United Liberty

One blogger says yes:

The tea party movement is dead. The one I was familiar with anyway. Judson Phillips held it down and Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span in front of an unsuspecting audience.

Sarah Palin didn’t give a tea party speech last night. She gave a partisan Republican address. It was a purely political speech designed to position her for a presidential run in 2012 or 2016. Period. She wasn’t there to celebrate the organic nature of a movement she had nothing to do with creating. She was there to co-opt the name and claim the brand as hers. And she did.

This morning’s unemployment report gave us the seemingly good news that the unemployment rate dropped three-tenths of one percent, but when you look behind that number the news still isn’t good:

WASHINGTON — The unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in January to 9.7 percent from 10 percent while employers shed 20,000 jobs, the government said Friday.

The rate dropped because a survey of households found the number of employed Americans rose by 541,000, the Labor Department said. The job losses are calculated from a separate survey of employers.

The report also included an annual revision to the estimates of total payrolls, which showed there were 930,000 fewer jobs last March than previously estimated. The department also revised down its estimates for April through October of last year, adding another 433,000 job losses.

The November figure was revised higher, however, to show a gain of 64,000 jobs.

All told, the Great Recession has eliminated 8.4 million jobs, the department said. That’s the most of any recession since World War II as a proportion of total payrolls.

So, let’s add it up.

We lost 20,000 jobs in January. That’s the number that matters. The down-tick in the unemployment rate is related to the fact that the BLS included data from a different survey in calculating the rate. How legitimate that number is, and whether it involves something less than honest on their part, I’ll leave for others to determine. What’s important is that we lost 20,000 jobs in January even though the rate went down.

In addition to that, there were revisions to previous jobs reports:

Once again, there is more common sense on Main Street than Pennsylvania Avenue:

While influential 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes would say it’s best to increase deficit spending in tough economic times, only 11% of American adults agree and think the nation needs to increase its deficit spending at this time. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% disagree and say it would be better to cut the deficit.

In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.

To help the economy, most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans, in fact, say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

Now if we could only get some of that wisdom to Washington.

Well, this was inevitable:

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday voted to allow the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper in debt – or about $6,000 more for every U.S. resident.

The measure, approved 217-212, would raise the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. That’s enough to keep Congress from having to vote again before the November elections on an issue that is feeding a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.

Already, the accumulated debt amounts to roughly $40,000 per person. And the debt is increasingly held by foreign nations such as China.

Passage of the bill would send it to President Barack Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever, market-rattling default on U.S. obligations.

“I can’t think of a more reckless or irresponsible act. Defaulting is not an option,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “If the United States defaults, investors will lose confidence that the U.S. will honor its debts in the future.

Do you really think that anyone believes that we’re good for that $ 14 trillion Congressman?

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, several Democrats on Capitol Hill are advocating a Constitutional Amendment:

Democrats in Congress want to amend the U.S. Constitution to say free speech does not extend to corporations in response to the Supreme Court’s decision allowing freer corporate spending in political campaigns.

On Tuesday, Rep. John Conyers, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Donna F. Edwards, Maryland Democrat, introduced an amendment to combat “the flawed ruling by the Supreme Court allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.”

The amendment will undo the Supreme Court decision and allow the government to regulate the expenditure of funds by corporations for political speech, according to a release.

“It is time we remove corporate influence from our policies and our politics. We cannot allow corporations to dominate our elections, to do so would be both undemocratic and unfair to ordinary citizens,” Edwards said.

Conyers said the “idea that corporate political speech is no different than an individual citizen’s political speech was not the law when the Constitution was written.”

The proposed amendment, introduced in the House, says that the government “may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity.” The proposal adds: “Nothing contained in this article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.’’

Today’s Politico notes the birth of a bipartisan movement:

A politically diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies and politicos on Wednesday will launch an online campaign, Demand Question Time, urging President Barack Obama and GOP congressional leaders to hold regular, televised conversations like the extraordinary exchange in Baltimore on Friday. Supporters include Grover Norquist, Joe Trippi, Mark McKinnon, Ed Morrissey, Ari Melber, Katrina vanden Heuvel and David Corn.

Original endorsers include Grover Norquist and Eli Pariser, Joe Trippi and Mark McKinnon, Markos Moulitsas and Ed Morrissey, and many more, including Ari Melber, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ana Marie Cox and Nate Silver. The steering committee is made up of Micah Sifry, David Corn, Mike Moffo, Mindy Finn, Jon Henke and Glenn Reynolds.

(…)

Demand Question Time invites visitors to sign a petition: “We live in a world that increasingly demands more dialogue than monologue. President Obama’s January 29th question-and-answer session with Republican leaders gave the public a remarkable window into the state of our union and governing process. It was riveting and educational. The exchanges were substantive, civil and candid. And in a rare break from our modern politics, sharp differences between elected leaders were on full public display without rancor or ridicule. …

Well, you could’ve seen this one coming from 238,857 miles away:

President Barack Obama has cancelled the American project designed to take humans back to the Moon.

The Constellation programme envisaged new rockets and a new crewship called Orion to put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2020.

But in his federal budget request issued on Monday, Mr Obama said the project was “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation”.

It was draining resources from other US space agency activities, he added.

He plans instead to turn to the private sector for launch services.

Constellation was initiated by President George Bush in the wake of the 2003 shuttle accident, which saw seven astronauts lose their lives when their vehicle broke up on re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere.

As much as I support space exploration, I’ve got to agree with this one.

We simply can’t afford stuff like this anymore.

The Obama Administration has decided not to try Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects in New York City:

The Obama administration on Friday gave up on its plan to try the Sept. 11 plotters in Lower Manhattan, bowing to almost unanimous pressure from New York officials and business leaders to move the terrorism trial elsewhere.

“I think I can acknowledge the obvious,” an administration official said. “We’re considering other options.”

The reversal on whether to try the alleged 9/11 terrorists blocks from the former World Trade Center site seemed to come suddenly this week, after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg abandoned his strong support for the plan and said the cost and disruption would be too great.

But behind the brave face that many New Yorkers had put on for weeks, resistance had been gathering steam.

After a dinner in New York on Dec. 14, Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, pulled aside David Axelrod, President Obama’s closest adviser, to convey an urgent plea: move the 9/11 trial out of Manhattan.

More recently, in a series of presentations to business leaders, local elected officials and community representatives of Chinatown, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly laid out his plan for securing the trial: blanketing a swath of Lower Manhattan with police checkpoints, vehicle searches, rooftop snipers and canine patrols.

“They were not received well,” said one city official.

Gee, I wonder why.

Apparently, the Justice Department is now looking for other locations for this trial, including here in Northern Virginia or at a secure military base.

Will President Obama get an uptick in the polls from last nights State of the Union, and how long will it last ?

Watch these numbers over the next two weeks to find out.

The Speaker of the House says she doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate health care bill:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Senate will have to amend its version of a health-care reform bill before her chamber can pass it.

“I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” Pelosi told reporters after a morning meeting with her caucus. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time.”

Pelosi has been struggling for days to sell the Senate legislation to reluctant Democrats in order to get a health-care bill to the president’s desk quickly. But moderates in her caucus have raised doubts about forging ahead without bipartisan support — a challenge as the midterm election approaches — while liberals rejected the Senate bill as not going far enough.

Pelosi described House Democrats as vehemently opposed to several provisions in the Senate legislation, including one that benefits only Nebraska’s Medicaid system — a deal to win the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — and a tax plan on expensive health-care benefits.

“There are certain things the members simply cannot support,” she said.

Aides said afterward that the best option would be for the Senate to pass a bill that fixes those and other issues under fast-track rules that require a simple majority. But the Senate has not agreed to do so.

And, of course, Scott Brown’s victory on Tuesday makes it pretty unlikely that they’ll be able to do so.

While I’m sure many will try to spin Pelosi’s words, and that it will still be some time before the Obama White House gives up the ghost on this debacle, as Josh Marshall points out the meaning of Pelosi’s words are clear: