VIDEO: President Obama discusses job creation, the deficit, the middle class

By GottaLaff

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I liveblogged this earlier here, but now you get to watch Prez O your very own self.

President Obama discusses job creation, the deficit: Liveblog

By GottaLaff

President Obama is speaking, previewing the State of the Union address... I am liveblogging:

The American Dream: If you work hard, you can get ahead, health care, secure retirement, an education... Simple ideas, at the heart of our middle class that made the 20th century the American century. Middle class has been under assault for a long time.

We just went through a difficult decade.

We took office to fight for the middle class. Not just survival, but thrive. To rebuild it on a new stronger foundation for job creation... Invested in areas with most potential for job growth.

We saved/created 2 million jobs so far. But more than 7 million have been lost due to recession. Demands a relentless, sustained response. Creating jobs is the single most important thing to do to rebuild the middle class.

But also must reverse overall erosion in middle class security... so that dreams can be pursued again.

Proposals: Make it easier to retire, to get ahead, to educate... make college more affordable, make it easier to pay off loans... save thru the workplace.... We'll keep fighting for middle class families... better jobs, financial reforms, health reform...

These steps won't solve all middle class problems, but will reestablish some of the security that's been lost. Not about how markets are doing, it's about how Americans are doing.

Above all, keep fighting to renew American dream.... for all time.

He'll seek an increase in child tax credit, too, per Biden.

Video- Fox's Cavuto worried that working class families might get a break

What a compassionate guy. Via Newshounds.

Biden's role

By GottaLaff

I haven't even watched the interview yet, but I've managed to read just about everything Biden said already. My time zone has its perks:

Vice President-elect Joe Biden told ABC News that he is going to chair a "middle-class task force" that will determine how the Obama administration's policies are affecting America's economic midsection.

Said Biden: "My focus is going to be, I'm going to chair this group and it is designed to do the one thing we use as a yardstick of economic success of our administration, is the middle class growing? Is the middle class getting better? Is the middle class no longer being left behind? And we'll look at everything from college affordability to after-school programs. The things that affect people's daily lives. I will be the guy honchoing that policy."

However, Biden also said his broader role will be that of adviser. He said he got a commitment from Obama that he'll be "in the room" on every major economic political, and foreign policy decision.

Biden: "I don't want to be the guy that goes out and has a specific assignment -- an important assignment to reinvent government, which Al Gore did a great job of. Dealing with some specific discrete item. I said I want a commitment from you that in every important decision you'll make, every critical decision, economic and political as well as foreign policy, I'll get to be in the room."

Pinch me. Someone will be paying attention to... the middle class? The same middle class that BushCo has expended so much time and energy to wipe out? That middle class?

Thank you V.P. Joe. If you can swoop in and offer a helping hand where it really counts, you'll be a hero in my book.

Michael Moore-- Senate to Middle Class: Drop Dead

By GottaLaff

Michael Moore at his Michael Moore-iest:

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers start building only cars and mass transit that reduce our dependency on oil.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers build cars that reduce global warming.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers withdraw their many lawsuits against state governments in their attempts to not comply with our environmental laws.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the management team which drove these once-great manufacturers into the ground resign and be replaced with a team who understands the transportation needs of the 21st century.

Yes, they could have given the loan for any of these reasons because, in the end, to lose our manufacturing infrastructure and throw 3 million people out of work would be a catastrophe.

But instead, the Senate said, we'll give you the loan only if the factory workers take a $20 an hour cut in wages, pension and health care. That's right. After giving BILLIONS to Wall Street hucksters and criminal investment bankers -- billions with no strings attached and, as we have since learned, no oversight whatsoever -- the Senate decided it is more important to break a union, more important to throw middle class wage earners into the ranks of the working poor than to prevent the total collapse of industrial America.

We have a little more than a month to go of this madness. As I sit here in Michigan today, tens of thousands of hard working, honest, decent Americans do not believe they can make it to January 20th. The malaise here is astounding. Why must they suffer because of the mistakes of every CEO from Roger Smith to Rick Wagoner? Make management and the boards of directors and the shareholders pay for this.

Of course that is heresy to the 31 Republicans who decided to blame the poor, miserable autoworkers for this mess. And our wonderful media complied with their spin on the morning news shows: "UAW Refuses to Give Concessions Killing Auto Bailout Bill." In fact the UAW has given concession after concession, reduced their benefits, agreed to get rid of the Jobs Bank and agreed to make it harder for their retirees to live from week to week. Yes! That's what we need to do! It's the Jobs Bank and the old people who have led the nation to economic ruin!

But even doing all that wasn't enough to satisfy the bastard Republicans. These Senate vampires wanted blood. Blue collar blood. You see, they weren't opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they're opposed to workers making a decent wage. In their rage, they were driven to destroy the backbone of this country, not because the UAW hadn't given back enough, but because the UAW hadn't given up.

It appears that the sitting President has been looking for a way to end his reign by one magnanimous act, just like a warlord on his feast day. He will put his finger in the dyke, and the fragile mess of an auto industry will eke through the next few months.

That will give the Senate enough time to demand that the bankers and investment sharks who've already swiped nearly half of the $700 billion gift a chance to make the offer of cutting their pay.

Fat chance.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

The vanishing Republican voter

By GottaLaff

How's that inequality working for you and your 1987105 houses, J Sid?

In a must-read New York Times Magazine piece, former Bush speechwriter David Frum sounds the sirens for the Republican party.

"My fellow conservatives and Republicans have tended not to worry very much about the widening of income inequalities. As long as there exists equality of opportunity -- as long as everybody's income is rising -- who cares if some people get rich faster than others? Societies that try too hard to enforce equality deny important freedoms and inhibit wealth-creating enterprise. Individuals who worry overmuch about inequality can succumb to life-distorting envy and resentment."

"All true! But something else is true, too: As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us."

Obama, as usual, is in touch with the American people. McCain/Palin, on the other hand, are not. They seem to have failed to notice this:

As long as all Americans were becoming better off, few cared that some Americans were becoming better off than others. But since 2000, something has changed. Incomes at the middle have ceased to rise. The mood of the country has soured. Conservatives who disregard the mood of unease may forfeit their power to defend the more open and productive American economy they did so much to build. [...]

With wealth comes diversity — and what is inequality but diversity in monetary form?

The Big Question:

When asked, “Are you better off than you were five years ago?” only 41 percent of middle-class Americans say yes, the worst result since pollsters started asking the question half a century ago.

It’s this pervasive economic unease that is capsizing the Republican Party, even as Americans have arrived in recent months at a somewhat more optimistic assessment of the progress of the Iraq war.

Remember-- Republicans create their own reality:

IN SHORT, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant.

Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact. And only by acknowledging facts can we respond effectively to the genuine difficulties of voters in the middle.

And then there's the trust factor:

Republicans have been badly hurt in upper America by the collapse of their onetime reputation for integrity and competence. Upper Americans live in a world in which things work. The packages arrive overnight. The car doors clink seamlessly shut. The prevailing Republican view — “of course government always fails, what do you expect it to do?” — is not what this slice of America expects to hear from the people asking to be entrusted with the government.

Finally, Frum's advice:

Equality in itself never can be or should be a conservative goal. But inequality taken to extremes can overwhelm conservative ideals of self-reliance, limited government and national unity. It can delegitimize commerce and business and invite destructive protectionism and overregulation. Inequality, in short, is a conservative issue too. We must develop a positive agenda that integrates the right kind of egalitarianism with our conservative principles of liberty. If we neglect this task and this opportunity, we won’t lose just the northern Virginia suburbs. We will lose America.

There you go. A former Bush speechwriter's p.o.v. Your turn.

Middle class supports progressive policies

By GottaLaff

Via Think Progress