"...those, let's face it, across the aisle..."

Useless Republicans. Incapable of governing. Obama's been taking heat lately from left as well as right, and through it all (including his own admitted missteps) he's actually gotten some governing done. As opposed to either ruling or doing nothing, which was the behavior of the previous eight-year administration.

The stimulus is already a success in keeping the U.S. from spiraling down like 1929, and it's positive effects are still growing, per Obama's discussion of the substance of the Recovery Act, how it targets energy efficiency technology designed to give America a competitive advantage:



I love that he calls out the Republicans from the get-go. Here's a list of some who would not support the stimulus but are crowing to their own electorate of what they brought home.

Meanwhile, the public option is getting some unexpected momentum in the Senate, and Obama is arresting another key Taliban leader.

And Q2 2010 is still over a month away.

Right and Wrong

Is this as close as Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has come to giving President Barack Obama credit for doing something right, i.e. "U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus":

Much of the stimulus spending is just beginning to trickle through the economy, with spending expected to peak sometime later this year or in early 2010. The government has funneled about $60 billion of the $288 billion in promised tax cuts to U.S. households, while about $84 billion of the $499 billion in spending has been paid. About $200 billion has been promised to certain projects, such as infrastructure and energy projects.

Economists say the money out the door -- combined with the expectation of additional funds flowing soon -- is fueling growth above where it would have been without any government action.

Many forecasters say stimulus spending is adding two to three percentage points to economic growth in the second and third quarters, when measured at an annual rate. The impact in the second quarter, calculated by analyzing how the extra funds flowing into the economy boost consumption, investment and spending, helped slow the rate of decline and will lay the groundwork for positive growth in the third quarter -- something that seemed almost implausible just a few months ago. Some economists say the 1% contraction in the second quarter would have been far worse, possibly as much as 3.2%, if not for the stimulus.

For the third quarter, economists at Goldman Sachs & Co. predict the U.S. economy will grow by 3.3%. "Without that extra stimulus, we would be somewhere around zero," said Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for Goldman.

Meanwhile, Dan Savage lays it on the line, as you know I agree:

"When you have a party that claims to speak for God, claims that God is on it's side, the rhetoric heats up and the anger heats up. It's not just a battle of ideas and positions and what's good for America and bad for the country. It's a battle of what God wants and what God doesn't want and you're, and it's easier to demagogue about your enemies and despise and to dehumanize in this really personal and vicious way, and the religious right is fomenting this kind of hatred in this country, and at our peril. I really do think that the Michele Bachmann's of the world and the Glenn Beck's of the world are actively, consciously or subconsciously trying to get, I'm just going to say it, they are trying to get the President killed. That's why they're setting this up as kill or be killed arguments. He's gonna kill you grandma, pull the plug on grandma, death panels children have to go in front of. This kind of rhetoric, this paranoid style on the religious right, from the birchers to the birthers doesn't usually end well, and we, somebody's gotta put the brakes on it, and unfortunately, in the Republican party, there are no adults left in the room, there are only the Michele Bachmann's and the Glenn Beck's and the Rush Limbaugh's running the show."

The President of the United States of America is coming to speak to schoolchildren in Florida, and this broken Republican party we have today is calling for a sick-out. Florida Republican chairman Jim Greer, official statement:

"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."

There is some sickness out there in America right now. The fearful and hateful and those who rule with fear, who attempt to spread it.

As always, Nettertainment makes plenty of room for conservatives who aren't relying on those gimmicks, as I believe the President to be somewhat conservative in the sense that he chooses, when possible, to conserve institutions rather than letting them fall, and so far it's working. We'll know more after his first year in office. And I there are reasonable conservatives who aren't so comfortable with today's GOP distractionating:

“There are serious questions that are associated with policy aspects of the health care reform bills that we’re seeing,” said Gail Wilensky, a veteran health care expert who oversaw the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for the first President George Bush and advised Senator John McCain in his presidential campaign last year.

“And there’s frustration because so much of the discussion is around issues like the death panels and Zeke Emanuel that I think are red herrings at best,” she said, referring to a health care adviser to President Obama whose views on some issues have been misrepresented by opponents.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group, is among those making policy-laden arguments against Mr. Obama’s plan that do not lend themselves to easily digestible catch phrases like “death panels” or false but sensational assertions that the elderly will be told to choose euthanasia as a cost-saving measure. But his critique is based on related fears that the plans being discussed would inevitably lead to increased government involvement in personal medical decisions and eventually affect vital services.

That's the ground that the Administration deserves to have to win the argument. Unless you're already 100% convinced, I mean not a shred of doubt, that any healthcare or health insurance reform is unacceptable AND are an Ends-Over-Means adherent, you've got to want a real debate on how to solve the very real problems of our current for-profit-only health insurance system. I actually agree that the President and Congress will need to convince the country that their ultimate reform plan is both worthy and workable.

The stifling of that debate, or of our democratically elected President in making that debate (and I mean by incitement, conscious or unconscious) to violence, is simply a matter to right vs. wrong.

And I say it's up to our mainstream media to admit it.

Knockovers

You want to just say fuck 'em all, but there is the credit issue, the oil that lubricates the whole system all the way down to the guy with the local bank loan. And maybe that's what it has to get back to. Because the hell with every one of those obscenely wealthy corporate bankers and everyone else feeding off their feudal system if they're doing shit like this:

The 20 largest banks that received government rescue funds slightly reduced their lending to consumers and businesses in the last three months of 2008, the government said Tuesday.

The Treasury Department said the banks reduced their mortgage and business loans by a median of 1 percent each, while credit card lending rose by a median of 2 percent. The median is the point halfway between the banks that lent the most and those that lent the least.

And the White House, the Obama Administration, wants to water down the bank executive bonus restrictions in the the stimulus package?

Read my lips, you guys who got us into this: Step Off.

Maybe it's all grand kabuki, make the bankers think this before you nationalize the whole thing, with the guy who presided blithely over this meltdown, Alan Greenspan as your cover. Maybe Geitner's only just figured out his strategy (not necessarily a bad thing to deliberate for your first week in the job) and all will go well. But the massive greed of the money class is lying low there, like flames ready to slip around wall or through a crevice, just give it even a whiff of oxygen.

That said, the stimulus transparency website, Recovery.gov, features the boss putting his face on it, YouTube style, the first cyberbuck stops here Presidential moment ever in history, a model for all time. What's so striking is the overview graph where I first saw that the #1 largest element of the stimulus package is tax relief -- $228 billion, as seen in proportion to the other categories.

(Second is State and Local Fiscal Relief -- similar to tax relief, not a pure spending measure -- at a distant $144 billion, Third is $111 billion for Infrastructure and Science, again more of our money coming back to us.)

The auto makers are next, America's post-industrial horror show, and that's going to hurt no matter what happens, but look at where we're at compared to just a month ago. Our President is strong, he is implementing the agenda the American people voted for, on the side of transparency for the people, the year is still young.

And here, after three weeks on the job, is our new, young President signing the largest non-military spending bill in our nation's history:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"It is great to be back in Denver. I was here last summer to -- we had a good time -- to accept the nomination of my party and to make a promise to people of all parties that I would do all that I could to give every American the chance to make of their lives what they will. To see their children climb higher than they do. And I'm back today to say that we've have begun the difficult work of keeping that promise. We have begun the essential work of keeping the American Dream alive in our time and that's what we're doing here today."

Obama's gaining strength, every day. It's like his Barack powers are zapped up by Presidential booster beams. He's not losing strength at all -- that the Republicans.

He's still growing.

Changed

Three weeks into the Obama Presidency, it seems like both the Right and the Left are having difficulty accepting just how successful the new President has been. He's implemented a number of smaller but significant campaign promise initiatives, especially with child health insurance, but mainly:

"In terms of what I've learned on the politics of it," he said, "I think what I've learned is that I've got a great team because we moved a very big piece of legislation through Congress in record time."

His bragging rights were easily justified. You'd have to go back to Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s or Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to find a more sweeping, more expensive and more quickly enacted package of what Republicans call "new spending" and Democrats call "new investments."

"And that was not easy to do."

The Republicans are absolutely clueless on how to combat Obama, because they have no ideas of their own. Compare yet another evolution in John McCain's simmering attempt to suppress his rage of entitlement:



With how our President has moved on and is addressing the entire NBA All-Star audience to promote helping each other through these tough times:



McCain comes off as America's Biggest Crank, and the GOP think the answer is to position Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has so often come off as dimwitted in cable news appearances, as the new Newt Gingrich -- you know, the House Speaker who kept universal healthcare from happening, now all these years.

Andrew Sullivan has a more-accurate-than-not take on those Dems who groused these past few weeks:

The Democrats and the liberal base have responded to all this with a mixture of cynicism and their own partisanship. They rolled their eyes at Obama’s outreach to Republicans; they hated the inclusion of the other party in the cabinet and had to swallow hard not to complain about the postpartisan rhetoric. Their cynicism is well earned. But my bet is that Obama also understands that this is, in the end, the sweet spot for him. He has successfully branded himself by a series of conciliatory gestures as the man eager to reach out. If this is spurned, he can repeat the gesture until the public finds his opponents seriously off-key.

I don't care or not if Obama elicits bipartisan support, as long as he doesn't compromise on core principles of whatever he's trying to pass. But what I did vote for was a strategist. That, and his ideas -- which he is, like any successful community organizer, putting into action.

And which is ultimately where the GOP finds itself bankrupt like a bank in 2009.

Winning

The election is over but the pundit class is acting like Obama didn't really win, or maybe lost since the Inauguration. But maybe they'll rejigger their bullshit conventional wisdom over the weekend now that he's held his Party together (never an easy task with Democrats) and passed the historically huge stimulus package, a combo of job creation and tax cuts all centered around improving infrastructure and helping the middle class. And for his, Obama remains incredibly popular -- outside of the moribund D.C. beltway.

Per Frank Rich in a great article about this disconnect between the true elites and the rest of us:

Am I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress...

...Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again...

...Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.

Great point, Frank. Maybe, after showing that he tried more than gamely to work in bipartisan fashion only to be rebuffed, Obama is already taking your advice:

U.S. President Barack Obama plans to travel and campaign more to pressure Republicans in Congress

rather than trying to win their loyalty, sources say...

...Obama plans to use the tactic in upcoming pushes to pass New Deal-style plans to rescue struggling homeowners and rewrite regulations on the financial markets, plus a budget proposal that lays the groundwork for sweeping healthcare reform, Politico said.

As for the guy who left office not three weeks ago, how is he faring with his post-Presidential plans:

Friends tell us that it has slowed the drive to raise some $500 million to build and endow the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Dallas's Southern Methodist University. "It's a bad environment," says one. Bush is taking no chances: He's making donor calls himself, and even his dad, the 41st president, is helping out, as are former aides like Karl Rove. In the future, say associates, look for Bush to host fundraising events in order to meet a goal of completing construction in 2013. But for now, "he's laying low," says one.

Can't raise the money for the George W. Bush Presidential Library? Wow, $500,000,000 for just three volumes...

...And they aren't even colored in yet.

Checkmate?

Did the GOP just violate their own "principles," and hand the Dems the biggest hammer for 2010?

The Reason Why

This is why we elected this guy:



Just imagine what this press conference would have been like with that last guy.

This is what made Clinton a genius, his ability to explain a complex initiative in a way everyone can understand and actually appreciate. It is making a collective thought whole.

So I hear Brian Williams say to Chuck Todd something about "them" wishing that this Obama had come out a week ago, totally ignoring that Obama is blasting away the Congressional GOP in public opinion and even the Dem Congress is more trusted than distrusted, albeit @ 48/42%. And I thought, who appointed these two jokers to spout loser pundit memes like we're supposed to assume it's the truth?

Obama lays the blame firmly where it belongs, at every institution that wagered 30 cents again 1 actual penny. He lays out the case for creating immediate demand in order to inhibit or reverse a Second Great Depression, and tomorrow his Treasury Secretary is laying out the banking plan in order to get credit flowing through our economy again.

He went to unemployment-ridden Indiana today and spoke for twenty minutes, then he answered questions from real people, not the super-screen Bush drones, for an hour. And he made sense. They threw economic questions, health care, the tax problems in his cabinet, renewable energy, and he was answered all of them clearly, intelligently, convincingly, a guy who's really thought about all of this, already, a lot.

That's why we gave him the bully pulpit.

Stimulus

I'm not an expert on economics, so I can't say what might be good or bad about the stimulus package for sure. But I do believe in Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in large part because he was right these past eight years while every single Republican was wrong:

I’m still working on the numbers, but I’ve gotten a fair number of requests for comment on the Senate version of the stimulus.

The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts...

...My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.

Now, the next step is for the bill to actually pass the Senate, then it goes into conference with the House where Speaker Pelosi is talking a hard line about getting it back where it was. There is some thinking that enough Republicans in Congress may end up voting for the bill -- i.e., not filibuster -- because they can claim they tried to have it their way already and failed, but I wouldn't put it past them to stonewall, particularly Old Man McCain, the final loser from last year's election marathon. And while he may think he's repositioning himself as the true-blue Republican, I believe it will only cement his reputation as a man who stayed at the party way too long.

The President is going into a renewed form of campaign mode this upcoming week, and I wonder if that news has some GOPers rethinking their position, a little quake in their loafers. Those of us who supported Obama over the long haul have gotten used to his kindly mode followed by slaps from the opposition, followed by Obama going tough and, having followed this strategic procedure, winning.

Here's this week's address, setting the stage:



After the GOP noise storm of a week ago, you'd have thought they'd won. But with Obama moving forcefully now against a rapidly growing backdrop of 7.6% unemployment, which in reality is closer to 14%, crazy, crazy numbers, one has to ask, even should the Republicans win, wouldn't that be tantamount to Party suicide?

Bring. It. On.

Hammer

Oh, did you think Obama would stop being the world's most compelling public speaker just because he got sworn in? At the House Democratic Retreat in Williamsburg, VA Thursday night he reminded us why we elected him:

Look, I value the constructive criticism and healthy debate that is a foundation of American democracy. I don't think any of us have cornered the market on wisdom, or that good ideas are the province of any party. The American people know that our challenges are great. They're not expecting Democratic solutions or Republican solutions - they want American solutions. And I have said that to those who have criticized the plan.

But what I have also said is - don't come to table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped create this crisis.

Or imagine that last President leveling with us like this:

This isn't some abstract debate. Last week, we learned that many of America's largest corporations are planning to layoff tens off tens of thousands of workers. Today, we learned that last week, the number of new unemployment claims jumped to 626,000. And tomorrow, we're expecting another dismal jobs report on top of the 2.6 million jobs we lost last year.

For you, those aren't statistics. They are constituents you know and families that you care about. Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that it's received, and you will get another chance to vote for this bill in the days to come. But I urge all of us to not make the perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary. The scale and scope of this plan is right.

Is he succeeding in turning the tide of cable anti-Recovery Act noise? Showdown on Friday.

In It

Gobama, back in the fray:

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it's a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.

Back in it to win it.

Hoovers

A Hoover is a British vacuum cleaner. And the last name of the last President, before Bush, who's economic philosophy and policies, and those of his Party, collapsed under him, sending the nation into spiraling unemployment, last called The Great Depression. Last time, Hoover stayed President for three worsening years. This time Bush left after three cheap-ass months. It's Harken II as much as Hoover.

Thankfully, we have a productive, strategic, fresh new President coming in with a stimulus plan that will cost less than the Iraq War and be about creating new jobs, particularly in the renewable energy sector, rather than killing a lot of people who never attacked us.

And the Party of Hoover = No Change:

The latest from RNC Chair Michael Steele: "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job."

And there's the confusion: of course a stimulus bill is a spending bill. It is when it's money spent on the military, and it is when it is spent creating public works programs. More Josh Marshall:

"Not a Stimulus bill. It's just a spending bill." That was Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) just a few moments ago on Fox...

...Can someone point out to me any case where an interviewer presses DeMint on the point that stimulus bills are by definition spending bills. Please someone send me this link or a time when it happens on TV. You're trying to counter the drop off in the demand that is causing the recession.

And, as if the last eight years never happened, they're lying again.

You may recall how, the week before last, Republicans were up in arms over a CBO report showing that under 40 percent of the estimated $350 billion in stimulus spending projects would hit the economy in the first two years...Which just goes to show: Don't mess with a White House budget director who's a former head of the CBO. This afternoon, the CBO released its official scoring of the overall stimulus package. And, wouldn't you know, the agency says slightly north of 78 percent of it will pay out over the first two fiscal years.

Where does this leave us? Obama's taking heat for not getting out ahead of this bill fast enough -- he's been working on substance, not media. But now that the other team has shown their cards, he's making his play:

Barack Obama is slated to sit down with the five major television news networks tomorrow, a media play that is almost certain to be part of a broader effort to sell his stimulus package to the American public.

The president will conduct interviews in the Oval Office with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX News on Tuesday afternoon, according to the official White House schedule. The sitdowns come at a delicate time for the president, with concern mounting in Democratic circles that much of the debate over the stimulus has been dominated by the GOP.

But I still wonder, if Obama resists caving, if he can return to the fray and once again seize the momentum, his impeccable sense of timing, and keep his Party in line, then will the Republicans really make good on threats of a Senate filibuster? Against news like this:

Macy's Inc. announced Monday that it will eliminate 7,000 jobs nationwide, including 1,400 at its West Coast headquarters in San Francisco — which amounts to almost 4 percent of its total work force.

In addition, Macy's plans to cut capital spending, reduce its contributions to its employees' retirement funds and slash its dividend to preserve cash amid a severe pullback in consumer spending.

It's all about the framing from here on out. Is this a spending bill or a jobs bill? I mean...everyone knows we need jobs.

Like, yesterday.