Pass. This. Bill.

He said is something like 22 times either verbatim or in related, close form. He's proven he's committed to bipartisanship and hasn't given up, but he's taken it hard to the other side to let them know where he stands now, after all the do-nothing and debt ceiling shenanigans. He's working on being the sheriff again.

Here he is, pts 1 and 2. My favorite section in this starts 5:55 and goes through 7:20. Notice the GOP side of Congress doesn't stand up and applaud improving public education to keep us competitive against China and the rest of the globe, and save the Republic:

The GOP sheep finally stand, dutifully, at 10:20 when Obama talks about the veterans. Because they have to pretend to appreciate the working military as well.

In this one I love him at 11:20 -- "We shouldn't be in a race to the bottom, we should be in a race to the top...":

From 12:30 to the end he gives the full-throated case for the common good through good government supporting the building and advancement of America, and not just be shirking responsibilities and leaving it all up to the Libertarians. Then he calls on Congress and himself to not shirk their responsibilities.

Towards the ending -- the shaming of the GOP Congress:

Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past. Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight will be paid for. And every proposal is designed to meet the urgent needs of our people and our communities.

Now, I know there’s been a lot of skepticism about whether the politics of the moment will allow us to pass this jobs plan -- or any jobs plan. Already, we’re seeing the same old press releases and tweets flying back and forth. Already, the media has proclaimed that it’s impossible to bridge our differences. And maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box.

But know this: The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here -- the people who hired us to work for them -- they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. (Applause.) Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.

They need it now.

Pass it, bitches.

The $300 Billion Dollar Man

How fast before the GOP long knives come out against this expected plan to actually help unemployed Americans?

The Michael Scott Candidate

Jason Linkins had a brilliant, nee, prophetic article up on HuffPo yesterday comparing Republican Presidential nomination candidate Mitt Romney with Michael Scott of NBC's The Office. Funny idea, and well-proven one day later as Mitt, a man of immense wealth, compared himself to the unemployed citizens he was meeting on that long campaign trail:

Mitt Romney sat at the head of the table at a coffee shop here on Thursday, listening to a group of unemployed Floridians explain the challenges of looking for work. When they finished, he weighed in with a predicament of his own.

“I should tell my story,” Mr. Romney said. “I’m also unemployed.”

He chuckled. The eight people gathered around him, who had just finished talking about strategies of finding employment in a slow-to-recover economy, joined him in laughter.

“Are you on LinkedIn?” one of the men asked.

“I’m networking,” Mr. Romney replied. “I have my sight on a particular job.”

Ho ho ho! That Mitt, he's just like one of us. Only, he's the guy who got rich making people unemployed (per Stephen Colbert via Steve Benen):

“You see, Romney made a Mittload of cash using what’s known as a leveraged buyout. He’d buy a company with ‘money borrowed against their assets, groomed them to be sold off and in the interim collect huge management fees.’ Once Mitt had control of the company, he’d cut frivolous spending like jobs, workers, employees, and jobs. […]

“Because Mitt Romney knows just how to trim the fat. He rescued businesses like Dade Behring, Stage Stories, American Pad and Paper, and GS Industries, then his company sold them for a profit of $578 million after which all of those firms declared bankruptcy."

And as Governor:

Complicating matters, during Romney’s only service in public office, his state’s record on job creation was “one of the worst in the country.” Adding insult to injury, “By the end of his four years in office, Massachusetts had squeezed out a net gain in payroll jobs of just 1 percent, compared with job growth of 5.3 percent for the nation as a whole.”

How bad is Romney’s record? During his tenure, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 states in jobs growth.

So Mitt is doubly lying. He has a job -- managing his sizable assets as well as running for President. And he has no strong record for creating them. Or, per DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

“Mitt Romney’s comments today at an event with unemployed Floridians that he’s ‘also unemployed’ is inappropriate and insensitive to the millions of Americans looking for work. This comment shows that Mitt Romney – a man who wants for nothing and whose only occupation for more than four years has been to run for President - is incredibly out of touch with what’s going on in our country and around the dinner tables of those who are out of work.

“Being unemployed, Mr. Romney, is not a joke ... The fact is, the failed policies of the past, that he is advocating for, got us into the situation we’re in the first place and Americans want neither a repeat of those policies or the type of out-of-touch and failed leadership Mitt Romney represents.”

And he's somehow the serious GOP option?

Only if played by Steve Carrell.

Easy for You

It's easy to say that President Obama folded if you have a job, as he did it to continue unemployment benefits for another year, benefits that were due to expire at the end of this one.

That said, it sure would feel better if he stood on principle and fought, instead of giving the GOP another victory.

Yep, he may have consigned himself today as a one-term President. Or he may have a Democratic revolt that kills his compromise. There's few who stand on principle like one (outgoing) Republican Senator, however, George Voinovich of Ohio.

One thing I will say is that I do not believe that Hillary Clinton would have somehow had the more perfect Presidency. She folded on the Iraq War vote and ran a chaotic, hubristic and wastefully spending campaign.

But we just want our champion to fight and maybe, just maybe, she'd be fighting harder.

Poison Tea

It turns out that a highly experience Republican operative, Sal Russo, is both funding of Tea Party Republican candidates and reaping the big bucks for himself:

Unlike many of the newly energized outsiders who have embraced Tea Party ideals, Mr. Russo, 63, is a longtime Republican operative who got his start as an aide to Ronald Reagan and later raised money and managed media strategy for a string of other politicians, including former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. His history and spending practices have prompted some former employees and other Tea Party activists to question whether he is committed to, or merely exploiting, their cause.

Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records.

Yep, those 'baggers are so good with money. That's why Republican Senate nominee for Delaware, Christine "Li'l Sarah" O'Donnell seems to make all her income off of running for office and could be indicted for how she's has misused previous campaign funds for her personal expenses:

Now, the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, allows you to spend money after a campaign to retire debt, but not to add to the debt. And she has lots of debt from 2008, which troubles a lot of people. They think it's hypocritical, because -- because she wants America to spend what it has. But let us show you some of these checks. You can decide for yourself if she should have written these checks from her campaign money. For example, a check for 475 bucks, she labeled it as mileage reimbursement. Remember, this is three months after the campaign is over. This means she drove hundreds of miles and she submitted this with campaign funding.

Also, $157 on a phone bill from Verizon Wireless; by all indications, this is her personal phone. Also, $28 at a gas station -- the gas station in the town where she's originally from -- Moorestown, New Jersey. She still has family there. This is campaign money. There's no campaign going on.

Six hundred dollars for her utility bill paid to Delmarva Power. Also, there are little piddly expenses, but increasing her debt. And these are very telltale. You wouldn't need to spend this for any campaign, let alone a campaign that is not going on anymore.

$19 at a place called the Pike Lanes. The Pike Lanes is a bowling alley. That would pay for about eight games of bowling.

Also $26 for a meal at Ruby Tuesday's restaurant -- campaign money once again.

And then she even used campaign money for a $2.84 charge at Staples. In addition, she paid rent money with her campaign funding.

Maybe that's why O'Donnell cancelled Sunday morning appearances on both CBS' Face the Nation as well as Faux News, where Chris Wallace went to the unusual length of - gasp - criticizing her as well as Bob Schieffer. Or maybe it was her "dabbling" in witchcraft?

How about 'baggin' Republican Senate nominee in Alaska, Joe Miller? Miller has been on the Federal payroll as U.S. Magistrate for half a decade but is touting his Constitutional interpretation of enumerated rights to say that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional -- and refused to answer any questions from, again, Faux News anchor Chris Wallace on what in hell he'd actually do to help all those Americans suffering due to the economic crisis:



It all seems like a witches brew of bad tea to me.

Financial Matters

It didn't start under Obama, but according to two economists, one of whom worked with McCain:

In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year.

In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation.

The paper, by Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton professor and former vice chairman of the Fed, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, represents a first stab at comprehensively estimating the effects of the economic policy responses of the last few years.

As for the Obama stimulus, it's not all public sector:

States are putting hundreds of thousands of people directly into jobs through programs reminiscent of the more ambitious work projects of the Great Depression

But the new efforts have a twist: While the wages are being paid by the government, most of the participants are working for private companies

The opportunity to simultaneously benefit struggling workers and small businesses has helped these job subsidies gain support from liberals and conservatives. Congress is now considering whether to extend the subsidy, which would expire in September, for an additional year. A House vote is expected on Thursday or Friday.

Despite questions about whether the programs displace existing workers, many economists have argued that direct job creation programs are a more cost-effective way to put some of the nation’s 14.6 million unemployed back to work than indirect alternatives like tax credits and construction projects.

So which is it? In any case, Obama is trying to help small businesses as well:

The battle was on full display on Wednesday as Senate Democrats pushed ahead with efforts to pass a bill that would increase lending to small businesses and provide tax breaks, and President Obama visited the Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, N.J., where he ordered a “super sub with everything,” to highlight his party’s small-business agenda.

The two sides agree that the nation’s 27 million small businesses will be a big factor in the economic recovery. Beyond that, however, the gloves come off, as Democrats say Republicans are stalling the small-business bill and Republicans say that Democrats will strangle small businesses with higher taxes and heavy-handed regulation — though Mr. Obama, in New Jersey, emphasized that he had cut taxes for small businesses eight times.

At the sandwich shop, Mr. Obama said there should be no argument. “Surely, Democrats and Republicans ought to be able to agree on this bill,” he said. “Helping small businesses, cutting taxes, making credit available. This is as American as apple pie. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. They are central to our identity as a nation. They are going to lead this recovery.”

One last question. We know that George Bush Jr. used "fuzzy math." But is it systematic that Republicans have trouble with numbers?

Proximity

At first glance Up in the Air appears to be about rootlessness, and that's certainly part of the mix. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, the peripatetic airline passenger pursuing a milestone number of frequent flier miles as he zigzags around the U.S. firing people who's bosses outsource the unpleasant task to his Omaha-based firm. Along the way he picks up a romance with the "female version of you, but with a vagina," played by the pitch-perfect Vera Farmiga, a young apprentice played by newcomer Anna Kendrick who is on the verge of bringing webcam layoffs to the firm and thus grounding Ryan short of his goal, and even his niece's wedding in upper Wisconsin. In the winter. In slush.

What makes Up in the Air (based on the book by Walter Kirn but considerably altered) resonant in our recessionary times are the real-person interviews, fitting right into the story but made up of recently laid-off workers who were given the chance by director Jason Reitman to say what they wish they had said at their own point of termination. (In the management-capitalism-speak of the movie, they are told that they job "is no longer available," as if the losing worker was expecting to purchase it, like an airline ticket or an a/v receiver.) And while the dialogue and scene changes are filled with wit that plays so well with Clooney in the lead -- his best performance since Syriana and much more of a play on his iconic charm -- the romance and the comedy are leavened with the pain that's happening on our nation's Main Streets (or Main Corporate Parks), and tinged with loneliness that follows you out of the theater.

The big theme of Up in the Air is actually proximity, an exploration of the choices we make as to how close we want to be with family, friends, lovers, as well as the ways in which both globalism and technology are collapsing distances which leaves us with a surfeit of proximity and a deficit of human warmth.

On one hand, Clooney is the perfect expression of his firm, which brings life-changing (often ruining) decisions made in the corner office by your cubicle to you from halfway across the country. The movie sides with Clooney's in-person approach against Kendrick's T-1 firings plan, but a step back and there's a cost anyway, to society and, in a certain way, to Clooney himself. He's inured himself to rich human emotion, distanced from his sister and her family, tripped up by his own inexperience when he actually tries to reach for real emotional closeness, a man who thinks his home is the network of modern airports and airplanes since his own home is barely a shoebox.

This is a modern movie where critical decisions are revealed by Blackberry Messenger and no one looks back. Where clothes are kept on open steel kitchen shelves for easy packing and survival skills include knowing which line to choose at TSA. Where major corporate moves are abstracted into the ether by contract and boarding pass.

While the movie leaves it up to us to come up with our own solutions, there is one moment where Clooney asks a firee to question why he dropped his dream career to pursue a corporate one, and proffers that he should return to that vocational path in order to earn back his own self-respect and that of his kids. Is that a glib feint on the part of the movie, the Hollywood idea that if you follow your dream, you'll be better for it in the end?

I have no idea the number of Americans who lost their job or their business in this recession that were indeed following that dream -- the bakery or graphics company or auto dealership that went out of business as the result of this year's round of nightmarish cutbacks, but I can't help wondering if there's not a new/old community-based economy on the way, or if that might not be the only solution. Cut the cable but keep the Web service, remove the main house phone line but keep the family cellphone plan, give the quick-service restaurants a run for their money.

Is there some way our new connectivity and recession-honed consciousness can lead to a new (Middle) American societal rebirth? Are the ruralpolitans signaling hope for the future?



Or are we just waiting for the next wave of the baton from our corporate overlords?

Terror

Nightmare unemployment numbers. Here's an interactive chart to tell you how your own demographic is doing.

As for the terror at Ft. Hood, here's to the courageous Police Officer who took down the shooter (and managed to leave him alive to stand trial or court martial), Kimberly Denise Munley.

I'm hoping her heroism will be kept separate from the ideological landgrabs on the Right, but we'll see how it plays on Faux News.

Good Week

You might not know it by the town hall ragers (and all their racial baggage) but last week was actually an excellent week for President Barack Obama and his Administration. There was a slowing in new unemployment (yes, not yet a recovery, but where it has to begin), the birthers/deathers/teabaggers are actually starting to boomerang in his favor, and he got his first Supreme Court Justice choice ever sworn in.

Best of all, he appears to have killed the Taliban chief of Pakistan, who was also their military leader:

Pakistan considered the al-Qaida-linked Mehsud its No. 1 internal threat. He was suspected in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and many other assaults. He claimed responsibility for some, including an audacious attack on a police academy in March that killed 12 people.

His death would be a victory for President Barack Obama and a nod to the Bush administration, both of whom have relied heavily on the CIA-controlled missile strikes to take out militants in Pakistan's wild northwest. The U.S. had a $5 million bounty on Mehsud, whom it considered a threat to the Afghan war effort.

Caught like a Somali pirate in the crosshairs of a CIA missile strike. And it appears that the ensuing power struggle to replace him is upping the body count:

According to sources, commanders Hakeemullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, the two leading contenders for the chief slot, exchanged hot words at the shura meeting in Sara Rogha over the choosing of a successor to Baitullah. A shootout followed, leading to the death of Hakeemullah while causing life-threatening injuries to Waliur Rehman. A government official in Peshawar said that both Hakeemullah and Waliur Rehman had been killed in the clash.

How crazy would it be if Obama's war strategy turned out to be the shining success of his Administration? Up next: Afghan drug lords:

The generals told Senate staff members that two credible sources and substantial additional evidence were required before a trafficker was placed on the list, and only those providing support to the insurgency would be made targets.

Currently, they said, there are about 50 major traffickers who contribute money to the Taliban on the list.

“We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency,” one of the generals told the committee staff.

As another President once said, "Bring it on."

The D Word

Unemployment is at a 25-year high, and that's the official 8.1% which doesn't include those who have given up on looking or are in part-time jobs when they'd prefer full-time, i.e. getting their old job back, which is estimated (the "U-6"number) at 14.8%.

Yep, Bush, Cheney, Phil Gramm and their fellow geniuses have bankrupted America, just like many on the left had been predicting all along. And now they try to pin it on Obama.

What's really happening is a complete remaking of the workforce, Industrial Revolution-style. This is where the rape of the Earth and our greed for luxury is meeting the road. Slews of the jobs going away are not coming back, some will take years to return, but essentially America has to reorganize huge sectors of its economy around new forms of businesses and work. It's why the stimulus is so crucial and why the safer landing would have included universal health insurance already in place.

Instead, those who got us here in the first place, think that decent health care is only a right for those rich enough for it.

Don't let them tag Obama. Make they pay so they can't do this again for a long, long time.

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.

Buh-Bye Continued

I may run out of material, or I may continue to devote nightly blog posts for the next week to saying goodbye to all that. And by all that I mean, George W. Bush, Richard Bruce Cheney, and Republicanism.

Here's the opening paragraph from Jim Kunstler's "Farewell GWB" post:

A prankish fate put George W. Bush in the oval office to keep America stupid. The nation was far from ready to see where it was going in the 21st century, and he was just the figure to keep it that way, with his void of curiosity, his allergy to reading, and his panderings to wealth-worshipping, Ponzi-loving, science-hating Jesus cultists. He goes out of office broadly regarded as an object of horror and loathing while the nation, now facing wholesale bankruptcy, struggles to imagine a plausible future, like someone who has just awakened from a cheap red wine drunk into the grip of a vicious hangover.

Kunstler goes on to indict the entire nation for our own massive self-delusion, positing that Bush/Cheney didn't trick the country into the Iraq War, we tricked ourselves.

As for his own legacy efforts, the Administration is right on top of it:

The White House Web site features an extensive recitation of Mr. Bush’s “highlights and accomplishments,” including a document titled “100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record.” (First on the list: “Kept America Safe.”)

I take issue with that first claim, of course, since it was the Bush/Cheney policy to do the opposite of whatever President Bill Clinton had done, including ignoring Richard Clarke and anybody not of their partisanship telling them about the threat that was 9/11. The proof of their having kept America far from same is the infamous skipping of the "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." memo. That supposed National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice kept her job after that is one for the ages.

Also from the NY Times article quoted above, on all the legacy talk by El Presidente and crew:

“They’re working hard to build their historical reputations,” said the presidential historian Robert Dallek. “Generally, presidents don’t spend the last days and weeks in office defending their record. They produce a memoir, they write a volume.

“To spend your waking hours on a defense of yourself speaks volumes about how, in a sense, defeated they’ve been.”

And, somehow, being in this particular White House might not be the same resume builder as with other administrations:

“Working on the White House staff is an honor and will always look good on a résumé,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist, who said several Bush officials had sought his career advice. “It just doesn’t look that good right now.”

Since the causes of this horrific job market can arguably be laid at the feet of this Administration and the ideology that drove it, one might call it poetic justice.

Just for the record, here's David Letterman's Top Ten George Bush moments, with #4 always my favorite, the defining moment of eight years of tragic misrule:




Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

On second thought, let it.

Hard Times

The November unemployment figures are the worst in decades -- since 1974 to be exact. Robert Reich asks whether we should call it a depression yet:

We are falling off a cliff. To put these numbers into some perspective, the November losses alone are the worst in 34 years. A significant percentage of Americans are now jobless or underemployed -- far higher than the official rate of 6.7 percent. Simply in order to keep up with population growth, employment needs to increase by 125,000 jobs per month.

Note also that the length of the typical workweek dropped to 33.5 hours. That's the shortest number of hours since the Department of Labor began keeping records on hours worked, back in 1964. A significant number of people are working part-time who'd rather be working full time. Coupled with those who are too discouraged even to look for work, I'd estimate that the percentage of Americans who need work right now is approaching 11 percent of the workforce. And that percent is likely to raise.

When FDR took office in 1933, one out of four American workers was jobless. We're not there yet, but we're trending in that direction.

So is anyone coming out on top through the Bush years?

Funny you should ask:

• 2006 marked the fourth straight year in which income gains at the top outpaced those among the rest of the population. Since 2002, the average inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households has risen 42 percent, whereas the average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of households has risen about 4.7 percent.

• As a result, the share of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent has increased sharply, rising from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 20.0 percent in 2006. Not since 1928, just before the Great Depression, has the top 1 percent held such a large share of the nation’s income. (See Figure 1.) In 2000, at the peak of the 1990s boom, the top 1 percent received 19.3 percent of total income in the nation.

Disparate Wealth = Depression Conditions.

Well, you know what George Santayana famously said about those who cannot -- or, in Bush and his GOP generation's case, refuse -- to learn from history...