Matt Yglesias writes:

This, right before our eyes, is a living, breathing example of why presidential speechmaking doesn’t do the things people say it does. It doesn’t even have the intended impact on its intended audience! Is Atrios fired up and ready to go? Prepared to stop writing sarcastic, depressed, and dismissive blog posts and instead go hard against the president’s critics, boosting the morale of the president’s audience? No, he’s sarcastic, depressed, and dismissive because the objective situation is depressing and everyone knows the jobs plan won’t pass.

I love Atrios but the prototypical voter he is not. Yglesias needs to find a more "representative" Friedmanesque cab driver.

Speaking for me only

Rep. Peter DeFazio said:

“I have been very unequivocal,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon. “No more tax cuts.”We have the economy that tax cuts give us. And it’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it?

MisterMix of Balloon Juice objects:

[L]et’s not forget the high-pitched cry of the safe-seat absolutist [. . .] Faced with the real possibility of losing the Presidency and both houses of Congress, in the worst recession in most of their lifetimes, this is how the Democratic Party reacts to the least objectionable piece of legislation that’s been sent to the hill in a long time. I’m sure Future President Perry, Future Majority Leader McConnell, and Continuing Speaker Boehner are all laughing right now.

I suppose some might call that a "pragmatic" analysis. I'm not one of them. Running against the Bush economic record, as DeFazio seems to suggest, seems like a pretty good political notion. YMMV.

Bad news:

Applications for unemployment benefits climbed to 428,000 in the week ended Sept. 10 from an upwardly revised 417,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

Exacerbating the problem is the rise in headline inflation:

The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index increased 0.4 percent last month, after rising 0.5 percent in July. The reading was higher than the 0.2 percent rise expected, with food prices posting their biggest gain since March. Gasoline prices climbed 1.9 percent after jumping 4.7 percent the prior month. Food prices rose 0.5 percent after increasing 0.4 percent in July.

This is bad because the folks that want Austerity Now! get to yell Inflation! The reality is that core inflation is 2% due to slack demand. But energy and food prices go up more because demand for these items is inelastic. This is a toxic brew of economic news. Things are looking bleaker.

Time for a new season of Survivor South Pacific and the finale of Big Brother. of the three Big Brother finalists, two of them (Adam and Porsche) don't even belong there since they were total lightweights all season, so if you haven't followed the season so far, no reason to start tonight. They need to do some serious re-tooling for next summer. (Added: my very catty take on the season is here.)

Also on tonight: Restaurant Impossible, a quirky show on the Food Network that is oddly appealing. When Obama announced his job plan, I kept thinking of the failing restaurant owners on the show, wondering how they and business owners like them would feel about being told they could have a $1,500 tax credit, a payroll tax cut and more tax cuts if they hired new workers. They have no customers because of the economy and they are already throwing their retirement savings into the restaurants just to stay afloat and keep the few employees they do have. How are they going to hire new workers? They need income and business, not tax credits.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Matt Yglesias says progressives have failed:

I got a great email today from a self-described “well-educated, politically literate, 30-something person with a job and a kid” who spends “let’s say 45 minutes a day that I spend thinking about politics” [she reads the Klein Group of self proclaimed "wonk" bloggers] and who had a great question:

I’m starting to realize that I am part of the problem as well. I don’t actually DO anything besides read and fulminate in the quiet of my own home.

Yglesias agrees that it is her fault:

Tebow! Tebow! (Just for the Denver/Gator audience.)

Open Thread.

There is something pathetic about this post from Kevin Drum about a GOP plan to make some states likely to swing Dem in the 2012 Presidential election not winner take all (example, Obama wins Wisconsin, but only gets 6 of the 11 EVs. See also Obama winning an EV in Nebraska in 2008.) Kevin writes:

[H]ere's what really so disheartening about the whole thing. As recently as a couple of decades ago this would have been a bridge too far for most of the party's mandarins: conservative pundits and senior GOP officials would have sounded off against it because it was just too raw a deal even for flinty political pros. But now we live in the era of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and Tom DeLay and Fox News. There's really no one left who might object to this merely out of a decent respect for institutional integrity and fairmindedness.

I suppose it is disheartening, but it is not new. What is disheartening to me is how the Democratic Party and some pundits, including on occasion, Drum, handwring over Dems and liberals being "too mean." It is a complaint of longstanding for me. Fighting Dems was something first talked about on the Left blogs in 2003. 8 years later, some are still shocked and disheartened by what the GOP does, and still tut tutting if Dems and progressives are "too mean."

Speaking for me only

Via Glenn Greenwald, Mother Jones blogger Rick Ungar:

On a day when Americans of all stripes should have been giving thanks to both President Bush and President Obama for doing whatever it is they do that has protected us from a tragic repeat of the events of September 11, 2001[.]

(Emphasis supplied.) Who was Mother Jones?

[When she] was denounced on the floor of the United States Senate as the "grandmother of all agitators," she replied:

I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.

I'm not sure that she would consider Rick Ungar one of her political descendants.

Speaking for me only

Jacob Sullum has the October cover story at Reason on President Obama: Bummer: Barack Obama Turns Out to Be Just Another Drug Warrior." As if anyone should be surprised.

I'm not. I've been writing since 2007 that he would do little to temper the War on Drugs. I would have called the article "Bummer: Barack Obama is Still A Drug Warrior." Why?

[More....]

Conservative Republican Bob Turner was elected yesterday to replace Rep. Anthony Weiner. The District encompassed much of Queens and a small part of Brooklyn:

Turner, 70, a retired cable television executive who has never served in elective office, defeated Democratic State Assemblyman David Weprin, 55, who has two decades of public service experience, to fill the seat left vacant when Anthony Weiner (D) resigned in disgrace in June after more than 12 years in the House.

The last time a Republican won in that district was in the 1920's.

Many will see it a referendum on Obama and the economy, and a sign for 2012. I think it's way too soon for that, too many unforeseen things can happen to change the public's mind between now and then. Voters are fickle and can change like the wind. Also, Israel/Palestine may have been a significant factor in this particular race: [More...]

Matt Yglesias writes:

It’s often best in life to try to avoid assuming that people you disagree with are motivated by “absurd” lines of reasoning. Perhaps [White House Chief of Staff Bill] Daley['s support for the President's decision to suspend EPA rule writing on ozone] is [due to being] persuaded by Matthew Kahn’s point (based on research from Michael Greenstone) that enhanced EPA regulations cause job-shifting out of non-attainment counties into attainment ones. Regulations that break up concentrations of extreme pollution in part by shifting polluting activity to less-polluted areas are perfectly sound public health measures, but there’s nothing absurd about the theory that it could do political damage to the standing of incumbent politicians in the areas that suffer from the negative short-term effects.

I checked the link Yglesias provides and find his political reasoning to be absurd. From the link:

Public Policy Polling released a new poll today. President Obama would beat Mitt Romney by 4 points and Rick Perry by 11 points.

The president’s more solid standing in the Perry and Romney horseraces comes from consolidating his party support. He was losing 13% of Democrats to each candidate in August, but only 11% to Romney and 9% to Perry now. Obama has meanwhile upped his own crossover support, from 5% to 9% of Republicans versus Romney and 10% to 11% against Perry. The president leads Perry by ten points with independents, but Romney tops Obama by two with them.

One reason for Obama's increase over Perry: Perry's position on social security, which is likely to cost him swing voters.