Out of touch

And in 1992, it was Bush The Elder that was amazed* by a grocery store scanner.

 (Sure enough, touch screens were developed - in part, and very early on - with government dollars)

(*'amazed may have been a wee bit of media exaggeration)

Setting a bar that shouldn't be set

A line in an Adam Sorenson post over at Time magazine's "Swampland" blog got me thinking:

But Obama needs to ignite a fire under the recovery (or his base) to get re-elected.

Nope.

Obama can't let this be about whether or not we are officially into a recovery or not...it's a high bar to have to clear (similar to predicting what the future unemployment rate will be) and there's small chance that more than a few of last night's proposals will make it past the House anyway.

He needs to run against the people who don't want an American economic recovery to happen on his watch.

He needs needs to run against the people who don't want their fellow Americans to have jobs that earn a living wage or that don't want to pay for modernization or education or clean air and water or other things that a first-class country should value having and actually pay to have.

Run that campaign - and actually try to pass that agenda - and Obama will fire up more than just his base.