Unbelievable. According to a report by Jay Heflin at The Hill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can’t muster the votes to pass a $15 billion jobs bill.
This jobs bill has become truly bizarre remarkably fast. When Reid pulled the plug on the Senate Finance Committee’s $85 billion “bipartisan compromise,” he wasn’t being unreasonable– most of that bill was a load of Republican tax cut priorities totally unrelated to the jobs crisis. Unfortunately, the $15 billion package Reid rolled out to replace that lousy bill wasn’t much better. Reid’s version includes tax cuts more directly tied to employment, but tax breaks that are very unlikely to work.
Why won’t they work? This brings us to the really crazy part of the story. Infamous Blue Dog Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Neb., is actually talking economic sense! From The Hill:
“There’s a question of whether that puts the cart before the horse,” said Nelson. “If I don’t have enough customers for my product, hiring more people is not going to help and tax credits are not going to be to my advantage.”
Nelson is basically right. If there is no demand for whatever a business makes, providing that business with tax cuts won’t create any jobs. And right now there isn’t any demand in the economy because everybody is broke and out of a job.

What planet are Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats on?

Obama's own economic advisers say that unemployment is going to average 10 percent this year and 9.2 percent next year.

And yet all that Harry Reid now is proposing to spend on a new jobs
bill is $15 billion over the next decade, which is peanuts. And most of
those peanuts are going directly to businesses, which is the least
efficient way to stimulate the economy.

There is no money to extend unemployment benefits.

There is no money to extend health care coverage to the unemployed.

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Last night the President did one of the things that he does better than almost anyone else, he gave a great speech. Taking the tone of confidence without arrogance, being willing to face the Republicans and put them in box by either applauding him or failing to applaud their own proposals, even by chiding them for their recalcitrance and stance of know nothingism. While it remains to be seen if he will push for the follow through which his speech called for it is interesting that the end of his speech was a political trope that should be dear to every politician.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

The Dogs Father taught one primary lesson to the hound as a pup – sometimes you get beat, but you only ever lose when you quit. This has lead to a life time of being beaten, but it also has lead to a set of victories personal, professional and public. This is the lesson the American people get, whether they had a father who harped on it or not. We intuitively understand that having a dumb faith in ourselves, an inability to see that the mountain is unassailable and that we would be better off if we just packed it in that is central to our experience.

by David Roberts

I’ve resisted writing the obligatory “what Scott Brown’s victory means for the climate bill” post, mainly because the real answer is Nobody Knows and Everyone’s Full of Sh*t. What pundit wants to say that?

Certainly everyone in the DC Village agrees that the Mass. special election was the Biggest Thing Evar (unlike, say, the Oregon special election wherein voters chose to raise taxes on rich people and businesses—only conservative news is big news). Congressional Democrats’ first reactions to Brown’s win were predictably and pathetically hysterical, with one after another racing to the microphone to assure voters that they’d gotten the message and wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to ever again try to pass any of the items on the agenda that got them elected.

The dust has settled a little, but this is still an extraordinarily volatile political climate. Conventional wisdom has been that with polarization so high and tempers so raw, the climate/energy bill is doomed. I’ve been holding out slivers of hope, though. The Obama administration and Harry Reid have both recently reiterated that they want a comprehensive bill this session.

Submitted by Deadhead

InTrade's latest market on Bernanke reconfirmation is 77.5x79, better bid, with some serious bid interest below 72. There is a size seller at 85. Yesterday, the market closed at 93, and was at 95 since the contract inception. The question is if Harry Reid's last minute endorsement will push the odds higher yet again. However, things are not so certain: Democrats have a busy agenda for next week - they have to make a vote on America's bankruptcy first ($1.9 trillion debt ceiling extension), and then there is the whole state of the union address... And the real question - when will Proshares and BlackRock start selling a qunituple leveraged ETF that will decay 99% by the time it hits Cede & Co.

You've got to feel sorry for the Democratic ­Senate leader, Harry Reid. In 1995, when it seemed Colin Powell
might run for president, Powell explained his ­appeal to white voters
thus: "I speak reasonably well, like a white person", and, visually, "I
ain't that black".

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From U.S. Census writers to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a racial designation long abandoned seems to be making a comeback.

I have to laugh - in-between the tears, of course - when I listen to regressives speak of the likes of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in terms of Stalinesque autocrats or thuggish mafia bosses.

I'm pretty sure that the elites who propagate this nonsense through mouthpieces such as Limbaugh or Beck know just how absurd and contradictory to pesky reality those assertions are. But the regressive hoi polloi - as idiotic and ill-informed a bunch of bots as you'll find anywhere this side of the Borg - well, they eat this stuff up whole hog.

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