For the curious, the “Character Matters” anti-Obama ad campaign can be reviewed here.

I don’t find it all that shocking;  Obama’s been called worse than a “metrosexual black Abe Lincoln.”  It’s not surprising that the campaign goes after Obama’s pastor, religion and race; we know how Jeremiah Wright inflames Obama-haters. Nor am I surprised this kind of stuff is being shopped around; more than a billion dollars will be spent on this election. There are plenty of folks in the political consulting industry vying for a piece of that action, and more than a few multi-millionaires at both ends of the political spectrum that may be tempted to bankroll a super PAC campaign.

I’m a bit surprised at how quickly Ricketts and Romney rejected this campaign, but I won’t be surprised if some version of it gets funded.

And I expect it will happen on the other side.  Reading the proposal for the anti-Obama campaign, I found myself imaging a pitch some liberal consultant might pitch to say, a mega-millionaire in the entertainment industry — Jeffrey Katzenberg or  George Clooney or someone like that:

“Listen man, we’ve got a chance not just to scuff up the Republican nominee. We can hurt him while also paying back the guys who bankrolled Question 8:  the Mormon Church.

“We can’t do the Rev. Wright thing, since non-Mormons aren’t allowed in their services, so there’s no footage of some Mormon bishop saying something outrageous we can take out of context.  But we can use that mystery against them, showing footage of locked doors and huge temples, with scary organ music. We can use old photos of Mormon polygamists and their many wives. Don’t know if we can get pix of Mitt’s great-grandfather — you know how many wives he had? — but we’ll find a sepia-toned pic that will be sufficient.

“The great thing is that Mitt didn’t just sit in the congregation for 20 years like Obama did.  He was a bishop in the Mormon church, even a “stake president,” which is even bigger than a bishop.  Did Romney help make policy? Did he have anything to do with the Mormons’ decision to baptize Jewish Holocaust victims?  Romney won’t discuss such stuff — there’s that Mormon mystery theme again — so we can insinuate anything we want.

“Rev. Wright never had any authority outside his congregation or outside Chicago — there’s no hierarchy in the Congregational Church — but the Mormons are a worldwide organization, with gazillions of dollars and business and political interests that go far beyond Salt Lake City.  Flash to impressive buildings around the world and scary pictures of Mormon elders.  We can raise questions about how the church spends money on politics. We know it spent tons to get Question 8 passed. How much will they spend to get Romney elected?  What will they want from him as president?

“Can America afford to find out? Is America ready for — try this for a tagline — its first non-Christian president?

“What do you say, Mr. Rich Liberal? A million now and we can start production tomorrow.”

I’ve been reading Alan Brinkley’s new mini biography of JFK, the same series that I’ve been reviewing for the MWDN starting about twelve years ago. My take on these books is that new biographies are great for refocusing the lens on how we relate a historic figure to our times.

I’ve been intrigued by the section on JFK’s attitude toward civil rights. To use the modern parlance, he started out in 1960 being tepid, but he evolved during his first three years into a civil rights champion. As Brinkley notes, RFK made it clear to JFK that once you achieve the status of being an evolved person, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.

Because JFK never had to run for re election, we tend to forget that his civil rights agenda in 1963 flew not only in the face of Southerners, but also a large chunk of JFK’s own party.  Nonetheless, by 1963 he was seriously in danger of ruining his chances for re election, or, indeed, of even being renominated by his own party. Why did he do it? Because it was the right thing to do. When you see injustice, you don’t worry about re election, you don’t worry about the fact that the laws won’t make it through Congress, you don’t fret, and ponder and give interviews about your evolution. At that point, you do. you act. Does O’Bama really need a lesson in civil rights activism? In demonstrating courage? In doing the right thing? OHB, you are no John Kennedy.

A Credit Default Swap (CDS) is insurance on loans to insure the lender of payment if default occurs, it’s called hedging, and on Wall Street, they’re easy to buy. First, the companies take out a loan from the bank, then the banks who loan the money and sell the CDS’ buy or sell stock in the borrowers’ company which manipulates the price of the stock and the value of the company.

JPMorgan Chase lost $2 billion in six weeks with depositors money on CDS’. So who’s defaulting on their payments and why aren‘t we hearing about it? Opps, as of tonight it’s up to they think, $3 billion.

The Volcker Rule in the Dodd/Frank law which recently passed allows for hedging of risk, but doesn’t allow banks to use depositors money to make high risk bets, since the deposits are insured by the federal government. CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon urged traders in their London office to take more risk and at the same time saying he didn’t know what was going on, he had people he trusted. Now he’s calling the practice an “economic hedge.” The new definition of a bankers’ casino bets gone bad.

The real risk eliminator on Wall Street has been the US Government, bailing out banks since Nixon was president. Subsequently, and with the implicit backing of the US tax payer, risk knows no bounds on Wall Street. It’s a different story on Main Street, make a bad bet and you lose, no hedging for us. Yet Jamie Dimon won’t even so much as lose his job making bad bets with depositors’ money, as “moral hazard” has been eliminated for big banks too big to fail. But it‘s still held as a major obstacle against a reduction of principal amongst those too small to matter, or can’t afford the lobbyists. Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone magazine said of Wall Street Bank Goldman Sachs, that they’re a “giant squid on the face of humanity”. It’s all the banks, they have become one giant financial system herding people and governments into giving them global fortunes and international power.

The chamber of Congress in which Obama’s party has a majority voted on his budget yesterday. Now both houses have voted on Obama’s budget; the total opposition is 513 votes and the total support is — wait for it — zero. Zip. Nada.

Peter Kirsanow asks some helpful questions for the president:

Yesterday, your budget for fiscal year 2013 was defeated in the senate 99–0. Earlier, it had been defeated in the house by a vote of 414–0. Last year, your budget for fiscal year 2012 was defeated in the senate 97–0. Meanwhile, more than $5,000,000,000,000 in debt has been accumulated by your administration. The federal deficit is more than $1,300,000,000,000. Despite the fact that Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security are the largest drivers of the deficit, you have failed to propose any credible entitlement reforms that effectively address the exploding expenditures. Last year, for the first time in history, the AAA credit rating of the United States was downgraded.

What evidence do you have that your administration has any credibility with Congress in dealing with fiscal matters? What evidence do you have that your administration will be able to effectively deal with Congress on fiscal matters should you win a second term?

Given your belief that you’ll have even more flexibility in a second term, what credible assurances can you provide that you’ll exercise any fiscal responsibility whatsoever in such term?

Meanwhile, on the jobs front:

- Walter Ramsley

One of the unheralded features of the JOBS Act is a change in how hedge funds can market themselves. Before the law was enacted all advertising was restricted to so-called “accredited investors,” rich people basically, who the government figured can fend for themselves. Under the new rules we now can talk with anybody, which simplifies life quite a bit. Actual investments still are restricted to people who meet the SEC guidelines. But while in the past we had to watch everything we said, and wrap everything around one disclaimer after another, now at least we can talk without fear of retribution.

As a testimonial to Barack Obama for enacting the new law (which has plenty of other benefits) here’s a pitch for an idea the President has promoted on several occasions.

End the “carried Interest” tax break used by private equity investors, and by a few hedge funds, as well. That’s the scheme where a guy puts up no money himself, raises the money he needs from outside investors, earns 20% of the profits plus 2% of the total investment per year as walking around money, and somehow gets that called a capital gain by the IRS instead of earned income. It’s not a capital gain. He didn’t invest any cash. He worked. He made money. It’s ordinary income.

People in favor of the treatment argue there will be less investment if the law changes. Or that the managers won’t bother doing the deals because, well, they can justify 85% of $10 million but if it’s only 65%, they’d rather drive a cab or something.

The whole thing is small potatoes by government standards, about $1-$2 billion in lost tax revenue per year. Still, it’s an obvious bargaining chip to insert in any tax reform package that ultimately gets done.

Back in 2004, when Merck took Vioxx off the market, I remember reading that investigators believed the drug may have been responsible for as many as 50,000 deaths from heart attacks and strokes.  50,000! That must be a typo, I remember thinking, because, while the number appeared in various accounts, nobody seemed too upset about it.  The story was played on the business pages, with more concern voiced about the hit on Merck’s stock price than on the victims.

In the years since,  Merck’s lawyers, lobbyists and pr folks have done a pretty good job containing the damage.  The stock has recovered. A class action suit was settled in 2007 for 4.85 billion, and federal suit charging illegal marketing has just been settled for $950 million.  The Merck CEO at the time (he made $50 million over just five years at the firm) has landed a gig at Harvard, teaching tomorrow’s CEOs how he got away with it.

But a more interesting thing happened in the years since Vioxx got pulled from the market: the U.S. death rate mysteriously fell.  Conservative writer and activist Ron Unz  (he was behind the Massachusetts anti-bilingual education ballot question a few years back) has concluded that data indicate that the death toll from Vioxx was closer to 500,000.  A half a million unnecessary deaths, and has anyone heard about it? No, because the major media put their efforts toward keeping up with the Kardashians and fretting about Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry.

It’s also because Vioxx, a pain medicine marketed to arthritis sufferers, apparently caused fatal heart attacks and strokes among elderly people who are prone to such episodes.  Now that Vioxx is no longer being prescribed, something like 100,000 fewer fatal heart attacks and strokes are being recorded among the elderly population.

So where’s the outrage? Where are the demands for tighter FDA regulations on new medications?  You aren’t hearing them, especially in Washington.

That is part of a pattern I’ve been noticing for awhile now: the willful denial of major events by those with an ideology impervious to reality.  Two years ago, the Gulf Coast suffered the worst oil spill in U.S. history, but the drill-baby-drill crowd never missed a beat.  Japan suffered the worst nuclear power catastrophe in history — a 50K  dead zone now surrounds the Fukashima plant. Japan and Germany have sworn off nuclear power as a result, but there are no second thoughts in the U.S., even about relicensing plants, like the Pilgrim plant on the South Shore, built on the Fukashima model.  Reckless trading on Wall Street crashed the world’s economy four years ago, but the gambling on derivatives continues as the finance industry and its friends in Washington work to blunt the watered-down regulations passed in disaster’s wake.

When you’ve made up your mind that government is more dangerous than unfettered corporate profit-seeking, then environmental disasters, or even 500,000 deaths traced to a bad drug, just don’t matter.  Punch a kid in the high school hallway and you go to jail.  Kill thousands through reckless research and false advertising, and you go to Harvard.

Having been told by the anti-Obama crowd that I should pay no attention to Mitt Romney’s past or his personality,  I will gladly shift focus to something that should be relevant: the economy.

To date, the gist of what I’ve heard from the Romney campaign is that he’s a smart man who “knows how jobs are created.”  I’ll grant that he’s smart — smart enough to have made hundreds of millions flipping companies.  I’ll grant that he had a hand in establishing a successful office-supply chain.  If someone wanted to figure out how many mom-and-pop office supply stores Staples put out of business, we could consider the implications for job creation.

But success in private sector profit-making doesn’t automatically equate to success in public sector policy-making.  Voters should be asking what Romney would do as president to fix what ails our economy. As near as I can tell, his economic platform consists of:

1. More tax cuts for the rich.

2. New tax hikes for the middle class.

3. Reduced services for the poor.

4. A blank check for the Pentagon to wage endless wars overseas.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me the first three points are covered by the Ryan budget, which Romney has enthusiastically embraced.  It calls for lowering top tax rates. The revenue loss would be made up by closing “loopholes” which Romney/Ryan refuse to specify, but would have to include tax provisions that benefit the middle class: the mortgage interest deduction and deductions for employer-provide health insurance and state and local taxes.  His preference for cutting programs for the poor is pretty well established. His pledges to double the size of Guantanamo and keep troops in Afghanistan until the last Taliban is dead demonstrate that Romney’s  desire to reduce government spending doesn’t extend to the government’s largest operational budget.

Anyone care to explain or defend Romney’s economic platform? Hint: “He’s got to be better than Obama” will be deemed unresponsive to the question.

I don’t quite know what to make of the WaPo story on Mitt Romney’s high school bullying.

I cut Mitt some slack on the dog-on-the-car thing, and I’m inclined to be generally forgiving of high school hijinks. I didn’t go to an all-boys prep school, but from what I’ve heard, what Mitt and friends are accused of doing sound pretty typical of that time and place.  Organizing pranks and posses are one way adolescent boys demonstrate leadership.  I expect there are many more anecdotes about the young Mitt showing exemplary leadership than there are of him showing cruelty.

But Romney’s reaction to the story has been, so far, terribly disappointing it.  The Post account is loaded with weighted words (“posse,” “vicious,” “closeted gay”) that apply 2012 standards to a 50-year-old event. A more gifted politician would put a more benign face on the story to blunt its impact.  Instead, Romney denied remembering something that others who were present found unforgettable, then made a weaselly apology: “Back in high school, you know, I, I did some dumb things. And if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize.”

Writing about it in the New York Times, Charles Blow takes much more offense over the original incident than I, but he makes a good point. Over the last year or so, a rash of teen suicides have inspired a serious and important discussion about bullying.  In schools across the country, kids are learning that there’s a line between teasing and harassment, that kids shouldn’t be ostracized just because they are different, that, in the words of my dear mother, “if it’s not fun for everybody, it’s not fun for anybody.”

By responding to this old story with candor instead of half-hearted spin, Romney could bring something positive to this discussion. He could talk about what he should have done, or what others should have done to stop the hazing.  He could talk about what he might tell the victim, now dead, if it were possible. He could share the lessons maturity brings, instead of just giggling uncomfortably giggling.  Blow’s accusation — “Romney has an uncanny ability to turn a bad thing into a worse thing by failing to be forthright” — stings.

I hope Romney addresses this again and does a better job drawing lessons from it that can add to the national discussion on bullying.  That’s how a president demonstrates leadership.

So, if you’ll pardon the expression, O’Bama has come to Jesus on the issue of gay marriage. Of course, he did it quietly, and, he said, upon reflection, and there was no mention of the point I raised about a week ago that perhaps his failure to endorse gay marriage and otherwise express a reasonable position on this critical issue might be in danger of costing him Ohio in November, or so the more than 1,000,000 emails to the White House have warned. Of course, he did it on Wednesday, the day after the North Carolina vote, when he didn’t have to actually do anything about his new found conversion. If he was reborn on Monday, he might have had to go out and actually urge North Carolinians not to write bigotry into their constitution for the first time since, oh, 1967. And curiously, O’Bama is now also a born again states-righter. It’s upon to the states to decide major social issues, not the federal government. Unless it involves health care. And the president should also be congratulated for accepting the position of our most famous bigots, like Bull Connor, in claiming that civil rights cases policies should be dealt with on  a state by state basis. Hey, it worked for water fountains for colored folk, so who needed Kennedy or Johnson or even Eisenhower butting in. Is there no bottom to the amount of shame O’Bama has in his own hypocrisy?

On my radio this morning much of the sound was on the subject of the President’s openly stated endorsement of gay marriage. Some folks are thrilled at the news and see his announcement as enormous. Others would downplay its significance or even frame it as another politician’s “flip-flop.” But the comment that really caught my attention came from the presumptive GOP nominee for the presidential election this fall.

“This is a sensitive and tender issue,” Romney said in soft and conciliating voice, “I know there are different views on this, but my personal feeling is a that marriage is between a man and a woman.” The emphasis on the word ‘personal’ was sort of soft and sweet, cloying —almost apologetic. It was as if to say we can all have our different views and these are just mine. There followed a sound bite from a spokesman for “Log Cabin Republicans” where the gist was that the whole subject of gay marriage was somehow passe´—not really an issue anymore.

The last I heard, as I shut off the radio, was the newsman noting that Romney continues to support a Constitutional Amendment banning same sex marriage.

Go figure.