More on jobs and the SOTU

Reich: The president ignored the elephant in the room

Ezra: Can we win the future if we lose the present?

I sat in on a briefing yesterday where various "senior administration officials" explained the theory behind the State of the Union. When they were asked about shifting their focus to the future when the economy was so bad in the present, they explained that they got pretty much everything they thought they could get -- and, in fact, more than they thought they could get -- in the tax-cut deal, and it was time to let that work. Left unsaid is that they can't get anything more out of a Republican House, and so there's little point in begging.

The missing word

Andrew Leonard notes The missing word in Obama's State of the Union.

The unemployment rate in the United States is 9.4 percent. But if you went to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night looking for a job, you came away empty. The president did not even mention the word "unemployment." The stock market "has come roaring back," he told America, and "corporate profits are up." But aside from one reference to "the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts of once busy Main Streets," Obama devoted precious little time to the current plight of Americans who might be facing foreclosure or the expiration of their unemployment benefits. Instead he told us that the "worst of the recession is over" and that we had "broken the back of the recession."

Leonard notes reality: with the congress we've got, there's almost no chance that unemployment will be directly addressed. The president is working within practical restraints. That doesn't change the discouraging feeling that we've been given up on.

Doesn't change the fact that you can train 100,000 science teachers, but you can't get them hired without direct investment. You can promote clean energy development and transportation infrastructure, but you can't make it happen without direct investment.

And even if investments here and there make it through congress, the fact remains that tens of millions of us find ourselves having to start over, while there are five people for every available job in this country, we're heading into the second big housing market decline, foreclosures continue apace, and the safety net has run out.

And even if the Republicans were to eliminate every "job killing" regulation on their wish list and capitalist heaven materialized on Wall Street, high unemployment and stress means that we won't be spending the money that drives the economy, not like we used to.

I'm a person who likes to think in terms of the long arc, and maybe there's still the chance that Obama can enact policies which will have a positive impact on my son's generation. But I have to say, I sort of feel like roadkill, and that sucks.

Epiphany

So perhaps the secret to keeping down the blood pressure is simply this: get all news in written form. News outlets, blogs, doesn't matter. Also NPR, NPR is fine. The only thing that matters is that one avoids, at all costs, television news.

Because as soon as you turn on the cable, you will see and hear the incestuous paid anchors and analysts and assorted denizens of the echo chamber that is "I get paid to talk about this" TV news, and they will always- always- offer some tidbit, some SURPRISING observation, which will drive up the damn blood pressure once again.

So yesterday, after I had blogged about not having the capacity for shock, outrage, or snark these days, I turned on MSNBC for a bit and got to hear Pat Buchanan (and who isn't surprised that he's on TV at all?) say that we are in a "near 1930 situation in the financial sector, and hoping it doesn't spill over to the larger economy".

What fucking planet does he live on? Why is he ever on my teevee?

So that was, perhaps, my first surprise! for the new year. And the accompanying epiphany: If I need something to get angry about (because anger is often a prime inspiration for action), all I need to do is spend a bit of time with cable news.