We're leading off with this video from this morning's "Morning Joe" which features Massachusetts Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren offering some of the questions she would've asked JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon yesterday, when he went to Capitol Hill less to testify about and apologize for his company's $3 billion-plus loss, it seems, than to have his ring kissed by Republican senators.
“You’re obviously renowned, rightfully so I think, as being one of the most, you know, one of the best CEOs in the country for financial institutions,” crooned Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). “You missed this, it’s a blip on the radar screen...”Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) — a tea party hero — gave Dimon a full pardon. “I really appreciate you voluntarily coming in to talk with us,” he said...Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) asked Dimon and his firm to be good corporate citizens, if only to avoid complicating conservative free market messaging. “How you managed JPMorgan is the business of your board of directors, your shareholders, but it does have consequences to those of us who believe in the free-market system, its value, its merit. I have the sense and I hope it’s the case that it is a responsibility you understand."
Perhaps the warm greeting came as a result of the connections between Dimon and that Senate Banking Committee, chronicled by ProPublica's Cora Currier.
President Obama will be speaking at 1:45pm ET today in my hometown, giving a major address on the economy. His opponent will also be speaking this afternoon in Ohio, but much further south.
Not good: the rate of foreclosures is going up, having risen by 9 percent in May.
Americans still blame George W. Bush more than President Obama for the economy, though.
Jamelle Bouie argues that Democrats shouldn't count on demographics to marginalize the GOP.
Of course Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's silly broccoli analogy has become a "symbol in the health care debate." The New York Times front-pages it today.
The Roman Catholic Church is fighting state lawmakers who want to increase the statute of limitations for sex-abuse accusers.
A transgender beauty pageant winner was found murdered in South Africa.
More on that faulty gay-parenting study from Mother Jones' Adam Serwer.
An Ebony writer on the limitations of the term "African-American."
Cord Jefferson has a new, stirring Gawker essay on "Watch the Throne," and how getting rich has turned Jay-Z and Kanye West into the "new black revolutionaries."
Lastly, guest host Ezra Klein and our colleagues at "The Rachel Maddow Show" took a look at voter suppression efforts in Michigan last night, as highlighted by my friend Laura Conaway earlier yesterday on The Maddow Blog. The segment is embedded after the jump.
Be sure to share in the comments links of what you're reading this morning, #nerdland. Happy Thursday.