Not so long ago, the news that the nation had lost 11,000 jobs in a month would be cause for panic. Today it’s a reason to celebrate, at least in some circles (Wall Street). The story line was well-illustrated by the graph released today by the White House in response to November’s job numbers and slightly improved 10 percent unemployment rate. Today also brought what Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder dubbed the “First Line of Every Democratic Campaign Speech in 2010,” courtesy of Christina Romer, chairwoman of the President’s Council on Economic Advisers: “But it is clear we are moving in the right direction.”
Related to the White House job summit Thursday, columnist Robert Samuelson wrote: “Obama can’t be fairly blamed for most job losses, which stemmed from a crisis predating his election. But he has made a bad situation somewhat worse. His unwillingness to advance trade agreements (notably, with Colombia and South Korea) has hurt exports. The hostility to oil and gas drilling penalizes one source of domestic investment spending. More important, the decision to press controversial proposals (health care, climate change) was bound to increase uncertainty and undermine confidence. . . . Choices were made — and jobs weren’t always Job One.”
Should something happen to the president, vice president and House speaker, the succession calls for the president pro tempore of the Senate to be sworn in as president. Currently that’s 92-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who recently became the longest-serving member of Congress in the nation’s history. And as a Washington Post reader suggested in a letter, “nonagenarians have no business being in the presidential line of succession.” A commission of the American Enterprise Institute has called for the current succession, which dates from 1947, to be updated, suggesting it extend outside Washington, D.C., and exclude congressional leaders. As the Washington Post editorialized, “it should not take a catastrophe to bring this issue into focus.”
“The president announced he will send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan over the next six months and 2,000 additional troops to Tiger Woods’ mansion in Orlando. Peacekeeping forces.” — Jimmy Kimmel
“The good news, Obama said he expects to start bringing our troops home in two years. The bad news, Bush said the same thing seven years ago.” — Jay Leno
“Some people are upset about President Obama’s primetime speech because it bumped ABC’s airing of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ or as Fox News reported it, ‘Obama ruins Christmas for a depressed bald kid.’” — Conan O’Brien
