YOU DECIDE DEPT:
Regarding economic news today, we see this bit of positive news:
"New jobless claims dropped to the lowest level since January and the prices of many household goods stayed low last month, positive signs of stability for the fledgling economic recovery."
But there's also this:
"The number of households caught up in the foreclosure crisis rose more than 5 percent from summer to fall as a federal effort to assist struggling borrowers was overwhelmed by a flood of defaults among people who lost their jobs."
The piece goes on to note that while many believe the recession is over, our unemployment rate isn't expected to peak until next year. Happy recovery, everyone!
And by the way, at the White House they think things are just dandy and that the "stimulus" is working...despite being confronted by evidence it, well, isn't:
"The Associated Press is touting an estimate posted on the federal government’s Recovery.org website that $16 billion in stimulus contract spending has created or saved 30,000 jobs. So using the White House’s own numbers, this comes to $533,000 per job saved or created. Instead of expressing embarrassment at a policy of spending $533,000 per job — about ten times the median income — the AP quotes White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein, stating that while it is early, “the early indications are quite positive.” Despite these “positive” indications, the unemployment rate has surged to nearly 10%, despite an earlier report by Bernstein predicting that unemployment would peak at 8% with a stimulus bill."
MORE ON RUSH LIMBAUGH:
It looks like some of the agitators are going to succeed in keeping him out of any purchase of the St. Louis Rams. That's an outrage. But at least one African-American writer today is not afraid to tell the truth. He doesn't like Limbaugh (too bad for him), but...:
"...[Limbaugh] is not the reason there are more black men in prison than in college. We are.
Our issues did not germinate in a vacuum, but I believe the best way to get out of our socioeconomical malaise is to spend less time looking at what white people like Limbaugh are supposedly doing to us and more time looking at what we're definitely doing to ourselves. More time charting a new course based on personal responsibility, not victimhood and the retelling of stories, because let me tell you, some of those stories have been touched up so many times it's hard to know what's true anyway."
LIBERALS AND OBAMA DEPT:
Why are liberals so frustrated these days with President Obama? Charles Krauthammer yesterday summed it up well:
"He has the Left. The Left has nowhere to go. They are never going to have a president more to the left than Obama, and they know it. So if you have to choose between the constituency that you have in your pocket and one that you could lose, namely, the Blue Dog Democrats — if you start a fight on the Defense of Marriage Act or if you start a fight in the middle of a war on “don't ask, don't tell,” or if you start a fight on health care where you insist on the public option knowing that you might lose the whole Senate on that — Well, it's obvious which way he is going to go, and that's the way he has gone…."
Obama wants and needs health care reform to pass. Krauthammer argues that if he gets that, he'll become much stronger politically and then might believe he is powerful enough to move to the left on some issues. Me, I'm not so sure. Obama will still be looking to 2012, to his re-election. He'll still feel the need to keep the center, in order to ensure a 2012 victory. The left may remain disappointed for some time...
