DOWNLOADS: (111)

PLAYS: (1484)

Embed

How could we ever get through another week of Sunday bobble head shows without Peggy Noonan around to let all of you people know what Very Serious People the Republicans are. On this week's edition of Meet the Press, it was Paul Ryan's turn for Nooners to fawn all over him, but at least she got some push back this time from Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

So-called "tea partier" and Senate candidate Ted Cruz did his best to help Noonan out and Reed did a nice job shooting down his talking points as well. The best Cruz could come back with is their nonsense about the Senate not passing President Obama's budget when what they voted on was a Republican parody of his budget and a cheap political stunt.

You can read the entire exchange here but I've left out some of E.J. Dionne and Chuck Todd's remarks for the sake of brevity:

MR. KASIM REED (D-Mayor of Atlanta, GA): Well, you know, the bottom line is I think that the Republicans made a decision to run for the second time a right-right election. And my dad said, you know, Republicans do well when they do dog leg left. If you go out to the Senate and you come-- you go out to the right and back to the center. Democrats go out to the left, come back to the center. This is the second time they’ve gone right-right, which means they’re going to go in the woods. I mean, the fact of the matter is McCain picked Palin, right-right. And now Mitt Romney who is a moderate is picking a person who is right-right. He’s just a better salesman at it.

GREGORY: Well, E.J. and Peggy, here’s the Weekly Standard cover story this week. It’s got Paul Ryan on the cover, the assault on Paul Ryan. E.J., have they landed any real blows?

[...]

GREGORY: Peggy, initial thoughts here on-- on the assault on Paul Ryan?

MS. PEGGY NOONAN (Columnist, Wall Street Journal): Uh, look, I think the choice of Ryan was admirable, you know. And I think Ryan himself is an admirable and accomplished person, and a serious man. He talks about serious issues. He does focus things on the budget, and on entitlement spending. But I also think this is a little bit delicate for Republicans. This is a stressed nation. This is a tough context in which to talk about things that people will hear as cuts. I respect the road the Republicans are going down. I think so far in the past week the real news has been they’ve been talking Medicare, and they’ve been winning on it. But long-term I think the Republican issues are growth, jobs, the economy, those are the things people trust the Republican Party on. So this is all very delicate. It’s strong, but it’s delicate.

[...]

GREGORY: Peggy, I come back to this tone though, because it does-- this polarization does matter. It does seem even more polarized and it’s got to have some impact on A, you know, are there moderates who actually show up and vote, and who do they vote for, and then how you govern after this kind of condition?

MS. NOONAN: Yeah, that’s a problem. Oddly enough, the-- while it’s so good in so many ways to focus on Medicare, by making people over the next 60 days take very definite points of view, you may make it harder to make a Medicare deal down the road. But overall, it seems to me, I’m not sure the American people themselves are so polarized. I, sort of, have a sense that they know-- they tell pollsters, I think I’m going this way for the president, I think I’m going this way for Mr. Romney, there’re so few undecided. But lately I have a feeling, the un-- there’s a sort of feeling of dissatisfaction among a lot of voters with the choices that they have. They are open to persuasion, they are open to listening for the next 70-80 days to a point of view that is serious and not low. They want hope. It’s a big group of Americans who are feeling cynical and disaffected. If somebody could reach in to them and say I can help, that would be very powerful.

[...]

MR. REED: I want to push back on this notion of Paul Ryan as a serious man. He b-- he voted for every budget b-- busting measure under President Bush. He voted for TARP. He asked for money under the American Recovery and Investment Act. He voted for both wars. He put Medicare on a credit card, and then all of a sudden in last 24 months, he’s developing the stature as a serious guy, so I want to push back on that…

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (91)

PLAYS: (271)

Embed

From this Sunday's State of the Union, while discussing whether President Obama's reelection prospects might hinge on the economy improving or not, Virginia's wingnut Gov. Bob McDonnell decided to throw out here what TPM's Sahil Kapur thinks might be a trial balloon in case the economy continues to improve; it's Republican governors that deserve credit for the recovery, not Obama:

Virginia Governor and Mitt Romney surrogate Bob McDonnell (R) on Sunday floated what may turn into a Republican talking point if the economy continues to improve: It wasn’t President Obama who made it happen, it was the GOP governors.

“Look, I’m glad the economy is starting to recover, but I think it’s because of what Republican governors are doing in their states, not because of the president,” McDonnell said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” [...]

The intricacy of McDonnell’s argument is noteworthy: He didn’t say jobs are created on the state level, as opposed to the federal level. He said the improvements happened because of Republican governors. That’s a difficult argument to make when the recovery is taking hold across the country, even in states with Democratic governors.

It’s also problematic because Republicans have been eager to give Obama ownership of the economy. But McDonnell’s trial balloon suggests that if the economic indicators continue to tick upward, the 2012 elections could shift from a battle over who’s to blame for a weak economy to who deserves credit for an improving one.

During the segment above, after McDonnell took credit for how his and other Republican led states are doing, Crowley cut off Gov. Martin O'Malley before he had a chance to respond to him. I'm wondering if he was going to point out that Virginia is doing well because of the amount of stimulus money his state accepted.

And after all the layoffs of government workers, their attack on public sector employees, with Republicans doing everything they can to sabotage any economic recovery on purpose for political gain, recall elections of unpopular Republicans, and Republican governors tanking in the polls over the last year due to their unpopular agendas, I say good luck with trying to make that argument to the public.

As far as O'Donnell's claim that the stimulus didn't work, I'd just refer readers back to Karoli's post on that -- Dear Democrats: The Stimulus Worked, Start Acting Like It.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (114)

PLAYS: (202)

Embed

With the upcoming primary in Florida next week, the Republicans decided to trot out their "golden boy" Marco Rubio for a good bit of projection on who it was that tanked our economy and to rattle off their usual list of grievances about President Obama not magically fixing the mess he inherited from George W. Bush in the face of unprecedented obstruction by the Republicans in the Congress.

What Rubio dished out here was more of their upside down definition of "class warfare" where they obviously think most Americans are too stupid to know what the actual definition of class warfare is and that it's their wealthy political donors who are winning that war right now with record income disparity in the United States.

Rubio also repeated the zombie lie that we've been hearing from Mitt Romney on the campaign trail, that "Obama made the economy worse." Jon Perr debunked that lie already for C&L in his post here -- Romney's Big Lie on the Economy Gets Bigger. And for a little reminder about that economic mess the Obama administration was left and who caused our current deficit, I'll just remind everyone again about this chart -- The Bush Deficit.

Rubio again says that the stimulus bill didn't work even though we know that Republicans have been talking out of both sides of their mouth on the issue since we know they were all clamoring for that money for their individual states and districts as we documented here, and here, and here, and here, and here. And we have more where those came from but I'll stop there.

Rubio pretends that the Republicans care about upward mobility and everyday Americans being able to get ahead, but their policies of trickle-down economics and tax breaks for the richest among us have led to nothing but record income disparity the likes of which we haven't seen since The Gilded Age, and their solutions are for more of the same that we saw under George W. Bush, but put on steroids. If this is really the message they want to carry into the general election, it's going to be interesting to see how the public responds once they all start trying to campaign on this around the country and try to sell this snake oil to someone besides Republican primary voters.

If the reactions from my coworkers, friends and family that I've spoken to so far are any indication, I don't think it's going to go well for them. I've gotten nothing but completely negative reaction from anyone who has been even remotely paying attention on their messaging, their "class warfare" rhetoric and even my lifelong Republican father has called the current crop of GOP presidential candidates "a bunch of clowns" after watching some of their debates.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics below the fold -- Rubio Gives GOP Weekly Address: Obama Has "Made Everything Worse":

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (147)

PLAYS: (782)

Embed

Here we go again with more projection from Liz Cheney. When asked about President Obama's speech in Kansas last week in which he talked about the Republicans being the party who are just looking out for the rich, the viewers of Fox News Sunday were treated by Cheney to political analysis that was about as ridiculous as when she claimed President Obama wanted to trash the economy on purpose for political benefit, as though a bad economy would somehow help his chances of being re-elected.

This week, it was more harping about regulations and the health care law somehow destroying our economy, lying that the stimulus bill didn't do any good to turn things around and pushing to have our social safety nets destroyed in the name of “entitlement reform”. And last but not least, claiming that President Obama is going to "lose" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he's been pulling our troops out of there.

CHENEY: And I also want to point out that he's gotten a pass in many ways on national security and foreign policy. He right now as Commander in Chief is performing abysmally in regard to Afghanistan and Iraq. He's about to snatch defeat from victory in Iraq by pulling everybody out and not being able to accomplish even strategic agreement for long term relationships.

WALLACE: What about his comments in the press conference where he said ask, because there was all this stuff about him being an appeaser, and in the White House press conference he said, “Ask Osama bin Laden if I'm an appeaser?”

CHENEY: Right, he wants to talk about bin Laden. It's terrific that he got bin Laden. We all give him credit for that. But Iraq and Afghanistan are two place where this President is absolutely failing and in Afghanistan, he's pulling our troops out so fast that he's putting the mission at risk. We've got these two wars that have been incredibly important and in which we have sacrificed tremendous lives and treasure. This President's performance means we very well may lose both wars. And the only reason that that's not getting covered is because his performance on the economy is so abysmal.

Juan Williams gave some weak tea response, but he's correct that the American people are tired of having our troops there after ten long years and don't agree with neocons like Cheney and the biggest drag on Obama's poll numbers are due to the economy. Naturally, no one called Cheney out for the fact that there wouldn't be any wars invasions/occupations to "lose" if her father and George W. Bush had not lied to the American public to take us into those countries in the first place.

DOWNLOADS: (148)

PLAYS: (644)

Embed

Wash, rinse, lie, repeat. That was about what we got from New York Rep. Michael Grimm in this week's GOP Weekly Address. Par for the course, it's more of their broken record on job creation; more tax cuts, deregulation, Washington spends to much, the confidence fairy and their insane proposal to pass their Paul Ryan plan on steroids balanced budget amendment which they know there is no chance in hell of ever passing.

We've already seen that their grand plans for job creation didn't work under the Bush administration where we were losing as many as 700,000 jobs a month at the end of his term. And the stimulus plan didn't work as well as it should have because Republicans wouldn't allow it to get through the Senate unless a good part of it was tax cuts. And of course none of these Republicans will admit that right wing governors all over the country purging government jobs at the expense of tax breaks for corporations has a great deal to do with why our unemployment numbers look so bad right now.

While it's become obvious that the Republican Party is doing its best to make sure the employment problem in America is as bleak as they possibly can to keep President Obama from being reelected, which is their goal according to their leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell, they've still got the nerve to come on the air day after day and pretend their party cares one iota about job creation in the United States as Grimm did here in their weekly response.

Transcript via the LA Times below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (295)

PLAYS: (294)

Embed

If Liz Cheney had any credibility maybe she'd go on some other media outlets once in a while instead of having to hide behind the refuge of Fox to spread her lies. Although Juan Williams did actually get after her a bit in this segment. Liz Cheney seemed to take it a bit personally that the Obama administration was criticizing her father's administration. Since they got stuck trying to clean up after the collapsing economy Bush left them, I'd say they've got every right to be critical when it comes to the employment numbers. With Republicans and ConservaDems like Nelson fighting them at every turn on everything but tax cuts for their rich buddies it's surprising they've gotten anything meaningful passed to help the economy.

Media Matters has more on her talking points on the stimulus.

Liz Cheney contradicts economists, claims the stimulus has "not worked":

Liz Cheney spread the myth that the stimulus bill has "not worked" to mitigate job losses. In fact, many independent and private analysts have agreed that stimulus spending significantly raised employment over what would have happened without it.

As they noted here's what Cheney said about stimulus during the segment.

Cheney: The Republicans are saying no to things that have not worked. We've lost 3.3 million jobs since the stimulus passed last year. And what is clear is that the private sector is not going to hire when they're traumatized. And I think they have been pretty well-traumatized by the policies of this administration. They don't know what coming next; more taxes, more regulation.

Here's a bit more from their article:

But independent and private analysts agree stimulus significantly raised employment CEA: Recovery Act has raised employment "by between 2.5 and 3.6 million." In its fourth quarterly report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) stated: "The CEA estimates that as of the second quarter of 2010, the ARRA has raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.5 and 3.6 million. These estimates are broadly consistent with the direct recipient reporting data available for 2010:Q1."

Independent analysts agree that recovery act significantly raised employment. In its quarterly report, the CEA included figures from independent analyses that also credited the recovery act with increasing employment.

Go read the rest of the article. They've got more with some numbers on the stimulus and the jobs numbers.

DOWNLOADS: (972)

PLAYS: (4982)

Embed

I wonder if Sean Hannity fed Elisabeth Hasselbeck her talking points before President Obama appeared on The View this week? Hasselbeck got taken to school over jobs saved and unemployment by the President in this segment.

Hasselbeck: I want to get to something that’s really important to so many Americans. You had promised that the stimulus bill would cap unemployment at 8 percent. We’re at near 10 percent across the country, 12 percent in my home state of Rhode Island. We are in a state of chronic joblessness. Yet, and we heard in the beginning of the show as well, you claimed that there’s "saved jobs", something, a standard that’s not been used before by any administration. [Sigh]

It’s frustrating to hear that saved jobs boasting, because it doesn’t feel that way to Americans when they don’t have jobs and they’re losing jobs. How can you continue and your administration continue saying you’re saving jobs when in fact people are losing jobs?

Obama: Well, actually Elisabeth what’s happened is that we’ve gained private sector jobs for the last five months. So, we were losing jobs when I was sworn in, as I said 750,000 jobs per month. We’ve now gained jobs for five consecutive months in the private sector. You’re absolutely right that it’s not enough. And if you don’t have a job right now, the only answer you want to hear is "I’m hired".

Hasselbeck: Right.

Obama: So, the frustration that people have is entirely justified. Now, I have to tell you though, this isn’t just my standard, Elisabeth, or my administration’s standard. There was a report that came out by a couple of economists just today, including John McCain’s former economist, that said had we not taken the steps that we had took, you would have actually seen millions of more jobs lost and we would be in a Great Depression. So, I know that’s not satisfying and it’s not good enough. But...

Hasselbeck: I think it’s the word ‘saved’ is what’s troubling people cause they don’t feel it.

Obama: Well, it makes a difference though if your job is one of the one that was one of the ones that was saved.

Someone needs to ask Hannity in a skirt if she's seen Steve Benen's monthly jobs chart if she thinks that nothing's been done to improve things since President Obama came into office. Most on the left would argue that not enough has been done and we had a reversal in the trend last month but we're definitely moving away from the bottomless pit Bush was taking us into.

DOWNLOADS: (138)

PLAYS: (245)

Embed

After talking about how “remarkable” it is that President Obama couldn’t get the Republicans and ConservaDem Ben Nelson to go along with more spending and calling the Democrats and the President irresponsible for wanting more stimulus spending for the economy, Liz Cheney throws this stink bomb out there.

Cheney: I think that you are getting very close to a situation where the President’s economic policies are becoming a national security threat to the country. And I think that you will see that play out very clearly in the elections in November, people focused not just from a political standpoint of getting more Republican seats, but on electing people who will be willing to stand up and stop what seems to be a, you know, illogical and unjustifiable spending bill.

Chris Wallace knowing full well that Cheney’s remarks are inflammatory as hell comes in and gives her some cover by saying that “the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen got up this week and said he thought the biggest threat to our national security was debt.

Juan Williams points out rightfully that of course Mullen would say that since his primary concern is paying for the defense budget with our never-ending wars and that it would be irresponsible to stop spending when we’re trying to get the economy to recover.

The Cheney’s of the world are more than happy to collapse our economy from reckless invasions of countries that were not a threat to us and tax cuts for the rich, but spending on stimulus or help for the unemployed, that’s a national security issue.

DOWNLOADS: (725)

PLAYS: (1254)

Embed

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly "There Is No Job That Is America’s God-Given Right Anymore" Fiorina apparently thinks that it a good idea to make jobs a central issue of her Senate campaign against Barbara Boxer in California given what she told Chris Wallace during this interview on Fox News Sunday.

WALLACE: All right. Give us an overview of your sense of this race. Take a minute and lay out what you think the choice is for California voters.

FIORINA: I think this election is about the direction of our state and of our nation. And in particular, it is about the direction of our economy. We are destroying jobs in California.

So while Barbara Boxer comes to California to tout the impact of the stimulus bill, the reality is that the unemployment situation in California has deteriorated since the passage of the stimulus bill.

We now face 12.6 percent unemployment. We have 2.3 million Californians out of work, hundreds of thousands of them for more than six months. Hundreds of thousands of Californians have quit looking for work.

We're not just going through tough economic times in California. We are destroying jobs. And we're destroying them because of a government that is too big, taxes that are too high, regulations that are too thick. So this election is about jobs, but it's also about out-of-control government.

And the reason I am running for the Senate is because so much of the Senate's work impacts every family and every business in California and, indeed, in our nation. The Endangered Species Act...

Chris Wallace actually points out that Fiorina's record on keeping jobs in the United States hasn't been the greatest, but of course we don't get any follow up from him.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (640)

PLAYS: (1567)

Embed

I guess it's asking too much of Fox Business Channel to let us know that their guest and former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao also happens to be married to the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as she repeats his talking points for him on the current jobs market. As Think Progress noted, she did at least get some push-back from Stuart Varney but at no time during the interview is she asked if her opinion might be biased because of who she is married to.

Although given her background and after being as Jim Hightower put it, the (anti-) Labor Secretary, she'd likely be in lock-step with him even if they weren't married. As a former Bushie who's administration ran the economy off of the cliff and as the current Minority Leader's wife, she's certainly no impartial observer of what's going on now.

Fox Business’ Stuart Varney Shoots Down Former Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao’s Negative Jobs Report Spin:

As ThinkProgress noted earlier today, conservatives have sought to rain on Obama’s parade, falsely claiming that the numbers are a “disappointment” because they were “mostly” due to hiring Census workers. On Fox Business today, former Bush labor secretary Elaine Chao attempted to spin the numbers negatively. But host Stuart Varney, who has been cynical about the administration’s economic policies, wouldn’t buy her spin, telling her that “this is not a blip up on a one month basis, there is a trend”. Read on...

As Steve Benen noted it seems his first-Friday-of-every-month jobs chart got the attention of Rachel Maddow. As Think Progress pointed out in their post, it appears to have gotten the attention of Speaker Pelosi as well.

Contrary to Chao's talking points, this does look like a step in the right direction to me as well and more than just a one month "uptick" even though as all of us know, things are still not great on the jobs front. I wonder what this trend would have looked like if the stimulus plan wasn't watered down with Republican tax cuts that Paul Krugman warned against back in January of '09?

I see the following scenario: a weak stimulus plan, perhaps even weaker than what we’re talking about now, is crafted to win those extra GOP votes. The plan limits the rise in unemployment, but things are still pretty bad, with the rate peaking at something like 9 percent and coming down only slowly. And then Mitch McConnell says “See, government spending doesn’t work.”

Let’s hope I’ve got this wrong.

Sadly it looks like he got it right although given the Republicans capacity to lie no matter what the facts are even if the administration had listened to Krugman and the numbers were better, they'd still be saying the stimulus didn't work. Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »