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?

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Here's President Obama just after he was elected in 2009, promising "reform" of both Medicare and Social Security.

President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare "bargain" with the American people, saying that the nation's long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.

..."What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further," he said. "We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else's."

.... "Social Security, we can solve," he said, waving his left hand. "The big problem is Medicare, which is unsustainable. . . . We can't solve Medicare in isolation from the broader problems of the health-care system."

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President Obama has unveiled his $447 billion jobs proposal

President Obama is now speaking. "It's an urgent time." Live blog follows:

Having to watch Boehner behind him ruins it from the outset. Obama says something speechy and gets a standing ovation.

He's sending Congress the American Jobs Act. There's nothing controversial about it. Everything in it will be paid for. Everything. It will create more jobs teachers, construction workers.

It will cut payroll taxes in half for every worker and every small business. It will provide a jolt or a stalled economy. You should pass this jobs plan right away.[More..]

The SuperCommittee Henchmen meet today. Raising medicare eligibility to age 67 is on the table for discussions. The Democrats have submitted a memo with various proposed changes and a discussion of each. Here's the memo. Raising the eligibility age appears on page 7.

President Obama proposed raising the Medicare eligibility age as part of the debt-ceiling agreement, but Democrats are hardly united behind the policy.

The Democrats note that it's not going to be a money saver -- it's just going to shift who pays the money. They give the same reasons I gave last month. [More...]

Matt Yglesias writes:

Henry Blodget has an intelligent article arguing that Bank of America may soon be in need of another bailout, and proposing a Swedish-style nationalization as an alternative. He lays it all out and it’s pretty compelling.

That said, I’m not sure that any of the underlying problems with the early 2009 version of this idea have actually been resolved. [. . .] Blodget['s] proposal, however, is for Geithner to “set a ‘trigger price’ for Bank of America stock” that is kept secret from the public and from Bank of America. Then if the price if breached, Treasury will nationalize the bank and do various things. Nowhere does Blodget note that this would be illegal. My read of the views inside the Treasury Building is that they think illegal seizures of private property would have undesirable impacts.

Consider it your daily reminder that in the American system of government, things generally require coordinated action between the executive branch and Congress to happen. What do you think the prospects are for timely congressional action on a new bank nationalization program? Not good. So we’ll muddle through.

I'm not sure on the legality of the proposal, but consider this proposal regarding Bank of America:

Via Atrios, HuffPo on OFA's idea of rallying the progressive troops:

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

That'll work.

Obama's approval rating is tanking -- it's now below 40%, the lowest of his Presidency.

Congress is faring even worse. More than 80% of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and plenty don't plan to vote for incumbents:

Just 18% of registered voters in a Washington Post survey said they were inclined to vote to re-elect their representative in Congress -- the lowest number in more than two decades (only once before had it ever dipped below 30%).

Obama and the Democrats should promise a lock box on the Medicare eligibility age and on social security benefits. And warn the Republicans that tax hikes for the rich are coming whether they like it or not. (Someone has to pay for the wars Republicans got us into.) Seniors vote in huge numbers and Medicare and Social Security are major issues for them. As for Republicans and the Tea Party: all wind but no sail. I'm not even paying attention to them. As bad as our incumbents are, they are worse. And most people know it. People may be amused by crackpots, but they don't vote for them.

As the economy worsens, President Obama and his senior aides are considering whether to adopt a more combative approach on economic issues, seeking to highlight substantive differences with Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail rather than continuing to pursue elusive compromises, advisers to the president say.

Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have much economic impact. [. . .] But others, including Gene Sperling, Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, say public anger over the debt ceiling debate has weakened Republicans and created an opening for bigger ideas like tax incentives for businesses that hire more workers, according to Congressional Democrats who share that view. Democrats are also pushing the White House to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

[. . .] So far, most signs point to a continuation of the nonconfrontational approach — better to do something than nothing — that has defined this administration. Mr. Obama and his aides are skeptical that voters will reward bold proposals if those ideas do not pass Congress. It is their judgment that moderate voters want tangible results rather than speeches.

Just passing bills that do nothing are not "results." Pretending that they are "results" with the economy floundering is part of the President's political problem. Another "Recovery Summer" stunt won't help - it will hurt.

Speaking for me only

President Obama is turning 50. He celebrated in Chicago with friends, at parties that doubled as fundraisers for his re-election.

As to his first term, he told the crowd:

The thing that we all have to remember is, is that as much good as we’ve done, precisely because the challenges were so daunting, precisely because we were inheriting so many challenges, that we’re not even halfway there yet. When I said, “change we can believe in,” I didn’t say “change we can believe in tomorrow."

Shorter version: His first term was such a dud, we should give him a do-over.

Nonsense:

The agreement removes the threat of default and lowers the prospect of using the debt limit as an instrument of coercion. [. . .]

Beneath all the bluster, the prospects for compromise on broader and deeper reforms are better than they have been in years. [. . .]

The government’s ability to make smart, long-term budget choices has long been broken. This gives us a chance to fix it. [. . .]

[B]y locking in long-term savings, Congress will have more room in the fall to pass additional short-term measures to strengthen the economy — such as extending the payroll tax cut, which provides an average of a thousand dollars to the after-tax incomes of working Americans; extending unemployment benefits; and financing infrastructure investments.

Fool? Knave? Both?

Speaking for me only

Remember throwing things at your computer will not actually hit him.

White House sez:

BIPARTISAN DEBT DEAL: A WIN FOR THE ECONOMY AND BUDGET DISCIPLINE The debt deal announced today is a victory for bipartisan compromise, for the economy and for the American people.

Incredible. Smells like something allright.

Jed Lewison links to Ezra Klein describing the latest in a pattern of miscalculations by the Obama Administration in its negotiations with the Republicans. Ezra writes:

The White House proposed a balanced trigger in April: It would have automatically [increase] taxes and [cut] spending if America wasn’t on a path to balanced budgets by 2014. [. . . ] But privately, they’re less concerned about a spending-only trigger, which was seriously considered during their negotiations with Boehner. They point out that Republicans might want to cut spending, but they don’t want the blame for automatic, untargeted spending cuts that slash away at Social Security, Medicare and defense during an election year.

This is a monumental miscalculation. I'll explain why on the flip.

It's really distressing not to hear our Democratic President point out that social security and Medicare are not government welfare programs. The Government forcibly took our money with a promise we would get it back after we reached retirement age. And retirement age shouldn't be the age we need to move to assisted living facilities and nursing homes.

Millions of us have paid these taxes for forty plus years. Obama should flat out refuse to shift the goalposts. Raising the eligibility age by two years will force those of us without employer paid insurance to stick with our private plans at a cost of $1,000 a month or more during that period. Even those who responsibly planned for retirement didn't count on another $20,000 in private health care premiums foisted on them at the last minute (And yes, three years before reaching 65 is the last minute considering most people are having trouble paying their existing bills and can't just decide to put aside another $12,000 a year.) [More...]

[T]he point is that if you ask what Mitt Romney would probably be doing if he were in the White House and not trying desperately to convince his party that he shares its madness, it would look a lot like what Obama is doing [on the economy.]

There are, however, two crucial points to understand. First, Obama gets no credit for his moderation, and never will. [. . .] Second, moderate conservatism isn’t working as a policy matter. As I’ve tried to tell everyone from the beginning of the Lesser Depression, a deeply depressed economy in which monetary policy is up against the zero lower bound turns the normal rules of policy upside down. We’re in a world in which conventional prudence is folly, in which playing it safe is extremely risky. And we have, alas, a conventionally prudent, play-it-safe president — the kind of president who might have done fine in the 1990s, but not now.

(Emphasis supplied.) This. To put the point another way, Bill Clinton would likely have been a subpar President in these times. Unless he changed his policy tune. And in the end, politics follows policy success, especially on the economy. Yes, it's the economy, stupid.

Speaking for me only