Over at Daily Intel, Jonathan Chait notices that after many months of vowing to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, the GOP has applied Lean Six Sigma management efficiencies on their platform, or something, and are now vowing to do something much simpler:

One of the hard facts about public opinion during the health-care debate was that, while the public quickly soured on health-care reform, it remained quite sweet on the concept of health-care reform. This is why Republican opponents took care to insist at all times they only opposed the particulars of President Obama’s plan, and wanted instead to reform the system their way, with all the popular things and none of the unpopular stuff. Republicans declared they had a “moral imperative” to reform the system, robotically insisting their plan was not merely to repeal health-care reform but “repeal and replace.” As Jonathan Bernstein notes, just last January, Republicans in Congress promised to have their all-gain, no-pain alternative ready and raring to go for the summer so they could move if the Supreme Court overturned Obamacare.

But, in a development that received almost no attention at all, Republicans quietly conceded last week that they aren’t going to replace Obamacare at all.

As Chait notes, the news that the GOP had declared backsies ended up in the Hill, and there it successfully managed to avoid attention. Now on May 10th, the date the Hill's article appeared, most political reporters were fully esconced in reporting and analyzing President Barack Obama's marriage-equality evolution, and it was pretty adorable, during that time, to watch other news even try to happen. The one story that popped? Mitt Romney's marvelous misadventures as a prep-school bully-coiffeur. So it was an ideal time to quietly break a promise.

Nevertheless, it's awfully surprising that political reporters aren't hungry for an answer to, "What will you replace it with?" or I guess now, "Wait, so, you won't be replacing it with anything?" At the very least, it's odd that the question isn't being repeatedly posed to Mitt Romney. After all, he's the guy in the race who invented and implemented a health care reform plan as the governor of Massachusetts -- the accomplishment that paved the way for him to play politics at the presidential level in the first place. He's since had to disown that accomplishment, because it was borrowed wholesale to form the Affordable Care Act, but to my mind, that adds a dose of intrigue -- having created one health care reform plan, can Romney gin up another one?

It's a relevant question, because Romney has appeared on the stump in front of signs, bearing his campaign logo, that read "Repeal and Replace Obamacare." In one memorable instance, he did so during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who never thought to ask about it. At the time, I would have said that this merely demonstrates Blitzer's unique awfulness, but it appears that the rest of his colleagues have joined him. (Except for Jay Leno, remarkably.)

READ THE WHOLE THING:
On Second Thought, GOP Will Just Repeal Obamacare [Daily Intel]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Lots of people agree that our government is currently bogged down in a morass of dysfunction that's so disastrous that it's basically criminal. And I do not use that word lightly.

People who hold other people hostage are criminals, and the elected criminals came very close to murdering the entire global economy when they took the debt ceiling hostage. And if you recall, the deal that was crafted to avoid that mess involved the creation of a Super Committee that was tasked with creating a package of spending cuts and revenue adds to bring budgetary discipline to Congress. They needed a supermajority to agree on a plan. And they failed.

Fie on supermajorities! The constant need for the approval of a supermajority is uniquely culpable for the way everything has ground to a halt in the legislature. Bills don't move, appointees don't get placed, and everyone's "grand bargains" fail to materialize. Whether by filibuster or through some special arrangement, the supermajority has turned our Congress into a joke. The abuse of the supermajority is legitimately something both parties are guilty of. It just happens to be the case that the out-of-power GOP is on the crest of this wave of mutilation and taking the abuse to new heights.

Is there anyone we can sue over this? Actually, according to Ezra Klein, this might be a possibility:

According to Best Lawyers, “the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession,” Emmet Bondurant “is the go-to lawyer when a business person just can’t afford to lose a lawsuit.” He was its 2010 Lawyer of the Year for Antitrust and Bet-the-Company Litigation, but has now bitten off something even bigger: bet-the-country litigation.

Bondurant thinks the filibuster is unconstitutional, and, alongside Common Cause, where he serves on the board of directors, he’s suing to have the Supreme Court abolish it.

Bondurant's case against the filibuster is founded mainly in historical fact, and to get the best sense of it, you really need to go read Klein's whole thing. To briefly summarize, however, the Senate never intended the filibuster to be put to such widespread use, and the framers were uniquely opposed to supermajorities. As Klein details:

In Federalist 22, Alexander Hamilton savaged the idea of a supermajority Congress, writing that “its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government and to substitute the pleasure, caprice or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junta, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.”

In Federal 58, James Madison wasn’t much kinder to the concept. “In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority.”

"The Constitution prescribed six instances in which Congress would require more than a majority vote: impeaching the president, expelling members, overriding a presidential veto of a bill or order, ratifying treaties, and amending the Constitution," said Klein. And Bondurant's case is that in accepting these exceptions, the framers excluded all others -- like stifling the Senate's ability to make laws, and permitting presidential appointees to be sandbagged.

But if we merely cite the supermajoritarians for misusing these parliamentary processes, we're actually letting them off the hook, for their crimes are not just occasional moments of abuse -- the supermajority is actually straight up allowing widespread dereliction of duty. It's like your lawmakers are telling you, "Oh, man, I would help you move this weekend, but my mom's in town, sorry!" Only this is what they say every weekend, and their mom's never actually in town, and they're not sorry.

More than anything else, the supermajority is used as a dodge. It's immunity from ever having to make a choice that might lead to a member losing their seat.

Consider the many "debt commission" efforts that have been undertaken in the past three years. In every case, these commissions were formed to address what was sold as an urgent need. In every case, they were created because someone had to make "the tough choices." In every case, there was some sort of supermajority requirement. And in every case, the supermajority requirement was added so that the commission would get bogged down by design. (From there, everyone could blame everyone else for the failure.)

Or, to use an example that remained in the legislature, consider the fate of the "public option." Proponents of health care reform loved the public option. But they were told that there weren't enough votes -- even with 60 members on the Democratic side -- to surmount the supermajority requirement that was, at the time, being universally applied to everything the Senate did. Too bad, guys!

But then, the Democrats lost Ted Kennedy's Senate seat to Scott Brown, which meant there was now 41 GOP votes to oppose any health care reform package. So the Democrats ran the ball through the tiny gap afforded them by the budget reconciliation process. But wait, now! Budget reconciliation requires only a simple majority, so with that in mind, could we maybe have the public option? Many whip counts reported at the time suggested that the public option was close to having a sufficient number of votes, but the Democrats' leaders, faced with the "tough choice" of adding the public option and getting endlessly buffeted with accusations of "socialism," balked. "Don't worry, we'll take a vote on that in a few months." Did they ever vote on it? No.

This is what the supermajority does: It allows lawmakers to have a tidy excuse for why nothing ever gets done, and why voters should always blame someone else. It's ridiculous and pathetic. Everyone talks about the need to "make the hard choices," but they really just want the "hard choices" to be made by other people first, so that it's "safe." That's the formula for self-propelled gridlock.

Of course, there are reformers within the body that want to change this. Klein notes that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is presenting himself as a supermajority abuser who has seen the error of his ways. But the political pressure against the Senate making a clean break from this drug are enormous. Even if Reid is being sincere, his calls to end the filibuster will be easily interpreted as cynicism: he just wants his Democratic majority to be able to pass Democratic things. And if the GOP takes back the Senate, they will be viewed in the same cynical fashion if they try to reform the filibuster. (And if the Democrats accede to a reform as a minority party, they'll be pilloried by their base for wussing out.)

It would seem, then, that there's little hope for an internal reform of the supermajority process. So piss it, let's sue the Senate. Let us sue the everloving bejeezus out of them.

READ THE WHOLE THING:
Is the filibuster unconstitutional? [Ezra Klein @ WaPo]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

We are apparently reaching the stage in the JPMorgan $2 billion fail-scapade when the patsies are identified and shamed. JPMorgan co-CIO Ina Drew has already cashed out in the wake of the losses, with two underlings, Achilles Macris and Javier Martin-Artajo, expected to follow. (On Wall Street, women seem to be uniquely positioned toward the front of the line when the guillotine gets to chopping, don't they? Think Zoe Cruz at Morgan Stanley, Erin Callan at Lehman, Demi Moore's character in the movie "Margin Call" ... you know, I'm just pointing this out!)

As Reuters reported this morning, Drew's group seems to have been running some sort of sub rosa trading game when everything went wrong:

One hedge fund manager who previously ran a proprietary (or prop) trading book at JPMorgan said the bank's public commitments to trim balance sheet risk were at odds with its network of trading silos, who were making bets independently -- with only a handful of the bank's most senior executives notified of their vast, complex exposures.

"This (CIO) group was completely separate, completely distinct from the prop trading unit. We had no clue about their prop book and they would have no clue about ours for that matter," the manager said.

So perhaps the axe is falling in the right place. At the same time, the activities that Drew and her cohorts seem to have been engaged in were squarely in line with Jamie Dimon's vision for the company, which was "transforming the once-conservative unit from a risk manager to a profit center."

And under Dimon, did JPMorgan lobby "to obtain special breaks that would allow banks to make big bets in their portfolios, including some of the types of trading that led to the $2 billion loss now rocking the bank?" Oh yes, they did -- specifically seeking out a large loophole to allow for "portfolio hedging."

The New York Times writer Edward Wyatt has a great explainer on "portfolio hedging" and the role JPMorgan played in pushing for it. (Of particular interest is the way the push for portfolio hedging opened a fault line between the various camps of government referees, with the Treasury and the Federal Reserve pushing for this loophole over the objections of the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.) But the bottom line is that all "portfolio hedging" seems to be is a game in which banks point to higher investment portfolios to justify other huge outlandish bets, taking on the word "hedge" to provide the illusion that something responsible is happening. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) shows up in the Wyatt piece to declare that "portfolio hedging" is basically "a license to do pretty much anything."

Barry Ritholz says that Dimon's premise, that this bad bet was a hedge, is basically horsecrap:

We first learned of this particular trade when they began to distort credit indices. Any trade so huge that it impacts its markets -- that becomes the market -- cannot be credibly thought of as a hedge. Simply stated, once you are the market, you are no longer a hedge. Sheer size of this trade makes it far more accurate to describe this as speculation than hedge.

Of course, the loss was the tell. A true hedge would have been offset by the underlying position that was being hedged -- so any loss should have been insignificant. Even a minor correlation error should not lead to a $2 billion dollar hit.

Ritholz concludes, "If we are going to define this trade as a hedge, then there is no other conclusion to reach except that everything at a huge bank is a hedge." The scary thing is that Dimon, up until maybe last week, probably believed this. Either that or he is out to sea on how his bank works.

At the very least, it seems that Dimon has spent such a long time inside his bubble -- an opportunity afforded him by JPMorgan's reputation for being the "safe" bank and a media that treats him as if he sprang from the head of Zeus -- that he's come to see the bank as being made of stronger stuff than the actual bulwarks that might guard against this sort of failure. That's what makes Gretchen Morgenson's scoop from inside that bubble so delicious. It seems that just one month ago, Dimon was at a schmancy party, publicly slagging the people who wanted to curtail these sorts of risks -- Paul Volcker of "Volcker Rule" fame and Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed, who's been a critic of "too big to bail" banks:

During the party, Mr. Dimon took questions from the crowd, according to an attendee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the bank. One guest asked about the problem of too-big-to-fail banks and the arguments made by Mr. Volcker and Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Dimon responded that he had just two words to describe them: “infantile” and “nonfactual.” He went on to lambaste Mr. Fisher further, according to the attendee. Some in the room were taken aback by the comments.

And that is called "getting Gretchen Morgensonned." At this point, I recommend that you pop some corn and bookmark Counterparties' "JPMorgan" tag.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Well, good morning and welcome once again to your Sunday morning chronicle of quickly typed reactions to stuff that happens on political prattle shows. My name is Jason. Happy Mothers day, to you all. Right off the bat, we have to hand it to Meet The Press, who last week actually managed to do something rare -- it had a moment of far-reaching relevance that actually impacted the world of politics. This is the Sunday Morning teevee equivalent of the "Miracle On Ice."

But hey, Joe Biden, out there, speaking his mind on marriage equality got a little idea snowballing, and pretty soon, the White House was abandoning whatever coldly calculated same-sex marriage rollout they had planned and President Obama was like, check it: now I am for this stuff, too. Okay! That was midway through the week, and I don't even know why other news was even trying to happen that day. Sorry, other news! We are going to all ride this Obama-is-for-marriage-equality pony until it gives out from exhaustion.

Of course, the being-for-a-thing is swell, and all. But it's possible to get overexcited. After all, the President cosigning marriage equality doesn't advance any policy or reverse any ban, and while the jury is going to be out for a while on this, it could even end up costing the President some crucial electoral votes. (For that reason, the decision to conclude his "evolution" might be deemed somewhat courageous.) But I have a feeling that we'll be talking about this issue all day today. (Know how I know this? Gavin Newsom is booked on Meet The Press, today.)

Anyway, y'all know what to do: crawl back into bed or go to church or brunch and let me HANDLE this. Meanwhile, you may also spend some time conversing in the comments, drop me a line, or follow me on Twitter, for other things.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

Okay, well, we're mixing things up today on FNS. Shannon Bream is here, instead of Chris Wallace, and we're going to be talking with Dianne Feinstein about national security and John Thune about...being handsome and running for President for a minute. Plus paneling. Sweet numnums, the paneling!

But first, hey, we blocked some terrorist attack from Yemen, and DiFi is here to explain it to us. Yemen, by the way, is the hot new place to be a terrorist? Afghanistan is yesterday's news, dude. Time to start getting in on these boss terror timeshares in Zinjibar. DiFI says that AQAP -- that's "al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula" if you are nasty (or a cartographer) -- is the number one threat to the United States. Time was that "I'm going to Yemen" was a joke on the show FRIENDS. Now, Chandler Bing goes to Yemen to start jihad!

Anyway, a bomb was recovered, and this is an "impressive victory" and a "substantial win" for the CIA, but we've got to "end this now" because it could get "complicated." Oh, hey, nice to know things aren't complicated yet. It's just a SIMPLE matter of needing a whole new war in a whole other part of the world than the one in which we are already fighting out exhausting, endless war.

But all of this "news' comes in the form of a "leak," and so there's a "big" investigation going on now to catch the leaker. DiFi says that the leak came to an AP reporter, and the story was held for a period of time after officials asked. "The leak," DiFi says, "really did disrupt sources and methods," and she says someone will get prosecuted. If you can catch me! I mean...If you can catch them!

So, are we going to catch underwear bombs, ever? DiFi says that the bomb material is hard to detect and when you keep this junk in their drawers, it's not easy to discover during a pat down. The TSA, DiFi says, has to learn and adapt. What will probably happen is that we'll all have to travel in jumpsuits that give the TSA easy access to our taints, I'm guessing.

DiFi says that in Dubai, there is a "big patdown." They are just very handsy, there. The Herman Cain of airport security.

DiFi is hopeful that we kill this particular bombmaker, and his associates, because who will make bombs then? No one, probably.

Moving toward Afghanistan, DiFi says that what the Taliban has done is expand their "shadowy presence" as a governing entity, and now they are moving into the Northeast and are essentially running things. And killing people! "This demonstrates that the Taliban are just waiting to come back," DiFi says. She goes on to add that most people in the Karzai government obviously oppose the Taliban, but they are strong in various areas. And they are making mad bank of opium, as well. This is why we probably aren't actually pulling out of Afghanistan in 2014. DiFi says that the "key to Afghanistan is action by Pakistan," and yeah, that makes 2014 unlikely, too.

Still, DiFi is positive that we will make our timeline, and she has two reasons why she thinks that and neither is "she's crazy, like, down to the bones crazy, jittering and shivering and talking straight nonsense." No. Actually, she says that we're apparently making very good progress on training Afghan security forces, and these forces are "in the lead in many missions." Also, DiFi says, there are schoolgirls going to school without acid being thrown in their face. So, remember, you're junior high school experience probably wasn't the worst thing in the world.

Moving to marriage equality, now. Has Obama flip-flopped? DiFi says that he hasn't flip-flopped and that there is "no political calculus in this." Ha ha ha. Yes. But DiFi goes on to basically say that the more you get to meet members of the LGBT community, the more your views change and prejudices disappear.

Moving to Jamie Dimon, who got caught in the deep end of the derivative market after telling everyone he didn't need a liferguard, and ended up losing $2 billion on some ill-advised prop bets. Loser! Should Washington get involved, though? DiFi says that JPM getting into this hedge trouble was a surprise, and a "danger signal" that various rules need to get set.

DiFi then goes on to explain how budgets and allocations work in the Senate.

Next, John Thune, who Bream assures me is "one of the most mentioned names in the Veepstakes." Who is mentioning this?

At any rate, Thune is live from whatever Fox studio is lit to make it look like a white-hot beam of light is being projected onto the subjects face from the direction of his crotch.

We begin with JP Morgan's big losses, because Thune voted against Dodd-Frank and wants it repealed. (This, despite the fact that Dodd-Frank was pretty toothless.) Thune says that "we don't know all the facts" about JPM's big fail. Thune says that his problem with Dodd-Frank is with the "compliance burdens" it puts on small banks. He goes on to say that JPM's losses do suggest that we need "some safeguards in place." (He also reckons that regulators need to fully interpret and implement Dodd-Frank, which he is trying to repeal?)

Moving to gay marriage -- which, in some polls, seems to be beneficial to the President. Bream notes that Thune has obviously endorsed Romney who has obviously endorsed the idea of marriage being between a man and a woman. What will Romney do, now, to avoid being "unfair" to everyone? Thune just sort of says that Romney believes what he believes, and the election will probably hinge on the economy, and Romney wants to talk about the economy, and here are some talking points, to choke on.

Of course, Obama is WARBLOGGING against the GOP Congress, and has given them a to-do list...which they will NOT DO, because LOL, it's an election year. Which doesn't mean that some of this stuff shouldn't get done, like offering tax incentives to bring business home whilst cutting tax breaks that foster outsourcing. Why won't the GOP consider this? Thune doesn't know! He's like, why didn't he come out with this three years ago? We would have rejected it then. Anyway, Thune isn't having it, because Obama blocked the Keystone Pipeline and gave him a sad, along with "class war rhetoric."

But why can't we just end these incentives that foster job losses? BECAUSE THE TIMING WAS SUPER BAD. (Also, lobbyists tell John Thune not to.)

Bream wants to know about Dick Lugar's loss to Dick Mourdock, and Lugar straight going off on Mourdock about the way Mourdock is an ugly-minded partisan hack who won't work with anybody. Is Thune worried about losing that seat in the fall, because Mourdock is so terrible? Thune isn't. (And I think he's right to not be, Mourdock is likely to beat the Democratic nominee.) He then goes on to describe the Senate's overall dysfunction, without ironically noting that Lugar was nominally in favor of the Senate not being such a desolate chamber of hack-obstructionists diddling one another all day long.

Thune insists that there is room for compromise, but the dividing line is that the Democrats believe in raising revenue, and just as soon as they give up on that there will be tons of compromise, okay?

Meanwhile, will Thune run as the vice-president? Thune filibusters, and intimates that he'd rather stay in the Senate. He, of course, "won't rule out" the possibility that he might consider being the VP if he is asked.

Welcome to the end of every single interview with a Republican on Sunday for the next few months, obviously.

John Thune has not been invited to play basketball with Obama, but would consider it a privilege. So, that's important for everyone to know!

Okay, so it's time for a panel, with Brit Hume and Liz Marlantes and Paul Gigot and Juan Williams.

Beginning with marriage equality, is this a plus or minus for the President? Williams says that the polls indicate that it's sort of a wash -- there are more people that say they are less likely to vote for the President than the reverse. That's sort of sums up the evidence for the argument that this was, at least on some level, politically courageous. Of course, the other big news on this front this weekend was the Jan van Lohuizen polling memo, which urged Republicans to undertake a reversal on gay issues because the populace is growing more and more in favor of LGBT equality in general. And that's sort of the evidence for the argument that you'd better get yourself into the 21st century, somehow.

Williams goes on to point out that Obama's decision will likely excite young voters and base traditionalists, while giving doubts to older voters and voters in places like Virginia. Williams also says that the fealty of the African-American vote will be tested, as they are a traditional liberal voting bloc that has held out against supporting marriage equality.

Gigot says that this might matter in some swing states, toward the fall, but it will probably only matter in a small way. Was it forced by Biden, though? Gigot figures that this was something that Obama and Biden were always going to do, they were just going to wait until the convention. Gigot does note that Romney gets some help, too, because it will motivate Christian conservatives to end their uneasiness with Mitt and get out and support his candidacy.

Marlantes says that Romney is not likely to go out and run on this issue, however. Both sides are pretty nervous about the issue. Marlantes says that the huge shift in favor of the marriage equality still indicates some volatility.

Hume says that there's reason to distrust the national polling on this, because the states still keep banning gay marriage. He figures that it's a net-minus for Obama and says that Obama hasn't actually "evolved" on the issue. He's just "revolved" around to an old position to maximize political advantage. (Of course, Hume prefaced all of this by saying there was no politica;l advantage to be had.)

Well, look, of course Obama did not "evolve." That was always a sort of fool's game. And that's why I don't get too excited about Obama's decision. Rather, I get excited about the fact that the activists on this issue have gained considerable clout in American politics. There are a considerable number of liberals who spit a lot of cynicism over this whole matter. Some are, of course, so overly concerned with winning elections that any expression of principle that isn't a slam dunk with all voters at all times is something to be afraid of. Others are a little more weird, prone to pointing out the cynical calculus, as if that eclipsed the symbolic importance of having a Commander-in-Chief swing to your point of view.

Look, y'all, I don't know what game of thrones you're playing, but anytime you can project yourself into a politician's political calculus, and get them hot and bothered about what you might do if you're not satisfied, that is A GOOD THING. I suppose that many people are sort of upset that Obama gets to sort of skate on this -- he was clearly always, at the very least, going to pop up after the start of his hoped-for second term and say, "Whoa, I am suddenly for gay marriage" -- and that marriage equality wasn't going to get hero president who led with courage and conviction on this issue.

"What a profile in courage," snarks Hume. Well, look. I like people with courage and conviction. But there are some times when courage and conviction are overrated. And I think that in politics, the one quality I absolutely love in a statesman is his or her capacity to get bent backwards over a barrel to the point where they have no choice but give me what I want, immediately. I'd always rather have some guy caught out with their pants down on the goal line between me and what I want, than someone with courage and conviction.

The people who have long advovated for LGBT equality have come from humble beginnings. I still remember a time when it was fearful to even present yourself in public as a member of that community. I still remember when their cries for help over a disease that was killing them was met with indifference (or even mockery). And now, these activists have the kind of pull that allows them to win a reversal in policy three days after someone says something on teevee? Sorry, y'all, I straight up refuse to be cynical about that.

Hume goes on to say that the Obama administration isn't going to do anything to advance the issue. I mean, except not fight DOMA. Have we forgotten about that? And as Chris Geidner points out, the Obama administration's decision to not fight DOMA does have repercussions in how the issue plays out in the states. It is of critical importance, for instance, to Ted Olson, the Bush Solicitor General who is fighting to overturn California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage.

One of the reasons, of course, that GOP pollsters are telling Republicans that they need to reverse themselves on this is because of the changing demographics:

Different states are evolving at different rates. And what happened in North Carolina is hardly a surprise -- they are one of the states that is uniquely resistant to marriage equality. But, the simple truth is that most of the people who oppose this tend to be closer to dying. So, unless they suddenly become immortal, this is going to be an issue that is looked back upon with some small amount of embarrassment.

Moving now to the Washington Post's story about Mitt Romney's high school years. Marlantes says that no one really wants to end up in a discussion about their adolesence, but the Romney camp flubbed their response to this story by not taking the opportunity to show some "largeness in spirit." "Romney's biggest problem isn't that people think he's mean," Marlantes says, "People think he's insincere."

Hume wants it to be known that forcing someone down and cutting their hair off is not a "prank," it's "hazing." That said, is that the Post failed to connect the story to some other part of his life or career. No big picture. I'm not sure that was the point though. Their reporter was assigned the story and he reported it. You know, that whole "making a larger connection" thing is nice when you can do it, but isn't that one of those places you open yourself up to criticism? "I have these facts, and in my opinion, they say something else, which I will extrapolate." That way lies charges of bias. I'm not saying that this is a bad form of journalism (though I really hate "psyhological studies" of politicians from reporters, who know nothing about psychology), I'm just saying that the Post reporter, in opting to stay in his lane, probably did himself a favor.

Hume says the story obviously struck the WaPa editors as a big deal, and he doesn't understand why, or why it got the presentation it received. (I am going with: 1) It's May and everyone is bored and 2) the Post wants to sell newspapers, and get talked about on the teevee.

I'll say this, as this Post story compares to the New York Times Vicki Iseman story of last cycle...well, there's no comparison. The Post's story is better. The Times Iseman story was awful. It felt like I was being conned, even as I read it.

Williams thinks that the Post expedited this story to connect with the gay marriage story of last week, but I was actually under the impression that they delayed the story slightly, to try to avoid that connection being made? At any rate, Shannon Bream points out that the Romney story was long-in-the-works, and of course, no one knew that Obama was going to make an announcement on marriage equality until a few hours before it happened.

Marlantes is probably the biggest defender of the story and its treatment, and she seems to find it silly that you wouldn't put this hair-cut story in the lede, after four people bring it up on the record independently of each other.

Will we see similar pieces on the President? Hume scoffs, "Are you kidding, from the Washington Post?" (Hume should actually meet the Post's editors!) He relents in the end, saying that the President will be judged on his presidency.

THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW

Okay, let's have some more FEELINGS about these stories with Chris Matthews and his Genius Bar colleagues, which today include Andrew Sullivan, Gloria Borger, Nia-Malika Henderson, and our own Howard Fineman. Howard and Nia-Malika are doing some color coordination today, by the way.

So, hey, y'all heard about this crazy stuff with Obama talking about how he was cool with the gay marriage, right? Andrew Sullivan, do you have any previously unblogged thoughts on the matter? No, but he's synthesized them all quite movingly. Sullivan says that Obama's announcement is "hugely important," and he didn't "realize how important it would be till it happened."

"I sat down and watched our president tell me that I am his equal. That I'm no longer outside, I'm fully part of this family. And to hear the President who is in some ways a father figure speak to that, the tears came down like with many people in our families. To be included. I never understood the power of a President's words until that day, really. I thought, all that matters is the states and the Congress and the Defense of Marriage Act and I had all this in my head and suddenly this man saying I'm with you, I get it, you're like me, I'm like you, there is nothing between us, we are the same people and we are equal human beings and I want to treat you the way you treat me, that -- that was overwhelming. That's all i can say. I was at a loss for words."

Matthews points out that in previous elections, gay marriage has been used as a brickbat in election years, but over the past few years, the opposition has diminished. Henderson notes that Biden's not wrong about the cultural impact of things like Will and Grace, and their ability to get people thinking in new ways. (Though most of the time I watched Will And Grace I thought about how boring the titular characters were.)

She also points out that gay marriage has been legalized, without the world ending.

Howard says that now this is a wedge issue on the GOP side, and says that Romney's campaign has been "calm and cautious" about this, even as the GOP forces outside of the campaign itself have gotten heated up about this.

In terms of the electoral college, Borger figures that his support for marriage equality ends up being a wash -- he loses some voters on the blue-collar margins that were likely leaning against him anyway, but he galvanizes the youth vote. (It's gone unsaid so far today, but deserves a mention, it also bring a lot of money off the sidelines and into Obama's warchest.)

Sullivan says that marriage, in itself, has a lot of "small-c conservative" values that mean a lot to families. Henderson adds that marriage equality resonates in libertarian pastures as well. (Gary Johnson -- in favor of marriage equality even before Joe Biden made it suddenly cool, let's not forget.)

Most of Chris Matthews' friends say that Obama's decision this week is either a wash or a net plus. Borger reiterates her position on the demographics. Howard goes macro, saying that it's a "historic moment" and that this is an example of Obama being the change agent he promised to be. The caveat -- and it's a big one: "It hasn't worked so well on the economy. If I was Mitt Romney, I'd say fine, go get married, then try to get a job."

"The irony is that this year, the Democrats are running a cultural campaign," Howard notes. Sullivan follows on that this is how Obama turns the election into a "choice" election. We've been over this before -- the administration would prefer the election to focus on "choice" and not be a "referendum election."

Moving to the WaPo story on Romney's tendency toward sociopathic high-school hijinks, which Romney can not remember. Sullivan "goes there": "Kids are committing suicide across the country because they're bullied in high school and we now know a future president was a bully in high school." Sullivan says that it's a "character issue," that affects him viscerally.

And now we're watching old clips from "All In The Family," which had an episode about Archie finding out a friend of his was gay, and Richard Nixon watched it, and he totally liveblogged his feelings onto those tapes he was always taping. (Nixon hated it, and turned it off, because he was so morally outraged by this teevee show, because BLARGH the Roman Empire was undone by a buncha homos, and he didn't want to see America become a place where you could be friends with a gay man, and blarrrgle-gargle-hooey, instead we ought to be like a "tough nation" like Russia, who "roots out" the gays. And then Nixon went on to be a figure that all Americans associate with moral rectitude, the end.)

What do Mitt Romney and John Kerry have in common? Uhm, they are New Englanders with yachts? (Actually, I do not know if Mitt Romney has a yacht. Our "yacht-politics" specialist, Elyse Siegel, is the person to ask about that stuff.) How about they are New Englanders who both speak as if they have been hooked up to a series of air pumps? Is that not it? Fine, what's the answer?

Apparently, to fight Romney, you must use the "Bush playbook," which I guess means, "Hope that Romney goes windsurfing." Oh, also: bolster your warfighter cred while making your opponent out to be an elitist flip-flopper. BUT SERIOUSLY, it would really help if Romney would go windsurfing.

Howard says that the Obama campaign probably have a lot of footage of Romney's homes and leisure activities. The collective strategy, he says, bears a resemblance to the old GOP campaigns -- running culture war strategy, burnishing the military aspect. That's why Obama went to Bagram AFB to announce -- well, he sort of announced that everyone should refer back to previous announcements. Seriously, I'm at a loss to tell you what new stuff was said at Bagram.

Is Romney hurting himself by showing off his wealth? Borger says that he does himself tiny little harms when he inadvertently blurts out something like, "My wife has a couple of Cadillacs." However, she says, there's no way Obama avoids running as an incumbent with a record to defend. And eventually, he's got to mount an economic argument.

Sullivan says that cultural populism is often a better motivator than economic populism. Henderson says that we're still in the "biography" phase of the election process, and so the Obama camp is off with an emphasis on the fact that he is "not far removed" from ordinary people. Howard says that the Obama camp would prefer to make almost any argument than one centered on the current state of the economy, but they won't be able to do it "all the way to election day."

Here are things the Chris Matthews did not know: Greece is leaving the Eurozone by the end of this year and it will have big ramifications on the election than anything they're discussing today (Sullivan), Democrats will continue consolidating women with the Paycheck Fairness Act (Borger), Al Sharpton will go out and make the case for marriage equality with blacks (Henderson), and the big Democratic donors are already out in force for the 2016 race, swelling around Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, mainly (Fineman).

Matthews asks Borger why women are more supportive of gay issues than men. She answers, "Our humanity."

Matthews wants to know if anyone in the media today can move opinion across the board, like -- he intimates via clips -- Johnny Carson. Howard says that if there's a unifying figure that go across the spectrum, it's daytime women talk-show hosts, like "Oprah, Ellen, and The View." Henderson cosigns, saying despite the struggles of Oprah's network, she demonstrates the ability to marshal minds. Borger isn't sure that we aren't so culturally diffuse right now that one single figure in the media can shift the landscape. Sullivan says that he's relieved that no one has that kind of power, adding that he thought David Brinkley had too much power. That said, he gives props to Brian Lamb, who created C-SPAN.

MEET THE PRESS

So, Jamie Dimon leads off today's MEET THE PRESS, which is nice, because elsewhere, this story is getting downplayed, but unfortunate because if there's anywhere better that this show to provide someone like Jamie Dimon a safe haven, I don't know what that is. Obviously, I'm hoping for the best, but I think that Dimon would find tougher critics at "Jamie Dimon's Electric Funk Hour" which is the show he runs every Friday night at 3am on Manhattan's cable access. Probably. Have you seen cable access television in New York City? It's mesmerizing.

See, they will bring in Andrew Ross Sorkin, to comment on this, and I'm guessing that his commentary will be something like, "My friend Jamie Dimon is awesome, obviously."

Then we will have a lengthy reminder that an actual news story happened on Meet The Press, with Reince Priebus.

Anyway, do you remember how last week, Joe Biden was on Meet The Press? This was a proud moment, for Meet The Press, Meet The Press will tell you. But David Gregory thinks that JP Morgan's big old $2 billion loss is going to renew the old "Wall Street vs. Main Street" fight. That J.P. Morgan had a cock-up of this magnitude is fairly striking, because they have a reputation of being the best a hedging. (We will call this whole matter "hedging" despite the fact that it's sort of hilariously ironic.) In fact, it was JPM that invented the credit-default swap, hedging against the likelihood that Exxon would default on the $4.8 line of credit JPM extended them in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Well, right off the bat, Dimon does penance for his previous remark that all of the agita over his bank's trading habits were a "tempest in a teapot." "I was dead wrong when I said that." He says that he's coming clean on this to demonstrate that he's a good guy on the block. Again, Morgan's reputation being what it is, it makes you wonder how the other big banks are doing business. And by "makes you wonder," I am referring to a vague sense of impeding terror?

"We made a terrible, egregious mistake," he says, "There's almost no excuse for it." What kind of heavy lifting are you doing there, "almost?" Maybe we shall find out.

Were there warning signs? Dimon says in retrospect, there were red flags, and people got defensive instead of acting to solve the problem. Did the bank break laws or rules or regulations? Dimon says that internally, they have compliance officers examining the situation. "We know we were sloppy, we know we were stupid, we know we used bad judgement," Dimon says, but he adds, "We don't know if any of that is true yet." By which he means, rulebreaking. Outside regulators, he says, are entitled to come to their own conclusions about it.

What was the screwup? "In hindsight, we took too much risk. The strategy was badly vetted and badly monitored and it should have never happened." See also: 2008, everyone.

Just as a demonstration of what I'm talking about in terms of MEET THE PRESS beging a friendly haven, I'll point out that when Gregory gets around to the part where he's supposed to be holding Dimon responsible for steering his ship into a vortex, he puts the question like this:

"So here you are, Jamie Dimon. you've got a sterling reputation. Why? Because people say he knows how to manage risk better than anybody. You're known as the guy who ably led J. P. Morgan Chase through the worst financial collapse since the great depression. How does a guy like you make this mistake?"

BUT YOU ARE SO AWESOME OMGZ! LIKE TOTES AMAZEBALLS? WHAT HAPPENED, BUDDY?

Dimon is of course, AW SHUCKS WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. Sometimes they are terrible and awful, you know, BUT I'VE GROWN AS A PERSON.

Meanwhile the point: aren't back to bailouts and "too big to fail," and whatnot? Dimon insists he wants to get rid of "too big to fail" banks. And he supports the parts of Dodd-Frank that offer "resolution" -- which takes apart a big bank piecemeal and includes compensation clawbacks and the dismissals of boards of directors, which Dimon says he supports. "The banks should be dismantled and their name buried in disgrace."

Great. But we've moved past the point. Let me kick this to Yves Smith for a second:

As we've noted, one of the big reasons it wasn't as badly hit in the crisis was that it took big CDS losses in 2005 on the Delphi bankruptcy (yes this is a rumor, but it is as pretty widespread rumor, and the sources are credible). The bank got cautious just as the subprime market was entering its toxic phase. So JP Morgan may have dodged the bullet at least in part by getting a wake-up call earlier than its peers.

But other issues seems even more important. First is that Dimon consistently misrepresented the seriousness of the exposures as soon as the press was onto it. Both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal were digging, and Dimon was dismissive, calling the concerns a "tempest in a teapot". JPM shares are down over 5% in aftermarket trading. The CEO misled investors, but no one seems to care much about niceties like accurate and timely disclosure these days.

This is the disclosure in the first quarter 10Q:

"In Corporate, within the Corporate/Private Equity segment, net income (excluding Private Equity results and litigation expense) for the second quarter is currently estimated to be a loss of approximately $800 million. (Prior guidance for Corporate quarterly net income (excluding Private Equity results, litigation expense and nonrecurring significant items) was approximately $200 million.) Actual second quarter results could be substantially different from the current estimate and will depend on market levels and portfolio actions related to investments held by the Chief Investment Office (CIO), as well as other activities in Corporate during the remainder of the quarter.

Since March 31, 2012, CIO has had significant mark-to-market losses in its synthetic credit portfolio, and this portfolio has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than the Firm previously believed. The losses in CIO's synthetic credit portfolio have been partially offset by realized gains from sales, predominantly of credit-related positions, in CIO's AFS securities portfolio. As of March 31, 2012, the value of CIO's total AFS securities portfolio exceeded its cost by approximately $8 billion. Since then, this portfolio (inclusive of the realized gains in the second quarter to date) has appreciated in value.

The Firm is currently repositioning CIO's synthetic credit portfolio, which it is doing in conjunction with its assessment of the Firm's overall credit exposure. As this repositioning is being effected in a manner designed to maximize economic value, CIO may hold certain of its current synthetic credit positions for the longer term."

The last comment would appear to imply that if they can't unwind this trade at acceptable losses, they'll move some of it into a hold to maturity book, where they aren't required to mark to market. Charming.

Are we going to get into the institutionalized obfuscation? I'm guessing no.

Gregory does point out that Dimon's been particularly outspoken against regulatory intervention, and Dimon responds by...objecting to this characterization. "We support 70% of Dodd-Frank." Again, this sort of muddies the waters. What Gregory needs to do is look at Dimon and say, "Public money should never backstop these sorts of insane prop bets you're making, agree or disagree?"

"Specifically, hedging should make your bank less risky," Dimon says. YES, ONE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT. You are using the word "hedge," after all. But what is the key goddamned lesson from 2008? EVERYONE THOUGHT THEY WERE HEDGED. It's sort of not good enough anymore to say, "Oh, well, our activities just naturally create lower risks. We have a model, and I think you'll plainly see that most days, the economy does not collapse."

Has Dimon given "more ammunition to regulators." Dimon doesn't think so. He doesn't think Morgan needs any help. "This is a stupid thing that we shouldn't have done, but we're still going to earn a lot of money this quarter." Well, that's a strong stance against stupidity!

There is apparently another part of the interview, that Gregory scheduled with Dimon before the news broke, just because Gregory wants to chat with Jamie Dimon, because that's awesome. Jamie Dimon was totally cool about sitting for more interview after the news of JPM's cock-up came out, because he is a hell of a guy. But anyway, the original intention was to ask Dimon some horsey-race questions about the election, because no one relates to the typical voter like Jamie Dimon.

This all needs to be noted, lest you wonder why Dimon and Gregory have switched chairs.

So, isn't it sort of galling that people are really struggling as the people who created most of those hardships sail on, unburdened? Dimon says sure, he blames everyone in general, but some banks were better than others, and blah blah, you heard these monologues in the movie MARGIN CALL. He understands the anger, but we need "solutions!" Gregory asks, "What about accountability? Why hasn't anyone gone to jail?" Dimon says that you should "go punish the bad actors," and leave the institution alone. I sort of think we're looking past the whole part where all the actors, good and bad, get Henry Paulson to hand out several trillion dollars.

Is America better off now then it was four years ago? LET'S ASK JAMIE DIMON THIS, DEFINITELY. His answer: America is awesome and the economy is getting stronger. Could we be doing better, sure. But there was a crisis, and Bush and Obama fixed it the "old fashioned way." (Shoveling money at rich people.) He goes on to say that the debt ceiling crisis, the failure to advance policy out of Simpson-Bowles, and the huge regulatory push have hurt growth. Dimon says he remains "barely a Democrat." Maybe he understands that the "debt ceiling crisis" was a zany right wing stunt that nearly became an even zanier destruction of the global economy, because there weren't enough people who knew what the "debt ceiling" was among the armed hostage takers pointing guns every which way. (Metaphorically, I mean. Actual guns would have been even zanier.)

But Dimon is "disturbed" by some Democrats' behavior. We've entered a zone where irony flourishes.

Dimon laments that there hasn't been "collaboration" of some vague, undefined variety that leads to awesomeness. Presumably, he would like to participate in such a "collaboration." He'll have to forgive us -- it really looked for all the world that you've been mainly focused on making crazy prop bets in the derivatives market, Jamie! We had no idea you wanted to build a bunch of dams or something?

"I wish that everyone would put their knives down and get back to work," says Dimon, who maybe needs to read that Mann/Ornstein piece from a couple weeks ago? When he's done trying to create a fund from the glint he rubs off of two quarters that are rubbed together, I mean.

"I don't know the inside story of Simpson-Bowles," Dimon says, which is okay, because no one in DC has reported it correctly. For instance, Dimon has gotten it into his head that you can "read Simpson Bowles." He is probably referring to the "Chairman's Mark," that was leaked during the deliberations. The one that was never going to pass because it called for modest tax increases? Sure, everyone read it! But understand that despite what Dimon says, it did not contain "magic words" that moved the debate. And you can't blame Obama for not backing the "Chairman's Mark" -- the President was hoping that an actual plan would get out of committee!

Dimon goes on the elaborate on his preferred policy prescriptions, and they are fully and foursquare the precise policies that are being advanced from the current occupant of the White House, to the chagrin of many liberals! Only Dimon doesn't seem to "get it."

And now here is Carl Levin and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Levin says that the regulators will step in and battle lobbyists over the whole JP Morgan matter. Levin's take is that the Volcker Rule guards against these sort of bets, with some important exceptions, most notably "hedging," which Levin understands as a risk reducer, but Dimon has already lumped this entire $2 billion failscapade and put it under the penumbra of "hedging."

"We have to be careful that the regulators are not undermined by this effort to create a loophole in the area of what's called 'portfolio hedging,'" Levin says. Now we know what hundreds of lobbyists are going to be arguing in the coming weeks.

Does Levin accept Dimon's "accountability?" He says that the issue does not involve "personalities," it's a matter of law, and preventing more "too big to fail" bailouts. Levin says that the real battle is in DC, and often between regulators, some of whom want the strong law, and others who want to weaken it. Levin, not surprisingly, feints in the direction of Treasury when he talks about the willfull weakeners.

Why should anyone care about this in general? Sorkin says that the real story here is the Jamie Dimon is superhuman in his awesomeness and if he could make a $2 billion cock up, then everyone can, and that means nothing has changed and everyone is still doomed...which is all stuff I could have told you if the big Jamie Dimon story was that he formed a J-Pop band and is touring the malls of America.

Can anyone give anyone any assurance that anything will be safe one day? Levin says that if we can prevent these banks from making these crazy bets, sure. LOL. Okay. Sorkin says that even though Dimon says he supports resoution authority, applied at his own bank if need be, the truth is that no one will know if the "break-up-the-banks" mechanism has any teeth until we're past the threshold of crisis.

Reince Priebus is here now, to talk about the horsey-race.

Will same-sex marriage be a defining issue for the GOP in the coming election? Priebus isn't sure, but if anyone has strong views on the matter, they now have a clear contrast between the two candidates. That said, Priebus is still pretty sure that the election is going to be on the economy.

Gregory points out that more and more Republicans are coming out in support of marriage equality. Priebus counters with the fact that the states have voted against it. But the only recent data point is North Carolina, who as a state has been uniquely resistant. I fully expect that in many states, these bans will be lifted and repealed, even from the state constitutions.

This is probably not the conversation Priebus would prefer to have, by the way -- a lengthy discussion of same-sex marriage? There's a contrast, and that's the point: it needs no further elucidation. But it seems that the Obama campaign has bought another week of not talking about the economy.

Priebus has to contend with Rand Paul's "I didn't think Obama could get any gayer" comment, and he just doesn't want to. He wants to talk about Romney, and he insists that Romney will be very nice to gay people, even as he restricts their freedoms and denies them some measure of dignity. Is it a civil rights struggle? Priebus says no. Gregory points out that gay rights proponents compare this posture to the one that allowed Jim Crow laws to flourish. Priebus says that's an inapt comparison, because people got murdered in the Jim Crow days. He does realize that members of the LGBT community have been murdered, right?

Anyway, Priebus says that "people deserve dignity and respect, but that doesn't mean that it carries on to marriage." Yes. Marriage is a sanctified tradition, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with dignity and respect. You can actually test this! You can meet a member of the opposite sex tomorrow and go get married on a whim, or a dare, or a bet. "Do they love one another? Are they going to go the distance?" The state doesn't give a crap! Take a marriage licence. Take a bunch! Everyone come in, with a complete stranger of the opposite sex, and get hitched, for poops and giggles.

It's all very sacred! We should definitely take the sacredness of this SUPER SERIOUSLY.

Priebus finally gets around to talking about how this show has been a waste of time because same-sex marriage is not as important an issue as the economy. Uhm...don't come on the show, then? Or at least don't come on the show and demonstrate that you have paragraphs of talking points on the matter?

What does Priebus have to say about the J.P. Morgan foul up? He says it demonstrates that we need less regulation, obviously! The bulk of Priebus' argument here is to blame Dodd-Frank for failing to regulate something that Priebus would prefer not be regulated. Making it an issue of Dodd-Frank's failure to prevent something, versus Romney/RNC's not-regulation, which would be successful, even if a bank impoded. "But the bank went craphouse, Reince!" you would say. He would reply, "Not because a policy we enacted failed!"

"Listen, I'm not an financial expert or an expert on SEC," says Priebus, "but I can tell you that this president talks a lot about regulation on Wall Street. He takes millions and millions of dollars from Wall Street." That's all true, and it would be a great position to take if you were coming at Obama from his left flank. As Priebus supports only talking about regulation and taking Wall Street money, it's more than a little fatuous.

Okay, it's panel time, which means I've got about twenty more minutes of chum-tunnel to wriggle through before I get to detoxify myself. Today we have Gavin Newsom and Al Cardenas and Chris Matthews and Kathleen Parker and Jonathan Capehart.

So, the New Yorker put rainbow columns on the White House, let's goggle at it. Whee! Matthews says that it's interesting that after Biden "got out over his skis," the White House made lots of leaks indicating how much trouble that made, which is pretty weird, I must admit. "I don't know why they wanted this spat to be public," Matthews says.

Newsom says that he has no idea if Obama was going to change his mind, but he's glad he did. Now we find out if it's a "good political decision or a perilous political decision." Cardenas, of course, thinks that Obama should have explained himself earlier, but in the end, it's "much ado about nothing."

Capehart notes that the states have always been handed the responsibility of defining marriage, and the idea that Obama is punting to the states on this is the wrong way to see this. I'll refer everyone back to Chris Geidner's piece which I linked at the top of this. Capehart goes on to note that Obama had to come out in favor of this, if for no other reason that his deeds (largely pro-LGBT policies) did not match his words (hesistancy to embrace the LGBT community). Parker contends that Obama did punt back to the states.

Parker (who is also pretty evidently pro-marriage equality) also says that "evolving" was always the perfect word to describe this because the American people are starting to come around to supporting it. Okay, but that doesn't describe what the President was doing. Obama was in a holding pattern, waiting to see what horizon line he'd hit first: total political safety or utter political untenability. Like Capehart said, it got untenable circa last week. That's not evolution.

Cardenas doesn't agree that the American people are evolving on the issue of gay marriage. He's wrong, but never mind.

Matthews, of course, is caught up in the history of it all, and essentially carrying Andrew Sullivan's argument into the discussion, without Sully's eloquence.

Cardenas says that social conservatives will probably come behind Romney more solidly and more passionately than they might have before. He also seems to think that social conservatives are new to the game of seeing marriage through a political prism. Matthews broaches Romney's high school bullying, to the objection of Parker, who isn't sure it's fair to extrapolate from Romney's adolescent experience. Newsom says that public opinion is swinging in favor of marriage equality, but the action at the ballot box will always lag -- when the SCOTUS ruled that inter-racial marriage was legal, public opinion was 70-30 against.

Capehart says some nice things about the gay community and Obama's symbolism, and Cardenas has a sad that Gregory picks that moment to end the discussion.

Okay, y'all. I'm going to call my mom, now, because it's Mothers' Day, so don't forget to do that. Just as a reminder -- there will be NO SUNDAY LIVEBLOG NEXT WEEK, because I will be out of town. We will return May 27th. Until then, best wishes to all of you!

Good morning everybody, and welcome once again to this Sunday Morning liveblog of ours. My name is Jason, and I will be your fast word typer. Welcome to May as well, and springtime, which I hope is mostly a real spring for all of you. Here in Washington, DC, "spring" typically means "eight days of temperatures in the high sixties" and then we skip immediately to several months of 90 degree weather and 132% humidity and the general despair of living near Capitol Hill, which is of course sitting atop the blast furnaces of Satan's brothel. (This is where Senator David Vitter both recruits his staff and spends all of his free time.)

Anyhoo, today we have Marco Rubio to ask 450 times if he'll be vice president, and Joe Biden -- later -- to maybe ask the same thing? You know, for "balance." Plus panels galore on the political psuedo-events of the week. You should all quickly run to brunch or church or a combination of the two ("chunch?") and let me handle this. You may also stick around and chat with each other in the comments (I like to think the Sunday Morning liveblog comments will have their first wedding any week now), drop me a line, or experience more of my personal frustrations in real time by following me on Twitter (and learning to bleat out sad squonks on a trombone, or something).

Once more, in to the breach.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

As Wallace indicates, Rubio is the pick of Republican voters at the grassroots level. By contrast, the Republican "insiders" want Ohio Senator Rob Portman -- who is like Tim Pawlenty in that he is bland and beige and unnoticeable, except Portman does not give off the faint scent of intractable failure. But if you put Portman on teevee and interviewed him, you wouldn't remember the experience. Seriously! It's like being roofied, with dullness. You notice this humming sound and then all of the sudden time has passed. And why are your pants down? Hey. That sounds like a personal problem. Don't bring me into this.

Anyway, Rubio is here. What does he think of the way President Obama has decided to run for re-election, and criticize Mitt Romney? He says that the President doesn't have a budget, for some reason choosing to lead with reminder of his party's dedicated obstruction (probably okay for this show's audience), and jumps to some generic, "the economy is worse," critique, which is spices up by noting, "the President is being divisive," which is his way of saying, "the President isn't just handing the keys to the White House to Romney."

This is an aspect that bores me, in Presidential elections -- incumbent President runs, opponents say, "he's campaigning, no fair!" and then I'm at the opthamologist with eyeroll fatigue.

Rubio adds that Obama is breaking his promise to be a different sort of politician by saying negative things about Romney. We remind you once again that Obama is a negative campaigner, according to political science.

Wallace points out that the Obama argument is that he "inherited a mess" and that the GOP would "take us back to the mess," and Rubio disagrees. That wasn't really a question, you know? "Hey, that guy says that you and your friends suck." "Oh, shoot. Wow. You got me dead to rights there, Chris. Totally true! Man, that was wily, the way to walked me right into that trap."

Rubio, like most Republicans, is finally way into the U6 unemployment statistics, which is great. Should they win the White House, they'll go back to ignoring it, which is too bad.

Now Wallace is showing Rubio a Romney video, that's critical of Obama -- again, I don't know what he expects Rubio to say about that? "What an awesome ad." He brings up Romney's weird claim that we should have a monthly employment growth of 500K or more every time out, which actually has happened with about the same frequency as perfect games pitched in the major leagues and, inconveniently for Romney, last happened on Obama's watch. (It never happened during the Bush administration, though, why would you have expected it to?)

Romney also says that the unemployment rate should be 4%, with magic. Robert Reich remembers what mere humans have to do to get it there.

Wallace tosses most of this at Rubio, who writes off Romney's weird ideas as having "high expectations," and then giving a tongue bath to the imaginary ideal of the "American people" who just need optimism and sacks of magic beans to create all kinds of jobs. Dude. If this is a competition to just have high expectations, why not say unemployment should be 2% and we should be adding a million jobs a month? Just go for it! "Mitt Romney will make, for America, the most delicious tiramisu!"

Rubio also complains that jobs aren't being created because of "uncertainty with the tax code," which doesn't happen to be what small business owners tell reporters:

-- Jody Gorran, chairman of Aquatherm Industries: "This mantra that every dollar in tax increases is a dollar away from job creation -- give me a break. ... It's not taxes that affects job creation, it's demand."

-- Kelly Conklin, owner of Foley-Waite Associates: "I don't decide to hire or buy equipment based on tax policy. ... We know how to make shit out of wood."

-- Debra Ruh, owner of TecAccess: "We need to hire people, but we don't have the cash or the credit to do it. ... I don't mind paying taxes. ... I like living in the United States and having the opportunities here. I don't understand why running a business has to be about avoiding paying taxes."

-- Michael Teahan, owner of Espresso Resource: "What we do in business, how we spend our money, how we allocate our resources -- that has very little to do with tax policy. ... I map my business based on my customers and what my customers want to buy and what they can afford to buy."

-- Rick Poore, owner of Designwear Inc.: "If you drive more people to my business, I will hire more people. It's as simple as that. If you give me a tax break, I'll just take the wife to the Bahamas."

-- Lew Prince, owner of Vintage Vinyl: "The economic premise that people won't hire because they might have to pay more taxes if they make more money is beyond laughable. ... You hire when you think there's a way you can make more money with that hire. The percentage the government takes out of it has almost nothing to do with it."

We move now to Chen Guancheng, who is apparently going to get to come to America, per a deal worked out by Hilary Clinton. Wallace points out that Romney may have popped off half-cocked by saying, "This is a dark day for freedom" (remember he is describing EVERY DAY, because we're talking about China), a little prematurely, assuming that the deal would not be coming. What does Rubio have to say about that? Not a lot. CHINA SUX, says Rubio.

He also says that the Obama administration did not "forcefully assert our values." I don't know what else you can do, to assert those values, other than be the place that Chen Guancheng wants to come to, and be the people who get him here safely. Everything else is just "spiking the football," which we learned last week is something the Obama administration is actually not allowed to do. So, we're in "damned if you do, damned if you don't" territory.

That's where we move to, now -- the bin Laden week. Joe Biden is shown, doing his "bin laden is dead and General Motors is alive" line. Biden should be careful -- he was the guy who went all "noun, verb, 9-11" on Giuliani. Wallace asks if that is fair game, and if Joe Biden is good on foreign policy. Rubio says that Biden is a nice person, who says stupid things all the time, and is terrible on foreign policy. A key thing Rubio points out: when Biden wonders if Romney would have taken out bin Laden, that's coming from someone who cautioned AGAINST that mission. (Biden may well run for President in 2016 should Obama get re-elected -- store that away.)

And then Rubio is off saying how disgusting it was that Obama opted to, you know, forcefully assert our American values, by celebrating the death of bin Laden, and "running on his record."

Rubio says, that he "took the issue and made it a weapon for political warfare, and I think that's wrong." Ha, ha: no he doesn't. The people who actually think that don't get elected to office.

Of course, as Rubio points out, Obama promised to be a "different sort of politician," and hey NO BACKSIES NOW.

Like I keep saying: don't ever promise to be a different sort of politician. You will never be rewarded for the attempt, and after a few weeks of everyone else in DC sticking by the Principles Of Dickdom, you will be derided as a failure.

Rubio's implicit promise is that Romney will set a lower standard in this regard, and that no one will be able to criticize him for being surprisingly base and small-minded. That is just smart politics.

Now we shall have a "lightning round." On Iran, Rubio has said he supports a "dual track" where we remain in talks with Iran whilst preparing to war with them. Wallace points out that this is precisely the Obama administration's policy as well. Rubio says that Obama has the right tactics, but the "wrong attitude about the tactics" in that he might be too diplomatic and less bomby. (Obama needs to be MORE "spike the football.")

Is Romney wrong to cut foreign aid? Rubio says that Romney is always looking for efficiencies in the budget. Rubio, himself, is pro-foreign aid. Good news! We do not actually spend enough in foreign aid to make cutting it an efficiency.

Wallace asks about Richard Grenell, the openly-gay foreign policy adviser Romney briefly hired and then fired...because why again? Was it because he was a churlish and unfunny sexist pig on Twitter? No...Romney was comfortable with that as long as he scrubbed the offending tweets. OH, THAT'S RIGHT. He was openly gay, and had the temerity to support marriage equality, and the Christian right, led by the AFA's Bryan Fischer, went lights-out nuts on the Romney administration, raised a screech, and got Romney to fire him. Then, Fischer celebrated the firing, and when people complained about it, he went on to say Romney was a wimp for not standing up to him.

Anyway, Romney is always looking for efficiencies, I guess? Wallace wants to ask what that says about tolerance. Rubio says he doesn't know Grenell and as far as he's heard, he left under his own volition. You know, if Rubio was more familiar with the matter, maybe he'd have a principled thing to say about it. But hey, he doesn't know what's going on? Guy gets hounded by homophobes into quitting (or being made to quit)? Boy, Rubio just doesn't know.

Rubio says that there's more tolerance in the GOP, for example, you can be a pro-choice Republican. (Can you?) He says that pro-choice Republicans are more tolerated than pro-life Democrats, which totally explains why Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey is always being hounded to an assisted suicide.

Rubio says that he hasn't heard about any contraception debate, no sir. That's just some divisive stuff Obama invented. "Whatever happened to the Obama of 'no red America and no blue America'?" he says, adding that Obama has become "just a typical politician." Burn, I guess? Everyone is against raising the debt ceiling until it's their job, I know. If Romney becomes President, we can at least look forward to that anti-debt ceiling nonsense going away for a while.

Rubio has some DREAM act of his own, and it's essentially designed solely to take away a winning issue from the Democrats that doesn't alter the existing immigration system, because Rubio is just a typical Beltway politician. To his credit, though, Rubio never promised to be something different.

Wallace points out that Romney will sort of bask in the mantle of Rubio's "Botox the existing system and call it a DREAM Act" without signing onto it by saying that he is "studying it." Rubio says that there isn't a "piece of legislation" to back yet. (I bet you there won't be, either.)

Rubio says, "Romney is for a legal immigration system that works," which is the vaguest thing you can say about anything. I AM FOR APPLES THAT ARE APPLE-Y AND ALSO DELICIOUS. I AM FOR CAN OPENERS THAT OPEN CANS. WATER SHOULD BE WET, AND BY GOD, IN A ROMNEY ADMINISTRATION, IT SHALL STAY THAT WAY.

Will Rubio be vice-president? "Well, Chris, I am not going to discuss the vice presidency." Instead, he talks about his qualifications for the Senate. They include, "I am currently in the Senate itself." He is doing a very good job filibustering. So much so that there most be lots of White House policies he is obstructing right now. Wallace stops him after it just gets stupid.

Can Romney win the presidency if Hispanics prefer Obama two to one? Rubio says there is no "Hispanic vote," and there's great diversity, every state is different. He makes a glancing hit at one point -- in swing states like Florida, Hispanics may vote differently than the rest of the Hispanic vote nationwide, and all that really matters is that electoral college.

Wallace tries about two more times to get Rubio to say he'd take the VP job if asked, and he fails.

And we're paneling with Bill Kristol and A.B. Stoddard and Lynne Liz Cheney and Juan Williams.

Kristol says that he noticed that Obama's kick off was light on defending the stimulus and the Affordable Care Act, and it was all pretty boring to him, boy howdy! Wallace is all, that was pretty cynical, but okay, the president didn't actually talk about his record and instead wants to make it a "choice" election. Stoddard says that it's not a surprise and that "the divisive theme of we can't go back to the GOP of old" is the one he's stuck with. She wonders if that will have to change at some point in the future.

Cheney says that this tactic will not be anymore effective in 2012 than it was in 2010. She also criticizes Obama for what she describes as "saying something doesn't make it so," and I am sort of laughing out loud, listening to a Cheney criticize that.

Williams points out that the economy is, nevertheless, doing better -- in terms of jobs, the stock market, production -- and that's the record he has to run on.

But the economic news for April was pretty bad, in terms of adding to the labor market. (Though there were upward revisions on previous months that may be getting a bit underplayed.) Kristol says that it adds up to mediocre improvements that Obama can take credit for, and that Obama will have a chance to win if he can make the election a choice between his first term and Bush's last term. "He's going to make Mitt Romney the third term of George W. Bush."

Stoddard says that the strategy could work, but there's not a lot of time left. That's true to a certain extent, but I'm relatively certain that the reason why is a bit too far past Stoddard's pay grade. Suffice it to say that the largest impact any single economic indicator seems to have on the electoral hopes of an incumbent is income growth in the last three quarters of the first term, with a particular emphasis on Q14.

Is Lynne Liz Cheney [Note: Sorry about that folks, I am always getting Lynne and Liz wrong, and I'm about to do it about 400 more times, so, sorry, xoxoxo, etc.!] going to run for the Senate in Wyoming? She doesn't answer the question. She should probably be waterboarded, because I hear it's a splashy and fun way to answer questions!

More paneling, moving to the Chen Guancheng matter. Kristol says that he thinks the Obama administration may have made some initial mistakes, but adds some "to be fairs" about these matters being very difficult to manage in real time. With the help of an uproar back home, Clinton probably gathered sufficient pressure to make things alls well that ends well. Stoddard adds that Chen himself didn't make it a very easy situation to manage, and that Romney's criticism was "politically tone deaf."

Cheney says that the administration just isn't competent, and doesn't do enough to just openly stomp around offending people. Why doesn't Obama just peacock his way around Iran? Because he is incompetent. Juan Williams totally disagrees. I'm just waiting for Williams and Cheney to get into a fight, so I can sit back and tune out the noise for a minute.

Drat. Instead Wallace changes the subject to the Obama campaign's bin Laden ad. I think I've said enough about that. Kristol says that it's unfortunate that the ad emphasizes the political costs to Obama if the mission had been a failure. I'll point out two things: this is just a true statement of fact. Had the mission failed, it would have been enormously politically damaging. We're all capable of speaking this way, in hindsight, about President Carter, so let's not act like it's nuts to point this out.

Second, if we're going to take the tact of saying, "Actually if [x] had failed it would have hurt lots of other people," let's consistently apply it. Because I'm a little sick of hearing about a massive unemployment crisis that seems to only be a problem for a wealthy politician's re-election hopes.

Ha, Kristol thinks that the message is odd, and George W. Bush wouldn't have done it. I'm pretty sure you can all google "bush mission accomplished aircraft carrier" for yourselves.

Williams said that it's unseemly that the Obama campaign did this ad, but a Republican president would have done the same thing. Again, probably no one would have said boo about this if the ad hadn't done that whole, "WOULD MITT ROMNEY HAVE MADE THE SAME CHOICE" thing.

Lynne Liz Cheney isn't impressed with whatever it is we'll be doing in Afghanistan until 2024, but can we just come home? No. "He doesn't talk about victory, he doesn't talk about winning," Cheney says. Yes. Historically, you don't get to use those words alongside the word "Afghanistan." At any rate, she shouldn't worry, because we'll be in Afghanistan long enough for lots of other Presidents of both parties to have a turn losing. I'm expecially looking forward to kids who were born AFTER the war started growing up and dying there. That's going to be fun. It sure will be just great, being part of the collective shame that a kid born in 2005 came into a world where none of the adults in their life had enough of their wits about them to keep him alive. Preview of coming attractions.

Would you even lose the election by just ending the war in Afghanistan tomorrow? I would think that you would win going away.But if not, I'd be proud to lose an election for that reason. I'd be proud to be hated for that reason. I would trade a daily kick in the face, to keep children from growing up and dying there, if everyone would agree to it. But no, let's definitely stay there till 2024. That'll work.

THIS WEEK WITH PROBABLY GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS BY MAYBE NOT YOU NEVER KNOW ANYMORE

David Axelrod is here, as is John McCain, who is now just circling Washington, getting punches on his Sunday Morning Chatspittle Super Saver Club card until the world is engulfed in flames and he ascends into the swirly maelstrom of hellfire as the Vampyre King Of The Milky Way Galaxy and flies off to Mars to mate with lava creatures, build up an army, and then get bogged down fighting in Afghanistan, forever.

Plus a panel that includes Bay Buchanan. I had better go make a Zantac milkshake.

Anyway, the answer to your question is "Jake Tapper is hosting," and he says that Stephanopoulos has a "well deserved morning off." Whatever, George.

Anyway, did you notice that there is some kind of election going on? There is. People are making speeches and having rallies, and yelling talking points at each other.

David Axelrod is here, and Tapper asks him about the recent economic numbers, and Axelrod states that "you have to look at the trend" because the trend is good, overall, especially considering where we came from, and here are some headwinds, and here are some bills that he supports that won't get passed, and it's like a mashup of every David Axelrod television appearance from the last three years, only now there's some anti-Romney stuff in it. Of course, you could have gamed out the anti-Romney stuff three years ago, too.

Axelrod reminds that four years ago Romney ran around saying that blaming Bush for the bad economy was just "politics" and he now evidently believes that it's okay to do that now that the shoe is on the other foot. Yes: we have all met Mitt Romney, and are familiar with his studied take on double-standards. (Don't you guys still want to talk about how bad the economy was under Bush, though?)

Tapper wants to know if the failure to fill 4,000 seats at Ohio State wasn't a sign that Obama should just concede the election right now on live teevee. Axelrod says no. He adds that people are enthusiastic. He is not sure people are enthusiastic about Romney. This conversation actually toom a couple of minutes, but it wasn't interesting enough to merit me chronicling it for posterity. I think that Romney will manifest much more enthusiasm than McCain did.

When will the Obama campaign run on their record? Axelrod says that they are already doing it. Like the bin Laden mission, remember that? But in about a week, he says, you will see lots of ads that "speak to the progress we've made since the President took office."

Moving to the whole "spiking the football" issue. Has he been doing that? Axelrod says no, he is noting simply that he kept this promise and made a risky decision, and if the mission had failed, the Romney campaign would be pointing and sneering.

Tapper then moves to the whole Chen Guancheng, and Mitt Romney's premature criticism of the efforts to protect him. Axelrod says it's shameful the way some people "speak irresponsibly on half information." He accuses Romney of "blunderbussing around trying to score political points," thus helpfully referencing the new Jack White album. Gotta keep the youths engaged.

Here are some things to read about Chen Guancheng, by the way? Because I worry that he is going to live in the minds of Americans as this guy who was briefly featured as a shiny object in the election-year fiff-faff between Obama and Romney.

Okay, now we jump to the 54,348th Sunday morning conversation with Sith Lord McCain.

Where does McCain come down on the issue of blunderbussing? This is perhaps the most unnecessary question in the world. McCain wants to know why we aren't cold saving more Chinese people from China, using these "Avengers" he keeps hearing about.

Tapper reads Politico to John McCain, which is, I think, part of some Sunday morning drinking game? Do a shot, everyone, right now.

"Back and forth during a tough primary campaign," McCain says, there's a lot of things that get said. He should know! One of the things he routinely said to the other people who debated him during the 2008 campaign was "I really hate this Romney guy."

Now McCain is mad because we did not do some heavyhanded intervention after the Iranian election, so as to make life even worse for the Iranian dissidents who really would have suffered mightily had their movement become ornately stamped with the United States' imprimatur. (Also, who would have been available to "do undefined stuff" in Iran? Probably the Avengers.)

McCain says that after the Iranians chanted "Obama are you with us," the President didn't say a word, and that was shameful. (Actually, the White House took a pretty sizable risk by asking Twitter to remain in service during the uprising so that the dissidents on the ground could continue communicating with each other and the outside world.)

McCain says that Obama is bragging about Iraq and he shouldn't be because things are unraveling there. He should, perhaps, not brag about Iraq, because all the Obama administration did was follow the status of forces agreement signed during the Bush administration to the letter. That said, Iraq's unraveling is happening because we invaded it. It's called "natural consequences." We put Iraq on a path to unraveling. We basically drew up a plan to ensure this.

McCain coming hard and heavy now. Things have never been worse between the U.S. and Israel. Remember those bunker busters we sold them? We were such a-holes, for doing that. "And then there's Syria," he says. I sympathize, of course, because we created an insane standard for intervening in Libya that we're not applying in Syria. (Or Bahrain!) But again, the Avengers do not actually exist, so I don't know who gets sent into Syria for the next few years and how this gets paid for. If everyone was being honest at the time of the Libyan intervention, we would have just said, "The new standard for doing this sort of thing is how easy can it be to do."

And, hey, this is why you don't spend all you blood and treasure on pointless endeavors. When it comes to warmaking, John McCain just doesn't seem to understand that there is this thing called "opportunity cost." We'd be in an even poorer position to help Syrians if we'd followed John McCain and his blunderbuss into South Ossetia, as he'd have liked.

Does McCain have any vice-presidential advice? Sure! And it comes wrapped in a lot of coy jokes where he winkingly acknowledges the fact that he's aware he made a terrible choice himself, without ever just publicly copping to it. Wow, John, this "leading from behind" just doesn't work!

And now we're paneling with George Will and Bay Buchanan and Greta Van Susteren and Austan Goolsbee and Tavis Smiley.

George Will thinks that Obama went too far with his bin Laden ad, because Dwight Eisenhower would never brag on his accomplishments and suggest that he alone was capable of bringing peace to the world while alleging that Adlai Stevenson would make different choices and maybe get Americans killed.

Only, ha ha, sorry, George Will, that is EXACTLY what Dwight David Eisenhower WOULD do and DID do:

Lord, and he did it for four and a half minutes! How cheap was television time back then?

Buchanan says that foreign policy is not likely to be a key issue, but Obama is not "presidential" when he fails to praise the Navy Seals. Tapper and Smiley retort that Obama has praised them repeatedly, and that their actions in terms of deeds and policy are generically geared toward support of veterans and soldiers. What disappoints Smiley is that there is a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Oval Office and Obama does a lot of warring and bragging about war. (Maybe he should put a bust of John McCain in the Oval Office?)

Goolsbee points out that everyone from Romney to Biden piled on Obama when he said he would go into Pakistan to get bin Laden, and because of this, it's a relevant campaign issue. It's not hard to imagine, of course, Romney going on a big Told You So Tour if the mission had failed. (No one would have said, "Hey, Mitt, have a heart and don't kick the Navy Seals when they're down," either.)

Greta Van Susteren wants to extend our interventions to Honduras and Mexico and the Sudan, among other places. I'm excited for the possibility that she will, in about fifteen minutes time, decry the large deficits. I mean, fingers crossed. I can actually get high, now, on publicly televised cognitive dissonance. Or maybe this isn't so much a high as my brain having a tiny stroke. Either way, all the colors go all tinty, and there's some numbness, and I usually pee myself.

George Will says that the Chen Guancheng matter demonstrates once again how nasty the Chinese regime is, and how foolish it is to expect their authoritarianism to be curbed by gradually introducing market dynamics into their system. Suck on that, Adam Smith, I guess.

Apparently, super power-mad dictators don't go all soft because there's a Starbucks and McDonalds down the street? If anything, McDonalds should only harden authoritarianism, like arteries.

Ha, ha. Did you ever imagine that Jake Tapper would attempt an Adam Yauch remembrance with George Will and Bay Buchanan sitting right there? Okay. Well, cross that off your "signs of the apocalypse" list.

Will says that if you look at the unemployment rate in a weird way that no one does, the unemployment rate would be 11%. Goolsbee retorts by pointing out that this just means that it would be down from 17%.

Van Susteren thinks that everyone has an enthusiasm problem, because Obama didn't fill 4,000 seats in Columbus, and all of Romney's endorsers are all, "Blah, Romney, whatever. I guess I endorse him."

Things get tedious for a while, until Will says that the push for more student loans is the "slow motion creation of a new entitlement," and decries both parties for supporting it. Smiley tries to argue that getting people into college is good for their job prospects, Will counters by saying that the margin of salaries between high school graduates and college graduates are a pittance. Smiley says why not give no-interest loans to students when we give them to banks. Will says, hey let's not give no-interest loans to anyone.

Goolsbee and Buchanan spend a few minutes chicken vs. egging on education and jobs. We should invest in education, says Goolsbee. No no, we need job creation, says Buchanan. Which is why he supports education investment, says Goolsbee. You should be creating jobs, says Buchanan. We did. No you didn't. No seriously we did, and Bush was terrible.

And we're on to the Lugar- Mourdock race. Buchanan is very excited about Mourdock. Van Susteren says that she could curb her enthusiasm, because Lugar is much better. Smiley says that despite Lugar's conservatism, he recalls Lugar's public service very fondly, and says it's too bad that a guy who's been a faithful conservative is losing because he lost some arbitrary purity test, balanced against his career.

What does the John Edwards trial mean, for America? The panel discusses as I get more coffee.

And now they are talking about Junior Seau's death. Is it possible to be in favor of this? No. Will agrees that football is in trouble because the game's players have developed to the point where the violence that can be doled out is too much for the humans playing the game to take. Smiley says that all the money in the game will keep things from changing. Van Susteren is more concerned about Drew Brees breaking some record. Goolsbee compares it all to glory-seekers who climb Mount Everest, which is literally a mountain covered in trash and corpses.

MEET THE PRESS

Okay, so, Joe Biden is here, I bet to talk about this whole "Obama campaign" thing. Also, Kelly Ayotte will be getting get first turn at Sunday morning surrogacy, when she panels with Chuck Todd and Tom Brokaw and Diane Swonk. These are three people whose names would be fun to hear pronounced by Tom Brokaw: "With Chuck Tawhawhd, Kelly Ayoughought, and Diane Swahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnk, I'm Tawm Brokahhhrrrrrrwwww."

I make my own amusement! Anyway, going to try to get through this last hour of chatting as quickly as I can. We begin with Joe Biden, who previously taped his sit down with Gregory.

So, the economy? Is it the suck? Biden says no, and that revisions keep picking up the prior months' numbers. "We're on a patth," he says. Gregory asks if there's a certain amount of stagnation happening. Biden says no. "There's been steady growth -- not enough -- but no stagnation."

Of course, Romney disagrees, preferring to cite the discouragement. Biden admits that people across the country are still feeling the economy as if it were still in recession. Biden says that what Romney's proposing -- tax cuts for the rich, obstacles to education, eliminating R&D and infrastructure investment -- will not help. "The good thing," he says, is that "they're not hiding the ball this time, God love 'em." Between the Ryan budget and the obstruction, the GOP, he suggests, are being very open about their desires. (Romney could still decide to distance himself from some of this.)

Gregory points out that the recovery has been a lot slower than previous recoveries, so why not give the ball to someone with a background in business? Biden says that Romney lacks the background he thinks he actually has. (He also points out that this recession was historically terrible.)

Biden gets into some specifics, pointing out that they would have been allowed to save a few million additional jobs had a tiny tax on millionaires income been levied, to help keep cops and firefighters on the job. Gregory scoffs, "But you can't guarantee jobs." Dude, you were the one who just asked, why not hand the whole government over to the guy with a business degree.

Moving to Chen Guancheng. is his future in America? Biden says yes. He says that he expects Chen to be permitted to come to the United States, with his family, to study at NYU, and they are prepared to grant him a visa immediately. Biden is much more surefooted in discussing this type of foreign policy interaction, and he explains that the situation developed last week along the lines of what Chen was seeking to do -- at first, he wanted to remain in China with his family, later it became his desire to get out.

Gregory asks if it's more important to stand up for freedom or maintain good relations, and Biden says that standing up for freedom is more important, and he's impressed that upon the Chinese repeatedly.

Joe Biden is going to run for Vice President. There is a few minutes of what Gregory and Biden imagine to be "hilarity," followed by a quick question on the talk of replacing him with Clinton, which is only ever discussed at cocktail parties in DC, by the foppish courtiers of the Beltway.

What about the "evolution" of Obama and Biden on marriage equality?

BIDEN: I am vice president of the United States of America. The president sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction-- beyond that.

He adds:

BIDEN: The president continues to fight, whether it's Don't Ask, Don't Tell or whether it is making sure, across the board that you cannot discriminate. Look [at] the executive orders he's put in place: Any hospital that gets federal funding, which is almost all of them, they can't deny a partner from being able to have access to their partner who's ill or making the call on whether or not they-- you know-- it's just-- this is evolving. And by the way, my measure, David, and I take a look at when things really begin to change, is when the social culture changes. I think Will and Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody's ever done so far. And I think-- people fear that which is different. Now they're beginning to understand.

Okay, so, great synergy with Will And Grace. But all of these comments have already been walked back. My thoughts on this are that if Obama gets re-elected, he'll probably say, "Hey, wow. Look at me, I'm evolved now." Maybe sooner if rich libertarians give his campaign half a billion dollars! And that's me, being cynical, hooray!

Was all that bin Laden football spiking Obama's "Mission Accomplished" moment? Biden says that the trip to Kabul was a legitimate meeting to sign a "war-ending" document that took twenty months to negotiate, completed coincidentally on the one year anniversary of bin Laden's death. I mean...I'm still in the vaporous haze of the previous paragraph's cynicism, maybe, but it was awfully convenient, and frankly, this agreement doesn't really feel like a slam-dunk war ender to me.

Gregory points out that having questioned Romney's foreign policy bona fides, Biden opens himself up to criticism that he opposed the bin Laden too. Biden says that's a valid point, but nevertheless, the President was "the only person with a full-throated 'go' was Leon Panetta." And even though Biden opposed it, he says that ultimately, he just wanted the President to "follow his instincts" because they were "always unerring" and...wait. Does Biden really believe that? Because the next question is, "Oh so does that mean you are now convinced that keeping up the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was worth it?" Because Biden's instincts at the time told him that it wasn't.

Anyway, Biden says the only thing they differed on is that he wanted "one more day" to do one more "test," before the raid. But the White House did pick a great time to do the raid -- the White House Correspondent's Dinner, when all the city's reporters are too drunk, ignorant, and chasing celebrity approval to notice something huge going down. (More than usual, I mean.)

Biden says that the United States' reputation in the world has been enhanced under Obama, and based upon what Romney's said about foreign policy -- our arch-enemy is Russia, for example -- our standing would be damaged.

Does Biden think there's a huge right-wing conspiracy to obstruct Obama's initiatives? He says no, it's just that the GOP has been taken over by the Tea Party, and it's like the way the "far left took over the Democrats back in 1972." "We go through phases, like this," he says. "We need a strong Republican Party...two or three people who can speak for the party and make agreements," he says.

I would make the case that everyone suffers when one party goes off the rails as well. Democrats aren't working important muscles debating Michele Bachmann and the Randian Haircut From Wisconsin, for Pete's sake. And we're about to turn out Dick Lugar? He's a solid conservative being made to feel ashamed for failing some purity test. If I'd told you that was going to happen eight years ago, y'all would have called me insane.

For this reason, Biden has a lot of sympathy for John Boehner. Know what? I schedule a little time on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do the same!

Who would Biden want to face on the debate stage? He says that he's looking forward to the debates and he'll assume that whoever it is will be tough. Will he run for President in 2016? Biden basically says, "Me and Hillary will run as a team. OMG, J/K, LOL!"

Panel time, with David Gregory and Brokaw's Unpronounceables. How does the Romney campaign feel about Obama's kick off? Ayotte says it's sad that the guy who promised to be a different kind of president is, like, totally trying to run against Romney by criticizing him and stuff! Also, she hates Obamacare and stimulus, and for the most part, foreign policy -- especially the same stuff McCain stuff about Iran. Ayotte speculates: what if making some big thunderous display of support had resulted in regime change in Iran? Well, it doesn't work like that. I mean, does it? Does wishing make things so? How come Kelly Ayotte hasn't gotten the Iranian people bald eagles and soft-serve icecream yet? It's because she doesn't want it bad enough.

Anyway, Gregory has some newspapers to read to everyone and questions to ask. Diane Swonk says that economy is a "measure of human behavior" and we are in a dense forest, a forest of wonder. An erotic forest, where paupers clutch at each other for warmth. But I digress. Because do you want to hear that "Europe could take us off a fiscal cliff?" FINE. Europe could take us off a fiscal cliff. It's just beyond the forest, this cliff. Where paupers are boning.

Brokaw is here to say some bromides about how the country "feels" about the economy, and acknowledges that he's is reciting a disaster of "mixed metaphors," but whatever. Economy be tripping, here's a six minute monologue about it.

Todd says that he finds it fascinating that the Obama campaign's shifted their message to, "Will you be better off four years from now, if you change to Romney." This is not actually a new tactic. This is the war president strategy. You can't switch horses in midstream. It's just being applied to the economy. We've won back the auto industry and are about to storm the shores of the economy's Normandy.

It's a little weird to have a panel with three reporters and one candidate's campaign surrogate, because what we're getting is three bent-over-backwards neutral types and one panelist who is out there with knives.

Swonk says that she's equally offended by both sides in the way that people haven't settled on a simple plan to cut some deficit and raise some revenues through taxation, and when are people just going to see the sanity of that and do it, because it would an easy fix for so many things! My advice to her would be to stop being so equally offended! You know, just be offended at the side that's preventing all this from happening. Lordy, this lady is Thomas Friedman in a scoop-neck blouse. That Thomas Mann/Norm Ornstein piece must have been read by nobody.

Brokaw says there's a movement to bring back the Simpson-Bowles plan, and it's failure was a black eye on the president. First of all, there is no such thing as a "Simpson Bowles plan" because the Simpson Bowles committee very famously failed to produce one. Had they done so, we'd have gotten to the stage where the president would have urged it's passage, and it would have been defeated, because the President urged its passage. What exists is a "Chairman's mark," and people really should be more specific about these things.

Anyway, if the President wants to pass anything that looks like something that might have not been totally kicked to death in the Simpson-Bowles committee room, he would need to make a big demonstration of how NOT for it he is. Otherwise it doesn't stand a chance. Were the President to caution America to not put their hands on the open flames of a gas stovetop, the GOP would all run home, burn themselves half to death, and criticize the President for being divisive.

Jamie Dimon is for "Simpson-Bowles," whatever that is, and we should all totally listen to Jamie Dimon, according to Tom Brokaw.

Is everyone high?

I simply cannot endure much more of this so I'm going to turn the sound off and put it on fast-forward and then summarize what I see from everyone's gestures.

Okay, David Gregory is like, "Huh?" and Ayotte responds, "Crickety-crickety-pippapippapip." "Blappitty, blippity, floo-owww, diddydiddydo," she adds. Head nod.

Gregory says, 'WAAAUUGH" and Brokaw is all, "HAWWDEEDAWWW, nim nim nim." Then there are pictures of George Clooney hugging people.

"Vamm," says Gregory, "Dipple-dipple-tit." Chuck Todd replies, "Oh, rim, oh ram, mickey jam."

[Ha, actually, I found out that the part I was driven too far into boredom to transcribe was Tom Brokaw throwing shade on the annual Masque of the Red Death known as the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and Todd and Gregory sort of feeling sheepish about it.]

And we are done. So much easier that way!

Okay, well, that is out liveblog for today. Thanks to everyone, as always, for participating. Just as a reminder, there will be no liveblog on May the 20th, because I'll be out of town and watching my wife get a masters degree that she's actually already received, but there are sacred traditions that must be observed. In the meanwhile, have a great week, and we'll see you next Sunday.

CNN is terrible. A God-awful, wall-to-wall, epic mess. And now, they have, in their hands, the clearest sign yet of how bad things have actually gotten. This past April, CNN posted its lowest ratings in 10 years. The New York Times' Brian Stelter recently noted the slim upside, writing, "people tune in to CNN, the same way they hurry to a hospital when they think they are having a heart attack." But what news channel does CNN have to tune in to, to learn the gory details of its own longrunning, sad disaster? Good news: we are that news channel.

CNN, of course, has a proud legacy to fall back on, as it is the entity that kicked off the tradition of 24 hour cable news channels in the first place, and its coverage of the first Gulf War demonstrated that it had minted real newsgathering mettle. CNN founder Ted Turner, in a meta-theatrical appearance on Piers Morgan's show last night, noted that he "wanted CNN to be the New York Times for the news business." Instead, the network has fallen lower in esteem than the New York Mets, who people actually still watch, on the teevee.

Cue the handwringing! How did this happen, and what's to be done next? Well, if you listen to the people who run CNN, you will learn that they think April's ratings low "isn't much of a problem," and what needs to happen now is that management needs "to come up with a plan to restore momentum."

Shut up, people who run CNN! We have been watching CNN for a long time, because there is a television set in our midst that is constantly tuned to it, out of pity. And we've been noticing for a long time that all of the various innovations and "momentum-builders," combined with the very strange decisions made when it comes to coverage, invariably conspire and combine to make CNN steadily worse.

Here is what you are doing wrong, CNN.

For the better part of the past decade, you guys seem to treat the ticky-tack banalities of the modern world as extra-special gimcracks you just discovered yesterday. You are still reading Twitter to people, on live television. On election coverage nights, your anchors paw at "magic screens" like catnip-tweaked felines chasing after a laser pointer. You made Erin Burnett go out there, on live television, to demonstrate "the flick." Except "the flick" did not, strictly speaking, "work" consistently.

And between all the whooshing and flicking and zooming -- and, when, exactly, did the need to touch the news grow to the point that merely reading it become insufficient? -- everyone on screen is standing around with holographic weebles and political convention simulations. Anderson Cooper, representing your network's last thin shred of self-respect, stood out there on that stage and repeatedly made fun of what was going on around him. (What have you done to poor Anderson Cooper? He is now restaging the old MTV show "Boiling Points" on network television. That is where you have driven him.)

Your debates, CNN? They were a mess. You fully embraced the stupidity of reality television shows, with asinine introductions of the GOP candidates that reminded viewers of the opening credits of "Survivor." And then you asked questions like, "Deep dish or thin crust?" Over the course of a long primary season, viewers gradually grew tired of watching the debates. But they especially grew tired of watching yours.

Shall we continue? Well, there was that time we actually wanted to watch coverage of the May 18, 2010 primary coverage in Pennsylvania, and you guys were airing a Larry King interview with Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger! Why? Why in all the world?

You replaced Larry King with the insufferably thin-skinned Piers Morgan. You replaced Campbell Brown with "Parker-Spitzer." "Parker-Spitzer" was a complete trainwreck, and no one seemed particularly committed to allowing Kathleen Parker to participate in or emerge from the experience with her dignity intact. That show became "In The Arena with Eliot Spitzer." That was on for, like, a week? Now Spitzer is at Current. Surprisingly, we'd call that a lucky break.

Remember that time that Falcon Heene's transparently dishonest parents were caught in a transparent lie right to Wolf Blitzer's face, and Wolf Blitzer was the only person in America that did not instantly recognize what was going on? Or that time General David Petraeus fainted at a congressional hearing, and CNN ran a segment that was, ostensibly, a "closer look at what happens when public figures pass out?" If you recall, General Petraeus' mishap was compared to Marie Osmond's fainting spell on "Dancing With The Stars."

Do you guys recall that until you were shamed from doing so, you planned to send an army of 400 reporters to cover the royal wedding? That was eight times the number of people dispatched to cover the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. We seem to recall that eventually, it was decided that William and Kate would only merit the amount of personnel sent to Fukushima. Which was great! More people to staff that strange morning show where Ashleigh Banfield prank-calls people.

I'm sure we're leaving something out. Like the time your correspondent on the "Royals" beat, Richard Quest, was arrested in 2008 for drug possession when he was found in Central Park with meth in his pocket and a length of rope tied to his genitals. But we think we've made our point. Over the course of many years, CNN, you have made bad decision after bad decision. Your tanking ratings are not an accident. Things have gone exactly as you have drawn them up.

What's the momentum-building solution? Well here's our suggestion. What if everyone showed up for work at CNN tomorrow to find that all of the people who have been making these decisions were no longer there? What if you could free all of CNN's hard-working news professionals from the terrible grip of your toxic decisions?

If you'll permit us to borrow from Joss Whedon, CNN, here's a question for you. Did you know, that in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords?

It is a good death. There's no shame in it. It is a man's death, for men who once did fine works.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

When we last left the genius who apparently thought that what al Qaeda's global death cult needed most was to embark on a print media enterprise, he was ... well, he was dead, actually. Samir Khan, the "Saudi-born, New York-raised" propagandist behind Inspire, the Lapham's Quarterly for bomb-mad terrorist weirdos, had been killed in one of those fun extrajudicial drone strikes that have become all the rage. Prior to that, Khan and his editorial team had commemorated the 9/11 attacks in "sour grapes" fashion.

Anyone looking for evidence that al Qaeda had been organizationally degraded in the decade since 9/11 would have found it in abundance in the pages of any issue of Inspire. Its debut issue urged young jihadis to "make a bomb in the kitchen of [their] mom" -- a sort of menacing version of the advice Alton Brown dishes out on the Food Network. Another issue featured a story suggesting that a good way to strike fear in the hearts of infidels would be to trick out your pickup truck to make it "the ultimate mowing machine," and terrorize sidewalk pedestrians.

Basically, these are the sort of convoluted, outlandish plans for villainy and mayhem that South Park's Professor Chaos would have deemed to be clownish.

Nevertheless, despite recent setbacks (that whole having your editor-in-chief killed thingy), Inspire is back, and it has new ideas for al Qaeda wannabes, chief among them ... uhm -- setting forest fires? Am I reading that correctly, ABC News' Randy Krieder?

The magazines have also lost some of the snark and American colloquialisms favored by the U.S.-raised Samir Khan, who memorably titled one of his articles urging Western Muslims to wage lone wolf attacks "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom." But issue nine carries equally lethal advice, with "It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb," which gives detailed instructions on how to ignite an "ember bomb" in a U.S. forest, recommending Montana because of the rapid population growth in wooded areas.

"In America, there are more houses built in the [countryside] than in the cities," says the writer, who uses the pseudonym The AQ Chef. "It is difficult to choose a better place [than] in the valleys of Montana."

Daily Intel's Brett Smiley gives good quip: "Little do Inspire magazine subscribers know that the U.S. already has arsonists and meth heads who will set fire to brush and historic trees."

Elsewhere, Krieder reports that the quality of the copyediting in Inspire has fallen considerably, with one story that seeks to assess what's happening on the battlefield between al Qaeda and the West getting the headline, "Wining On The Ground," which would be a more appropriate title for a piece on planning the perfect Napa Valley picnic. Of terror!

Anyway, it looks like Inspire's quest for an Ellie will remain unfulfilled.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

If you're like me, you may have noticed the curious way our Wall Street watchdogs tend to operate. For example, a comparison: Harry Markopolos can gift-wrap the case against Bernie Madoff for the SEC and get nowhere, while at the same time Martha Stewart is a heralded example of a scofflaw run to ground by regulators. This sort of creates this impression that the people who oversee our financial system are more or less content to look the other way where the big fish are concerned, preferring to spike the football when a small-timer is called to account.

Well, if that describes your experience, you're likely to get some sense of vindication, if not satisfaction, from Jesse Eisinger's recent story over at ProPublica. In it, he describes how the SEC just lowered the boom on a "tiny iconoclastic ratings agency called Egan-Jones." Their crime? While Eisinger notes that there are some "serious allegations," the SEC has basically hammered Egan-Jones for what amounts to clerical errors.

Now, in the realm of rating agency follies, this sort of pales in comparison to, say, that time all the big boys (Fitch, Moodys, S&P) gave AAA ratings to all those credit derivatives whose mezzanine tranches were primarily composed of arsenic and walrus piss. Eisinger notes that Egan-Jones did business slightly differently.

Before the S.E.C. charges, Egan-Jones was best known for two things: having made some bold calls about shaky credit prospects and having a business model that was different than that of the big boys -- Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch. Mr. Egan's outfit gets paid by the users of his ratings; the oligopoly gets paid by the issuers whose debt is going to be rated.

You don't need to be a hedge fund quant to see the conflict of interest: the more ratings, the more profits to the ratings agencies, so the temptation is to be extra lenient. And, boy, were they.

Eisinger notes that Sean Egan, who runs his eponymous agency, "wasn't shy about pointing this out, often through media appearances." So if you have a sinister bent, there's more than a whiff of upholding the rule of rentiers to be sniffed here. But even if you're not inclined toward cynicism, Eisinger's summation seems pretty apt:

This is your S.E.C., folks. It courageously assails tiny firms, and at the pace of a three-toed sloth. And when it goes after its prey, it's because it has found a box unchecked, rather than any kind of deep, systemic rot.

So, they're sort of like the National Collegiate Athletic Association. (Spoiler alert: That is not a good thing.)

READ THE WHOLE THING:
SEC Keeps Ratings Game Rigged [ProPublica]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Politico reports today that there is a "dangerous new Obama book" coming out that turns out to be the same book -- David Maraniss' forthcoming "Barack Obama: The Story" -- that led Politico on a merry adventure in plainly stated publisher disclosures on Wednesday.

Why is the book so "dangerous?" For the same reason that any book of this ilk is considered "dangerous." As Politico's Glenn Thrush and Dylan Byers noted on Thursday, President Barack Obama is "a control freak when it comes to messaging his own life" and turns to the memoir as a means of telling his own story.

This basically describes the point of any memoir written by a presidential aspirant. You can create a decent bedside stack of tomes from John McCain and his aide Mark Salter that set out to accomplish the same thing. (I'll allow that there is an outside chance that at some point in the near future, Andrew Cuomo might pen "I Think I Should Warn You, I Can Be a Bit of a Jerk at Times, Sorry.")

At any rate, Maraniss has earned respect for calling things like he sees them. And while Obama sat for a lengthy interview with Maraniss for this project, it appears that there is some "low-grade" worry that it will reveal that Obama is a man with a certain amount of personal ambition and not some wandering philosoph gently drawing on the spiritual energy of America. (I think that there are some reporters who made "composite girlfriend" jokes yesterday that can attest to the fact that "low- grade" worry might be understating things somewhat.)

But this part of Thursday's Politico story is pretty chuckle worthy: "Maraniss is a biographer in search of real insight, not Drudge links or Colbert appearances."

Why are you hitting yourself, Politico? (In other news, the "Colbert Report" has a solid reputation of booking serious authors as guests, and if Maraniss is smart, he'll be one of them.)

Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?

The New York Times writer Nick Confessore's big Sunday read, "Obama's Not-So-Hot Date With Wall Street," hit the web Wednesday, and gives a very good depiction of the serio-comic lengths the Obama campaign is going to in order to retain any support from Wall Street's executive class. Things are not going well, apparently!

See, as you may have heard, Team Obama Re-Elect has been having a difficult time courting big Wall Street donors this election cycle, mainly because President Barack Obama has, at times, intimated that the wreck of the global economy may have had something to do with some sort of widespread misrule among members of the financial industry. (There are any number of good books on this subject that make this case, if you still need to read a book to be convinced, which isn't terribly likely.)

And, of course, the Obama administration did sign the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law, and while it is almost embarrassingly ineffective (having been nibbled to death by lobbyists, who were bought with bailout money, this is hardly a surprise), its existence does create the impression that maybe -- just maybe! -- some degree of financial regulation is desirable.

Meanwhile, corporate America has been posting record profits, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is (perhaps ominously) back to its pre-recession levels, and, of course, no one has actually been punished for that time the global economy nearly died in a ditch.

But gads! The whining! It remains. And the Obama team can't guarantee that some attempt to mine populist ire against the financial industry won't come up during the campaign season. As Confessore reports, when Obama campaign manager Jim Messina was asked if the president would make some sort of sustained attack on the private equity industry, because of Romney's history with Bain Capital, Messina said that while the president would refrain from such attacks, he "couldn't control what the president's surrogates -- like Priorities USA -- might do."

The Priorities USA super PAC is run by Bill Burton, Obama's close personal friend, but OF COURSE they cannot COORDINATE, oh no!

At any rate, these resentments and fears are all part of the gap that the Obama campaign is finding difficult to traverse, in order to shore up a larger share of that sweet, sweet campaign lucre. But that's not to say that the Wall Streeters themselves don't have some pretty great ideas on how the resident can make everything copacetic:

One of the guests raised his hand; he knew how to solve the problem. The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich? Around the table, some people shook their heads in disbelief.

I sort of don't understand why rich Wall Streeters can't just go visit the small apartments of normal New Yorkers to get a quick dose of feeling a lot better about themselves, but there you have it. Rich people be having their feelings all hurty! Over at the Plum Line, Greg Sargent has some disbelief to offload:

One wonders if there is anything Obama could say to make these people happy, short of declaring that rampant inequality is a good thing, in that it affirms the talent and industriousness of the deserving super rich.

"Yes, yes, that's exactly what would make us happy!" say Wall Street donors.

READ THE WHOLE THING:
Obama's Not-So-Hot Date With Wall Street [New York Times]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

As you may already know, over the weekend, Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute co-authored a piece for the Washington Post Outlook section titled "Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

The piece is part observational and part critical. In it, Mann and Ornstein observe that the "GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics." In describing Republicans' increasing polarization, compared to their opposition, they employ a sports metaphor:

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

They manage to draw that distinction without holding the Democrats out for being saints, saying, "Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics." But Mann and Ornstein state, quite reasonably, that "these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics."

Mann and Ornstein direct the main thrust of their criticism at the political media, saying reporters should probably suspend their traditional fetish for "both sides are equally bad when it comes to [x]" analysis:

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Within the body of the piece, Mann and Ornstein set up a very nice way of demonstrating the "distortion" that comes through "a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon." Here's what they have to say about the fate of the Senate's proposed debt-reduction panel: "And seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded and thus denying the president a seeming victory."

But here's how the Washington Post covered the defeat of the debt-reduction panel:

Both parties were to blame, [Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.)] said. Twenty-three Republicans (and one independent) voted no, seven of them people who had previously co-sponsored the commission bill. So did 22 Democrats, many of them committee chairmen looking out for their own prerogatives.

Emphasis mine. In the piece cited above, the late David Broder uncritically quotes Evan Bayh in order to get to the necessary "both sides are equally bad" trope. But had Broder applied even a cursory examination of the way the votes came down, this wouldn't have made it into print (outside of, perhaps, an article titled, "Whiny Evan Bayh doesn't understand how bills get passed"). See, you can look up the 16 Democratic committee chairpersons, find out who they are, and then see how they voted. As it happens, 10 of the 16 voted for the committee. The six that didn't aren't enough to kill it, if those seven GOP co-sponsors stay at home.

That's a pretty fitting example of the point Mann and Ornstein are trying to make. When a political reporter hangs the blame for the bill's passage on "Democratic committee chairmen," a majority of whom voted to uphold the bill, what purpose does it serve? Besides creating a "both sides are equally bad" fantasy, deflecting the blame away from seven people who clearly wanted the commission to exist right up until the moment President Obama did as well, it serves no purpose at all.

Well, if Mann and Ornstein hoped members of the media would take their advice, they're not off to a good start. This morning, the Post's Chris Cillizza opted to throw shade on their op-ed. Cillizza insists that Democrats are decamping toward the extremes as well:

But, a look at the recent departures from the Senate Democratic ranks suggests their number of moderates is also very much on the decline. Already in 2012, Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Jim Webb (Va.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.) have called it quits. Add to that the likes of Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) all of whom left in 2010, and its clear that the centrist Democratic ranks have taken a major hit over the last four years too.

It's worth pointing out, however, that a lot of the names on that list are people who just opted out of having to argue their continuing incumbency. Is there a lot of affection for people like Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh among progressive elites? Of course not. But we'll never know if there was some sort of extreme ideological rump capable of devouring them at the polls. Joe Sestak did manage to defeat Arlen Specter in a Democratic primary, but is that so unreasonable? We're talking about Pennsylvania Democrats preferring a lifelong Democrat to a lifelong Republican who made a late-career party switch, for the very reasons Mann and Ornstein observe. (Blanche Lincoln, I seem to recall, won her primary, and was defeated in the general by a Republican.)

Meanwhile, on the GOP side, we don't just see a concerted effort to limit their moderate membership. Over the past few years, Utah Sen. Bob Bennett and South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis have both been victimized by their party's move to the ideological outlands; Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar are facing similar pressures in this election cycle.

With the arguable exception of Lugar, none of these men are even close to being moderates -- if it's ideal for the GOP to set up on their own forty-yard line, Bennett and Inglis and Hatch are very comfortably settled in the red zone. What did these men in (or may do Hatch in) has nothing to do with fealty to conservative values. They got marked for elimination because they do not personally want to manifest a high level of snarling, lycanthropic behavior in pursuit of their politics.

Bennett's sin, in fact, was nothing more than partnering with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on a health care reform initiative. (It's fortunate that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has accrued enough celebrity to inoculate himself from the same criticism.) This phenomenon isn't replicable on the left. Ted Kennedy played a huge role in midwiving the No Child Left Behind act into existence. There's plenty of partisan dislike for that law. How successful was the "primary Ted Kennedy" movement?

Cillizza's argument gets weirder:

Look to the debt ceiling negotiations. There was clearly a desire on behalf of Speaker John Boehner to craft a grand bargain with President Obama. What was lacking was the will from the House GOP conference to sign on. And where did that collective lack of will come from? From the fact that when talking to their constituents at home, Republican members grasped the fact that a compromise was not what the people who elected them wanted. At all.

I'm so, so sorry, but doesn't this ... prove what Mann and Ornstein were talking about? Obama and Boehner were close to a "grand bargain," which was scuttled by Boehner's caucus. Between Boehner and Obama, who paid the political cost for the collaboration? If anyone, it was Boehner, who occasionally draws "primary John Boehner" threats from grass-roots extremists. Had the bargain gone through, what would have been the political cost to Obama, other than drawing the poisonous affections of Thomas Friedman?

Yes, the GOP electorate is less amenable to compromise, but in considering the debt ceiling issue, that's largely irrelevant. Should Mitt Romney become president, he will request that the debt ceiling be raised on multiple occasions. The Democrats will, in all likelihood, offer some critique, but in the end, they'll grant the request, because they do not believe that a gun should be held to the head of the global economy for the sake of scoring cheap political points. Meanwhile, you can expect GOP lawmakers to go along with the request, because they'll probably remember that Romney has an "R" next to his name. The GOP base will allow this, because it will count as a "Romney win."

Beyond that, how are we still writing sentences like "Look to the debt ceiling negotiations," without immediately noting, "Why did we have these negotiations in the first place? Oh yeah, because the right went crazy?" Because, as Mann and Ornstein note, the media is still very committed to making a "balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon."

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Good morning one and all! Welcome to the end of April, to another Sunday, and another rendition of your Sunday Morning Liveblog. My name is Jason. Last night was Washington's annual Masque Of The Red Death, and yet even still, we wake up and find out that everyone is still having these terrible shows, because we are without shame as a culture, or something. That said, there does appear to be a goody amount of phoning it in set to transpire today -- odd guests, B-team panelists, and some "Hey Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago today, let's just go with that, guys."

So, let's get on with that first part, where I drink coffee and regret waking up. As per the norm, y'all can feel free to have fun and frolic in the comments, drop me a line is you so desire, and, of course, you can always follow me on Twitter, as a matter of last resort.

Okay, well, let's begin with the show that comes on about the same time I bother to get up.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

So, we're going to have a lot of war on terror talk with John Brennan. And then Joel and Victoria Osteen are here? For some reason? And then paneling, with the Fox third stringers.

So, a year ago Wednesday, Osama bin Laden got got by the Seal Team Six. So why not remember it next week? Because this is a Beltway Media Television Show, and it's not about you or me or anyone else but them. And they all remember it happening the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner, and so this is its anniversary. "Where do we stand now in the war on terror," asks Wallace. The answer: far removed from it, and in relative luxury.

But, piss it, let's have John Brennan talk about it. But first! What's going on with Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who yesterday made a rather daring escape from house arrest with the help of what was likely to be a network of people who risked their lives to free him. He is now rumored to be at the American Embassy. SO IS HE, JOHN BRENNAN? TELL NATIONAL TELEVISION ALL THE SECRETS.

"I"m not going to address the issue right now," he says. There are people doing stuff. Other people. Not John Brennan. No one currently in front of a teevee.

How does the President balance the need to occasionally pluck people from China's many attendant miseries, while maintaining good relationships with them? (As well as factories where people make the products we enjoy at all hours of the day in sweatshop conditions until they retire, by which I mean, kill themselves?) Brennan says that we try to balance out commitment to human rights by...balancing them. He literally answered the question by saying, "How do we balance it? You know, through a process I like to call 'balancing.'"

Are we going to give up Chen to satisfy the Chinese? Brennan won't say.

So, will terrorists be celebrating the death of bin Laden with a terrorist attack? Brennan says "there is no active plot" afoot to mark the occasion. But we won't "let down our guard" and will stay "extra vigilant." They hear about plots all the time, and they track down leads, and that's just what they do. (I suppose that our counter-terror efforts stateside have a pretty good track record, but, you know, you always remember the outliers.)

Moving on to the Secret Service scandal. Does Brennen take the matter seriously? Brennan says that the reports of what went down in Cartagena were very serious, but American Hero Mark Sullivan is on the case, and he is taking care of business, everyday, and working overtime, to make the Secret Services awesome again.

But was Brennan's "hair on fire" over this? He has very little hair. But it "raises questions," and the "investigation is still ongoing" and everyone is pretty sure the president's security was not compromised and SHUT UP MARK SULLIVAN IS WORKING ON IT.

Now, on to the TSA, who are bribing and drug smuggling out in Los Angeles. What happens if they allow explosives, or terrorism, or "the gay bomb" through airport security. You know what I'll do? I'll be like: "Yeah, this is what you get when you try to do this the cheapest way possible, you jerks." Brennan says that he obviously wants the TSA to not do this terrible things. And John Pistole -- the TSA's version of Mark Sullivan, except he is not sexxxy and beloved by everyone -- wants the same things, because otherwise people call him and they are yelly! "WHY DID YOU NEED TO SEARCH MY FOUR YEAR OLD'S CROTCH, ETC!"

Okay, Brennan does say that Pistole is a "first-class manager-leader." Whatever that means.

But do we need to take another look at the TSA and their activities? Brennan says that the TSA is looking at itself. So, it's being policed by itself, like all great American institutions, such as Wall Street banks. Everything is going to be fine.

Why don't we have any awesome snuff pictures from the bin Laden raid? "TRUST ME HE IS DEAD," Brennan says. COUGH, SORRY. He goes on to say that pictures will just incite emotions and perhaps make the wrong lunatics go on a psychotic break. But, HA HA: cagey Chris Wallace comes back by asking if that's true, why does the Obama campaign have this ad where Bill Clinton is like: "Obama is my new BFF because he got bin Laden? What would Romney have done? Probably give bin Laden MASSACHUSETTS STYLE HEALTHCARE -- ERR, I mean, HUGZ."

So won't this campaign ad incite violence? "I don't do politics, I'm not involved in the campaign," Brennan says. That said, he says that Obama made a gutsy call, and he'll keep giving the President advice. Wallace asks, if the campaign ad makes the job of keeping us safe, would he tell the president so? Wallace says that he advises the president on that matter. Does the campaign ad concern him? Brennan won't say. Is it fair to say that Mitt Romney is terrible? Brennan won't say. "I'm not a Democrat or a Republican," Brennan says.

Brennan says that we've "degraded al Qaeda significantly," by forcing them to star in "Real Housewives" type shows that were also all tossed in the ocean. "We are going to destroy" al Qaeda, he says. We are working hard with people in Yemen to eradicate their presence there as well. And they keep looking for lone wolves, in the hopes that they can be steered away from terrorism, and into singer-songwriter careers.

Brennan says that the drone program is a "tremendously capable program," because it gathers intelligence and drops bombs. We only use them "in full concert with our partners," which I assume means the states involved, but could just means the military contractors who build them?

Now, Wallace is showing Brennan pictures of himself, on the day Osama bin Laden was killed. "That day was a particularly solemn day, for all of us in the Situation Room," he says, and a day where everyone reflected on the people they'd lost to terrorism. He also wears a special bracelet to remind him of the importance of keeping Americans safe from terrorism. Sort of like I wear a bracelet to remind my parole officer of where I am and what I am doing. NOT KNOCKING OVER JEWELRY STORES ANYMORE, LET ME TELL YOU!

Now Joel and Victoria Osteen are here, because CORPORATE SYNERGY: his show follows this one on Fox, and he's having a big to-do at Nationals Park...uhm, sometime? Maybe it already happened? I'll keep watch to see if he says anything interesting.

Wallace asks Joel if he's just a "motivational speaker" teaching a "prosperity gospel," and he basically says yeah, sort of, but also not? He basically rejects the idea of humility and is more into this sort of theory of AWESOMENESS. Joel and Victoria Osteen are, essentially, the preacher equivalent of Jack Donaghy and Avery Jessups. They want Americans to spend more time "Reaganing," for Jesus.

Wallace asks Osteen what should be done about illegal immigrants. He doesn't know. It's so complicated. Who knows what is right? He wishes he knew! He says that being gay is a sin, but gays are "some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world" who are going to hell and miss out on the Lean Six Sigma of the Seraphim. What about Mormons? Osteen thinks they are swell, like vegan huevos rancheros. "Hey neat! This looks like actual huevos rancheros! Golly that's cute. Oh, I bet there is someone who would enjoy these."

[NOTE: I am actually allergic to eggs, so, in fact, I actually ADORE vegan huevos rancheros. Sorry I'm not sorry! The vegan huevos rancheros at Great Sage in Maryland are AMAZING.]

Victoria Osteen on contraception? Just type "youtube miss south carolina" into Google.

I am going to get some of the coffee that God made me. Be right back.

Okay, panel time with Brit Hume and also they've scrounged up Liz Marlantes and Charles Lane and Kimberly Strassel.

The Supreme Court are totally hating on the President's health care law and their argument against Arizona's "round up the browns" immigration law. Does Hume think it would be damaging if the SCOTUS ruled against these things? Hume does indeed think it would be damaging, though the health care law is obviously more serious. Hume intimates that it's Arizona's law, though, that might be in more trouble.

Marlantes says that Obama's opponents will totally be, "HA HA SUCK IT CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR," but upholding the Arizona law would really fire up the Hispanic vote and bring them to the Democrats. But Wallace points out that Hispanics are actually split on the issue. Strassel says that Obama has demagogued the issue, which is...just -- wow. Ha ha. Yes. THAT'S WHERE ALL THE DEMAGOGUERY HAS COME FROM, IN RE ARIZONA AND HISPANICS. (It should be remembered that while Hispanics nationwide may be split, Arizona Hispanics put that state's electoral votes in play.)

Charles Lane is now saying something that doesn't make sense to anyone else on the panel. He is the journalistic equivalent of a character from The Office.

Should Obama run against the Supreme Court? Hume says that it would be "ineffective" and notes that as controversial as the Court is, it is the only thing in Washington that still has a positive approval rating. (Also: You won't see Obama making a gigantic deal out of the SCOTUS unless he gets to the point where he is losing his argument on the economy and is desperate.)

And, we continue paneling, moving toward the horsey race. The Obama campaign is totally humblebragging on killing bin Laden and saying that Romney wouldn't have done the same. "WE KILLED BIG EVIL MAN AND THE OTHER GUY IS FLOWER WEAVING WIMP" is, basically, the plot of every post 9-11 GOP political ad ever. Hume says that Obama will get the same amount of credit in November for that as Bush 41 did for the first Gulf War. Meaning: not much, because of the economy.

The Romney is complaining that they are hanging their critique of him on a statement taken out of context. It's important to remember, of course, that a central part of Romney's campaign strategy will be taking statements out of context and walking around in high dudgeon about it. We've already seen this happen, and the Romney campaign has made it abundantly clear that they are going to keep doing it: "First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business.... Ads are agitprop.... Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It's ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context.... All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art."

But the strategy doesn't work unless they, having invited their opponents to do the same, don't whine like Miss Muffet about it being done to them. They have correctly surmised that the media refs work like this:

MEDIA: Hey, Obama campaign, not cool!

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: Sure, maybe? But remember when Romney did it, and was like, we're going to keep doing it, because "it's ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context.... All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art."

MEDIA: Sure, maybe so. But you are the guy who promised us a "new sort of politics" that was above that sort of negativity and cheapness.

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: And Romney?

MEDIA: Well, he only promised that he'd be a flip-flopping heel with fungible principles. He's living up to what he told us he would be.

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: Seems sort of unfair.

ME: It is. But this is why I always tell people in politics to NEVER PROMISE TO TRY TO BE BETTER PEOPLE. You guys aren't!

Anyway, Marlantes points out that Romney did not seem to grasp how much bin Laden's death meant to ordinary people, and after realizing that it made him look weird, he walked it back. But, I mean, Romney doesn't grasp how much cookies mean to ordinary people.

Strassel asks, "Do you think Obama wants to get into a foreign policy argument with Mitt Romney?" If the Mitt Romney who has lately been writing about foreign policy shows up at the debate, why not?

Lane points out that Obama has been using drones a lot, and that one can argue that he's extended these powers far beyond the range that Bush 43 did, and is "almost ruthless" with these drones, and in typical Washington Post fashion, finds a way to avoid sounding like he is FOR the ruthless use of drones and the accidental deaths they've caused or AGAINST the ruthless use of drones and the accidental deaths they've caused. You know, it's just NEAT! Hey, could cost him some Democratic votes? Care to add a rebuttal, charred pile of Pakistani child-corpses? Okay-doke!

(Actually, I take that back, Washington Post's Marc Thiessen is FOR that stuff, because it saves him the money he was spending on Viagra.)

Hume doesn't think that voters are impressed with GM recovery. (Michigan is a swing state.)

THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW

So, someone at the Chris Matthews Show has titled their bin Laden segment, "Bin Laden, Done That." Can you imagine, being that person, and knowing that you'll have to go on being that person for the rest of your life?

Today we have Richard Stengel, Katty Kay, Helene Cooper, and David Ignatius. Stengel, whose listicle and cocktail party company also publishes a magazine called "Time" (cleverly named for what you spend in the dentist's waiting room that you will never get back) and they have a whole big article on "HOW IT WENT DOWN," where "it" equals the operation to go get bin Laden.

Stengel says that Obama took the "high-risk, high-reward" strategy because they knew that using drones to get bin Laden would have never been conclusive. They'd never know if he was actually dead, and they knew that the Pakistanis would be disinclined to help find out. Stengel says that the length of time they spent planning the operation was risky, too, because something could have been leaked at any time during the seven month planning stage.

Cooper says that Obama had Leon Panetta on his side. Ignatius, noting the added back-up the mission got, has concluded that for all of Obama's public awkwardness, he is privately a "very, decisive and tough man," and "somehow he is going to tell the country that."

Liz Cheney and John Bolton, of course, hate Obama to death, and they think that Obama didn't actually do anything to kill bin Laden but "get out of the way." Matthews, in particular, is incensed by this, and Katty Kay says that "when you read Time magazine's account, it's clear that what John Bolton said is patently wrong." But you have to read Time Magazine, or else you are wallowing in Bolton's effluvia. Do you want that for your children? TO THE NEWSSTANDS!

Chris Matthews friends mostly say that killing bin Laden will "inoculate" Obama from the charges that he is soft on national security. How many electoral votes do you get for carrying Christ Matthews' Pals-istan? Not enough, I can tell you.

Ignatius says that the one thing to look for is that this was sort of a "mano-a-mano battle" between Obama and Osama with each trying to kill the other. Osama had a big ol' sad because when the Obama administration rebranded the "War On Terror" and made it specifically about al Qaeda, bin Laden's support began to diminish, leaving bin Laden sad and bored.

Osama bin Laden wanted to kill Obama and make Biden President, and Ignatius says that the Obama campaign will play that up, except for maybe that last part where bin Laden was saying , "On the other hand, if we could make Biden president, LULZ."

Stengel disagrees, saying that people vote for Democrats based on the economy. Everyone basically votes for everybody based on the economy.

Ignatius says that since bin Laden died, his jihad has grown even more popular. At the same time, however, the Muslim world is ridding themselves of their "apostate leaders," so "we shouldn't declare victory yet."

What is the best way to attack Mitt Romney? Dems be straight pondering this! Should he be cast as a flippity-flopper? Or take him out for a spin with his "I was a severely conservative governor" line? David Plouffe is already calling Romney the most conservative candidate since Goldwater, which...I mean...seriously, though? Okay! Whatever?

Cooper says that the Obama team is "shifting to treating Romney as a right-wing extremist" and tying him to the Tea Party types. Which is why on Student Loan Tour, Virginia Foxx's "zero tolerance for people with student loans" comments got a workout. Stengel says that the Etch A Sketch line, of course, is totally true, and isn't a scandal, and Romney has enough consistency in his message that he can fix the economy.

Kay says that the "people in the middle" matter more than the base now, and the obvious thing to do is remind them all of his primary season positions. This, Kay says, will play especially well with Hispanic voters, where Romney was "so far on the right." Ignatius says that you start with the conservative stuff, then hit him with the flip-flop stuff when Romney tries to adjust.

Oh, boy! But what if the only thing that matters is, say, real income growth in the three quarters leading up to the election, especially the one we are in right now?

Things Chris Matthews knows not of include: Stengel saysthe Democrats are going to say the words "Cayman Islands" over and over again (stoned people will hear this as "Kay, man. ISLANDS"); Kay says that the White House won't be talking about Europe because the whole continent be trippin' (government upheaval in France and the Netherlands and recession in Spain, and the U.K. is in its second dip); Cooper talks about her story in the New York Times (go read it) about Charles Taylor's conviction of war crimes in Sierra Leone -- Cooper is from Liberia and wants people to remember that Taylor committed many atrocities there as well; and Ignatius says -- well, it's hard to come after that -- but okay: the White House is saying that there's a possibility of a deal with Iran over nuclear power, and that Iran seems more receptive than usual.

Did Hillary Clinton basically announce her plans to run for President in 2016 with some jokes at Stengel's party? Stengel says no. He humblebrags about how he's traveled around with her and it's pretty awesome. Kay says that people should definitely announce their big plans at Rick Stengel's party. Cooper isn't sure she has any such plans, and that she may "rest and cool down," between then and now. Ignatius says that the DC consensus is that she is the best Secretary of State ever and she's expected to run for President, the end.

FACE THE NATION

So, over at Face the Nation we are going to have Haley Barbour and Jerry Brown and Antonio Villaraigosa - which means I'd better just CTRL-C the word "Villaraigosa" from here on in, because otherwise I will spell it differently every single time, like I already do with ALL THOSE OTHER WORDS.

CBS is making Bob Schieffer talk about Google hangouts? That just seems pointlessly mean.

We begin with the obligatory montage of White House Correspondent's Dinner stuff, which is no longer about actual correspondents at the White House. But then, is anything? I am pretty sure they would gladly turn the press room into a skee-ball arcade if they could just somehow fumigate all of the desperation from the room.

Anyway, here is Villaraigosa! Villaraigosa Villaraigosa Villaraigosa! I can CTRL-V that all day. Plus Haley Barbour.

So, okay, Romney, he seems confident about his Presidential run. Why is he not knock-kneed with terror, now that he is the nominee for President? Barbour points out that after the contest, the polls have Romney doing fairly well in the polls, and everyone expected Romney to emerge from the primary damaged. (Not me!) Villaraigosa says that the "only person that will be packing" are...the companies he bought (Bain?) and uhm...employees...and, WOW -- Villaraigosa is NOT GOOD at snappy surrogacy.

Villaraigosa eventually pulls it together -- the contest will be close and tough and Obama will win because of his record of "defending and fighting for the middle class." Much better.

Barbour of course, counters that Obama can't win running on his record because the recovery has not been robust and blah blah Obamacare. Villaraigosa counters by saying that Romney's record as governor is not that great -- big debts and bad unemployment. (There was one part of Romney's record that I think the President finds to be pretty neat-o, though, right?)

Villaraigosa: "I think [immigration] is going to be an issue." I can't stress enough what exciting television this is. THING THAT IS AN ISSUE WILL CONTINUE TO BE AN ISSUE. "I think on the issue of immigration Obama is more in tune with America." Schieffer: "What do you make of that, Haley Barbour?" Barbour, "Hispanics are being hurt by this administration, and the Democrats waited to bring up the DREAM act until the lame duck session."

He continues to question the president's seriousness -- why, after all, did he not bring up the Dream Act when he had sixty votes in the Senate. He doesn't seem to understand that he's painting his own party into something of an anti-immigrant corner here. "Obama should have KNOWN we wouldn't have voted to improve these peoples' lives or even attempt to create a sensible immigration policy!"

Barbour says that the DREAM act, as envisioned by the Democrats, has some "attractive" ideas, but he seems to be unsure about the whole path to citizenship concept. Villaraigosa supports the Dems' version completely and says that the version that Marco Rubio came up with makes Hispanics "second-class citizens," though he does not detail why. Villaraigosa also doesn't think that Rubio would help all that much as a vice president, but only because vice presidents don't tend to move the needle, electorally. Barbour essentially agrees, though he notes that the idea that a Veep can help you carry a state is a persistent idea that likely won't go away in this cycle.

Okay, now California Governor Jerry Brown is here. Schieffer wants to know how much politics has changed. Brown says that everything is more polarized, money holds sway, and the adversarial environment is "amped up several degrees" and there is widespread dysfunction. It's a very serious problem! And lookie here! Somehow a piece called "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem," penned by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, got smuggled into the Washington Post, in the same way that Chen Guangcheng got smuggled into the American Embassy (MAYBE!) -- past the censorious diktateer of the WaPo op-ed page, Fred Hiatt, to whom any non-"both sides do it equally as bad" premise is poison.

What can be done about it? Beyond burning people at the stake again? (Willing to try this!) Brown says we need a "breakdown that leads to a breakthrough." Unfortunately, the new, hip things in breakdowns are things like defaulting on the debt ceiling and spinning the planet into a global economic crisis. That is not the same thing as "that time I learned a lesson from when the milk boiled over on the stove top."

Brown says that Obama is "cool, reasoned, intelligent, reasoned and good under pressure" and "has the strength to go all the way." That is, I guess, an endorsement.

Would Marco Rubio help Romney in California. "I don't think Romney will win California," says Brown, who turns that really weird question into a lengthy criticism of the GOP and their "reactionary cul-de-sac" on immigration.

What will the election turns on? Brown says first, elections tend to move on people who make mistakes. Also, incumbency has a huge advantage. Romney has economic discontent to mine. Obama has to tell a story about how the economic dislocation is not his fault, and that he's actually fixing it.

Schieffer wants to know what advice or lessons Brown has for politicians. "Things don't get done overnight...you've got to take thirty years to get things done." He says it's too bad that people look at politicians who don't get their agenda passed in two years time and get considered a failure. "The world doesn't work like that."

What's harder, Mayor of Oakland or Governor of California. Brown says the latter -- "it's more abstract...as Mayor you're dealing with cops, criminals, and developers...more of a hands-on thing...as governor, you are in a capital, but the capital is everywhere." Is he mulling a second term? Sure, why not.

For some reason, Bob Schieffer's closing commentary has been moved up to the midway point? Anyway, the big thing is that Scheiffer and Jerry Brown sat together on a log and had an interview. It was the 1970s and the air was hazy, and hey, it wasn't unusual for a couple of guys, confident in their masculinity, squatting on a log and talking about junk. Brown was, at the time, linked to Linda Ronstadt, and Schieffer wanted to meet her. And someone was eavesdropping behind a tree? Was it Ronstadt? They don't know! They never found out! (TWAS THE WILY JERSEY DEVIL, ME THINKS. Or "Nell," from that movie "Nell," which was about "Nell.")

Anyway, Brown and Schieffer returned to that log and spent the rest of the day having "gentlemen's pleasure," the end.

Okay, now we're going to panel with Graham Allison and Peter Bergen from Time, who wrote the bin Laden story. David Ignatius is also here, with CBS' correspondent John Miller, who was the last person to interview bin Laden.

So, some of the President's senior advisors did not want to chance it, and do the raid. Biden and Gates, in particular, recommended against it. "So if Biden was president today, bin Laden would be alive," says Allison. (This creates a certain frisson, now, with Biden making the claim that Romney would not have made that call.)

"There's a temptation to think of this as a no-brainer," Allison says, who adds that timing plays a big role in when to do something like this. Bergen adds that it's a really rare experience to have two advisors pulling you in two different directions.

Bergen, who went to Abbotabad to see where bin Laden spent the last days of his life, describes his living conditions as pretty miserable, and says that the declassified documents showed that many of his plans were delusional.

Ignatius says, "Al Qaeda was an organization that burned itself out," and that they paid a high price for the many Muslim's bin Laden himself killed. At the same time, Ignatius says, again that while the "dreams of violent jihad died with bin Laden, the dreams of purifying the Muslim world of Western influence is happening."

Schieffer asks Miller if there's any evidence that Pakistanis were involved in sheltering bin Laden. Miller says that "they seemed to be geniunely shocked" that bin Laden was there and there is no indication that there was awareness of bin Laden's presence "at a high level." Allison throws some shade on that, saying that either the head of Pakistan's ISI had been living there, or he had no idea. "Which is more frightening?" he says -- either the ISI is complicit or incompetent. (He adds that so far, there's no intelligence that the ISI knew about it.) Bergen says that bin Laden was a paranoid person, and that there were people in the compound that didn't know bin Laden was living there.

How did they keep this a secret? Basically, it was the world record for shutting the f--k up and saying nothing. Allison points out that a majority of NSA officials had no idea what was going on, and they are probably monitoring everything we type on our laptops. He notes that if word had gotten out too far, some Washington jerkoff would have started complaining about how long they were waiting to pull the trigger.

Is America safer? Ignatius says yes: to the end, bin Laden was plotting to kill Americans. His replacement, Ayman al Zawahiri, is not seen as being as influential or as effective.

Bergen says that more Americans die in their bathtubs than they do from al Qaeda, so why aren't we bombing bathtubs, John McCain? (Actually, John McCain probably has beaten back the bathtubs to their pre-Austro Hungarian Empire borders.)

For some reason, CBS News pointed a camera at a Google hangout, where lots of people were Skyping each other, just jawing about immigration, and it is precisely as exciting as I am making it sound. Perhaps less so. I mean, do you want to see the RNC's Bettina Inclan complain that the President didn't put forth a plan for comprehensive immigration reform that the RNC's Bettina Inclan would then excoriate? That's one of my favorite political gambits: "The President has failed to provide the sort of leadership necessary to produce a piece of legislation that I'm already pre-committed to despising!"

Anyway, John Dickerson had to spend an afternoon listening to people on Skype yell at each other, so, you know, buy him some food or something? Because no one deserves that.

So, that bring us to the end of another week on the Sunday morning prattle-grind. Thank you all for joining me today. I hope that the rest of your week goes well! Just as a programming note, there will be no liveblog on Sunday, May 20, because I will be attending the University of Virginia's graduation ceremonies. (I finally got my degree! (Just kidding.))

[More liveblog is coming next Sunday. While you are waiting, check out this story from me and Jason Cherkis -- "'I Can Smell The Fires From Here': Broadcasts From The L.A. Riots" -- we spoke to radio reporters who covered the Los Angeles Riots twenty years ago, as well as deejays who spent days taking calls from the community. It's an intimate take on those major events, from the people who were closest to it. We've got transcripts for you to read and exclusive audio to listen to as well.]

Your latest dispatch from the corner of "Idiot Celebrity Avenue" and "Politics Can't Keep Packing On Stupidity At This Rate If It Doesn't Want God To Send A Fusillade Of Lightning Bolts At Its Face Boulevard" concerns the race for governor in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where Tareq Salahi -- best known for parlaying his security-breach White House party-crash into a failed reality show escapade, is said to be "mulling" a campaign. CNN says this story is "TRENDING," so, there's that.

Tareq Salahi put out a "statement?" Okay, fine:

"As a Virginia native for the last 42 years, I am troubled to see how our current political figure heads continue to waste tax payer dollars during these difficult economic times! I'm a big believer in limited government, keeping taxes, regulation and litigation low.

He'll be running to replace a governor who more or less feels the same way, so you might be wondering what his objection is to the way Virginia is currently being governed. These objections perhaps get a little bit clearer when you factor in one of the other Republicans that Salahi would be competing against in the primary, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Per the Associated Press:

Salahi's plan to run as a Republican comes just days after another GOP candidate for governor filed a lawsuit against Salahi and his winery. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli claimed in the suit that the winery cheated customers who bought tours.

A Salahi "spokesman" (sigh) piled on, complaining about Cuccinelli wasting "huge sums of tax payer dollars on witch hunt type investigations." Or, you know, that one "witch hunt type investigation" in particular.

Salahi apparently laced up his clown shoes awfully tight to begin this run for Richmond. CNN reports that Salahi's filing application has an error, "as Salahi filled in the wrong date for the November 5, 2013 election. His application says November 6."

The next step for Salahi, should he choose to pursue this, is to file a formal Declaration of Candidacy (which is "generally not filed until January 1, 2013, at the earliest"), which will have to include petitions "signed by 10,000 registered voters in the state with a minimum of 400 from each of Virginia's 11 congressional districts." I'm pretty sure that if 10,000 Virginians sign their names to support Salahi's candidacy, it will unlock some sort of doomsday "seal."

So, keep watch on the James River for when it runs red with blood, the end.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Back in 2010, one of the more colorful political figures to run for office was Florida's Jeff Greene, the billionaire real estate mogul who decided, for some reason, that he was just the guy to challenge then-Rep. Kendrick Meek in the Democratic primary for Florida's open Senate seat. Greene wasn't the most natural fit with the Democratic Party or the times -- he was, after all, a former Republican who had hit it big playing the credit default swaps market while the rest of the financial world was burning down, pushing the nation into a recession and Floridians into a foreclosure nightmare.

Of course, Greene hadn't simply laid back, playing the shorts for big payoffs. He was also elbow deep in the sort of sketchy real estate deals that spurred the market toward downturn. Also, he was something of an ostentatious playboy type, with a reputation for wild parties aboard his yacht, The Summerwind.

The Summerwind was a perennial source of amusement: Sometimes it was banging through coral reefs, sometimes it was mysteriously docked in Cuban harbors. Most notably, it was described as, allegedly, a "vomit-caked yacht."

These things ended up getting noticed, and reported on, by local papers like the St. Petersburg Times (which is now the Tampa Bay Times) and the Miami Herald.

This didn't please Greene, so he sued them for libel. How did that work out? Per Wednesday's Herald: "Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene’s libel suit against Times Publishing Co., publisher of the Tampa Bay Times, was dismissed by a judge on Monday."

"The fact that the plaintiff may not like the way the article was written or how it was written does not automatically provide the basis for a libel suit," [Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Valerie Manno-Schurr] wrote.

The judge also declared that Greene's 2010 campaign made him a public figure: "There is no doubt that Greene had injected himself, even if for a limited time, into the public arena as a candidate for public office [so] he is considered a public figure."

The attorney representing the Times Publishing Co. was pleased with the result, saying, "It's an appropriate dismissal of a lawsuit that should never have been filed."

Greene, however, plans to appeal the decision, a somewhat baffling choice for a man who could otherwise spend his time throwing what are pretty obviously some of the greatest parties in the universe.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Mike Tyson has offered more recent statements testifying that certain incidents that were that were alluded to in the original as "apocryphal tales" never happened on the Summerwind.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]