The President answers questions on the American Jobs Act...

...and by the way, it should be passed right away.

\

Funniest moment, the President takes a question from an Atlanta-based reporter...and drops some smack about the Bears-Falcons game the day before.

You wanted a bill, Republicans (Teabaggers, Limbaugh), okay, here's the President introducing the bill (VIDEO)

The text of the bill can be found here.

President Obama's remarks before the "Concert for Hope" (VIDEO)

The Fireside Chat for September 10th, 2011 (VIDEO)

The President takes the argument to every corner of the country, in this case: Richmond, VA (VIDEO)

President Obama's speech on the American Jobs Act - both versions (VIDEO)

One with the fancy graphics (which I watched live):




And one without:

The Lioness Program...

First caught this video on the Daily Beast this morning.  I'm sorry not to have seen it earlier.

Jonathan Chait: What the left doesn't understand about Obama (and by extension Poltiics)

I'm a little mad at myself for not having read this sooner, but this was a fantastic piece to be found in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s. Congressional Republicans pursued a strategy of denying Obama support for any major element of his agenda, on the correct assumption that this would make it less popular and help the party win the 2010 elections. Only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster. Moreover, Republican opposition has proved immune even to persistent and successful attempts by Obama to mobilize public opinion. Americans overwhelmingly favor deficit reduction that includes both spending and taxes and favor higher taxes on the rich in particular. Obama even made a series of crusading speeches on this theme. The result? Nada.

That kind of analysis, however, just feels wrong to liberals, who remember Bush steamrolling his agenda through Congress with no such complaints about obstructionism. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently invoked “the panoply of domestic legislation — including Bush tax cuts, No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Part D prescription drug entitlement — that Bush pushed through Congress in his first term.”

Yes, Bush passed his tax cuts — by using a method called reconciliation, which can avoid a filibuster but can be used only on budget issues. On No Child Left Behind and Medicare, he cut deals expanding government, which the right-wing equivalents of Greenwald denounced as a massive sellout. Bush did have one episode where he tried to force through a major domestic reform against a Senate filibuster: his crusade to privatize Social Security. Just as liberals urge Obama to do today, Bush barnstormed the country, pounding his message and pressuring Democrats, whom he cast as obstructionists. The result? Nada, beyond the collapse of Bush’s popularity.

Perhaps the oddest feature of the liberal indictment of Obama is its conclusion that Obama should have focused all his political capital on economic recovery. “He could likely have passed many small follow-up stimulative laws in 2009,” Jon Walker of the popular blog Firedoglake wrote last month. “Instead, he pivoted away from the economic crisis because he wrongly ignored those who warned the crisis was going to get worse.”

It’s worth recalling that several weeks before Obama proposed an $800 billion stimulus, House Democrats had floated a $500 billion stimulus. (Oddly, this never resulted in liberals portraying Nancy Pelosi as a congenitally timid right-wing enabler.) At the time, Obama’s $800 billion stimulus was seen by Congress, pundits and business leaders — that is to say, just about everybody who mattered — as mind-bogglingly large. News reports invariably described it as “huge,” “massive” or other terms suggesting it was unrealistically large, even kind of pornographic. The favored cliché used to describe the reaction in Congress was “sticker shock.”

Compounding the problem, Obama proposed his stimulus shortly after the Congressional Budget Office predicted deficits topping a trillion dollars. Even before Obama took office, and for months afterward, “everybody who mattered” insisted that the crisis required Obama to scale back the domestic initiatives he campaigned on, especially health care reform, but also cap-and-trade, financial regulation and so on. Colin Powell, a reliable barometer of elite opinion, warned in July of 2009: “I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all. And we can’t pay for it all.”

Rather than deploy every ounce of his leverage to force moderate Republicans, whose votes he needed, to swallow a larger stimulus than they wanted, Obama clearly husbanded some of his political capital. Why? Because in the position of choosing between the agenda he came into office hoping to enact and the short-term imperative of economic rescue, he picked the former. At the time, this was the course liberals wanted and centrists opposed.

On two subsequent occasions, Obama faced this same choice. Last December, he could have refused to extend any of the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. Republicans vowed to let all the tax cuts expire if he did so. If Obama let this happen, it would have almost fully solved the long-term deficit problem, while at the same time setting back the recovery by raising taxes on middle-class and low-income workers. Obama decided to make a deal, extending all the Bush tax cuts and also securing a progressive payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits, both forms of stimulus that Republicans would never have allowed without an extension of upper-bracket tax cuts in return.

There is a decent argument that the president should have refused this deal. But if you make that argument, you have to accept the likelihood that nearly a million fewer jobs would have been created and that we would have been at risk of a double-dip recession back then. Yet the liberal critics most exercised about Obama’s failure to secure more stimulus were, for the most part, enraged when he did exactly that. Take Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor under President Clinton. Last November, Reich pleaded for an extension of unemployment benefits, calling the plight of the jobless our “single newest and biggest social problem.” When Obama made his bargain, Reich called it “an abomination,” complaining that “the bits and pieces the president got in return” — including the unemployment benefits previously deemed vital — amounted to “peanuts.”

And then, this summer, Obama let the G.O.P. hold the debt-ceiling vote hostage to extract spending cuts. I think he should have called the Republicans’ bluff and let them accept the risk of a financial meltdown. But the reason Obama chose to cut a deal is that calling their bluff might have resulted in catastrophe. And Obama made a point of back-loading the G.O.P.’s budget cuts so as not to contract the economy. He may have chosen wrongly, but he chose exactly the priorities liberals now insist he ignored — favoring economic recovery over long-term goals.

Liberal critics of Obama, just like conservative critics of Republican presidents, generally want both maximal partisan conflict and maximal legislative achievement. In the real world, those two things are often at odds. Hence the allure of magical thinking.

The highest compliment I can give political writing is when I can't find easy places to cut an article, and Jonathan Chait, you did not make easy.

TPM: Rick Perry. Ripping Gubmint with one hand. Secret Socialst with the other.

Rick Perry, eternal weasel.  Rips the Government with one hand, goes begging to Uncle Sugar (aka President Obama) with the other.  Now that he's gt his money, it's all smiles.

For about five minutes:

Today the President called Texas Governor Rick Perry to express his concern for citizens of Texas impacted by the unprecedented fires. During the call the President extended his condolences for the lives that have been lost as a result of these events, and made clear that the federal government, through DHS/FEMA and the U.S. Forest Service, will continue to make federal assistance available to state and local officials as they fight the fires. The President also assured the Governor that requests for additional assistance, including as recovery begins, would be quickly assessed. Following the call, the President directed his national security staff to continue to work closely with FEMA, the Forest Service and the State of Texas to ensure we were making all resources available. Over the last several days, at the request of the Governor, the Administration has granted eight Fire Management Assistance Grants, making federal funds available to reimburse eligible costs associated with efforts to combat the fires. FEMA is actively working with state and local officials to conduct damage assessments and to identify areas where additional federal assistance may be warranted.

Let's count the number of times Rick Perry calls President Obama dangerously out of touch and foreign at tonight's GOP Debate.

Jonathan Bernstein (once again) kicks the crap out of Thomas Friedman...

Just a reminder to my Father, who for some reasons still reads Mr. "Six More Months"...

Tom Friedman approvingly quotes a Singaporean diplomat:

There will be no painless solution. ‘Sacrifice’ will be needed, and the American people know this. But no American politician dares utter the word ‘sacrifice.’

That's right: it's yet another chapter of Tom Friedman apparently pays no attention at all to the President of the United State of America.

From an obscure web site called Whitehouse.gov, let's see...

September 5 in Detroit, the big Labor Day speech:

That’s the bedrock this country is built on. Hard work. Responsibility. Sacrifice.

He took a call from college student body presidents in August, so he could tell them (according to the WH blog):

President Obama jumped on the call to speak with these young Americans about the need for a solution that finds a shared sacrifice for all Americans. Just as was pointed out in the letter, he said that solving this problem is about investing in our future and making sure young people today have the same chances past generations had.

Here's a weekly address from July. Hint: he says it three times.

Thing of it is, it's not just Friedman. Its the Media, and or even some of my fellow Liberals who succeed in not listen to what the President says.

Did the President just say "Bite me" to Eric Cantor?

Granted, he said it in a very Presidential way, but still...



Key graph:

The main message that I have for all the residents not only of New Jersey but all those communities that have been affected by flooding, by the destruction that occurred as a consequence of Hurricane Irene is that the entire country is behind you and we are going to make sure that we provide all the resources that are necessary in order to help these communities rebuild.

And I know that there's been some talk about whether there's going to be a slowdown in getting funding out here, emergency relief. As President of the United States, I want to make it very clear that we are going to meet our federal obligations -- because we're one country, and when one part of the country gets affected, whether it's a tornado in Joplin, Missouri, or a hurricane that affects the Eastern Seaboard, then we come together as one country and we make sure that everybody gets the help that they need. And the last thing that the residents here of Paterson or the residents of Vermont or the residents of upstate New York need is Washington politics getting in the way of us making sure that we are doing what we can to help communities that have been badly affected.

And you watch Gov. Christie. He doesn't nod, but deep down (given his recent statements along the same lines) you know he does.

"We’re going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party.." (VIDEO)

The President always fires a warning shot before he gives a big speech. Here it is:

The Fireside Chat for September 3rd, 2011 (VIDEO)

"What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President?" (VIDEO)

First Richard Wolffe asks "the" question (video below):

The interesting question is: What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President? Why do Republicans think this president is unpresidential and should dare to request this kind of thing? It strikes me that it could be the economic times, it could be that he won so big in 2008 or it could be, let’s face it, the color of his skin. This is an extraordinary reaction to a normal sequence of events.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The complete minute by minute tick-tock can be found here at TPM:

Roger Simon, Politico, putting said the tick-tock to prose:

The White House was well aware the president’s speech would conflict with a planned Republican debate sponsored by POLITICO and NBC to be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The debate would be broadcast live by MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and live-streamed by POLITICO.

Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle. “With all due respect, the POLITICO-MSNBC debate was one that was going on a cable station,” the White House source said. “It was not sacrosanct. We knew they would push it back and then there would be a GOP debate totally trashing the president. So it wasn’t all an upside for us.”

And, at first, things seemed to fall into place.

At about 10 or 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, White House chief of staff Bill Daley called House Speaker John Boehner and asked that a joint session of Congress be assembled the following Wednesday night. The White House viewed Boehner as a political opponent, but not an enemy and the call was cordial, even pro forma considering such a request had never before been refused.

And, according to the White House source, Boehner said “okay” to Daley’s request for the Wednesday evening date. (Asked for comment, Boehner’s press secretary, Brendan Buck, said he had nothing to add to his statement of Wednesday that read in part: “No one in the speaker’s office - not the speaker, not any staff - signed off on the date the White House announced today.”)

Then things quickly unraveled. It turned out not everyone was as sanguine as Boehner with the notion that a Democratic president was going to step on a Republican debate.

At 11:55 a.m. Wednesday, the White House tweeted the news about the joint session. “And then Rush Limbaugh beat Boehner up,” the source said.

The conservative talk show personality was in his familiar state of high dudgeon. “This is a pure campaign speech and to give it the imprimatur of a speech before a joint session of Congress, there’s no way, he doesn’t deserve that,” Limbaugh said. “Boehner’s got to say no. Now, whether he will, I have no clue.”

A number of Republicans in the House and a few in the Senate did have a clue and they told Boehner that while they would allow the joint session – it was hard not to for both historic and political reasons – the timing had to be on their terms, which meant it could not conflict with the Republican debate.

At which point Boehner’s office announced that Boehner had never agreed to the Wednesday date, that Congress did not get back into session until 6:30 p.m. on that day, that various votes had to be taken, that security had to be arranged and Obama should push his speech back a day to Thursday.

Which just happened to be the evening the Green Bay Packers were meeting the New Orleans Saints in the NFL season opener. Which meant Obama would have to move his speech up an hour or so before the kick-off at 8:30 p.m.

The White House was not pleased. In reality, it believed, Congress really had never gone out of session, a parliamentary move that blocked Obama from making recess appointments. “And they had to arrange security?” the White House source scoffed. “As if they couldn’t do that! This was a political thing, a tea party thing, a Rush Limbaugh thing. They were all giving Boehner gas.”

The White House did not want to give in and look weak, but what was the alternative?

An Oval office speech instead?

“You can’t speak for 40 minutes from the Oval Office,” the source said.

How about the East Room?

“He’s going to speak to an empty East Room with just the Teleprompters and staff there? No,” said the source

So it had to be in the House of Representatives, which the Republicans control. “But we couldn’t go if they didn’t let us come,” the source said. “You can’t hold the speech in the lobby or in the parking lot. And you’re not going to get network coverage if you hold it at George Mason University.

“After a month of world chaos, the setting had to match the topic. And you don’t get any better setting than a joint session of Congress.”

In the end, the White House felt it had no choice but to give in on the date, and Obama sent an email to his supporters with the subject line: “Frustrated.”

“It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on,” Obama said in the email. “I know that you’re frustrated by that. I am, too.”

Obama said he was going to put forward “a set of bipartisan proposals to help grow the economy and create jobs” and he was “asking lawmakers to look past short-term politics and take action on that plan.”

It was, perhaps, not the friendliest message, but the White House was not in a friendly mood. Some Democrats were attacking Obama for once again “caving in” to Republicans, though others thought that it was an inconsequential matter.

The White House is viewing it as very consequential, however. “It is a big deal,” the source said. “It shows the House Republicans will do no outreach, nothing.”

And who does the White House believe was really behind treating the president so shabbily?

“At first, I didn’t think it was Boehner, but his caucus,” the source said. “But maybe not. Maybe it is him.”

Steve Benen:

By agreeing to Boehner’s preferred day, the White House at least prevents a prolonged argument about process. Because Washington rules dictate that there must be a “winner” in every dispute, the Speaker gets to gloat this morning, but the fact remains Boehner still looks small and petty, picking an unnecessary fight. That he claimed to be speaking “on behalf of the bipartisan leadership and membership of both the House and the Senate,” when he clearly was not, only makes him look slightly worse. If President Obama values being seen as “the adult in the room,” this little mess reinforced the perception.

But that doesn’t make yesterday’s developments any less ridiculous. If Americans wanted a responsible Congress, ready and willing to act in the nation’s interest, and able to work constructively in response to critical challenges, they made a tragic mistake in November 2010. Yesterday’s largely inconsequential fiasco will fade away soon enough, but it’s symbolic of a larger problem: voters elected far-right children to run the legislative branch of government.

Ezra Klein:

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. A speech can rally the base, and maybe even temporarily change the topic in the news. But it can’t change the fundamental fact of politics right now, which is that the two parties disagree on the most profound question in Washington. It’s not: How do we fix the economy? It is: Who should win the next election?


So long as Republicans and Democrats disagree on that, there will be no significant cooperation on substantive issues. Boehner simply will not cut off his party’s candidates at the knees, especially its presidential contenders, by handing Obama a major economic accomplishment. Because he controls the House of Representatives, that means Obama -- and, by extension, the U.S. -- is not going to get a major economic accomplishment.

Almost everyone in Washington understands this. The interest in the president’s speech is just a function of the fact that people who discuss politics and policy for a living need to seem like we’re doing something through the long summer months. The administration needs to look like it’s acting to create jobs, the media need to appear to be reporting news, the pundits need to generate opinions about it all.

This is the part of the column where, as a pundit, I lay out my three-point, politically implausible plan to turn the situation around. This is where I tell the president to fight harder, or take his message directly to the people, or fire up the lethargic Obama for America organization. This is where I remind the Republicans that they supported tax cuts as stimulus all through the last decade and even into 2009; where I beg them to put country before party; where I warn them that everything they are doing unto the Democrats today will be done unto them tomorrow. This is where I summon history to show how FDR or Reagan or Truman broke a similar logjam.

But such exhortations -- and I am guilty of writing variations on these many times over -- are pointless today. The facts are what they are. And what they are is depressing and unlikely to change.

President Obama vs. Rick Perry boiled down to this 2 minute clip from the West Wing... (VIDEO)

Gee, maybe Mitt Romney hasn't changed that much. Maybe he's always been a brain dead-- (VIDEO)

Great catch by Steve Benen:

In February 2008, Romney delivered a speech announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race. He explained his rationale for quitting this way:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and frankly I’d be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

For those who may have forgotten it, Jon Stewart had a compelling reaction to the remarks at the time.

But more than three years later, I’m curious: does Romney think he was right? Barack Obama became president, and has proven far more successful in combating terrorism than his Republican predecessor. Does Romney stand by his belief that electing Obama president was part of “a surrender to terror”?

Or does Romney regret making the charge in 2008, and realize now he was wrong?

Since Steve didn't post it in his blog, and since Jon Stewart's still on Vacation, I figured I'd put up the whole video.

The Daily Show - Mitt Drops Out
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And for the record, Jon's response is just (ahem) two words, and it's still deserved.

The Fireside Chat for August 26th, 2011 (VIDEO)

President Obama pays tribute to the first responders, those who have served, and those who lost their lives ten years ago in the September 11th attacks. Visit Serve.gov for ways to commemorate the solemn anniversary in your community.

Just for laughs, how did Libya look back in March, with lots and lots of (VIDEO)

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The Daily Show
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Leading from behind, or the World Police turning into the World Police Chief?

An interesting thought from Zack Beauchamp (writing for the vacationing Andrew Sullivan):

Police forces aren't made up of one member. There's a chief, sure, but there are also detectives and uniformed officers who work with the chief. The chief guides their efforts, but each of them works on their own towards the general goal of enforcing the law.

It's better to think of the U.S. as the global police chief rather than sole policeman. We may be the strongest of our allies, but by no means do we take lead role in solving every problem. American allies work like detectives: they conduct crucial operations in support of the general task of keeping the global peace and creating a better world.

Libya demonstrates how the police chief system works. After the initial phase designed to halt Qaddafi's move into Benghazi, American forces played only a supporting role, letting NATO allies take the lead. Though our contributions (especially in terms of high-tech capabilities) were invaluable, no one would say American forces were doing most of the legwork.

That's the essence of "leading from behind:" convincing other states to shoulder some of the burden of creating a just international order. The U.S. provides limited help in areas where it has a significant advantage, but it outsources lead responsibilities to allies whenever possible. U.S. influence is exercised indirectly through bilateral contacts between states, mulitlateral organizations like NATO and the U.N., transnational networks, and "soft power" ideological and cultural means of influence. The idea is to limit U.S. involvement in order to husband the resources that America needs to lead in the first place.

Ultimately, that's why neoconservative critics of Obama's "weakness" and realist critics of American "empire" both get it wrong. "Leading from behind" isn't about abandoning American leadership - it's about exercising in a manner that's not completely self-defeating. Being a global policeman doesn't mean "wars all the time everywhere!" - it means enlisting allies to help us with global governance. Yes, that occasionally means military intervention by the U.S. and/or allies when the intervention in question passes basic just war theory tests, but doesn't mean the hallmark of the international order is perpetual use of military force. And our allies aren't limited to Old Europe - the U.S. can, with skillful diplomacy, work with rising states like India, which has demonstrated its commitment to global governance through its significant contributions to U.N. peacekeeping operations.

International police work is important. Not only is it morally required for rich, powerful states, but it's good for them in the long run by limiting dangerous instability. Luckily, Americans don't have to conduct every patrol on their own.

Turns out that the President in charge while Qaddafi fell had nothing to do with Qaddafi falling...if you ask the GOP

Mea Culpa, I was wrong when I wrote this back in March:

One of the things that annoys me about all the Congressional demands in this matter, is that it's not about process, it's about C.Y.A., covering (your...or in this case their) ass. They're only questioning it now because the outcome is uncertain, but you can bet your ass that if the Libyan mission comes off successfully (definition of success, TBD), Congress-critters and Senators will be lining up to take credit.

Nope!  Congressional Republicans (rather Republicans in general) aren't lining up to take credit. They're lining up to airbrush the President out of the decision.

Adam Serwer:

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, among the earliest voices calling for intervention in Libya, wasted little time in congratulating the rebels and slamming Obama for not intervening earlier:

The end of the Qadaffi regime in Libya is a victory for the Libyan people and for the broader cause of freedom in the Middle East and throughout the world. This achievement was made possible first and foremost by the struggle and sacrifice of countless Libyans, whose courage and perseverance we applaud. We also commend our British, French, and other allies, as well as our Arab partners, especially Qatar and the UAE, for their leadership in this conflict. Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Qaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower.

McCain and Graham, both of whom had warm personal interactions with Gaddafi in the past, have now gotten exactly what they wanted from the administration’s decision to intervene. But GOP partisanship demands that they not acknowledge the president’s role in assembling the global coalition that aided the rebels. Indeed, with the Republican Party wedded to a contradictory image of the president as foreign policy weakling and iron-fisted domestic dictator, we’re going to see a lot of bizarre rationalizing of what happened in an attempt to preserve this narrative of the Obama presidency.

Fred Kaplan:

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a truly obnoxious statement today, congratulating "our British, French, and other allies, as well as our Arab partners, especially Qatar and the UAE, for their leadership in this conflict," adding, almost as an afterthought, "Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Qaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower."

Second, if a pair of prominent Democrats had issued such a statement after, say, President George W. Bush helped to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan, they would have been condemned as bitter partisans or worse.

Thomas Lane (TPM):

Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. "Ridding the world of the likes of Gadhafi is a good thing," he wrote. "But this indecisive President had little to do with this triumph."

...

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who condemned the Libya action from the start, issued a statement acknowledging this disagreement:

"I opposed U.S. military involvement in Libya and I am hopeful that our intervention there is about to end. I also hope the progress of events in Libya will ultimately lead to a government that honors the rule of law, respects the people of Libya and their yearning for freedom, and one that will be a good partner to the United States and the international community."

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman had also opposed getting involved in the conflict. His press release failed to mention either that or the President:

"The impending fall of Colonel Gaddafi is one chapter in the developing story of a nation in turmoil. Gaddafi has been a longtime opponent of freedom, and I am hopeful -- as the whole world should be -- that his defeat is a step toward openness, democracy and human rights for a people who greatly deserve it."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry strove for a far-sighted, statesmanlike tone:

"The crumbling of Muammar Ghadafi's reign, a violent, repressive dictatorship with a history of terrorism, is cause for cautious celebration. The lasting impact of events in Libya will depend on ensuring rebel factions form a unified, civil government that guarantees personal freedoms, and builds a new relationship with the West where we are allies instead of adversaries."

The most substantive response was perhaps that of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, as befits the man who is still the GOP's frontrunner. He turned attention back to the still-oozing wound of the Lockerbie bomber, and demanded the new government extradite him (presumably to America since the Scottish government has already -- controversially -- freed him).

Still, that too contained no mention of President Obama. Just as the partisan approach to the death of bin Laden seems to be to claim the root cause (and thus praise) goes back to President George W. Bush, one wonders whether a similar thing is happening here... and just how long it will be before we're told Qaddafi's fall is all the result of the prior President's ingenious long-term thinking.

And finally, Steve Benen, really nailing it:

Remember hearing about the “blame America first” crowd? Well, say hello to the “thank America last” crowd.

McCain and Graham “commend” everyone except the United States military, and then, even while applauding the developments, take yet another shot at the Obama administration.

These two just can’t bring themselves put aside petty partisan sniping, even when they’re thrilled by the fall of a dictator.

There’s obviously a legitimate question as to whether the international offensive in Libya was a wise decision. But as the Gaddafi regime crumbles, do the conflict’s two biggest congressional cheerleaders really feel the need to complain, “Yeah, but we’re not happy with the speed with which Obama got the job done”?

Here are three things I’d encourage McCain and Graham to keep in mind. First, complaining about getting the outcome they wanted is just cheap. When the fear of Obama getting some credit for success is stronger than the satisfaction that comes with a tyrant’s fall, there’s a problem.

Second, the fact of the matter is, the efforts of U.S. forces in Libya are being cited as “a major factor in helping to tilt the balance after months of steady erosion of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military.”

And third, if McCain and Graham really want to complain about why “this success was so long in coming,” maybe they can talk more about their trip to Tripoli two years ago, when both McCain and Graham cozied up to Gaddafi, even visiting with him at the dictator’s home, discussing delivery of American military equipment to the Libyan regime. Both senators shook Gaddafi’s hand; McCain even bowed a little.

I’m curious if McCain and Graham have simply forgotten about this, or if they’re just hoping everyone else has.

MSNBC: The President's address on the Libyan Situation (VIDEO)

For some reason, we've been waiting for hours now for the White House to release this video, and only now are we able to get it from MSNBC:

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The Fireside Chat for August 20th, 2011 (VIDEO)

From a farm in the Midwest, President Obama talks about the determination and integrity of the American people and calls on Congress to put aside their differences to grow the economy.

The President's Town Hall from Alpha, Illinois (VIDEO)

ProPublica: Separating Economic Fact from Economic Fiction (particularly about the Stimulus!)

ProPublica has a list of five myths about the Economy, but these two were of particular interest to me:

2. The stimulus failed./The stimulus rescued the economy.

Neither. It clearly hasn't hauled the country back to full employment, but widely-cited economic models show it probably prevented a deeper downturn.

Many economists and nonpartisan forecasting firms have credited the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with increasing employment by at least two million jobs (see Table 8). Although the unemployment rate remains stuck at 9 percent, several economists estimate that unemployment would have been higher -- as much as 12 percent -- and remained high longer without it.

One of the most prominent studies on the stimulus was put out by the economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi in July 2010. The pair concluded that while the bank bailout and actions by the Federal Reserve had a greater impact in ending the recession, the stimulus was a critical part of the remedy. "We do not believe it a coincidence that the turnaround from recession to recovery occurred last summer, just as the ARRA was providing its maximum economic benefit," they wrote.

Other analyses have shown less of an impact -- that aid for state budgets and education "funded staffing that would have occurred anyway" and that the stimulus saved government jobs while doing little to boost private-sector employment.

Critics say it failed because it fell short of what administration officials claimed it would do. They point to a chart produced shortly before Obama's inauguration by his economic advisers Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, which showed that if the stimulus plan were passed, unemployment wouldn't top 8 percent. But the recession turned out to be much more severe than they and blue-chip economists realized.

The goal of the stimulus "was to end the Great Recession and jumpstart our recovery," said Zandi, who has advised John McCain but has said he's a registered Democrat. "It did that. It was never intended nor should it be expected to be the source of long-term growth. The plan was always to hand the baton to the private sector. And that was going smoothly until we got creamed" by the European debt crisis and rising gas prices.

3. The stimulus should have been bigger.

This is a red herring. Politically, the initial stimulus package almost certainly couldn't have been bigger because the moderate senators who provided the key votes wouldn't stomach a package over $800 billion. Indeed, late in the game, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and others were looking to trim the bill to $650 billion.

Regardless of the politics, many economists, including New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, insist the stimulus was too weak to deal with the crisis. Other economists, including John F. Cogan and John B. Taylor at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution, argue that the amount of stimulus spending wouldn't have mattered because it mainly reduced borrowing by state and local governments rather than increasing spending. So, they contend, the predicted benefits were washed out.

In any case, the total stimulus is bigger than you might have thought. Since the Recovery Act, Congress has approved hundreds of billions of dollars in additional stimulus, including the renewal of unemployment benefits, this year's payroll tax cut and the extensions of the education jobs fund and the homebuyer tax credit. The total is now well over a trillion dollars.

But even that isn't sufficient knowing what we do now, according to Romer. As she recently told The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, the economy "probably needed about $2 trillion given what we were actually up against."

As much as Iove and respect @ThePlumLineGS, he gets Tom Coburn's statement wrong. Not that Coburn knows what he's talking about.

Whew.  Going race heavy today.  Thanks, Senator Coburn and Gov. Perry!

Okay, following up on Coburn's racist statement (yup, I'm stickin' with that) Greg Sargent posts first an expanded quote from Senator Coburn (always helpful), and then some analysis:

“No, I don’t... He’s a very bright man. But think about his life. And think about what he was exposed to and what he saw in America. He’s only relating what his experience in life was...

“His intent isn’t to destroy. It’s to create dependency because it worked so well for him. I don’t say that critically. Look at people for what they are. Don’t assume ulterior motives. I don’t think he doesn’t love our country. I think he does.

“As an African American male, coming through the progress of everything he experienced, he got tremendous benefit through a lot of these programs. So he believes in them. I just don’t believe they work overall and in the long run they don’t help our country. But he doesn’t know that because his life experience is something different. So it’s very important not to get mad at the man. And I understand, his philosophy — there’s nothing wrong with his philosophy other than it’s goofy and wrong [laughter] — but that doesn’t make him a bad person.”

I think what Coburn means here is that African Americans are more likely to need such programs than whites are, and by his own lights, Coburn actually thinks he’s being charitable to Obama here. He’s essentially saying that Obama’s life experience quite naturally dictated that he would view the safety net as a good thing, because it helped poor African Americans.

As Adam Serwer notes, the problem with Coburn’s remarks as they were originally reported is that he seemed to be saying that blacks get unfair advantages, thanks to the welare state — an implication that’s central to the conservative case against it.

I think the full transcript shows that this isn’t quite what Coburn was saying, but his use of the phrase “create dependence” is still highly questionable. Because as Serwer also notes, Coburn is also implicitly conceding that these programs succeed in their objective of helping people who lack the means to protect themselves.

What’s funny to me about this whole episode is that it reveals how challenging it is for the saner variety of Republicans to reason with some of their constituents about the President. Coburn is struggling to talk a constituent out of his anxiety that Obama actively wants to destroy the country. He needs to find a way of defending Obama’s motives that a constituent inclined to believe the worst about Obama might be able to listen to and even tolerate. So Coburn hit on this way of defending Obama while still keeping his argument confined within a world view that this constituent might find acceptable. It’s not easy being a Republican official these days.

Errrr...no, Greg.

Sen. Coburn still linked this erroneous idea about "dependency programs" to the President's race, suggesting that it is only blacks who benefit from them.  That's even with the benefit of an expanded quote.  So, Senator Coburn is not being charitable.  He's still being quite racist, or at the very least, showing himself as willing to indulge in the racist thoughts and behavior of his constituents, which doesn't exactly warm my heart either.

It goes to show me, as an African-American, what these white folks are saying when none of us are around...and goes back to an argument about our fundamental status as not-quite-American.

Let me give you a quick background. I am an African-American male and did not directly benefit from any quote-unquote dependency programs. My father, having grown up poor in small-town Texas, did.

But in his case the "dependency" programs worked as were intented to work, and the American People benefited from their investment. The people of the United States shelled out Tax dollars to help give my Father a leg up. He then took that leg up, went to College, went to Graduate School, got himself a PhD in Mathematics. A rise from near-poverty to Upper-Middle Class Status...complete with the higher taxes that befits a man with his salary.  This, of course, allows him to shell out his own dollars to help someone else get their leg up.

See how this works?

My Father's story, which in time became my own, is why I support the programs I receive no direct benefit from.

And just for the record, Welfare is not a blacks-only, or even blacks-majority program. Most of the people getting Welfare are white. That's just a matter of numbers.

However, most of the Politicians benefiting from selling racial resentment to white folks are themselves white (I doubt this is a coincidence). This includes Rick Perry, and includes Tom Coburn. That's just a matter of racism

As Jonathan Chait points out:

Keep in mind that the only area where Obama has attempted to create a new entitlement is health care, which is the same goal pursued by Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Harry Truman, and other non-black politicians.

Senator Tom Coburn...racist.

From TPM:

Responding to a man in Langley who asked if Obama "wants to destroy America," Coburn said the president is "very bright" and loves his country but has a political philosophy that is "goofy and wrong."

Obama's "intent is not to destroy, his intent is to create dependency because it worked so well for him," he said.

"As an African-American male," Coburn said, Obama received "tremendous advantage from a lot of these programs."

"Oh my God...they'd make him live in Houston..." (VIDEO)

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Racism still exists, America. It's just gotten very subtle.

One of the things White folks need to get through their heads is that African-Americans do listen, do pay attention, and do know all the code words and behaviors.

Why? It's a matter of survival for us. We have lived in a world, a world that existed as recently as 50 years ago, within my Father's lifetime, where an African-American saying the wrong thing, or merely looking at someone the wrong way could get them killed.

Don't believe me? Ask Emmett Till. To esoteric a reference for you, then why don't you try Amadou Diallo or Abner Louima?

Of course, they represent the most extreme form of racism.  Today, it's form is far more supple, downright invisible until it strikes.

The election of an African-American President is a historical step forward for us as a society and a nation, it does not mean America has moved past its at times very racist self.

No, we don't have crosses burned on our lawns.  We're not called every name but a child of god.  That's the past.  Now, we just have our authenticity questioned.  If you're like me, you have extra eyes following you around the store when you shop, or you see the bag get clutched a little tighter when you're on the elevator.  (Or you're told over and over again that the movie that offends you shouldn't offend you).

If you're the President, you're hounded (repeatedly) for your birth certificate.  If you're his wife, you're right to complain is cut off.

Consider what Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry says in this piece, and what it says about the view that fundamentally, there's a certain part in the lizard-brain of American that simply will never view me as a "real" American.

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What should scare you (Lord knows it scares me) is that I've found these lizard-brain reactions not just in Conservatives, but Liberals as well.

Oh, so NOW Kasich wants to negotiate... (VIDEO)

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From Steve Benen:

Kasich said the offer to revisit the law he recently signed has nothing to do with “a fear we are going to lose.”

The laughter was audible throughout Ohio. I mean, really. Why else would the governor suddenly discover a willingness to change a law he championed?

It’s almost amusing — Kasich wants to negotiate with state employees after gutting their collective bargaining rights, because he knows his constituents are likely to side with workers over him.

A progressive coalition, We Are Ohio, dismissed talk of a deal, but said Republicans can avoid the November referendum by repealing the anti-worker measure.

Charlie Rose's Interview with Warren E. Buffett (VIDEO)

They talk about his recent column on coddling the rich.

The President's Town Hall from Atkinson, Illinois (VIDEO)

Wolf Blitzer's Interview with President Obama (VIDEO)

Apologies, CNN's embeddable video can take a bit of time to load. Be patient. It'll work.

And unfortunately, to watch the complete set, you'll have to watch a LOT of AT&T ads.


Part 1:




 Part 2:




 Obama on risk of one-term Presidency:




 Obama: I'll cut Perry some slack:




 Where are the jobs?:




Obama: Debt debacle hurt businesses:




Obama: U.S. wants a responsible Congress:




 Obama: Health care costs are coming down:




 President Obama feels he has 'greatest job on earth':




Obama: 'We have to stay vigilant':




Obama: Tough economy can be polarizing:




President reveals 'gift' for daughters:




Obama: We'll be just fine:

Union Workers decide to give Scabs safety tips. Figuring that someone had to do it. (VIDEO)

Via Think Progress:

Nearly 45,000 Verizon workers have been striking for nine days, as the company continues to demand huge worker concessions. Since these workers have gone on strike, the company has replaced them with temporary workers.

Now, a video has emerged of a group of striking Verizon workers assisting these scab workers with safety training that the company apparently did not provide them. In the following clip, a man from the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers (IBEW) Local 2321 Danvers Garage explains to some of the replacement workers how to safely get up an electric pole without being hurt. (Warning: The video contains some expletives):

Fareed Zakaria: "I think that Liberals need to grow up..." (VIDEO)

Over the last week, liberal politicians and commentators took to the airwaves and op-ed pages to criticize the debt deal that Congress reached. But their ire was directed not at the Tea Party or even the Republicans but rather at Barack Obama, who they concluded had failed as a President because of his persistent tendency to compromise. This has been a running theme ever since Obama took office.

I think that liberals need to grow up.

As the New Republic's Jonathan Chait brilliantly points out, there is a recurring liberal fantasy that if only the President would give a stirring speech, he would sweep the country along with the sheer power of his poetry. In this view, writes Chait, "Every known impediment to the legislative process - special interest lobbying, the filibuster, macroeconomic conditions, not to mention certain settled beliefs of public opinion-are but tiny stick huts trembling in the face of the atomic bomb of the presidential speech."


This does happen - if you're watching the American president - but not if you're actually watching what goes in in Washington.

The disappointment over the debt deal is just the latest episode of liberal bewilderment about Obama. "I have no idea what Barack Obama ... believes on virtually any issue," Drew Westen writes in the New York Times, confused over Obama's tendency to take "balanced" positions. Westen hints that his professional experience - he is a psychologist - suggests deep, traumatic causes for Obama's disease.

Let me offer a simpler explanation: Obama is a centrist and a pragmatist who understands that in a country divided over core issues, you cannot make the best the enemy of the good.

Obama passed a large stimulus package within weeks of taking office. Perhaps it should have been bigger, but despite a Democratic House and Senate, it passed by just one vote. He signed into law an unprecedented expansion of regulations in the financial-services industry, though one that did not break up the large banks. He enacted universal health care, through a complex program modeled after Mitt Romney's plan in Massachusetts. And he has advocated a balanced approach to deficit reduction that combines tax increases with spending cuts.

Maybe he believes in all these things. Maybe he understands that with a budget deficit of 10% of GDP, the second highest in the industrialized world, and a debt that will rise to almost 100% of GDP in a few years, we cannot cavalierly spend another few trillion dollars hoping that will jump-start the economy.

Perhaps he believes that while banks need better regulations, America also needs a vibrant banking system, and that in a globalized economy, constraining American banks will only ensure that the world's largest global financial institutions will be British, German, Swiss and Chinese.

He might understand that Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are smart people who, in long careers in public service, got some things wrong but also got many things right. Perhaps he understands that getting entitlement costs under control is in fact a crucial part of stabilizing our fiscal situation, and that you do need both tax increases and spending cuts-cuts that are smaller than they appear because they all start with the 2010 budget, which was boosted by the stimulus.

Is all this dangerous weakness, incoherence and appeasement, or is it common sense?

Stephen Colbert's Extended Interview with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice (VIDEO)

Part 1:

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Part 2:

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The President's Town Hall from Decorah, IA...now with Teabagger confrontation! (VIDEO)

For those of you with concerns about the President's strategy, how he handles negotiations, etc., the first two questions cover that ground pretty nicely.

And in case you're curious about the President's confrontation there toward the end with the Teabagger nation, it is here...and requires a strong stomach.

The President's Town Hall in Cannon Falls, MN (VIDEO)

President Obama's worst...day...ever. (VIDEO)

This is an example of the superhuman patience this President possesses. If I were President and the Dallas Cowboys (aka, the source of all evil in the Universe) were to win the Super Bowl, I think I would rather resign my office rather than have them in my White House.

But there's our President, sucking humble pie for his beloved Bears while the arch-rival Green Bay Packers come to town to...well, rub it in. Well, Packers DB, former Heisman Winner and (euuuhhh) Michigan Alum Charles Woodson wanted to rub it in.

Yes, I said.  I would rather resign my office than congratulate the Dallas Cowboys on anything.

Should Obama go Truman? Is Obama going Truman?

Norm Ornstein lays out the history of Truman and the fight against the 80th "Do Nothing" Congress:

[T]he sweeping GOP victories in 1946 convinced many Republicans that they had achieved a lasting ideological victory—that the American public had finished with the liberalism under FDR and Truman, and embraced their brand of conservatism. They were wrong. Voters had reacted to short-term economic conditions, and to a post-war mood for change, but not for a new right-wing ideology.

But it was Truman’s triumph to realize that the hyper-partisan Congress was as much a political boon as it was a political liability. Truman seized upon the conservative over-reaching and openly fought against what he dubbed the “Do-Nothing Eightieth Congress.” That rhetorical strategy paid dividends, as voters rebelled against the ideologues and the Democratic base was energized to elect a president they had long disparaged and opposed. Not only was Truman reelected—pulling off the upset of the century in a four-way race with a popular Republican nominee, Tom Dewey, and Democrats running to his left (former Vice President Henry Wallace) and right (states’ rights advocate Strom Thurmond)—but Democrats picked up nine seats in the Senate and a full 75 in the House to recapture both bodies. “The luckiest thing that ever happened to me,” Truman remarked years later, “was the Eightieth Congress.”

Barack Obama ought to be able to leverage his own recalcitrant Congress for political gain. The sitting 112th Congress, like Truman’s 80th, is dominated by a Republican House that believes that its sweeping victory reflected a huge public mandate to dismantle government as we know it. The overreaching in this case does not involve passing laws that get enacted over a presidential veto, but in precipitating artificial crises—over appropriations that are set to expire in a new fiscal year, over a debt limit that has always been raised without preconditions—to create hostages and force extreme actions. Far more than the 80th, the 112th is a true “Do-Nothing” Congress, producing little progress, and showing little interest, on key national policy areas from education to energy.

E.J. Dionne reminds us about how things looked about this time back in 2007:

For Obama’s lieutenants, his comeback from the ’07 summer doldrums provided an overlearned lesson that encouraged them to ignore external criticism and cruise along with complete confidence in their man’s almost magical powers of restoration.

The president’s loyalists still have faith in him and still love to criticize media narratives they think underestimate him. But this time, both he and they are expressing a level of frustration that may be the healthiest thing happening to Obama in what is an otherwise dismal moment in his presidency. A White House crowd often too sure of itself is fully aware of the ferocious fight Obama faces and the seriousness of the problems he confronts. Their mood and past experience suggests that a new Obama — or, in many ways, the old Obama of 2008 — is about to reappear.

...but, as Greg Sargent reminds us, maybe he's not about to re-appear, as the New York Times suggests:

Over the weekend the Times published a much-discussed piece reporting that Obama and his advisers are persuaded that the way to win back independents and moderates is to opt for something approximating the latter approach. The Times claimed that advisers think emphasizing plans that have no chance of passage won’t appeal to moderates, who want “tangible results rather than speeches.”

I don’t know how much stock to put in the Times story, but if there’s something to it, I feel compelled to point out that this is a false choice. It’s not merely giving “speeches” for Obama to propose ambitious job creation measures, even if they don’t have a chance of passage. It’s laying out a stark contrast of visions and challenging the opposing party to defend its position.

Either way, this is the key dynamic to watch: What Obama’s post-debt ceiling rhetorical feistiness will translate into in terms of actual job-creation policy, and how aggressive Obama will be in using concrete policy proposals to challenge Republicans and to reveal them as unwilling partners in fixing the economy.

But E.J. Dionne believes the time for bipartianship is over, if only because the President has no other choice:

{On the Presiden't character] he is both conflict-averse and highly competitive. On the one hand, he believes his old speech declaring there is neither a red America nor a blue America, and he trusted his capacity to bring left and right together — an imprudent presumption, given the nature of the current GOP.

Allowing this side of himself a much longer run than seems reasonable is what unleashed all the recent commentary describing him as weak and indecisive. But no sane human being (and sanity is still an Obama hallmark) can pretend anymore that today’s Republicans remain the party of Bob Dole or Howard Baker. The proof came in last week’s Republican presidential debate, when every candidate on stage raised a hand to declare unacceptable even a deficit deal involving 10 times as many spending cuts as revenue increases. This provides a handy new definition of extremism: When 90.9091 percent purity is not good enough.

Obama knows he’s reaching the end of the line on negotiating. Now he has to win. This brings out his competitive side. The rules of an election are similar to those of the sporting contests Obama so enjoys. Candidates are expected to be tough, to go after their opponents, to push and shove and throw them off balance. If you doubt Obama can do this, ask Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

The president’s speech last Thursday in Holland, Mich., was the first sign that the competitive Obama is reemerging. His target, like Harry Truman’s in 1948, was an obstructionist Republican Congress. He condemned “the refusal of some folks in Congress to put the country ahead of party” and urged that it “start passing some bills that we all know will help our economy right now.”

With Obama, there is always the danger of a relapse into the passive, we’re-all-reasonable-people style. The fighting Obama has briefly appeared before, only to go back into hibernation. This time, the evidence suggests he’ll stick with it — and, in truth, he has no other choice.

Steve Benen says "Great, but what about the policy?" What happens when the rubber meets the road...and the road isn't there?

[What Steve read from E.J.'s piece] sounds pretty heartening to me, at least insofar as we’re likely to see a feisty president ready to take his case to the public and the fight to his rivals. This strikes me as a very good idea.

What I’m less sure about is what, precisely, this will mean in policy terms. The economy still stinks, the public is still feeling a lot of anxiety, Congress is still dysfunctional, and Republicans are still being ridiculous. It’d be nice if millions of engaged citizens started demanding the GOP start taking governing seriously, but Republicans are well aware of their deteriorating public support and don’t seem to care.

My point is, I’d welcome a fired-up president ready to throw a few punches. But then what? What happens after he smacks Republicans around for a while and they still won’t extend the payroll tax cut, won’t extend unemployment benefits, won’t invest in infrastructure, and generally won’t lift a finger to improve the economy at all?

So ultimately, what's going to happen? Is the President going to be fired up and ready to go? Is he going to go milquetoast as the New York Times suggests? Steve Benen went for clarification and came away both happy...and confused:

For what it’s worth, I’ve asked for some clarification from the White House, and a senior administration official shed a bit more light on what Plouffe and Daley actually believe.

According to the official, who wanted anonymity because officials don’t want to be quoted on record discussing internal messaging deliberations, Plouffe and Daley both favor a confrontational rhetorical approach that will blame Republicans for opposing any and all job creation efforts for purely political reasons; both are leading internal boosters of a message that accuses Republicans of putting party before country.

“Plouffe and Daley have been big proponents of the sort of messaging that you saw from the President’s Country before Party speech in Michigan,” the official says.

In that speech, Obama implicitly accused Republicans of opposing an array of job-creation proposals because of their refusal “to put the country ahead of party,” adding that they would “rather see their opponents lose than see America win.” Some liberals worry that by directing his fire at Congress in general, Obama isn’t calling out Republicans directly enough, but it seems clear the White House is banking on media coverage making the target of Obama’s ire clear.

If this speech’s message is what Plouffe and Daley favor, this is a bit at odds with the public picture that’s emerged. The Times story suggested that the Plouffe/Daley camp worries that any ambitious proposals that seem designed only reveal the GOP as obstructionist will be seen as mere “speeches” by independents. The story also suggests Plouffe and Daley think continuing to reach deficit-reduction compromises with Republicans will prove more politically effective than drawing a sharp contrast with the GOP on the economy. But if Plouffe and Daley favor a continued effort to cast the GOP as blocking economic improvements for political reasons, that complicates the picture somewhat and suggests that the latter, too, will be central to the reelection campaign.

To be sure, this still doesn’t tell us how ambitious Obama is willing to be in terms of proposing genuinely ambitious and bold job creation policies in order to draw that contrast with the GOP. And liberals are right to worry that the current range of options being entertained is far too limited. But if the Obama team is serious about drawing a sharp contrast — as the senior official insists is the case — we can at least hope that the policies will follow the rhetoric.

Okay, this last bit was weird, if only because Greg said in an earlier piece that he didn't put much stock in the New York Times article...only to turn around and start putting stock in the New York Times article.

If you want to look it from a narrative standpoint, the choice between of cutting deficit reduction deals with the GOP and blasting them for their intransigence is a false choice itself. If Obama is truly going to get more in their face, why not do it Obama style? Why not sit down with the GOP in good faith, and make sure everyone knows who's to blame when they walk out?