Hard to complain about the attention being given to today's big story. It certainly deserves it. That said, other stories deserve some attention today, too. Here's a handful that caught my eye, put your own links in the comments, please...
- Senate Republicans are blocking trade deals. Why? To protect American jobs? Nope. Just the opposite. They want the trade deals. They just object to Democratic proposals to insulate American workers who might lose their jobs as a result of the trade deals.
- The GOP is holding the debt ceiling hostage in order to preserve the American economy and protect the future of American business, right? So how come the right-wing US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers are publicly calling for an increase in the debt ceiling?
- And this just made me laugh. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) writes a whole op-ed calling on business to call out those politicians who stand in the way of balancing America's books. Does Sen. Warner practice what he preaches, by calling out who he thinks business should call out? Nope. Does he indicate any recognition of the fearsome absurdity of a US senator lobbying business, the 180-degree opposite of how things are supposed to work? Nope.
- Hey, Beltway media, this one's for you. Maybe it's time to stop treating politics like a game and start covering it as though people's lines are on the line. I know, it's so much easier to follow process rather than tackle numbers and get all empirical about what they mean. Do it anyway.
- This one's especially scary, because it suggests Pres. Obama is slipping into the same reality-denying/defying mode that became such a signature of the Bush Administration. The quote I'm referring to is Pres. Obama letting himself off the hook for the inadequacy of the recovery by claiming most economists underestimated the tenacity of the recession. The reason this is dishonest is because Pres. Obama has yet to reassess the credibility or expertise of those economic advisers who made that underestimation. If he were going to be intellectually honest about this, he'd appoint as his top economic adviser the Nobel Prize-winning economist who predicted that this was exactly what the "recovery" would look like unless Pres. Obama did something more than enact his anemic recovery and stimulus measures. #notholdingmybreath
What are your underbuzzeds today? Share 'em in the comments.
Follow Senior Producer Jonathan Larsen (@jtlarsen) on Twitter