"Make em beg for more, and then don't give it to them": Mama Rose's advice to Louise.

You can uh, you can uh, you can uh...uh...uh

I have been uh uh uh frustrated with the messaging from Obama, let alone what he is actually doing as President. While the Republicans have the single message of "cut taxes" Obama seems to be all over the lot in his effort to be bipartisan. Progressives are baffled and/or angry. What does the President stand for?

Democrats and Progressives may have the best platform in a generation.

I accept the President's jobs compromise deal. The main reason is that it is, with old GOP support, an end run on the Tea Party whose aim is a continuation of the poor economy which spawned it. The package on the other hand gives assurances the economy will grow and gives Democrats a good shot in 2012. Bob Greenstein of CBPP estimated the package would take a full percentage point off unemployment--and without the package the uncertainty of getting any stimulus or unemployment benefits out of the new Congress could tip the economy back into a "double dip". By my calculations, 1% off unemployment is about 1.5 million people.I think of them as particularly vulnerable hostages.

The big question in my mind is what's next. Much depends on Obama's committment to regulate the financial industry and fend off Republican budget attacks which will be designed to undo every piece of progressive legislation since the New Deal. But leave Obama out of the picture and look at the package as a tutorial. Not in the sense of what Obama might have done right or wrong but in the sense of how the package demonstrates the essential guts of how the system works.

When my knees were younger and the VW camper hadn't yet blown its engine for the 3rd time I made an annual trip up Rt. 395 from the bowels of L.A. to the Mammoth Mtn. area of California. The purpose was to back pack and hike in the Eastern Sierras, but the first stop was at Mono Lake. The lake is, well, other worldly. Alien features like the spikey "tufas" give it a lunar quality. T

Mr. President, you are the most intelligent and classy political figure I've seen in my lifetime.

Mr. President, if you squander this opportunity to reform the banks and Wall St. I will join in a primary challenge to your re-election.

Mr. President, you can seize an historic moment.

The populace is feeling two emotions which are related but separate. One is a sense of unfairness. The other is the gut knowledge that the system is rigged. The sense of fairness is relative: a moderately well off person thinks his taxes are unfair, but so do the poor and the wealthy.