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NRO Newsletters . . .
Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
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| Hello,
Welcome to Morning Jolt. You have a lot of choices in your morning newsletter, and I'm glad you selected mine.
Best,
Jim |
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1. Will the Last Employed American Turn Out the Lights at the End of the Day?
Christina Romer, chair of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, just told Congress that "employment is currently about nine million below its normal trend level. "
This comes not too long after Joe Biden told us the stimulus was working "beyond his wildest dreams." (Perhaps the Vice President's usual nightly dream is a post-apocalyptic nightmare.) We're used to politicians lying, and an administration insisting the economy is getting better when the actual data and indicators are much grimmer isn't that surprising. They've been doing this since April, in fact. But doesn't this seem like a particularly dangerous gamble? Can you spin someone into thinking the economy is getting better if they don't see people getting hired in new jobs? Oh, hey, jobless claims are up. I like to think of the entire state of the economy as a giant publicity stunt for Derb's book, "We Are Doomed."
A potential early indicator on this front: Carol Shea-Porter, a Democratic member of the House from New Hampshire, has come out and acknowledged the obvious, that we're not getting the economic pick-me-up we were promised: "I know that it has created some jobs but clearly not what we were anticipating, and again, I think that we should have put more money into the infrastructure so that there'd be more projects that people could work on."
Maybe Shea-Porter's got a uniquely un-stimulated district, but if Democrats start backing away from the stimulus in places like New Hampshire with its 7.2 percent unemployment, how tempting will it be for them in places like Michigan, California, Nevada (13.3 percent unemployment! Harry Reid, you must be so proud!) Florida (collapsed housing market AND 11 percent unemployment!) and Illinois (10.5 percent unemployment? But it seems so well governed!). |
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2. Awaiting the Vice President's Hilarious Polish Jokes
Joe Biden is in Europe for a trip the New York Times headline acknowledged is "mending fences" and "a damage control tour." Ah, that tough smart diplomacy. Biden's message is to tell the Polish government and people, "Make no mistake about it: Our commitment to Poland is unwavering." Of course, it was not long ago that the administration was calling Afghanistan "a war that must be won" and now we're going back and forth - dithering, Vice President Cheney bluntly points out - on whether more troops will ever be sent there. (What will General McChrystal receive first, the additional troops he requested or Social Security?) If the U.S. isn't sure if they're all that committed to Afghanistan, how committed will they be to Warsaw?
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3. You Still Have a Lot to Earn
The Obama Administration's Special Pay Master - good heavens, even this administration's titles are Orwellian! - plans that "the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the cash payouts to their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year." Lots of us were screaming last fall, 'don't take the TARP money, it's a trap!"
So if I had a chief executive who was hired after making a ton of grandiose promises in the job interview, and after ten months on the job, nothing was fixed and in fact a lot of key areas were worse, and he spent large chunks of his time on frivolities and took forever to make key decisions, and he made, say, $400,000 per year plus generous benefits (company housing, company car, company plane), what would the Special Master recommend? |
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4. Well, You Know Those Talk Radio Hosts
The White House War on Fox News is "Nixonesque," declares the furious right-wing political editor of... uh, NPR. |
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5. Come On, Man, Even The Klansman Showed Up Today
Judging from his comments, Harry Reid really wishes that Democrats had a majority in the Senate. Yet on the first major vote of the health care debate, not only did he miss 60 votes, he missed a majority, and Reid didn't even have the excuse of Robert Byrd missing the vote.
Be of good cheer; if you think you're glum after all this news, imagine being a Democrat who has to root for this crew.
Jim
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