By now, you have all heard it: Republican Speaker John Boehner has asked the President to postpone his jobs address from September 7, the first day Congress gets back to DC. The White House is saying that they in fact consulted Boehner's office before sending the President's request, and at the time Boehner raised no objections. But John Boehner doesn't want a jobs speech. The official reason he's showing is because, oh, you know, Congress is just going to come back from its long summer vacation on the day, and uhh, they need to ease into their part time job with a full time salary and benefits paid for by the American taxpayer. No, I'm not kidding. Here's what the Speaker actually said in his letter:

[A]s the Majority Leader announced more than a month ago, the House will not be in session until Wednesday, September 7, with votes at 6:30 that evening.  With the significant amount of time - typically more than three hours - that is required to allow for a security sweep of the House Chamber before receiving a President, it is my recommendation that your address be held on the following evening, when we can ensure there will be no parliamentary or logistical impediments that might detract from your remarks.

I mean, really? That's Boehner's official response to the President's request to address the Congress? His official response is basically that "we're too busy and important to move our behinds and move up or reschedule a vote so that the American people can hear what the President of the United States has to say about creating jobs in an economy like this?" His official response is basically that an address on the most important issue of this time needs to wait so Congress can ease back into session after their vacation? REALLY?

Lawmakers are scheduled to return to DC after facing angry voters who want them to get off their behinds and do some work to move the people's business. The President, true to his promise to take the Republicans in Congress to task, spoke, calling for them to immediately pass a clean extension of the federal highway bill and the FAA funding bill.



Money quote:

There is work to be done, there are workers ready to do it, and that's why I expect Congress to act immediately.

Last night on MSNBC Melissa Harris did a piece about the so-called African-American flap between the President and Black Caucus members that was amazing. The piece excoriated the Black Caucus Members for putting all the blame on the President. She thought their attitude was somewhat "puzzling" since the black unemployment rate has been always high under other Presidents including Clinton. Where were they yelling and screaming then? She basically said that the Black Caucus members need to take responsibility with regards to the high unemployment in their communities and so do the voters who keep voting them back in even though some of them do corrupt things and have their own legal issues to worry about. Yet, they are loud and proud and are calling out the President who has never rejected his 'blackness'. He identifies as a proud AA male and he understands the crisis but he cannot do it alone. It is time that everybody take some responsibility for the jobs crisis in this country and not put it all at the feet of the President. This includes Black Caucus Members and all Senators and Reps from other communities. Like Harris said 'we are all in this together'. See her take apart Black Caucus in her piece last night. It was truly an awesome thing to see!!!

Hey, did you hear? The House Republicans have a jobs plan! Hurray - finally a year after telling people how they would have a "laser focus" on jobs, the Republicans in the House have come out with their jobs plan. I waited with baited breath: Oh what will I wear to the Republican Jobs Plan party? Well, if you have heard the news of the Republican jobs plan, you know that most of it is based on a hugh and cry of oh, who will think of the trust fund children!!! and oh the poor, poor corporations are being so darn inconvenienced just 'cuz you folks don't want lead in your toothpaste. Eric Cantor haz a sad because under President Obama, the EPA and the NLRB are daring to enforce the law.

Most of the media has been looking at the Republican plan as their attempt to preempt President Obama's upcoming jobs speech, and it in large part is. But interestingly, the House GOP plan can be looked at another way: a pre-emptive surrender to President Obama on certain issues just as the debt reduction supercommittee is about to begin its work. The President has been pushing for a jobs agenda some parts of which the Republicans seem to finally be acquiescing to: such as tax reform to eliminate the tax giveaway welfare state for the uber rich, passing the pending trade agreements and patent reform.

The House Republican plan, while it whines a lot about how they should be able to block any new regulations just by Congressional edict rather than lawmaking (the tool already available for them to pursue if they don't like a certain regulation), they do give way to some of President Obama's demands.

[ This post by Hamden Rice over at DailyKos was so excellent that I'm copying it verbatim and reposting it here - with permission. Some of it is addressed to the Daily Kos readers, but I'm sure you will find it to be informative and moving.]

This will be a very short diary.  It will not contain any links or any scholarly references.  It is about a very narrow topic, from a very personal, subjective perspective.

The topic at hand is what Martin Luther King actually did, what it was that he actually accomplished.

The reason I'm posting this is because there were dueling diaries over the weekend about Dr. King's legacy, and there is a diary up now (not on the rec list but on the recent list) entitled, "Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream Not Yet Realized."  I'm sure the diarist means well as did the others.  But what most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans.  And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general.  His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer.  That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy.  Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.

There are tons of complaints - some of it legitimate - about the Obama administration's messaging apparatus. But at least in one instance if you want to win a messaging battle, look at what President Obama is doing. Not because President Obama is some sort of a miracle worker, but because what he's doing is working. Compromise, a dirty word to both ideological extremes, has suddenly become buzzword among voters - and guess what? Voters want policy makers to compromise. MSNBC reports on a new AP poll that finds Congress' disapproval rating at a sky-high 87%, and their approval rating down to 12% - i.e. it's down to paid staff and family members and not even all of them at that - also finds this from voter interviews:

"I guess I long for the day back in the '70s and '80s when we could disagree but we could get a compromise worked out," said Republican Scott MacGregor, 45, a Windsor, Conn., police detective. "I don't think there's any compromise anymore." [...]

"They're so committed to their personal ways, and party's way, that they are having a hard time finding a middle road," Republican Frank Chase, 77, a military retiree from Hopkinton, Mass., said of both sides.

When Republican voters are openly telling pollsters that policy makers in Washington need to get off their ideological line-drawing-in-the-sand and start compromising, you know that the message in favor of compromise and against a stagnant, deadlocked, dysfunctional government is winning. It's winning, remarkably, despite 24-hour "news" channels competing on "format purity" and ideological Internet media on both sides attempting to make 'compromise' a four letter word.

It seems that the elitists on the Professional Left will not leave any stone unturned to take shots at President Obama, even if that stone happens to be engraved with the likeness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (or maybe especially so). Prof. Cornel West, of race-baiting and anti-semitism fame, just could not stop himself from penning an op-ed in the New York Times exploiting Dr. King's legacy to bash the President and to say that Dr. King weeps from his grave because of President Obama.

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.

Nice to see a so-called advocate for the poor just skip right over health care - the number one cause of bankruptcy and the least affordable for working and poor Americans. Nice to see that the President's expansion of SCHIP to an additional 4 million poor children doesn't even register with this elitist professor. Nice to see this advocate for the poor and the working class ignore the largest expansion of Medicaid ever through health reform. Nice to see this poor-man's-advocate wannabe not once think of the $11 billion expansion of community health centers - where the poor disproportionately obtain health care. Nice to see Cornel West, judge of all things pro-poor and pro-working class, whistle right past health reform that will result in the largest expansion of public responsibility and the first public subsidies for those who cannot afford it on their own to obtain health insurance.

A Dailykos front pager writes,

It would be irresponsible for responsible Democrats not to make their voices heard. It would be irresponsible for responsible Democrats not to be very clear about what they consider to be unacceptable outcomes. It would be irresponsible for responsible Democrats not to continue to define what it means to be responsible Democrats. It is never wrong for Democrats to stand up for what is right.

I agree but how far must a responsible Democrat go to be an irresponsible Democrat?

Would it be irresponsible for a responsible Democrats to uprate comments that say there is NO substantive difference between Obama and Bush or claim that the President is criminal or serves criminally selfish elites or embrace statement that claims the responsible Democrat'scontempt for Obama is stronger than it was for Bush or call for his impeachment or address President Obama as "that fucking piece of shit" or call him a "Constitutional Rapist" all in one comment?

Yes, I think it is irresponsible for irresponsible Democrats to literally say I am rooting for a Teabagger to win the White House or I am voting for a Republican or Green for President and still be considered a responsible Democrats. Moreover, 100 plus critics of the President uprate such comment and can be considered responsible Democrats to have an outlet to continue undermining our Democratic President.

Before I start the link share today, I know that many of us are watching the hurricane make landfall in the eastern United States. Let's keep the people there in our hearts, minds and prayers. The President is in the FEMA headquarters monitoring the hurricane and the response himself. Stay safe, Mr. President.

And now, here is the link share:

•  Let's first start with good news - W.E.E. See You has been reincarnated as Pragmatic Obots Unite! Yesterday, they covered the Fantastic Four - in the words of the Libyan people.
• Winning Progressive covers the Strategic Failure of the Left’s Persistent Attacks on President Obama.
•  Smartypants points out that the Obama administration previously held drills in case of a hurricane making landfall in New York City, just the situation we face today. Good government doesn't just happen.
• Chipsticks at The Obama Diary covers the story of a president who has lost the base so much that OFA's office openings are overrun with overflow crowds!
• Zander on Angry Black Lady Chronicles has a nice take on the Right's Obama derangement syndrome.
• BPI Campus covers World Water Week.

As usual, the rest is your open thread.

Women's right to vote turns 91 today. The women's suffrage movement is recognized as one of the earliest equality movements in this country, and the women who were part of that movement keep inspiring generations. From women's suffrage to establishing a woman's right to choose, from battling workplace discrimination to fighting domestic violence, women have made America the beacon of hope that it is. From Hillary Clinton's declaration that women's rights are human rights to Nancy Pelosi's assent to the Speaker of the House, American women have made equality not just a word but a cause.

And women have been at the forefront of every civil rights movement in this country. If Susan B. Anthony is to be remembered for blazing the trail for women's suffrage, who can forget Coretta Scott King and Rosa Park's gift to the African American civil rights movement, or Dolores Huerta's leadership of the United Farm Workers movement for immigrants' rights? The lesbian rights movement quite correctly can be called the mother of the larger movement for equality for all irrespective of sexual orientation or gender identity.

In the name of that tribute, here are a few moments that stand out and make us proud to be Americans and American women who we can be proud of every day:

The Obama Administration is moving forward to protect the rights of workers, especially the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. The NLRB has finalized a rule requiring employers to post a notice on both their physical bulletin-boards as well as any company intranet sites informing employees of their legal right to organize. The Department of Labor already requires such notices for federal contractors, and now the NLRB rule expands it to all employers under the National Labor Relations Act.

Of course, big business is very uncomfortable with workers being made aware of the rights they already have. Multinationals depend on keeping workers in the dark about their rights in order to exploit them and ultimately take away those rights.

The labor board originally proposed the regulations last November, and the proposal has faced widespread criticism from the business community, which has said the move was part of the board’s pro-labor tilt under President Obama.

When the board issued its original proposal, Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said: “These actions are consistent with a general ramp-up of enforcement against employers we are seeing across the board.”

WHAT? The National Labor Relations Board has a pro-labor tilt? Oh. My. God. Stop the presses! And how dare the Obama administration enforce labor laws on the employers? I mean it's not like the executive branch is charged with enforcement of our laws or anything like that. That a Chamber oligarch would even say this in public shows how of touch they are.

Union membership among American workers is at a dangerously low level: in the private sector, less than 7% of workers are unionized. Despite Americans' strong and overwhelming belief in workers' right to organize, this is still the case. Why? Two reasons: primarily, corporate wholesale purchasing of an entire political party (the Republican party). Secondarily, labor establishment and "leadership" like this:

The most powerful union official in the country offered reporters his harshest critique of President Obama to date Thursday, questioning Obama's policy and strategic decisions, and claiming he aligned himself with the Tea Party in the debt limit fight.

"This is a moment that working people and quite frankly history will judge President Obama on his presidency; will he commit all his energy and focus on bold solutions on the job crisis or will he continue to work with the Tea Party to offer cuts to middle class programs like Social Security all the while pretending the deficit is where our economic problems really lie," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

I would call Trumka uninformed, but I know that is not the case. The debt ceiling deal offered no changes on social security - none - either as part of the initial package or as part of the triggers. In fact, the President has never offered the Republicans or anyone else any cuts to basic Social Security benefits, and in fact, for the poorest retirees, proposed to increase their Social Security benefits, while guaranteeing a base benefit above poverty. By the way, the AFL-CIO supported the Clinton economic plan in 1993 that raised taxes on social security benefits (in other words, cut the dollar value of the benefit for some beneficiaries).

Investigate banks or help struggling homeowners? That might just be the unpalatable choice being set up by a proposed settlement that would have the major banks mired in the foreclosure debacle - Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo - pay about $20 billion in loan modifications for struggling homeowners and possibly counseling programs. The catch? From all news sources, the banks are asking for a release from liability - as broad as possible. While giving banks even partial immunity from criminal liability is nothing to be taken lightly (and nothing to be celebrated), the question of just what the homeowners get in a possible deal has been little discussed. Sure, we would all like it if the banks gave homeowners the help they needed and left themselves open to criminal probes. But just what is their incentive to do so?

The Left media has run with the theme of how teh evil Obama Administration is trying to "pressure" NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to accept the deal, and how heroic Schneiderman is for resisting them. To be sure, other state Attorneys General such as Beau Biden of Delaware, Kamala Harris of California (who is a strong backer of President Obama's, and whom I absolutely adore), and Martha Coakley of Massachusetts have all said they are interested in joining a probe on Wall Street's shady mortgage securitization practices. As their respective states' chief law enforcement officials, they should well be wanting to do exactly that. But I have seen the media narrative completely ignore what's in the actual proposed deal. That's important because ultimately this is a cost-benefit analysis, even if it sucks sometimes.

When we think of the civil right struggle, amongst many champions, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., comes as one of the greatest iconic figures who has paved the way for many people like me to flourish in a society with so much inequality and injustice. Dr. King has been nothing but a relentless champion in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world using nonviolent methods to teach his vision that the world can in fact be an anti-racist society by ending racial segregation and racial discrimination.

The White House today released some business regulatory revisions that are the fruition of a regulatory review the President ordered in January. When the President first issued the order back in January, I cautioned the progressive community to actually look at the order and understand that the President, like so many of his other approaches, was going at this problem with a scalpel rather than a hatchet. I said then that the far Right view that any regulation at all is bad for the economy and the ideologue Left view that all regulations are good for the public are equally dumb. Those views may help preserve our current state of political bickering, but they serve to do little else.

I call these things purposeless political fighting. The ideologues on both sides are so concerned about proving their ideology correct that they forget what the goal of that ideology is. The goal - the only goal - of regulations of business is to protect citizens, consumers, workers, and public resources such as land, air and water. Where regulations or enforcements are lacking in meeting this essential purpose, regulations and/or enforcement must be strengthened - just as the President did with health insurance regulations through health reform, the broadest and most significant financial industry regulations since the 1930s through Wall Street reform, student loan reform, credit card reform, and the nation's most significant food safety regulatory overhaul since the 1930s. But on the other hand, where regulations fail to follow this qualitative test of providing protection and serve primarily to increase paperwork, eliminating and reforming those regulations is an entirely progressive thing to do.

In 1967, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a hugely successful political organization - with chapters in even some of the most conservative universities and a key role in a multi-racial diverse movement against the Vietnam war that united pacifists and veterans, labor unions, civil rights organizers, students, and teachers. Within two years the SDS had ceased to exist except as an often violent debate among tiny, widely hated, Marxist factions. Critics at the time said these groups had adopted the political program of Fight the People because of their attacks on everyone who didn't sign up to their "revolutionary" ideology - almost everyone in America. Bill Ayers (yes that same one) told a meeting of the Weather Underground (WU) faction in 1969 that Fight the People was a good strategy, that polarization would clarify the ideological differences between real revolutionaries and unprincipled compromising middle class reformers. If this sounds familiar, it's because the multi-racial diverse movement that elected a Democratic House in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2008 is now under siege by our own era's purists and jargon theorists.

It was only about six months ago when the Qadaffi's regime threatened the many innocent people of Libya not to mention the killing of many peaceful demonstrators indiscriminately in a bloodbath that cost many lives until the international community came together to protect the Libyan people.

This is what President Obama said on March 28, 2011:

To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

(full transcript here):

When President Obama made the decision to support United Nations Security Council and NATO resolutions to intervene in Libya through air support for the Libyan rebels who have risen up against their dictator Mommar Gaddafi, the critics came from both (far) ends of the political spectrum. The nutty Right alternately blamed the President for being too involved and not being involved enough, going in too late and not waiting for a Congressional authorization (i.e. not early enough). The unhinged Professional Left (or as the term has now been coined by TPV, Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere) was ready to impeach the President for doing something imperatively moral and unquestionably legal.

But as the rebels took control of most of the Libyan capital of Tripoli over the weekend, and Gaddafi has gone AWOL, and President Obama pronounced that Gaddafi's rule is at an end, the President's strategy has proven to be the exactly correct one. The President understood that in the movements to democracy in the Middle East, change cannot - and should not - be imposed by outside forces, but the peoples of those countries must themselves forge a path to liberty. But that did not mean that the rest of the world had to sit there and watch the violent suppression of democratic movements. So President Obama called the international community to action, and they acted in unison.

Thank You Mr. President for Being Who You Are!

This diary is inspired by a comment I read referencing an article from a 2008 article at the Onion:

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind.

I always say things happen for a reason. Maybe it is because I believe in optimism and reenforcing the positive.

I am just glad the worst job that was vacated on Jan 20, 2009, was given to a thrilling and inspiring new president -- young, black, handsome, Harvard graduate community organizer, charismatic, inspiring, someone who seeks to unite than divide, a political with intellectual gifts that surpasses any standing politician in Washington, a man who is extraordinarily calm and methodical who deliberates with grace and humility. Yes, all of that and more is Barack Hussein Obama.

My focus in politics is electoral, not ideological or issue related. The time I devote to politics focuses on elections, voter education and messaging. Since President Obama first started campaigning for the office, volumes have been written about the people who oppose him from the Left. What is rarely explored is what chance, if any, is there to ‘change the minds’ of his Left Wing non-supporters about anything concerning politics. What are the best ways to cope with these people in an electoral environment? I’ve developed a rating system for the categories of non-supporters that I have thus far identified. With this rating system I hope to help people, either online or in the real world, interact with or at the very least emotionally cope with different levels of opposition.

The Narcissist

In brief the Narcissist suffers from a pathological need for attention; hypersensitivity to insults and criticism; an over-inflated sense of self-importance; unrealistic expectations and a preoccupation with success and power. It’s been fairly well established which particular ‘activists’ who claim the Far Left as their territory fit this description. These people live for the fight. Everything they do and say with regard to politics is about opposition. The more driven among them have developed strategies for making money from this opposition. These people have no allegiance to either Party. Their allegiance is to themselves and feeding the never-ending necessity for attention and staying relevant. They go wherever there is an opening. Their belief system is composed entirely of being against whatever “The President” believes in.

Hello everybody, what an exciting week this has been for TPV! We have gotten attention from the Huffington Post, been a target of Paul Krugman's whining, gotten actually fair coverage in ABC News, and scored a place in the hate-list of the Left's Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann. Yay.

But surely as anything, it's time for our look at the fantastic work that our partners in the other blogs of the pragmatic progressive blogosphere have been doing.

• Smartypants exposes the Republican plan to raise taxes - on the poor and the elderly.
• Eclectablog notes that suddenly, Michigan GOP is very concerned about "identity theft" from signature gatherers, since the signatures are being gathered to repeal the state's financial martial law.
• In news to care, ABL over at Angry Black Lady Chronicles notes that President Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act Provides Free Meals for All Detroit School
• Norbrook has a little look at Her Majesty Jane Hamsher's money-games and how she is running out of sheep.
• PBomb at W.E.E. See You presents the military history of African Americans.
• Under the category of Secessionist for President, Ametia at 3ChicsPolitico covers Rick Perry.

That's all for now. This is your open thread.

In case you are wondering the where about of our President, he is taking his darn earned vacation with his family on Martha's Vineyard where he plans to spend eight more days with his family.

I understand watching the President's pictures for whatever the reasons may be are not welcomed in some progressive blogs but I can't let these images pass you by because pictures do speak as good as words and my take is regardless of all the criticism this President has faced, Americans appreciate the man and his family.

Considering the fact that the President's Poll numbers are in the low 40s, with all the daily beating from the Right and the Left, in the most tumultuous time in the nation's capital where Government shut down was hanging by the President's neck, with all the trash talking about how Obama has sold our country to the Chinese and how he caved on the debt ceiling, I am surprised to see the President approval rating is where it is today. And guess what, higher support among moderates and high approval from liberals have kept him afloat with 72% liberal approving his performance, 30 points higher than his overall approval rating of 42%.

Last year, one of the no-brainers that the Republicans held up in the Senate for the longest amount of time was the Small Business Jobs Act that provided funding for community banks that increase their lending to small businesses within their communities. This is one of the smartest jobs initiatives imaginable: the money goes to help small community banks and credit unions, not big financial institutions, and the loans go to small businesses that hire, do business, and live in the communities.

News came this week that the Department of Treasury has so far given out $1 billion of the Small Business Loan Fund (SBLF) set up in the law to 80 community banks. And this is just the beginning. More funding announcements are coming in the weeks ahead on a "rolling basis," says Treasury. Here are the 37 small banks and communities that got the funds in the latest rollout:


View SBLF Funding Rollout 8-17-2011 in a larger map

This whole thing got started when our own Deaniac83 here at thepeoplesview.net, criticized Paul Krugman's immature off the cuff analysis of the debt ceiling deal in the article titled, Paul Krugman is a Political Rookie. Or How Barack Obama Left John Boehner Holding the Teabag, Again. , where Deaniac83 pretty much made the Nobel prize winning Economist regret he wrote the article The President Surrenders a day before all the facts were out.

An OFA director from New Mexico State, Ray Sandoval read the article by Deaniac83 and sent an email message to supporters encouraging everyone to take 5 minutes to read it and specifically wrote:

"I know many of you have raised frustrations, but please, I implore you, please take 5 minutes and read the article below. It does a great job of explaining the Debt Ceiling deal,"

Huffington Post as usual reports the sharing of a legitimate and excellent analysis with a sensationalized article titled:

Obama Campaign Staffer Sends Out Email Bashing Paul Krugman And The 'Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere'

The Queen of the Firebaggers Jane Hamsher at FDL reports with another how dare you criticize and try to correct Paul Krugman's ignorance rant titled:

OFA Director Attacks “Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere,” says “Paul Krugman is a Political Rookie”

So Keith Olbermann has a sad. Aww. Why? Because an Obama staffer happened to send along my article on the merits of the debt limit deal to some supporters. Or more aptly because I took on the Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere's whining and moaning. Of course, neither Keith nor any of his worshipers bothered to actually read the article and consider the merits that the President came out the winner in the deal, but I assume that is because they have no counterarguments against those points. Even the Professional Left's Patron Saint Paul Krugman wouldn't touch the merits of my argument, instead choosing (just like Keith) to have a proxy fight with the Obama campaign about what I wrote. One has to wonder if it's because Keith doesn't want his viewers to know that he actually has no comebacks on the merits against an article written by some kid in an ity bity blog.

Anyway, here is the video:

Paul Krugman today came up with an old, time-tested, tired tactic to go after President Obama: accuse the President of hippie punching. Now I am not quite sure if Paul Krugman is upset because he thinks the President thinks he's a hippie, or because he thinks he's being punched, but of course, Krugman's quick piece is about the poutrage generated yesterday by an Obama staffer sending what seems the article from TPV on the debt ceiling that seems to have become a proverbial pain in the behind of the Professional Left.

Nonetheless, here is what I found rather interesting from Krugman's post:

I would say this: on one side you have the GOP, which responds to completely crazed Tea Party demands by doing all it can to assure the hard right that it’s on its side. On the other, you have the Democratic establishment or at least part thereof, which responds to complaints from its own base that it’s going too easy on the crazies by lashing out at the base, with a bit of bearded-professor bashing on the side.

Other than the provable fact that the self-described bearded-professor and the screeching Left being nowhere close to "the base," I was delighted to see Prof. Krugman prove my point about him being a political rookie by openly admitting that he is jealous of the Tea Party. Besides, why shouldn't you want to respond to complaints that you're going too easy on the Right ideologue crazies by worshiping at the feet of the Left ideologues instead?

Having won the battle to establish the validity and necessity of our social safety net already, President Obama has set out to do something extremely important in his rural bus tour for his jobs agenda: reframing the conversation on spending and the budget with a progressive vision. The message is substantially the same wherever he has gone, but let me quote from his stop in Cannon Falls, Minnesota:

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton -- the last time we had a balanced budget -- all of them understood that you have to take a balanced approach to solving our deficit and debt problems, the same way a family would.  If you knew that you had to cut down on your budget, you wouldn’t stop funding the college fund for your kid. You wouldn’t say, sorry, Johnny, you know, things are tight so we’re going to keep on taking our annual vacation and I’m going to buy a new car next year, but you’re not going to college.  That’s not how you balance your budget.

You get it when you listen to it. It makes sense. I have no doubt that this essential reframing will be missed in the media as well as the "mainstream lefty" blogosphere. But this is the essence of framing the debate if progressives want to sell the country on our vision of America: a nation that invests in our shared future, and that we do not sacrifice that shared future so that the extremely well-to-do can get even more comfortable. In fact, responsible families would do the opposite. They would cut out the lavish vacations so that their children's college funds can be protected. Likewise, a responsible federal budget must protect investments into our future by asking those who have done the best to contribute their fair share.

I have to thank rootless for noticing and posting here about the Huffington Post article on the OFA state director of New Mexico sending out my article on the debt ceiling deal. The author of the Huffpo article, Amanda Terkel, choose a curious headline for her piece: "Obama Campaign Staffer Sends Out Email Bashing Paul Krugman And The 'Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere' " - which is marginally better than its previous version, in which she accused me of calling Krugman a Firebagger. I pointed out the fact that I have never directly called Krugman a Firebagger in an email to Terkel, and she, to her credit, clarified the lede.

But I digress. Terkel's choice of the headline is curious, and not the least because my article on the debt ceiling, titled Paul Krugman is a Political Rookie. Or How Barack Obama Left John Boehner Holding the Teabag, Again., is actually primarily about the political (and policy) merits of the debt ceiling deal. And I expect that is the reason OFA's New Mexico state director Ray Sandoval sent it to supporters. But of course, you can always expect the Huffington Post - a corporate media outlet sold for a cool $315 million in cash and at the cost of 200 American jobs lost - to pick up on the poutrage and not concentrate on the merits. No surprises there.

Incidentally, nor is the article, contrary to Terkel's claims, about "bashing" Paul Krugman. Here's what I said:

Paul Krugman is a political rookie. At least he is when compared to President Obama.

That's a fact. Paul Krugman is a political rookie, compared to President Obama. I don't think even Paul Krugman would dispute that fact. If anyone would like to claim that Paul Krugman is better experienced and more knowledgeable about how things work in the political world than the first African American president of the United States, they are welcome to make their case, but I don't think they'd get anywhere.

The hyperventilation may cause Texas' drought to break

WASHINGTON -- The Obama campaign's point person in New Mexico recently sent an email to supporters defending the president's position on the debt deal and bashing the Nobel Prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and the "Firebagger Lefty blogosphere."

On the evening of Aug. 1, just after Congress passed legislation to raise the debt ceiling, Obama for America (OFA) New Mexico State Director Ray Sandoval sent an email to supporters with the subject line, "Please take 5 minutes to read this, Please."

"I know many of you have raised frustrations, but please, I implore you, please take 5 minutes and read the article below. It does a great job of explaining the Debt Ceiling deal," Sandoval wrote in bold text.

The rest of the email was a blog post taken from a blog called "The People's View," run by Spandan Chakrabarti.

Jane Hamsher has a post up complaining already. Comments in it are amazing. No links from me though. What People's View, WeeSeeYou, and other sites are doing is breaking the PL monopoly on "speaking for" us - the base, the Obama supporters, the Democrats. And that's something they find enraging.

UPDATE! The reaction on FDL and on Twitter is clear: the disappointed left is deeply upset that someone not only challenges them, but challenges their self-appointed roles as spokesmen for "the base", the Democrats, and the principles of the Democratic Party.

UPDATE II: The Washington Post weighs in

"I at once felt myself in the present of an honest man — on whom I could love, honor and trust without reserve or doubt." ~Frederick Douglass after his first meeting with President Abraham Lincoln

A front page article from Sunday at Dailykos, Frederick Douglass: The activist who would not 'grow up', highlighted the greatness of Frederick Douglass as an effective model for activism. However, Douglass was also characterized as someone who had refused to "grow up" to advance his calling to abolish slavery in the process the article was rebutting a commentary made by Fareed Zakaria who "berated liberals for their criticisms of President Barack Obama" by urging them to "grow up". In my opinion, the commentary made by Fareed Zakaria has been used to paint a false equivalency of today's activists by comparing them with the likes of Frederick Douglass which in my opinion undermines the legacy of Frederick Douglass.
In my view, the majority of today's activists on the blogsphere are not anything like Frederick Douglass for a reason I will discuss further below. However, to give the "grow up" liberals remark made by Zakaria's a context, watch the first 4 minute of his Sunday program with partial transcript provided (bold emphasis mine):

With political melodramas and tragic ironies taking to new heights this week with the Secessionist Mr. Rick Perry accusing the chairman of the Federal Reserve of committing treason, and just as President Obama is in the middle of this three day rural jobs tour, news comes to show that in fact, despite a Wall Street, Right Wing, and Professional Left freakout last week, the economy is actually recovering, not headed for another recession.

As the crisis in Japan began to ease, American industrial output surged in July, driven by motor vehicle productions, gaining at nearly double the rate expected. Along with that, the decline in building new housing actually eased last month:

Industrial output increased 0.9 percent, the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday, after a 0.4 percent gain in June -- nearly double economists' expectations for a 0.5 percent rise.

Manufacturing rose 0.6 percent as motor vehicles production surged 5.2 percent after falling 0.9 percent in June. Excluding autos, manufacturing rose 0.3 percent, pointing to resilience in the sector that has been the economy's main pillar of support, even when regional factory activity has been cooling. [...]

Also supporting the improving tone for the economy, housing starts slipped a less-than-expected 1.5 percent in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 604,000 units as builders broke ground on new multifamily units to meet demand for rental apartments, Commerce Department data showed.

Last week, while a court of appeals was busy ruling that Congress did not have the power to tax or to regulate interstate commerce (or more precisely, to tax or regulate a commercial behavior - like not buying health insurance when one can afford it), the pace of implementing health reform did not slow down. The departments of HHS and Treasury announced awards and proposed rules to make the transition to and operation of the exchanges coming in 2014 smoother. Last week's implementation involved the following:

• HHS announced $185 million in grants to 13 states and DC (bringing the total number to 16 states and DC) to start building the exchanges.
• HHS also announced rules to coordinate Medicaid and SCHIP through the exchanges so that eligible individuals and families do not spend time in redundant paperwork.
• Department of Treasury announced how the tax credits for purchasing health insurance would work.

Kathleen Sebelius has turned out to be a tremendous Secretary of Health and Human Services. She is truly striving for the exchanges to be a one-stop-shop for people who have to get health insurance outside of an employer plan as well as small businesses. Government streamlining is often poo-pooed by progressive intelligentsia, but they save tax payer money as much as they save headaches for citizens.

Thought Mitt Romney is just a moderate Republican governor? Think again. Mitt Romney is one of three - the extreme of even the extreme GOP field of presidential candidates - Republican candidates to sign a national anti-gay hate group's pledge to not only oppose marriage equality but to conduct a witch hunt of LGBT activists who challenge anti-LGBT propaganda and demonstrators. Here's the pertinent part of the hate pledge from the hate group "National Organization for Marriage (NOM)":

I, [candidate name], pledge to the American people that if elected President, I will:

[...] establish a presidential commission on religious liberty to investigate and document reports of Americans who have been harassed or threatened for exercising key civil rights to organize, to speak, to donate or to vote for marriage and to propose new protections, if needed.

Pay attention to the "donate" part - it will come in handy. As usual, hate groups are made up of your run-of-the-mill schoolyard bullies. They think that they have the right to go in and get in people's faces and preach hate, but God forbid anyone gets in their faces and challenge them. That's harassment. Laws already exist to deal with real harassment and violence. What hate groups like NOM want is for LGBT activists who confront them to be intimidated and put on some sort of a list. The only conceivable purpose of this part of the pledge is not to protect the free speech of the hate groups (and yes, even hate groups have free speech) but to chill and silence the speech of those who have the courage to confront them.

The backdrop for this post is the University of Iowa Libraries' award-winning Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century exhibit, also featured in part at the Library of Congress. A version of this post is crossposted to Oh Crap, I Have A Crush on Sarah Palin.

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Who knows what Sarah Palin was really thinking, rolling her party-crashing act into Ames, Iowa on Friday. "I was quite sure that [soon-to-be-favorite Rick Perry -OC] wasn’t going to run because he was adamant until I think about four months ago that he wasn’t going to run, so it surprised me," she said, clutching her pearls in the rarest of rare forms. Needs more drama coach. Nobody believes that any more than these guys believed Harold Hill:

And when the man dances, certainly boys, What else? The piper pays him!

Well yesterday, the piper paid Palin's friend Michele Bachmann with a 29% win, in the infamous straw poll that has thrown the GOP's last five election seasons into full swing.

Here are two videos of Wall Street Journal interviews. The first video is with Barton Biggs, who manages a giant hedge fund and who was the super influential "chief global strategist" for Morgan Stanley for decades. Biggs suggestions for fixing the economy:

1. Increase taxes on rich people and on tax-avoiding big companies like GE in order to increase government revenue, reduce the deficit, and to reduce the cost of living of the vast majority of the population whose wages have stagnated.
2. Make a massive public investment in roads, trains, bridges, and ports so we can catch up with Asia and our economy does not become a permanent backwater - and also to put people back to work.

As Biggs points out, the government can borrow money right now for nearly nothing - and it should take advantage of that. I'd prefer the government to avoid borrowing and just have the Federal Reserve sign over a trillion dollars to the government to fund the investment, but it's not a big deal either way. These ideas are not new, they are not even mildly radical - Biggs is an enormously wealthy Hedge Fund manager, not some left wing revolutionary. The objections to these ideas are coming from Republican politicians who hope to gain political power by making the economy (and the President) fail and from nutcase ideologists who don't care about facts. The second video is from Nouriel Roubini who correctly forecast the Bush Super-Sized Recession. Roubini makes a point that is often forgotten by ideologists of both left and right- the current recession and deficit was caused by the policies of George W. Bush's administration.

It never stops, does it? It seems that the mouthpieces and opinion writers of our national media have a fetish: beating up on President Obama. One example this weekend is Matt Miller - a self-proclaimed representative of the "center-left" tells us why the center-left has supposedly had it with President Obama. Evidently the reason is that they are not getting to write the President's campaign script or dictate his governing methods. Matt Miller, noted supporter of killing public schools, err, I mean of school-vouchers, had this to say:

It helps to think like Mitch McConnell... for all the attention it will consume, there is no way the super-committee can deliver... Once Obama sees that this struggle for power ensures no substantive progress in the next 15 months, he has two alternatives. He can campaign small — via Mediscare and fresh taxes on millionaires and billionaires, while demonizing the GOP candidate as “worse” — and hope to squeak across the finish line.

Or he can go big — with mega-plans for jobs, education, infrastructure, and research and development, while calling out GOP nihilism as the obstacle. [...]

See, Mr. Armchair Campaign Operative over here is going to give an electoral lecture to the man who defeated two political machines and inherent, institutional political racism to become the first black President of the United States. Also, he is going to presuppose the success or failure of the Congressional committee which has just been formed. Because, you know, Mitch McConnell.

On Saturday, the President chose to focus on jobs like a laser beam in his weekly address to the American people (hey, people constantly complaining about why the President won't use the bully pulpit, pay attention):



There is little doubt that the economy is weaker than anyone would like it to be, and that the recovery, adversely affected by a crisis in Europe, revolutions in the Middle East, an enormous earthquake in Japan, and GOP anti-growth policies in Congress and in the states, seemed to grind to a near-halt by the end of the second quarter of this year. Still, bits and pieces of good economic news keep on trickling, such as the upturn in the market at the end of last week driven by data showing that new unemployment claims were down by 7,000 in the last week to 395,000, and are now below 400,000 for the first time in four months. Retail sales also continued their strong growth in July.

David Atkins writes to defend the progressive campaign against President Obama. Apparently those of us who consider the progressives harmful not only use "straw man arguments" but we are defenders of "neoliberal" politics, want to "compromise at all costs" and have sacrificed any "core principles" we may have ever had. But that's not the worst thing about us:

Ultimately, the argument made by the Administration's most active defenders against progressives is a version of the Dolchstoßlegende: progressives are stabbing Dems in the back by not being supportive enough of the President, and would be much more useful if they got in line and clapped louder

Marvel at that Gothic ß in a phrase meaning "stab in the back legend" - a story that the Nazis and other right wingers used to blame the German loss in World War One on leftists and Jews and other riff-raff. It's not that we disagree with Atkins criticisms of the President, it's that we are unprincipled neoliberals embracing a Nazi myth to try to enforce mindless clapping for compromise at any cost. I feel like I need to practice an evil laugh and kick a puppy or something. Those progressives are so brave to stand up to such an assault!

This week's pragprog link share is mixed with a couple of important news stories first:

• The famine in East Africa is taking an even direr form, and hundreds of thousands of kids could die. Jill Biden visited there to draw international attention. If you can, please help.
• Goodwin Liu, a brilliant liberal legal scholar at UC Berkeley whose confirmation to the federal bench was blocked by Republicans, is now headed to the nation's most consequential state court: the California Supreme Court. Bravo to Gov. Brown for the nomination.

And here is the pragprog sweep:

• Miranda from W.E.E. See You picked up on a comment from the Washington Monthly that is eye-opening about the struggle of black public servants in American politics and how many white progressives miss that mark.
• Smartypants writes about the race towards extremism for the GOP in her coverage of the Republican candidates debate from Thursday night.
• Michael Grunwald of Times magazine blog Swampland performs an outstanding takedown of the whiny Professional Left and gives us a look at what President Obama has done on the environment.
• Huff-n-puff-Post commenters enjoy free rein to advocate violence, points out The Fierce Advocate.
• Chipsticks at The Obama Diary brings you the highlights from Steve Benen's excellent post on why Friday's 11th circuit court ruling on the individual mandate is screwed up.
• Ametia at 3ChicsPolitico comes upon a truism: Michele Bachman really is crazy.

President Obama was back in Holland, Michigan again yesterday, just over a year from his last visit there. In July 2010, he visited the groundbreaking of the LG Chem/Compact Power Inc. vehicle battery plant, an event where he called out Pete Houkstra who attended the event despite having voted against the stimulus legislation that made the federal grant to LG Chem/Compact Power Inc. possible.

This visit was to the brand new Johnson Controls plant, another vehicle battery-making facility that received federal funding. This plant was built thanks to a $299.2 million federal stimulus grant and $168 million in state grants.

Driving up to the plant, there was a cluster of what appeared to be protesters. Turns out they were supporters of the president.



After the jump are lots of great photos from the event along with some of the president's comments.

Amidst the zigzag of the stock market and the picking of the members of the Congressional supercommittee to reduce the deficit, I did not want us to miss something that is equally critical: this week is National Health Center Week. On Tuesday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a $28.8 million grant under health reform to establish new community health center access points that will serve an additional 286,000 patients in 67 communities. These grants are not to build new CHC's but to build new access points of existing community centers that already serve underprivileged communities. A full list of awardees is available here.

The grants will eventually be expanded to 350 new centers and $250 million. The National Association of Community Health Centers pointed out in their press release about these grants that CHCs do not simply provide access to quality health care, but also to jobs for hard-hit communities:

"We deeply appreciate today’s announcement by HHS, which comes as we celebrate National Health Center Week,” said Tom Van Coverden, President and CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC)... [T]his announcement does mean that we can continue to bring quality, cost-saving primary care services to more communities that are ready and waiting to serve patients... Additionally, health centers bring valuable jobs to hard-hit communities across the country. Investing in health centers is a good prescription for both our nation’s health and the economy.”

Markos Moulitsas, the owner of the Dailykos website, took a brave stance against Pat Buchanan's racism a few days ago in his article on the front page of dailykos titled, Pat Buchanan jots down racist screeds in book, which pretty much made the case about how Buchanan, one of the most racists TeeVee personalities is able to stay on the airwaves while spewing so many racist bile and yet how MSNBC's president Phil Griffin has given Pat Buchanan a medium to parade his racism.

Markos succinctly laid it all out about Pat Buchanan's racists history in a paragraph and accurately accused the MSNBC's president Phil Griffin for being an enabler by letting hate and racist rhetoric be amplified using MSNBC's news outlet.

Apparently, the soapbox MSNBC president Phil Griffin gives Pat Buchanan on his network wasn't enough for the KKK's most "out" member. The KKK's most "out" member has used that platform to relentlessly stand up for poor oppressed white America. You can see his handiwork here, here and here. Given that he's also (literally) a Hitler apologist and Anders Behring Breivik apologist, and you've got yourself a bona fide white supremacist parading around a mainstream news outlet.

All of this is out in the open. And while MSNBC has suspended hosts for far less (and banned me from the network for making Joe Scarborough cry on Twitter), Buchanan has remained untouchable. There can only be one conclusion—Phil Griffin thinks there's a place for Buchanan's abhorrent white supremacist views.

I have to agree. Anyone who looks the other way and enables Pat Buchanan to poison the airwaves with racist bile is an accessory to the wrong doing and MSNBC's president Phil Griffin, whether it be consciously or unconsciously, is an enabler of racist pandering.

I know, I know. The big shrill-shreeking story on the upcoming "supercommittee" that will work on additional deficit reduction is right now, "ZOMG, Republicans are appointing anti-tax hardliners, and Democrats are appointing Max Baucus - Noooo!" In fact, Cenk Uygur's "The Young Turks" twitter feed claimed yesterday that "the fix was in" since Max Baucus was appointed by Harry Reid. But the entire Republican Congressional delegations are made up of anti-tax hardliners. The goal here is not to get the Republicans not to pick hardliners but to get them to break that hard line.

They may already be starting to do that. The New York Times' Jennifer Steinhauer reported on an interesting townhall meeting by four conservative House Republicans in Virginia:

In a town-hall-style meeting in Virginia on Tuesday night with four Republican House members ... audience members asked what, if any, revenues the representatives would accept...

Of the four, three gave specific examples that they could possibly acquiesce to. Mr. Rigell – who had invited the other three House members to the meeting because it focused on health care and they are medical doctors – said he thought that at least a few forms of tax subsidies provided to oil companies should be on the table...

Mr. Gingrey said he found the question “difficult” and suggested that he had been struggling with the answer himself. Raising the rates on those earning $250,000 a year – a category of beneficiaries under the Bush tax cuts that some Democrats have suggested be taxed more – was a no-go for him, but for those earning over $700,000, he said, “I’m not really sure.”

Cenk Uygur had a piece today on Daily Kos today that personifies the Professional Left's romance with conflict. Conflict not for any particular outcome but conflict for conflict's sake. Cenk opens with such a hubris:

Let me give you a small example nobody talks about, but I think is telling. After Gabby Giffords was shot, his administration indicated that he would do a major speech on gun control ... later. I told my audience that was not going to happen. Why? Because I know Obama. He hates, hates, hates conflict. And he would never take on an issue where he did not have overwhelming support. It's not in his nature.

Cenk is a either ignorant or he's flat making crap up. The administration never indicated that the President would do a major speech on gun control - that was made up by the media. In fact, most sites that seem to have reported that there was going to be "a major speech" are right wing blogs. What the administration said, specifically, what then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, is as follows:

As for guns, Gibbs said: "I wouldn't rule out that at some point the president talks about the issues surrounding gun violence. I don't have a timetable or obviously what he would say, but I wouldn't rule that out in the future."

See, what happened is that Gibbs said this in the aftermath of the President's State of the Union speech and complaints that he didn't mention gun control in the speech, ergo, conflict-lovers like Cenk translated that into a promise of a major speech on gun control. Which, of course, the administration never said the President would do. The administration is not filled with loose-lips like Cenk - they would never commit the President to any speech without knowing the date, time and place in advance.

Yesterday, Princeton University history professor Julian Zelizer wrote a piece on CNN asking, "where are the Democrat's ideas?" To which, my question back is, have you been living under a rock the past three years, Professor Zelizer? In an opening paragraph contradicting his own rhetorical question, Zelizer says:

When Sen. Ted Kennedy died in August 2009, many Democrats wondered who would replace him as the voice of modern liberalism. With a Democratic president who was then fighting for an ambitious health care program, many felt Barack Obama would be that voice.

Barack Obama is that voice. The good professor would know so if he had bothered to check. Not only has Barack Obama gotten that ambitious health care program passed, he's got some more Democratic and progressive ideas passed into law. How this history professor just completely leaps past recent history is beyond me, but I am compelled to remind him that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress also:

• Passed the most far-reaching Wall Street reform since the 1930s; created the first ever independent agency to protect consumers from financial industry excesses.
• Codified women's pay equity in the form of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
• Passed student loan reform to cut out the middle man (banks) and use the savings to expand loans.
• Provided the largest increase ever in Pell Grants for students.
• Legislatively repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
• Made the largest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower and the interstate highways.
• Provided real tax relief to the working poor in the form of a payroll tax cut.
• Extended unemployment benefits to 99 weeks to cope with the extraordinarily difficult economic times.

Well, this ought go be a big fat middle finger in the face of the anti-government Teabaggers who were celebrating Standard and Poor's downgrade of the United States. I am not sure the agency had this in mind when they downgraded the credit-worthiness of the United States - that is, the value of US Treasury bonds. But in the middle of the stock market jumping off a Tea Party cliff today, the much less-attended to news is this: upon hearing the news that the US government bonds were downgraded, investors opted to sell their private stocks and move to... yup, government bonds! NPR's Jacob Goldstein noted the irony:

Stocks were down this morning, and the interest rate on Treasury bonds fell.

In other words, bond investors' first reaction after SP's downgrade of U.S. government debt was to be even more eager to lend money to the U.S. government.

Sure enough, Bloomberg confirms.

It is said that Republican strategy was, once they got control of the House of Representatives, to make the Country ungovernable for Democrats, to create chaos as a means to grab power. There are those who say they have succeeded in doing just that. To even consider that might be true seems defeatist to me. I can’t find any evidence of any real successful power grab by the Republicans outside of Congress. Quite the opposite seems to be happening, not only on a National scale, but on the International stage as well. And the Country has most definitely NOT become ungovernable. I believe this because there is more to governance than legislation and appropriation. To me only a small part of governing actually takes place in the Legislature, which is probably a good thing since they’re so rarely in session.

For instance, look at the most recent visible example of the work of governing that was accomplished outside the purview of Congress: the breakthrough agreement between the Administration and the American automakers to raise the fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 mpg by the year 2025. In 2007 Congress enthusiastically passed a Bill raising the fuel efficiency standards to 35 mpg by 2020, the first such increase in 30 years and it was signed by President Bush. This new agreement between the Obama Administration and the automakers raises that standard by almost 20 additional miles per gallon! The agreement states that the standard can be re-visited later, but that’s not unreasonable given the amount of technological advances required to achieve the goal. It takes someone with more imagination than me to dream up a way our current Congress could have accomplished anything even approaching that significant an improvement. I doubt a new mileage standard could have even made it out of committee. And yet here we are with a newly minted benchmark for the future.

Standard and Poor's downgraded America's long term credit rating on Friday to AA+ with a negative outlook on Friday. Let's be clear about something: it was a bone-headed move, economically unsound, and I believe ultimately more damaging to the credibility of the S&P than to the borrowing costs of the US government. Yes, there was a glaring $2 trillion error in S&P's initial calculations. According to the Department of Treasury, the mistaken calculations were given a great deal of weight in the downgrade until at the pointing of the Department, S&P corrected their calculations, but decided to proceed with the downgrade anyway. So take it with a grain of salt.

Take it with another grain of salt, given that this is the same ratings agency that told us that loan-shark-forced subprime mortgage backed securities were "AAA" investments. But within their off-the-mark assessment, they did get a couple of things right: first, the GOP's economic terrorism, and second, the need for revenue. The best explanation I have heard so far was from Jared Bernstein, VP Biden's former economic adviser and a former member of the President's economic team. Bernstein appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show on Friday night. Please watch:

-- A version of this post is crossposted to Oh Crap, I Have A Crush on Sarah Palin --


"Don't Tom for Mr. Charlie"
-- Civil Rights era saying
What comes after tokenism?

These days, I've been discussing a trend I've noticed, not only on the states rights Christian-shariah right but the crankodoodle left, as well. Beyond political pandering and 1960s-2000s tokenism, it concerns the use of Black spokesmodels as morality chips to advance regressive politics or views that tug at the heartstrings to evince a particular political result. Neither pandering nor tokenism are anything new. But in the age of The First Black President®, the trend is one to watch, because it's not going away.

It's that time of the week again - time to take a look at what our partners in crime throughout the pragmatic progressive blogosphere have been up to. It's been an exciting week politically - with the debt limit drama, the ensuing stock market drama, and now the S&P credit downgrade (I'm still working on a piece on this). But we can't let slip the fact that big recall elections are coming up in Wisconsin, and they need our help!

Here goes the linky goodness:

• Allan over at Angry Black Lady Chronicles has a rundown on the prep for the recall elections in Wisconsin, the GOP dirty tricks and how you can get involved and help show the Teahadists the door.
• Our very own Eclectablog stresses on his blog that the effort to recall Michigan's GOP Teahadist governor Rick Snyder is still on. Read the details there and lend a hand if you can.
• The last week has been an exciting one here on the debt limit compromise as you guys sent this blog viral, but don't miss Leanne's coverage at Blue Wave News on the White House countering media spin on the debt deal.
• The Mep Report covered the courage of Gabby Giffords and the competence of President Obama, and asked for a commitment from all of us.
• The Reid Report broke it down about the Glenn Greenwalds of the world, exposing him/them for their Paulite, Naderite dreams. Granted this article is from April but everyone needs to read this: Re-rise of the Naderites: Glenn Greenwald’s third party dreamin’.
• The Fierce Advocate has launched a new feature: The N Word Watch, in honor of Pat Buchanan.

So that's that. As usual, the floor is yours, as is this open thread.

Last month, the Professional Left took aim at the President for the dismal jobs numbers in June, and just yesterday, Paul Krugman, on the occasion of the stock market plunge, declared in the New York Times, "we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery," while throwing in a gratuitous jab at the President for not podium pounding "Truman-style." But last month, I noted that jobs are the lagging indicator in an economic recovery - especially in one that is recovering from the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. I also noted a few factors in favor of future job creation in June: 85% of retailers reported better than expected gains in sales (not hard to understand that when sales rise, businesses hire), consumer credit was up, US jobs index was the highest since immediately before the economic, and small business borrowing was at its highest in June since 2008.

I also pointed out that those factors caused economists at top financial institutions expected unemployment to fall throughout this year and next. And what happened in July? Despite big worries in the market, despite the Republicans holding the economy hostage, despite all of that, the job market sprinted at a faster pace than estimates:

Employers added 117,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, compared with a revised 46,000 in June and better than the 85,000 net new jobs that forecasters had expected. The unemployment rate ticked down to 9.1 percent, from 9.2 percent in June.

The private sector did even better, adding 154,000 positions, but governments--particularly at the state and local level--slashed so many jobs as to reduce overall job growth.

After reading some of the comments in the diaries, When you negotiate with terrorists, you only embolden them or Obama jokes about protecting Medicare at DNC birthday bash, or Obama fails to win independents in debt limit debate written by the front pagers of the Dailykos progressive website, I am compelled to say which universe do some so called progressives come from. Well, here I must say my peace in my own space about the ignorance level I witness at Dailykos.

Sometimes I think some in the the Professional Left are "the stupidest creatures on the planet". It seems like they sing this tune everyday:


Insert this lyrics at the Chorus and BAM, a perfect depiction of what goes on in the Professional Left camp.

From two wars, a brand new drug benefit and a whole new government bureaucracy on the national credit card and filling oversight agencies with cronies and lobbyists from the industries those agencies are supposed to oversee during W's term to unprecedented obstruction and taking the national economy and every American worker hostage again and again now that Barack Obama is president and is trying to clean up their mess, the Republican party has been hard at work making sure that the government is dysfunctional.

But as it turns out, our shot ourselves in the foot in November - whether because of general apathy or because Obama did not cure everything in two years - and the Republicans got at least they got part of the keys back. And when they did, they saw an opportunity not to simply make government dysfunctional but to root out the very fundamental premise of American society: a social compact that protects children, the poor and the elderly, ensures public safety, and provides the necessary infrastructure for a thriving economy. And to be fair about this, President Obama warned us about this last year when idiots and self-promoters on the Professional Left were running around making sure our side didn't vote.