Friday News Roundup - Hour 1
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-09-02/friday-news-roundup-hour-1
Employers failed to add jobs last month for the first time in a year. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.1 percent. The news comes as President Obama puts the finishing touches on his job-creation strategy. His much-debated launch of the plan can’t come too soon. Polls show the public believes G.O.P. candidate Mitt Romney would handle the economy better than the president. A veteran Senate Republican staffer is chosen to head the new deficit-reduction committee. And residents along the East Coast cope with the lingering effects of Hurricane Irene.
Guests
Michael Scherer
White House correspondent, Time magazine.
Jeanne Cummings
deputy government editor, Bloomberg News.
David Welna
congressional correspondent, NPR.
Friday News Roundup Video
The panelists respond to some listener questions from Facebook and Twitter which posit that President Obama has not been bold enough in pushing his agenda. Time Magazine's Michael Scherer also talks about White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley's invitation to presidential historian Michael Beschloss for Bescholss to speak to administration staff about past presidents that have won re-election despite high unemployment rates:
Comments
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I hope people outside of the Tea Party will not be enthralled by Rick Perry. This man is only out for his own power and glory. Texas has been burning up with fires and drought this summer, and his only focus has been to position himself to run for president. He is a corporate shill and a gold-digger.
Please forgive me for the following complaint: I am deeply disappointed in the deteriorating environment on this discussion page. I rarely read it any more, which is too bad, as I have learned much from many of the past thoughtful arguments and discussions.
Please ban Monte ( and perhaps ecgberht, if he/she continues with comments like those today) from this forum. It's clear the tone of his comments often degrade the discussion and repulse participants. I feel he often breaks the civility standard you request.
Uncivil behavior sullies a discussion, even in print. There is only so much an active, engaged participant can ignore. Unfortunately, I prefer not to use Facebook for this type of forum, so I would like a more gracious environment to discuss topics from the best news show on radio.
Monte, I have seen more condescending comments from you in past pages, so maybe you are making efforts to be a kinder participant. If so, I apologize. But the tone appears unchanged to me and I find trolling very unkind. Thank you all for reading.
The republican presidents of the past that are rightfully blamed for "contributing" to the problems we have now, they were wrong because they legislated like democrats. Bushes Medicare bill of 2003 for instance.
Obama came into office focused on health care "overhaul". It's obvious he fancies himself a L.B.J. or F.D.R. wanna be. The trouble is he has no where near their intelligence, and was incredibly naive to not recognize that it was the wrong time for such grand plans. We got a terrible and destructive piece of legislation with "The Affordable Care Act" because Obama is simply unqualified for the job. This one piece of legislation is the main reason why Obama is in such trouble, and the man with his infinite ignorance proceeded to implement even more economy strangling regulations on top of that. The country would have done better if it voted in a Ken doll in 2008.
LauraH wrote:
"he has not been a progressive president at all, center right in my mind."
The "stimulus" was center right? ACA was center right?
I looked at the link. Pretty funny stuff. Benjamin Disraeli said "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics". In other words, you can "prove" any case you want if you cherry pick the data you use; for example, the deficit under Obama has NEVER declined, nor has the debt. Note that the middle chart makes Obama "look good" by PROJECTING into the future. That's worse than cherry-picked data. It's made up. The article also does not explain how the debt went from about 6T to 10T under Bush in 8 years, and from 10T to 14T under Obama in 2 1/2, yet budget deficits (did Democrats ever even pass a budget? No.) "decreased". As another example, the writer has chosen to include jobs data from only the last year of the Bush Presidency - as though the first 7 didn't exist. It also does not explain the fact that the unemployment rate - on the rise no doubt as Bush left office, never did anything but go up - until it leveled off roughly around 9% (when it was projected to not go above 7 or 8!). It also does not explain how about 50% of Obama's job "recovery" occurred before the stimulus even passed - much less was implemented! When you look at the data from 2001 through today, what you see, in fact, is that a late term recession in the Bush administration was inherited by Obama. His policies, in turn, made things worse, or at the best, did not improve things which is what he was hired to do.
I await your excuses as to why this was all Republicans' fault.
Your complaint about the President is not hard to analyze at all, LauraH ...
"Lead please, Mr. President. "
He doesn't lead, LauraH, he organizes. We tried to tell you that in 2007 and 2008 when he was running.
"Going on an extravagant vacation" is a hoot. Especially when a do-nothing Congress isn't in real session.
Yes, maybe he shoulda got his daddy's friends to buy him a pig farm so he could do the manly-manstuff like clearing brush.
Boehner is reflexively, synaptically going to object to anything Presdient Obama proposes, the way a horse's tail flicks away flies. Anything Obama suggests which Boehner doesn't resist would almost not be worth having.
villette wrote:
"and perhaps ecgberht, if he/she continues with comments like those today) from this forum. It's clear the tone of his comments often degrade the discussion and repulse participants. I feel he often breaks the civility standard you request."
Point to one. Posts for which you have policy disagreements do not count as "degrading and repulsing". If you only want to read the opinions of liberal sycophants, visit the Daily Kos.
The Tea Party have changed.
If they ever did represent commoners, they don't now.
In the 3 summers since Obama won the inauguration, it's been shown that the Tea Party has been reduced to the hardcore rightwing social conservatives. American Grace is all over this
Curious conservadems and independents have been wandering away from them for a long time.
Diane, I cannot stand to be disagreed with, please ban everyone one here who disagrees with me. We will name names at a future date as I am compiling a list.
Please know my political positions are so weak that I refuse to question them and insist that you eliminate anyone who dares challenge them. I know this forum is supposed to be open to all, but that does not concern me. I want these forums to reflect only what I want to read. It is not enough that I can choose to come here and read the posts freely, I want opinions I disagree with removed and the people who post them destroyed, oops, eliminated.
I couldn't agree more. I'm absolutely convinced that Obama wants to do the best for the entire country, but I also believe that not only does he not know how to do that in terms of improving the employment situation, but neither does anyone else. We are in a place we've never been before in terms of global competition, and are no longer in complete control of the playing field. This may be a painful and irreversible truth that politicians cannot spin us out of. Personally, my family is not much help to the economic situation currently, as we are rapidly approaching retirement age (though maybe never truly retirement status) and are trying to pay down our own debt so that maybe we can eventually at least reduce the number of hours we work. We cannot get there by buying more stuff, especially stuff cannot afford.
Why is the government of Turkey on such good terms with the murderous regime in Syria and has such strained relations with Israel who is arguably acting in self defense?
catjohn wrote:
Thanks for a really intelligent post. You are stepping back and taking in the whole world picture as are many of us and trying to deal with reality. The world is different. And it will never be as it was in the 50's again. A principle problem is world labor rates. They have been inflated by government props and labor unions in this country for decades. That was ok when the market was, essentially, closed. Now, it's a world labor market. Labor rates need to normalize. That's going to reduce the standard of living for a lot of people, though I believe it will still be better here than most places for the next 100 years at least. Your focus is jobs as well it should be. I think the best thing we can do is to reduce corporate tax rates to zero. We have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world - second only to Japan. You would see American manufacturers flooding back into this country with their manufacturing jobs. You would probably see companies centered in OTHER countries wanting to come here too. We need another industrial revolution in this country - it just needs to be based on WORLD markets, not just U.S.
monte wrote:
"Diane, I cannot stand to be disagreed with, please ban everyone one here who disagrees with me. "
Classic one, monte! The thing about people like you and me is that we do not suffer fools gladly. Have you noticed that as President Obama's record and poll numbers decline, liberals view the discourse as more and more distasteful?!
Diane is not a journalist. She is a political activist. The Ideas that Ron Paul promote are the real answers to virtually all of the nations problems. How she can completely ignore him as a front runner is a clue that she is bought and paid for.
1) It’s a long way to Election Day! Enough with the political handicapping and prognostications. I know the “punditocracy” and the “commentariat” can’t help it, but the rest of us can ignore their blather about who’s ahead and who’s behind.
2) I don’t blame Republicans for Romney’s loss of support. If I were a conservative I wouldn’t trust the guy either. After all, he’s busy repudiating everything he said or did as Governor of Massachusetts. Now, there’s nothing wrong with changing one’s opinions. A wise person is capable of that. But there’s a difference between “seeing the light” on the road to Damascus, and on the road to the White House!
3) It’s long been known that the “money primary” is more important than any of the so-called “early primaries”, and this year it’s “on steroids”! This is what our democracy has become? A race not between the most qualified, but among the best funded!
4) I don’t care whether it was a “mistake” or a deliberate calculation, Obama blew it - scheduling his speech. Whether he, and his people, were fools or knaves the whole thing was stupid, clumsy, heavy handed, and childish. (So was Boehner’s response, but in keeping with the “maturity” of the whole incident, the GOP is entitled to point the finger at the White House and cry: “Well, you started it.”)
TO BE CONTINUED
5) I wouldn’t be so sure Democrats will “rally” around Obama next year. We may “hold our noses” and vote for him (especially given the Republican alternatives), but it won’t be enthusiastic. Last December I put Obama “on probation” (mainly because of his “leadership skills”). Nothing that’s happened since reassures me. If a Democratic challenger appeared who demonstrated a real possibility of winning the nomination and the election, I’d give them real consideration and (possibly) my support. I know I’m not the only Democratic voter, and liberal, who feels this way.
6) At the end of the day, the employment figures will matter more than everything else. Too bad Republican “policies” are more likely to turn our current Great Recession into a second Great Depression. That’s why none of the current candidates have much chance of getting my vote. (Plus, there’s always the most important issue for me: the Supreme Court. I don’t want any of them picking the next Justice - certainly not Rick “I want to secede” Perry!)
Just a heads up for y'all about the aftermath of Irene. Day after day NPR reports from the Northeast about the destruction and efforts to rebuild. I'm not trying to diminish their suffering, but I don't hear much of anything about the damage done in my home state of NC. Eastern NC was ravaged by this storm but has received virtually no national coverage. East Carolina University alone suffered nearly $2 million in damage and the central NC beaches were ravaged. I'm sorry to hear about the loss of income that New Jersey beaches will be facing this weekend, but I wonder if anyone outside of NC knows that beaches and beach-related businesses up and down my home state's coast are suffering a similar fate.
Diane is not an activist...she's a moderator on a talk show. She occassionally voices her own opinions on political issues but in general simply presents questions to her guests. Ron Paul's beliefs are simply ridiculous. They assume that if we burn the a good deal of constitution, reform the country as a loose confederation of States, and allow private industry to essentially run the new confederated republic, then we will have a libertarian paradise. His ideas are as ludicrous as any lefty communist's belief in a workers paradise of collective communes. He has run unsuccessfully year after year, with his ideas always being rejected by his own party over and over. As such, his ideas and his candidacy are not terribly newsworthy. Diane's (and heck, even Fox News') choice to not pay him much attention simply reflects the reality of his limited appeal as a political candidate. The fact that Paul's supporters always view this as a conspiracy reflects their own naivete as well as their own particular brand of paranoid delusion.
ecgberht wrote:
"Have you noticed that as President Obama's record and poll numbers decline, liberals view the discourse as more and more distasteful?!"
I have, Diane's liberal callers sound downright desperate on top of being foaming at the mouth angry at republicans.
Etaoin Shrdlu wrote"6) At the end of the day, the employment figures will matter more than everything else. Too bad Republican “policies” are more likely to turn our current Great Recession into a second Great Depression.'
Response- I think the country as a whole will breath a huge sigh of relief when Obama leaves the scene, many democrats included. Obama is a sword that cuts both ways. I think if republicans can stick together and simply eliminate everything Obama put in place we would be on the right track for economic improvement. But your right the election is a long way off, at this point it's the republicans to lose.
monte on September 2, 2011 @ 1:26 pm wrote: “Diane's liberal callers sound downright desperate on top of being foaming at the mouth angry at republicans.”
As opposed, of course, to the calm, rational, deliberate, well-reasoned, and non “foaming at the mouth angry”, or insulting, discourse you and ecgberht don’t engage in?
You know what really epitomizes “desperation” and “foaming at the mouth" craziness? Someone who can’t even wait for the show to actually air before posting their inanities. Now, I wonder who that could be?
Pot meet kettle.
monte on September 2, 2011 @ 1:40 pm wrote: “But your right. . . .”
This is a red letter day, folks! I think this may be the first time monte has actually conceded that I might be correct about anything.
Don’t worry, monte, it won’t hurt for long.
Of course, we completely disagree on what constitutes “the right track for economic improvement”. Personally, I think the Republicans will end up causing a second Great Depression, just like their policies caused the first.
Now, if I were the mindless partisan you and ecgberht are that would actually be encouraging, since it would ultimately lead to the destruction of that Party (and its philosophies) for all time.
But I’m not. Unlike you, and people like Senator McConnell (who believe defeating your political opponents is the only thing that matters), I care about what’s best for this country. I may be wrong in my economic ideas, but I am willing to sacrifice them if the country will benefit. Can any of you say the same?
P.S. - Stating the election is “the republicans to lose” misses the point of “It’s a long way to Election Day”. I guess we don’t agree about that after all.
Bravo to Diane for interrupting that caller who was spouting "excrement". Left, right, or center, I would hope people can keep a civil tongue in their mouths.
And anyone who can't state an opinion without mindlessly insulting anyone who dares to disagree (just because they disagree) is the true coward!
(And yes, I know that happened during the other hour, but I wanted to post my support here too.)
Ciao!
It's time to consider some new panelist for this hour. The current ones all sound like apologist for one party or the other.
Ms. Cummings comment on the lack of consumer confidence and its negative effect on economic growth was particularly naive. Consumer confidence results from coins jingling in middle class pockets, not hoarded dollars in the bank boxes of the wealthy.
Growing consumption results from expanding employment, not stifling it, as shrinking the size of government does; the current fear of borrowing has; and pulling back government support of our few expanding industries, like health care and environmentally protective energy sources will.
Private investment is driven by profit, and therefore severely limited in a period of high unemployment and low consumption, providing little if any economic stimulus. Only government spending (investment) is free of this profit constraint, making it the strongest and possibly the only tool we have for jump starting employment to influence private industry to expand.
The government's ability to take positive steps to reduce unemployment and increase incomes, unfortunately, has been stymied by a business community that sees the absurdly over heated debt issue as an opportunity to retract regulations that protect the well-being of our children and grandchildren by protecting their right to clean air and water; that insure a movement to cleaner energy and the maintenance of the country's infrastructure.
Our short-term greed, in the long run, will be a very painful burden, if not the proverbial straw, that breaks the back of our children and grandchildren. What a legacy of ineptitude.
strudel wrote:
"I don’t blame Republicans for Romney’s loss of support. If I were a conservative I wouldn’t trust the guy either. After all, he’s busy repudiating everything he said or did as Governor of Massachusetts. Now, there’s nothing wrong with changing one’s opinions. A wise person is capable of that."
You see repudiation because you do not understand the republican (small r) concept. He differentiates between what is appropriate at the state level and what is appropriate at the federal level, that's all.
The concept of a republic is lost on liberals. All they see is one big mess 'o gubment.
I voted for Romney in the 2008 primary. I'll vote for him again in 2012. He was, and still is, the best man for the job.
What is truly wrong with the current economics and politics of this country is abundantly clear in the commentaries on this site as well as many others, polarized, mindless regurgitation of my way or no way directives for solving the problems at hand.
Anyone with an once of brain matter and any knowledge of history must see that alone neither the right nor the left, the Democrats nor the Republicans cans solve this. All parties to the problem have some legitimate ideas toward solve it, but none seem to have the ability to put their allegiances aside long enough to reach an agreement of compromise.
The economics are not that difficult, for the IMMEDIATE term, we need to do EVERYTHING possible to stimulate job growth, while planning for and implementing LONG term deficit reduction.
This upcoming election shouldn't be about defeating a president or congressman, it must be about saving the America we all grew up in while enjoying the highest standard of living in the world.
An America that had a strong middle class, with the buying power to support a robust business community, a tax base sufficient to fund excellent education necessary for innovation and continued growth.
We owe our children a shot at the same dreams our forefathers gave to us. They didn't accomplish it be fighting to destroy all their political adversaries, they did it by distilling the best from them and incorporating into a whole that was greater than its individual parts.
Congressman go to Washington with their constituents desires and are confronted by a nations needs, without intelligence leadership and honest compromise, everyone loses.
The time has come to put our elephants and donkeys out to pasture and as citizens, neighbors, moms, dads, sons and daughters insist politicians compromise and legislate to make this country whole again.
E.S. and others, I do not call other posters on this forum names! A few times I had some come backs on petty personal cheap shots directed towards me by name but that is rare. If my comments on political issues and politicians you support is so offensive to you consider for a moment your foundation of beliefs might be weak and therefore your easily offended. E.S. in your posts today you call me names directly, it does not really bother me but why do it? As far as posts before the show airs, so what. I know the subject matter and apparently it must be just fine with D.R. and her staff. They could very easily stop early posting if they wanted too and you know it. I believe they welcome posting anytime scheduling permitting. As liberal as I think Diane is she seems to make a real effort for the inclusion of apposing ideas, I like her show and enjoy posting here and I will continue to do as long as I feel welcomed.
Many of us are political junkies and enjoy this kind of political discourse, if anyone finds me intolerable, please my name is at the top of all my posts just proceed to the next post without reading mine.
"Marvin Wagner wrote:
Yeah mobed, our country and our citizen's lack of jobs, housing and health care can take a back seat to the Republican selfish bullcrap machine. I think I have figured out and now understand who Monte is. He is a TV figure named Rush.
Sorry Monte. The devil made me do it"
And Marvin:
Obama has no idea how to fix these problems.
Meangreen
uselesseater wrote:
Let me get this straight.
At 10:00 am the leader of the free world requests a joint session of congress following normal protocol with no objection from the Speaker of the House at that time.
Then the titular head of the Republican party "Rush Limbaugh" goes on the radio and decrees that the President's request will be refused.
At 4:00 In an historically unprecedented move, the Speaker of the House and apparent Rush Limbaugh lackey Republican John Boehner refuses the President's request.
This is all good because now we know who runs the Republican party.
If you want to know what the Republican party thinks ask Rush Limbaugh.
If you want to know what the Republican party is going to do ask Rush Limbaugh.
The Republican party has changed its mascot from an Elephant to a lemming and they are going to take us all over a cliff.
We know that the Republicans work for Rush Limbaugh but who pays his multi-multi million dollar salary.
If we pull back the curtain we will see the Oligarchs hard at work and all of the mystery disappears.
Remember my fellow peons
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE
Hey Uselessness:
Didn't Obama on his first meeting with Republicans Leaders after being elected state "that Limbaugh had no say in this Administration"(Obama).
Will what happened?
"LauraH wrote:
To all - please ignore Monte. While annoying, he/she is nothing but a troll. He/She does not add anything intelligent to the conversation"
Laura:
I find monte to be a very intelligent and articulate person. A gentleman and a scholar.
Right back at ya Alex!