A Bear Market Lurks as Dow Nears 10000 (WSJ)

Surge of 46 percent in the past six months freaks out prognosticators.

For President, Five Programs, One Message (NYT, Alessandra Stanley)

"The president's talk-show grand slam was a remarkable -- and remarkably overt -- display of media management."

Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day (NYT, Frank Rich)

A modern-day Father Coughlin. "Crazy-quilt cosmology" mixes with populism to blanket the country. (Sounds like another media creation to me.) Read Salon's "The making of Glenn Beck," if you want.

Democrats Target Bank Overdraft Charges: Bailed-Out Firms Lean More Heavily on Fees (WashPost)

Overdraft fees soaring, without telling customers. A run on banks — by mobs with torches — may be necessary.

You Have No Idea What Health Costs: If You Did, You Might Just Want Real Reform (WashPost)

Relying on Kaiser Family Foundation's last Employer Benefits Survey, Ezra Klein notes:

A Proposed Tax on the Cadillac Health Insurance Plans May Also Hit the Chevys (NYT, Reed Abelson)

Volcker, a super czar, is too often ignored by O (NY Post, Terry Keenan)

Barack Obama's got czars for everything, but Paul Volcker, one of his first, can't get no respect from the administration.

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Nevada Senator John Ensign, a prime GOP critic of Barack Obama's economic-stimulus plan, says he won't resign, despite the furor over his having regularly fucked one of his staffers.

The L.A. Times notes that the "silver-haired, telegenic conservative," who has been "a rising star in the Republican Party," was "grim-faced" as he apologized.

Ensign didn't identify the staffer, but she (or he) must be feeling pretty miffed that Ensign described their affair as "absolutely the worst thing I have ever done in my life."

True to form, Ensign noted that he and wife Darlene went into counseling and that their marriage is "stronger than ever."

Maybe eventually, no one will care whom he or other politicians fuck, as long as they do it on their own time and their own dime and aren't hypocritical about it.

Of course, popular butch broadcaster Rachel Maddow accurately points out that very hypocrisy: that before Ensign admitted cheating on his wife he had affirmed that he was an ardent believer in the "institution of marriage" and an adamant foe of gay marriages. Not to mention that he didn't carry on his affair on his own time: He was not only fucking one of his campaign staffers but she was married to one of his other staffers — a cuckold in his Senate office.

Anyway, Americans aren't as evolved as Europeans (who generally don't care who their politicans fuck), so this tiff over Ensign is is good news for Obama. The president's going to have a tough enough time getting his vaunted "overhaul" of the financial system through Congress. Now, a key foe of his stimulus plan has confessed to being overstimulated and has suffered a public embarrassment. Ensign is chair of the Republican Policy Committee and has been a frequent talking-head critic of Obama's economic package. He might have a tougher time getting people to take him seriously when he criticizes the other guy's package.

The senator says he won't resign, but he is thought to have quit his job as the latest driver of the GOP Pussy Wagon.

Some Nevada observers say the fuss won't hurt him locally because "he's the leading voice in Nevada and in the country for fiscal restraint." Physical restraint, however, is something else, at least when it comes to Ensign's keeping his dick in his pants.

The Federal Reserve's latest "beige book" roundup of economic conditions "shows the economy is still frail," as the WSJ understates it.

Reporters regularly comb through the beige book looking for red flags to write about, which is how the WSJ's Erica Alini conjured up "Are Lights Going Down on Broadway?" Yes, the beige book says sales and attendance on Broadway dropped in May after a slight rebound in April. But then Alini gets melodramatic. She concludes, based on a Marist poll, that "the vast majority of New Yorkers already think a Broadway show is far too expensive."

You think? Shit, that's what New Yorkers say even when they're riding atop a bubble.

Alini does have a tidbit, however: After Barack Obama took a chopper to NYC with wife Michelle to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone, ticket sales for the play soared. So did complaints by the GOP, which Chris Matthews addresses in the above video.

And no matter what critics say, nothing rakes in dead presidents better than a live one.

That's a real protest, unlike the "tea parties" being promoted by Fox News — see Jon Stewart's "Tempest in a Tea Party" last night — to try to give the GOP some sort of basic issue to rebuild the party other than feeding Rush Limbaugh to the troops.

Adding up the past failure to pay taxes by such Obama Administration appointees as Kathleen Sibelius, would-have-been appointees like Tom Daschle, and, of all people, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the head of the IRS employees' union says her members are "upset and angry." The Chicago Tribune explains:

More on why they're seething: