I’m perplexed by remarks from Mitch McConnell (R—Ky.) in this well-sourced article about the strange ways in which Democrats are failing to enjoy the support that their legislative achievements probably deserve:

“I am amused with their comments about obstructionism,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview. “I wish we had been able to obstruct more. They were able to get the health care bill through. They were able to get the stimulus through. They were able to get the financial reform through. These were all major pieces of legislation, and if I would have had enough votes to stop them, I would have.”

Mr. McConnell said, though, that the Democratic victories would come at a price, predicting that the party’s decision to push sweeping measures in the face of public opposition smacked of arrogance and “is sowing the seeds of their potential downfall.”

It seems like McConnell is confusing “obstructionism” with “successfully defeating proposed legislation.” It’s true that lawmakers, almost exclusively Democrats, have passed a lot of reform legislation during Obama’s cycle. But it’s also true that other lawmakers, mostly Republicans, have used proceedural manuvers to prevent that legislation from coming to the floor – obstructing, if you will, the way toward an up-or-down vote on the matters, to such an extent that Democratic Senate hopefuls have fantasized about excluding the filibuster option from their session altogether.

And the legislative results, too, show Republicans haven’t been altogether ineffective in their obstructionism.

With healthcare reform, plenty of lawmakers — maybe 50 in the Senate, and more than enough in the House — would have voted for a public healthcare option. A vocal minority wanted a single-payer healthcare system. With stimulus spending, some economists thought more money should have been spent to insulate the public from the lingering effects of a nasty recession. As it turns out, they were probably right. With financial reform, there wasn’t a good reason for Republican obstruction in the first place because from the early iterations of the legislation both parties more or less agreed on everything.

I understand why Republicans are displeased with the legislative results of 2009 and 2010, but it isn’t unreasonable to politely inform that party’s base that resulting policy could have been a lot worse for them.

It also seems like Republicans are scambling too early to campaign on this issue — “vote for us and we’ll be able to obstruct Democrats’ priorities more effectively” — for the November elections.

Not every progressive idea is a good idea. The best message the Republicans can offer right now is to embrace their obstuctionism, perhaps with a different word, and focus on the potential reform they’ve prevented instead of dwelling on what progressives have accomplished. Because they’re almost certain to pick up a sizeable number of seats in both the House and the Senate, campaigning on a legitimate position would put them in a better position to legislate according to their own ideology going forward. But I fear all of this is pretty wishful thinking.

I’m in the midst of writing what I hope will be an informative and provocative post that connects a few recent pieces of political news.

One of those pieces of news is not that Sen. Carl Levin (D–Mich.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, was hit in the face with a pie during the weekend, but I’m linking to that story anyways because, well, the Senator was hit in the face with a pie during the weekend.

Just because I just got done watching a CNBC segment that took today’s New York Times report about a net neutrality deal between Google and Verizon as fact, I’m posting Google’s official response to the coverage, which refutes it — in the form of a Twitter post.

googlepubpolicy

Google Public Policy

@googlepubpolicy: @NYTimes is wrong. We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet.

Aug 5, 2010 @ 02:55 PM from web in reply to nytimes Powered by Tweeted

Here is the original article, for which Google declined to comment. And here is some of the enormous amount of subsequent pick-up.

It’d be a shame if all of the time spent reporting on what is apparently only speculation (at least, if you ask Google) turns out to be wasted.

Update @5:45pm ET: The newspaper’s spokeswoman, Diane McNulty, explained to Poynter Online: “We stand by our reporting which is based on information from sources in a position to know about the conversations. Google’s comment about The New York Times story refutes something The Times story didn’t say.”

Update 2 @6:08pm ET: Erica Naone, writing on the MIT Technology Review web site, is skeptical of the Times story as well.

Update 3 @10:30pm ET: Keith Olbermann ran a lengthy segment on this news with a guest from FreePress.org — it too takes the New York Times speculation as fact. It’s hard to say this loudly enough: Google plainly refuted the story 12 hours ago. Fortunately, Olbermann does mention this, but only in passing, and it’s tough to tell that the statement was an official remark from Google.

“Make no mistake: Our commitment in Iraq is changing, from a military effort led by our troops to a civilian effort led by our diplomats.”

– President Obama, speaking yesterday about the evolving strategy for Afghanistan

I’m convinced that whenever President Obama begins a point by saying “Now hear this…” or “Look…” or “Make no mistake…”, he’s reading from prepared remarks that he himself has written, free from the filter of his advisers and handlers.

That might mean very little if, as some of the pundits are saying, there’s a substantial disconnect between those in Washington and the forces on the ground in Afghanistan. But I’d qualify anything coming from the White House that connects the conflict to diplomacy as cautious optimism.

In the United States, the recession has been over for more than a year—but the vast majority of the country’s population isn’t enjoying the recovery. The New York Times Economix blog, for instance, reports that 71 percent of Americans don’t even know the recession ended last April, presumably because they aren’t feeling the recovery in the context of their own everyday lives.

Why not? Why is unemployment spectacularly high? Why are both consumers and businesses hoarding cash that would otherwise give a recovery some definition? Why do so many of these troublesome economic trends linger?

This Sunday on Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked guests, including New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Fed Chairman Dr. Alan Greenspan, some pointed questions: “Why is it that recovery feels so much like recession?”

The video’s worth watching.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Just a link for now until I have time to go into what it might mean:

China’s armed forces will continue to enhance its capabilities and military readiness to safeguard sovereignty, security and development of the nation, Defense Minister Liang Guanglie said Saturday. [more]

Do you see any Cubism in this screen-grab? No, really, do you see any Cubism in this screen-grab?

Because I do. A little bit, at least. While I’m stupefied as to why it even exists, a recent study from market-data provider Nanex explains that … well, Alphaville summarizes it better (emphasis mine):

The datafeed company’s research shows that high frequency players approach trading in an almost ‘paint by numbers‘ way. That is to say, when broken apart and analysed, their algorithmic order sequencing displays patterns which verge on cyber art.

Zero Hedge calls them HFT crop circles. Nanex describes the practice as ‘quote stuffing’.

The image above is a visual rendering of a burst of stock quotes — specifically: “NASDAQ ‘Ask Mountain,’ Symbol IAU,’ Over 56,000 quotes in 10 seconds, all with same Ask Price and the Ask Size increasing or decreasing by 1 (to almost 40,000!)” — and arguably accidental art.

So are quants really contemporary, capitalist artistes? Not if you ask me. But click through for more high-res trading screen-grab goodness anyways.

“It’s hard to know how much of [bank profits from prop trading] will be affected by the various new rules. But suppose trading revenue at Morgan Stanley could fall by 30 percent from existing levels. All else being equal, a third of the company’s business would still come from trading, more than from any other single business line.”

Here’s the problem with this paragraph from a post this morning on Reuters Breakingview that is otherwise pretty good: It’s plainly impossible at this point to come close to predicting, with any expectation of accuracy, the losses prop desks at investment banks could see.

Financial reform was just signed into law earlier this month. That’s the legislative part of it all. The regulation – the specific ways that legislation will be deployed onto the markets – has hardly been explored in any meaningful way, let alone made. It’s still all a very new thing to virtually everyone connected to the markets.

Plenty of news outlets make the ridiculous assumption that because legislation has been passed, the regulation associated with it is already reliably predictable – and it’s all well and good to fling around these kinds of estimates like a frisbee when it fits into a post. I just wish the Reuters writer would have quoted a source on the 30 percent estimate. That would’ve made the number seem like less of a guess and put a name behind the prediction just in case something ridiculous happens, like prop-trading profits remaining steady despite the new regulations.

A brief yet compelling letter from a hedge fund manager that lays out a case against climate-change skeptics was uncovered today, and I too thought at first blush that it would be a case of cats and dogs living together.

It’s not. It’s more or less perfect, actually. Written by Jeremy Grantham, chief investment strategist in Boston at hedge fund manager GMO LLC, the letter is accessible, objective, balanced, and (in my estimation) exactly right.

The climate-change analysis starts on page 7.

Download (PDF, 76.46KB)

(Link via Treehugger.)

Last week I linked to Ezra Klein’s post that called for journalists to start publishing transcripts of their important interviews online. It’s a request I’m still entirely on-board with.

Later that day, I left this comment on his blog:

I work in the PR/media field and frequently act as an intermediary between reporter and source, making sure everyone has the appropriate background information before a formal interview to ensure nobody’s time ends up being wasted.

I like having information fully transparent, and anyone who feels the same way can probably get on board with the notion that important interviews ought to be fully transcribed somewhere online and public. In fact, I frequently urge clients — corporate executives, law firm partners, etc. — to establish their own blogs so they can do just that. Reporters, understandably, have deadlines and many other pressures to grapple with, but transcribing and posting an important interview between one of my clients and a Times reporter, for instance, would probably be a decent use of *my* time, and if it can benefit other writers or bloggers, then all the better.

I’m not so sure, though, that most journalists would like it if the subjects of their interviews began to do that. Any thoughts?

I’m still on the fence about the matter. How would journalists react if their sources began recording interviews and publishing the full transcripts on their own blog, or on their company’s blog?

When I’m committing public relations, I want to help journalists get what they need as quickly as possible, whether it’s a quote, statistic, or an interview with someone. I also want to give clients the capability to fully articulate their positions, and oftentimes news articles don’t offer the space for fully nuanced opinions. But at the same time, I don’t want to overstep that delicate journalist-source boundary, which is, it seems, quite variable, depending on the professional tastes of both parties.

I’d love to hear from other media-types on the question. Journalists and PR people, chime in if you want to.