forbidding slowdowns and wildcat strikes (and one effect of that is union leadership becomes less accountable)
• giving the Supreme Court license to weaken the Laguardia-Norris act
• prohibiting pass picketing, permitting employer anti-union campaigning, etc. etc.

Taft Hartley effectively stalled the growth of the labor movement. The 1950s red scares then purged "radicals" from the labor unions. By 1953, C. Wright Mills described the labor union movement as pretty much a tame subsidiary of the corporate system. As the government under right wing economic control moved to rewrite corporate and bankruptcy law to favor Mitt Romney style looters, changed the tax code to subsidize outsourcing, and facilitated centralized media under anti-union mega corporations, the tamed, purged, weakened labor unions did little. After Paul Volcker destroyed manufacturing, Ronald Reagan was able to crush PATCO and usher in a new age in which labor was reeling from defeat after defeat. And yet after the failed union effort to recall the right wing Wisconsin governor, the lesson that the elite left wing savants drew was

the horrible mistake of channelling a popular uprising into electoral politics.

You can search Doug Hendwood's "analysis" of the labor defeat for "Taft" or "PATCO" or "NAFTA"  but you won't find anything. Instead, Henwood provides a startlingly impractical suggestion:

Librarians are expected to be three things: 1) female (mostly), 2) mousy and shy, and 3) avid readers. I fail on counts 1 and 2—very much male, and quite dapper and boisterous, if my loved ones are to be believed. But I cop to number 3. I am and always have been an avid reader. At this moment I have 3 books going at the same time.

As an avid reader, one of the topics I've consumed since I was a child has been Roman history. I still remember a wonderful children's history of Rome from its mythical founding to its fall that never stayed long on my school library's shelf as I always had it out. I'm not a scholar of Roman history, but I have more than a passing familiarity with its outlines and its meat.

The most traumatic moment in Rome's rise to power—and an event which, despite its immediate disastrous consequences, set it on the course for empire—was the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE. There's literally a mini-industry of historians that focuses almost exclusively on this period of Roman history, and how this period solidified what we consider to be traditional Roman traits that set the city on the path to world empire. There are many, many good books on the subject; I just finished reading The Punic Wars by Adrian Goldsworthy, and last year read The Ghosts of Cannae by Robert L. O'Connell, both excellent tomes which I can't recommend enough to those interested in Roman history.

After revisiting Mitt Romney's interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation on Sunday, I am still quite intrigued as to why Mitt Romney cannot muster up a position for anything.  First, he dodged four times in answering whether he would repeal President Obama's directive to de-prioritize deporting illegal youths (I don't want to call it an executive order anymore, since it's not).  Then, he managed to sidestep Schieffer's question, which asked him where he would find the revenue to balance out his proposed tax cuts:

SCHIEFFER: You haven’t been bashful about telling us you want to cut taxes.  When are you going to tell us where you’re going to get the revenue? Which of the deductions are you going to be willing to eliminate? Which of the tax credits are you going to — when are you going to be able to tell us that?

ROMNEY: Well, we’ll go through that process with Congress as to which of all the different deductions and the exemptions —

SCHIEFFER: But do you have an ideas now, like the home mortgage interest deduction, you know, the various ones?

ROMNEY: Well Simpson Bowles went though a process of saying how they would be able to reach a setting where they had actually under their proposal even more revenue, with lower rates. So, mathematically it’s been proved to be possible: We can have lower rates, as I propose, that creates more growth, and we can limit deductions and exemptions.

The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, on frivolous charges that the Department of Justice has refused to produce documents to aid Congress' investigation of the operation known as 'Fast and Furious.' The vote, entirely along party lines, came after the President himself intervened to assert executive privilege on certain documents.

Back in April, I wrote about why the media talking heads were wrong about the president's focus on Romney's conservatism as opposed to his flip-flopping, and why that focus was exactly the right thing to do. Here's proof that it was: In a new Bloomberg survey, President Obama leads Mitt Romney by a whopping 13 points - 53% to 40% - among likely voters.

Here's some other key numbers from the poll:

• Over 50% Approval Rating: President Obama's approval rating, at 53%, matches his support in the contest - a strong indication that the president is gaining both policy and electoral support.
• Favorability: President Obama's favorability rating is at 55%, compared to Mitt Romney's 39%. Note how closely these numbers track their actual support in the poll  for the election.
• Enthusiasm gap: 76% of Obama supporters support the president "very strongly" or "fairly strongly," compared to only 52% of Romney supporters. Only 6% of the president's supporters describe their support as "not strong," while Romney doubles that number at 12%.
• Economy - Advantage Obama: The president beats Mr. Romney not only on understanding the problems of people like the respondents themselves (55 to 35), the president has succeeded in breaking through the media barrier and establishing that his vision is better for the economy, with voters now giving him an edge by 48-43.
• Generic Congressional Ballot: Democrats enjoy a 48-41 advantage (leaners included).
  

The poor have it too good. The poor are treated with too much favoritism in the federal tax code. That's what Mitch McConnell said yesterday (in an interview that aired this morning). You may consider it outrageous. I certainly do. But what he said is the formed basis for right-wing conservative economic policy. Here is part of the interview from CBS News:



Note the clever propaganda-spreading in McConnell's interview.

Almost 70 percent of the federal revenue is provided by the top 10 percent of taxpayers now. Between 45 percent and 50 percent of Americans pay no income tax at all. We have an extraordinarily progressive tax code already. It is a mess and needs to be revisited again,

Mr. Plastic strikes again! Today, Mitt Romney went on Face the Nation, his first non-Faux News interview since the GOP primary.  In this segment, Bob Schieffer asks him whether he would repeal President Obama's executive order on immigration announced last Friday that will stop deporting some kids who are illegal immigrants:

This is not an essay of analysis.

This is not a delineation of the brilliant optics and strategy of President Obama's announcement to cease deportations of young people who would have been covered by the DREAM Act. That's for another essay, and soon, because the brilliance of the man as both strategist and tactician is just compounded by the goodness of his actions.

This is a very personal essay.

My parents came here legally. Even if they hadn't, being Cuban, they would've been welcomed with open arms once setting foot on US shores. But they went through all the hurdles, all the procedures of leaving a country that looked very askance at those who wanted to leave it. They got visas. They had people here who could vouchsafe them. They waited nine years from Fidel's victory until they could finally get on a plane in 1968 and make it to New York. They did everything by the book.

I wish I were making this up. But I'm not.

Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown was banned from the floor after she ended a speech by saying, "I'm flattered that you are all so interested in my vagina, but no means no." The speaker responded by banning her from the floor for breaching decorum. Later on, Brown asked, "If I can't say the word vagina, why are we legislating vaginas? What language should I use?"

This was the doing of Republican Speaker Bolger of the Michigan House. Well, I have one thing to say to him: Vagina!

Today, the Obama administration announced, through the Department of Homeland Security, a prosecutorial priority policy that stops the deportation of young, undocumented immigrants who were brought here through no fault of their own and who, by all measures other than paperwork, are Americans. The order from Sec. Nepalitano accomplishes a small part of what the DREAM Act would do, except that absent Congressional consent via legislation, executive action cannot grant legal status. It would apply to any young undocumented immigrant who:

• came to the United States under the age of  sixteen; 
• has continuously resided in the United States for a least five years preceding the date of this memorandum and is present in the United States on the date ofthis memorandum; 
• is currently in school, has graduated from high school, has obtained a general education development certificate, or is an honorably discharged veteran of  the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the  United States; 
• has not been convicted of  a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or  otherwise poses a threat to national security or public safety; and 
• is not above the age of  thirty

So, the Huffington Post - an online "newspaper" that happily takes money from Scott Walker - went on full freakout mode yesterday based on a leak from Public Citizen of a single chapter of a still-in-the-works trans-Pacific trade agreement with the United States that is still under consideration. What is the poutrageous matter?

Under the agreement currently being advocated by the Obama administration, American corporations would continue to be subject to domestic laws and regulations on the environment, banking and other issues. But foreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings.

That refers to a dispute resolution section in the leaked document that allows foreign investors to file a case in international arbitration within the context of the agreement. Sounds scary, don't you think? That corporate-shilling, backstabbing good-for-nothing Obama! Impeach him!

Except, maybe one should ask if this is actually true. Would foreign corporations operating within the United States be able to contravene American law, and worse yet, appeal American legal or regulatory rulings in international tribunal?

Umm, no.

Once the investor has submitted the dispute to either the courts or administrative tribunals of the disputing Party or to any of the arbitration mechanisms provided for in Article 12.18(3) the choice of the procedure shall be definitive and exclusive.

The meaning of life is not somewhere out there, but right in between our ears. In many ways, this makes us the lords of creation.

--Stephen Hawking

Many years ago I read a book entitled Russian Spring by the science fiction writer Norman Spinrad. It was published after the fall of the Soviet Union, but written while it was very much alive. In it the Soviets have joined in European prosperity and scientific advancement, while still maintaining one-party rule which became increasingly untenable.

The US, meanwhile, had defaulted on its trillions of dollars of debt and become an isolated, inward-looking country. Needless to say, the GOP was the dominant party, liberals a distant memory save in enclaves like San Francisco. The state was ruled by an oppressive National Security Act, which made nearly everything a threat to that security.

The age-old conservative-liberal debate about the role of government in our society was put in stark light when last week, Mitt Romney demanded that our communities become less secure and our children less educated (by continuing to fire teachers, police officers, and firefighters).



The media take on this has generally been that it was a gaffe by Romney, and that Democrats went after it was just tit for tat for the Republicans smearing the President. But in reality, Romney's comments provide a window into conservative thinking, and unwittingly, does liberals a favor, if we can take advantage of it.

If you watched Lawrence O'Donnell last night, or check out the MSNBC blog, you might have seen this. If not, this is a must-watch. Here's Pastor Fredererick Haynes, talking about the President's decision to back gay marriage.



Not that I'm religious, but, AMEN!

The late Robert Fitch's Obama speech from 2008 has been widely circulated and it should be because it really sums up the dead end confusion and wounded class privilege of the American Left as the 21st century gets under way. Fitch begins with an examination of Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech:

The Third Way is expressed very well in Obama’s 2004 convention speech.

---

Well, I say…tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America…there’s the United States of America. “The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. “We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

---

Are traditional political vocations now obsolete? The Left stands for the interests of those who have to work for a living; for the tenants and the poor. For the victims of discrimination. The Right in America stands for the interests of the employers and the investing class. For those who own the land, the houses, the banks and the hedge funds. For Joe the plumber who was really Joe the plumbing contractor. And for those who see themselves as the victims of affirmative action.

Marxism sees history in terms of class struggle and Fitch is making the case, in somewhat less than straightforward language.

 Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat
- Marx and Engels, NOT Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is a Democrat not a Marxist - he does not believe that society is split into two great hostile camps and so on. Call the EMTs: 10 New York leftists are fainting from anger and a couple of million tea party nitwits and their minders are fainting from shock. Fitch didn't need to quote the speech at all, most people could have deduced that Obama was not a Marxist from "he gave a speech at the Democratic Convention". One has to wonder whether leftists think Obama is supposed to be a class warrior because he's black (which is what the right wing thinks) or because he gives inspirational speeches or maybe it's the combination. Whatever the reason, the bitterness and anger with which the US left confronts Obama's stubborn insistence on his own path has been irritating and embarrassing. Especially since the left's class struggle ideology is a Victorian relic.

Republicans apparently had a field day today because the President said, in a press conference, that "the private sector is doing fine." At least, that is the cut-quote you will see in the media and from Republicans ad infinitum from now on till the Sunday talk shows and probably beyond. But there's a reason why. And it's not the one the media is telling you. The reason the media is going to be obsessed with that cut-out of the president's press conference is not, as they would like you to think, that it was Obama's 'big gaffe.' It's what came before and after those words, that the Republicans and the right-wing-lapdog media doesn't want you to hear or pay attention to.

Luckily, we have access to the transcript.

THE PRESIDNET: [...] What I’ve said is, let’s make long-term spending cuts; let’s initiate long-term reforms; let’s reduce our health care spending; let’s make sure that we’ve got a pathway, a glide-path to fiscal responsibility, but at the same time, let’s not underinvest in the things that we need to do right now to grow.  And that recipe of short-term investments in growth and jobs with a long-term path of fiscal responsibility is the right approach to take for, I think, not only the United States but also for Europe.

Q    What about the Republicans saying that you’re blaming the Europeans for the failures of your own policies?

THE PRESIDENT:  The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone.  The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government -- oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

And so, if Republicans want to be helpful, if they really want to move forward and put people back to work, what they should be thinking about is, how do we help state and local governments and how do we help the construction industry.  Because the recipes that they’re promoting are basically the kinds of policies that would add weakness to the economy, would result in further layoffs, would not provide relief in the housing market, and would result, I think most economists estimate, in lower growth and fewer jobs, not more.

The Citizens United election is coming. This November. Now that Romney has secured enough delegates to be the Republican nominee, his campaign and the RNC raised a combined $76 million, surpassing the combined figure taken in by the DNC and President Obama of $60 million.

But we do know this: Mitt Romney and the RNC are raising money from big dollar donations - 98% of President Obama's May haul came from donors giving less than $250 a piece, while only 15% of Romney's did. Here's how the Obama haul looked in May:

Glenn Greenwald had a positive meltdown yesterday as he went after progressive blogger 'extremeliberal', for a couple of tweets he'd written about Greenwald, admitted worded with salt. Greenwald had a hissy fit over 'extremeliberal' tweeting his personal opinions that Greenwald was flirting with treason by consistently sticking up for terrorists and indiscriminately bashing President Obama. Here are the tweets that had Greenwald wet his big-boy pants:

The beating that the Left took last night in Wisconsin can't be sugar-coated. Scott Walker survived his recall election by a good seven point margin, and all but one of the other Republicans did as well.

From the perspective of the Left media (though I find it a little amusing to see the same Left media outlets that took money from Scott Walker complaining about this), the blame for the loss is being put squarely on the shoulder of Citizens United and Walker's 8-to-1 money advantage, and there is no doubt that cash coming through the Citizens-United-opened the floodgates is drowning our democracy. Nonetheless, hanging it all on Citizens United ignores a crucial cause for this defacing loss: the ideologue Left themselves.

Ask yourself: how did Scott Walker and radicals like him come to power in the first place? This is how:



Elections have consequences. The consequence by the name of Scott Walker (and others like him) is intricately the effect of people like Ed Schultz actively disengaging Democratic voters in 2010. As we found out last night, voters aren't particularly fond of helping you because you don't like lying in the bed you made for yourself in the middle of a term.

A victorious Scott Walker stood in front of his supporters last night, having survived - by a pretty strong margin of 7 points - his recall election. Here's a photo, from Newstimes:

Wait, what's that? Forward? FORWARD? ZOMG!!!!!! Doesn't he know that Forward is a socialist communist Marxist Nazi word? And worst of all... it looks a hell of a lot like this!!!

Waiting for Right wing outrage against Walker in ... [crickets]...

UPDATE: Walker survives recall, but Democrats knocked out one GOP state senator, apparently assuming control of that body.

Here's your Wisconsin recall election open thread. A couple of things to remember as we watch the results come in:

• Democratic areas like Madison are going to have more people voting than were previously registered, thanks to WI's same-day-registration law. Now you know why the Republicans want to get rid of same-day voter registration.
• Anyone who is in line by 8 pm can vote, or register and vote.
• Scott Walker is not the only person on the recall ballot. His Lt. governor, as well as 4 WI Republican state senators are facing recalls. Winning even one of those would alter the balance in the State Senate.
• Exit polls are showing that while the recall race for governor is extremely close, the voters who are voting today would give the state to Obama in November.

Sit tight, comment, and enjoy. It's going to be a long, exciting night.

Every single Republican in the Senate today voted to let employers intimidate their female employees.

The bill would have built on the 2009 Ledbetter legislation, which ended the statute of limitations on equal pay lawsuits. The new bill sought to bar companies from retaliating against workers who inquire about pay disparities and open pathways for female  employees to sue for punitive damages in cases of paycheck discrimination.

This morning, the President's campaign is out with a new ad, pounding away at Mitt Romney's dismal jobs record in Massachusetts in economic boom time:



The $10 million swing-state ad buy, and the Obama campaign's recent focus on Mitt Romney's record in Massachusetts is being associated in the beltway media with a switch of sorts from the focus on Romney's profit-on-the-backs-of-killed-jobs record at Bain, because some prominent Democrats have spoken out against going after private equity. This paragraph from the Washington Post's report on the ad story is typical of the media response:

The move comes after even some fellow Democrats balked at the president's attack on Mr. Romney's record as an equity investor. The Obama campaign on Monday released an ad called "Heard It Before" that focuses on Mr. Romney's pledge to use his business experience to create jobs in Massachusetts.

Sorry I have been absent for a couple of weekends on these videos, but it's back! I wanted to discuss the liberal and conservative concepts of American exceptionalism, and how the latter is really at best a direct heir of white supremacy. Here it is:



What the right wing describes as "American exceptionalism" is really a extended concept of White supremacy - in essence saying that rules that apply to everyone don't apply to America because it is inherently superior to other countries (mostly because of its whiteness). The real American exceptionalism lies in the liberal version: building an exceptional country and an exceptional society that gives everyone a fair shot. THAT is what the world can look up to say that America is an exceptional country.

Americans landed men on the moon.

Americans split the atom.

Americans, with allies, defeated fascism.

Americans, with allies, outlasted the Soviet Union.

Americans brought 100 years of Jim Crow to an end through blood and peaceful action.

Americans brought an unjust war waged by their government in Vietnam to an end.

And Americans need to grow the fuck up.

Mitt Romney and Bain Capital is what happens when the government gets corrupted by the rich to make what the great venture capitalist Vinod Khosla calls "incumbency capitalism" - capitalism rigged in favor of the people who already are rich. The law is supposed to make sure that managers and owners of corporations do not take advantage of the corporate structure to enrich themselves by having the corporation pay them with money owed to someone else. For example, if you create a corporation that gets an advance payment to build a house, gives you all the money as a "dividend", and then goes out of business without building the house, you will most likely be forced to give the money up and also spend time in jail. But, thanks mostly to 40 years of conservative Judges "reinterpreting" law, if you do the same trick on a large enough scale, with the assistance of enough bankers and corporate lawyers and tax lawyers and so on, you can keep the money and leave the debts to the little people - exactly what Mitt Romney did.

In fact all over America, there are companies that have failed leaving huge piles of unpaid debt behind them (like pensions, unpaid salaries, unpaid taxes ... ) or companies that are barely surviving under huge burdens of debt - because someone smart and well connected like Mitt Romney has scooped out all the money from the company and walked away. With several companies it owned, Bain Capital had the company borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, paid itself "dividends" and fees, and then stepped back as the company collapsed. It needs a lot of money to pull of this kind of scam - you have to start as rich or well connected - but profits are enormous. Bain was able to take home hundreds of millions for investments of 10s of millions in a couple of years and do the same thing several times over.

Corporations are complicated legal structures that are supposed to encourage innovation and enterprise by making it somewhat less risky for people to start companies. It used to be that when a business failed, the business partners would have to pay debts themselves. A corporation is a special legal way to setup a business so the business is responsible for its own debts and the owners have "limited liability". The idea is that people will be more willing to start new businesses if they can separate their personal assets from the corporate assets and keep their homes in the event that the business fails. But there are obvious ways to abuse this kind of system and so corporate managers and owners are supposed to be held accountable if they enrich themselves by looting the company. The laws require that corporations cannot just give money away, they have to either be distributing profits to owners or getting value for whatever it is they are paying for. About 40 years ago, the Olin Foundation, set up by right wing nut Chemical Company billionaires, began funding cushy law school "endowed chairs", and fancy vacations for Federal Judges (I mean, "seminars") where they could push a theory called "law and economics".  That theory brings right wing economic ideas (trickle down and "supply side")  into interpretation of law to essentially destroy traditional ideas of the duties of managers and owners - even when they need to ignore the plain meaning of written law to do so.

When Republicans or Conservatives or Libertarians say they want the government out of business, what they mean is that the unfair legal protection for incumbency capitalism that they have constructed over 40 years should never be challenged. And you can see what kind of world they have in mind when you notice how much they respect and cheer for the corporate looting that Bain did, and how much they hate and fear people like Elon Musk who started a rocketship making company. Musk is everything they dislike, a real entrepreneur, taking real risks, with his own money, to innovate in a way that might displace the incumbents - the guys who are already funding  "Free Market" Professors and "small government" political campaigns.

Mitt Romney is rather busy today taking political advantage of the jobs numbers. Guess that's par for the course. We are not going to always have super-good news, and when we don't, political opponents will jump on the opportunity to bash the president. But today, another jobs report came out that shows us what will happen should the Romney-Ryan-Bush economic plans that caused the great crash of 2008 be put back into place.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The 17-nation eurozone's unemployment rate reached the highest level since the creation of the common currency 13 years ago, climbing to 11% in April as employers slashed 110,000 jobs. [...]

The U.S. May jobs report, also released Friday, showed that U.S. employers added 69,000 jobs, while unemployment ticked up to 8.2%. While both results were much worse than the forecasts of economists surveyed by CNNMoney, who had been expecting 150,000 new jobs to keep unemployment at 8.1%, it was far better than Europe's job picture.

The recent worsening of the problems in Europe are almost entirely due to one thing: austerity, that is, the unqualified slashing of public safety nets designed to get people through tough times. That, by the way, is almost identical to the Republican economic plan - to slash spending on education, infrastructure, medical care, food security and other safety net and economic programs that help build a middle class and cushion a blow. I say almost identical, because the Republican plan is much more cruel than the plan in place in European nations practicing austerity.

That's the Republican take on the jobs numbers that came out this morning. The numbers are by no means good news, even though the private sector added some 82,000 jobs, bringing the private sector growth to 27 consecutive moths. The unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2% as more people started looking for jobs. Steve Benen on the Maddow blog notes the Republican opportunism - while doing everything in their power to slow down the economy:

At a certain level, this is almost amusing. Matt Yglesias noted this morning how "impressed" he is by conservatives' ability to "pretend to believe Obama is 100% responsible" for all economic developments a year and a half into divided government. He added, "You can't fake that kind of bulls**t, it takes real conviction."

But we can go further with this. The same Republicans who are blaming monthly job totals on the White House have argued -- last year and this year -- that GOP measures have improved the economy, and that credit for recent improvements should go to them, not the president. [...]

Remember learning the "heads I win, tails you lose" game as a kid? It's the GOP's argument in a nutshell -- whether the president deserves credit or blame for a monthly jobs report is due entirely to whether the report is encouraging or not.