I missed it. How'd it go?

More affectionately known as the Catfood Commission. Jane Hamsher writes:

Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, who had served as Obama’s Social Security advisors on both the campaign and his transition team, sounded the alarm in a piece that appeared in Harvard’s Nieman Watchdog entitled Has Obama created a Social Security ‘death panel’?:

President Obama and the leadership in Congress have delegated enormous, unaccountable authority to 18 unrepresentative, inordinately wealthy individuals. The 18 individuals are meeting regularly, in secret, behind closed doors, until safely beyond this year’s mid-term election. If they reach agreement, their proposal will be voted on in December by a lame duck Congress, without the benefit of open hearings and deliberations in the pertinent committees and without the opportunity for open debate and amendment on the floors of the House and Senate. Despite the speed and lack of accountability, the legislation will affect, in substantial ways, every man, woman, and child in this nation.

(Emphasis supplied.) It is also the Dem Party Death Panel as it will certainly destroy the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future if the Congress votes for the Catfood Commission's recommendations to destroy Social Security.

Change you can believe in.

Speaking for me only

If Alan Simpson is allowed to remain on the President's Deficit Commission, what little credibility the Commission has will completely disappear. Via Joan McCarter:

Simpson's email, which OWL chief Ashley Carson released publicly, (PDF) was sent in response to an April blog post Carson wrote for the Huffington Post. [. . .] His email is peppered with exclamation points and condescension. At one point he urged Carson to read a certain graph, "which I hope you are able to discern if you are any good at reading graphs."

Simpson concludes by implying that leading a major organization dedicated to the interests of middle-aged and elderly women is not "honest work." "If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know," he writes. [. . .] Call when you get honest work!"

On the merits of the issues of the deficit, Alan Simpson is a proven Know Nothing. But we all know that is a feature, not a bug, in DC. But if Simpson has reached a stage where his mental capacity does not permit him to avoid this type of expression, I don't think he can credibly remain on this commission. Simpson is an embarrassment to the President now. He should resign and the President should ask him to if he does not volunteer.

Speaking for me only

Is he wrong?

"President Obama should ask for -- and accept -- the resignations of the remaining members of his economic team, starting with Secretary Geithner and Larry Summers," Boehner (R., Ohio) said in an economic address to the City Club of Cleveland.

President Obama boasts about his progressive accomplishments:

"We have been able to deliver the most progressive legislative agenda -- one that helps working families -- not just in one generation, maybe two, maybe three," [President] Obama said.

That's nice. How about "delivering" some jobs? How about stimulating the economy? Are we counting the current economic crisis as delivering a progressive agenda? Gawd, I hope not.

Speaking for me only

Good stuff from the President:

Sam Stein:

Speaking publicly for the first time since he disparaged the "professional left," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he stands by his comments [. . .] Taking the podium after a day off to tend to a sore throat, Gibbs said he has not reached out to any Democrats to discuss his remarks, in which he chastised liberals for wanting to "eliminate the Pentagon" and pursue Canadian-style health care reform. Nor, he added, has he talked to the president about the matter.

Does he stand by the comments? "Yes," he replied.

All righty then. Hell of a Press Secretary the White House has there.

Speaking for me only

Sam Stein has Gibbs saying the following:

[W]e should all, me included, stop fighting each other and arguing about our differences on certain policies, and instead work together to make sure everyone knows what is at stake because we've come too far to turn back now.

Kumbaya!

Via Atrios, Robert Gibbs thinks he is still working for Dick Gephardt's 2004 campaign:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough. [. . .] The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Talk about adopting Right Wing memes. So the President is going to be out there "politicking," trying to energize the base, and his Press Secretary is going to be taking right wing potshots at the base? Does anyone know how to play this game? Gibbs was a great campaign spokesman for the Obama campaign, but he's been a pretty lousy Press Secretary. No discipline. FTR, my reference to Gibbs and the 2004 Gephardt campaign is about this:

As often happens in government, the person who got it right on the stimulus, Christina Romer, is leaving:

"She has been frustrated," a source with insight into the WH economics team said. "She doesn't feel that she has a direct line to the president. She would be giving different advice than Larry Summers [director of the National Economic Council], who does have a direct line to the president. She is ostensibly the chief economic adviser, but she doesn't seem to be playing that role," the source said.

Meanwhile, back at the failing economy:

[T]he nation lost 131,000 jobs last month, but those losses came as 143,000 Census Bureau workers left their temporary posts, the Labor Department said. June’s number was revised dramatically downward to a total loss of 221,000 jobs. The agency originally reported that the nation lost 125,000 jobs in June.

If Obama fails politically, the cause will be his policy failure regarding the size of the stimulus -- when he listened to Geithner and Summers instead of Christina Romer.

Speaking for me only

The Hill. In other news, I oppose opposite sex marriage as well as same sex marriage. At least marriages that involve the state. Government should get out of the marriage business, straight or gay.

And I bet you that the President agrees with me. But politics does not allow him to say that. Instead the President's men say stuff like this - "The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control[.]"

Pols are pols and do what they do.

Speaking for me only

This is good news:

The Obama administration will allow tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire on schedule, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday, setting up a clash with Republicans and a small but vocal group of Democrats who want to delay the looming tax increases.[Geithner] said the White House would let taxes on top earners increase as part of an effort to cut the deficit.

Geithner [. . .] said the White House plans to extend expiring tax cuts for middle- and lower-income Americans, and expects to undertake a broader revision of the tax code next year. "We believe it is appropriate to let those tax cuts that go to the most fortunate expire," Mr. Geithner said at a breakfast with reporters.

Good job Obama Administration.

Speaking for me only