Obama to address today’s weak jobs report at 10:35 AM eastern. Watch it live here.
Apple is denying censoring politically-themed emails through its mobileme email service.
There’s no getting around today’s job report being just really bleak. 18,000 jobs is nothing against the need to add roughly 10 times that number just for the economy to produce enough jobs to keep up with population growth. (The rate itself rose to 9.2%) And it brings the country perilous close to going back to net jobs contraction. We are living with the consequences of inadequate government action in early 2009, poor policy choices and a basic misdiagnosis of the scale of the crisis the country faced. But then, we know that. Perhaps the starkest thing to contemplate is that these numbers raise the odds of new policy choices — sucking still more demand out of the economy in the form of sharp spending cuts — most likely to steepen the economy’s descent.
Many Dems support big Social Security cut as long as it’s not called a “cut”.
Pelosi: We won’t support a debt limit bill with Medicare or Social Security cuts.
As GOP moves in an increasingly radical direction it’s posed a growing challenge for members of the House looking to get ahead of the curve on the Crazy. In a new effort, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is now proposing lowering the debt ceiling.
Rep. Allen West (R) praises President Obama’s (alleged) willingness to join Republicans in slashing Social Security and Medicare.
White House says Obama hasn’t changed his position on Social Security, not quite as clear on what sort of cuts he’d accept.
A very interesting counter-take on the question of the structural impediments hurting the Dems and favoring the GOP from TPM Reader JB. I partly agree with the take …
I read you piece today on the Democrats failure of the political aspect of politics this morning. I think you need to take a step back and look at the larger picture. Nate Silver’s piece today makes clear that the terms conservative and Republican are converging with everyone else favoring the Democrats. In this scenario, turnout composition explained the results in 2008 and 2010 more than population realignment.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told her agitated caucus this morning that she was left in the dark about the plan to reportedly include Social Security cuts in a debt deal.