The treachery continues, but it’s hard to guess what the endgame is. Maybe Barack Obama really believes his own hype. He’s the “adult” in the race and therefore can’t lose against Texas wing-nut Rick Perry or insipid Mitt (“Corporations are people”) Romney.

From Daily Beast:

More dispiriting news, this time about the White House overturning the EPA’s proposed new rules on smog. That comes a few hours after the jobs report from Friday morning, one of the bleakest yet. And it comes a few days in advance of what everyone expects will be a small-thinking, modest, blah jobs speech by the president …

The smog decision is a real low … Environmental groups were going to file a lawsuit in 2009 about Bush-era ozone rules, and the Obama administration told them, in effect, “Wait, don’t hassle us with a lawsuit, we’re going to propose stricter rules soon.” So the stricter rules were proposed, and the White House has now said, “Sorry, changed our mind …”

… And you know how partisans say sometimes in anger that we’d have been better off with the other guy? They say it for effect and don’t actually mean it. But in this case, it’s literally true. Bush-proposed standards in 2008 were tougher than the 1997 standards under which companies will now operate …

Philip Radford of Greenpeace:

On the [2008] campaign trail the President talked a lot about holding corporations accountable. This decision today is the opposite of that. He’s actually doing their dirty work for them. And as a result all of us are going to suffer.