The nation is waiting to hear what President Obama is going to say tomorrow night, when he gives an address to a joint session of Congress on the subject of jobs. Plenty of people have already been offering advice to the White House, but instead we thought it'd be interesting to ask some of the people who are going to be sitting in the audience tomorrow what they'd advise the president to include in his speech.

So we called up Washington and asked around. Below are the responses we got. We specifically did not contact House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, because we were more interested in the responses from individual Democrats rather than statements about the goals of the party as a whole. We contacted a number of Congress members who were unable to provide quotes; due to being out of the country, or due to various disasters happening across the United States in the past few weeks (the day we started calling, a hurricane was on its way towards Washington, for instance). And we did not contact every Democrat, so you shouldn't read too much into who responded and who could not. The responses are arranged in no particular order.

Here are the questions we asked to each of them:

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Another Dismal August

For President Obama, August is indeed the cruelest month.

In 2009, the president ended his "honeymoon" period with the public, with the largest one-month drop in his job approval poll numbers he has ever experienced. In 2010, Obama hit an all-time low for monthly approval numbers. This would be followed, within the next two months, by his lowest daily approval average and his highest daily disapproval average.

This August, President Obama set new all-time lows in approval and all-time highs in disapproval, across the board.

August just isn't a very good month for Obama. There's simply no other way to state how dismal Obama's poll numbers were last month. A quick look at the new chart shows this plainly.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

August, 2011

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It surpasses all irony and actually enters into the realm of bitter humor that we're about to celebrate Labor Day when the unemployment rate remains at the sky-high level of 9.1 percent. There are millions of Americans who are not laboring for a paycheck this year, and they have nothing at all to celebrate.

Many of them will, no doubt, still attend a barbeque or picnic or parade, or perhaps go to a local beach. But it's a pretty safe bet that few of them (at least the ones not attending the parade) will be thinking much about the meaning of Labor Day.

President Obama is going to spend the weekend hashing out exactly what will be in his upcoming speech on jobs and the economy. It's another fairly safe bet that Obama won't be using the words "Labor" or "Union" in this speech, sadly enough.

Obama's speech was originally planned for Wednesday night, but the Republicans had set that night aside for Reagan worship, so he was forced to move it to Thursday, the same night the first professional football game of the year will be broadcast -- perhaps setting up the tough choice for millions of couch potatoes between watching an hour of politics or watching the pre-game show.

Sigh.

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Lynching is an ugly word. It's ugly precisely because what it refers to is both deeply horrific and utterly counter to what it means to be an American. The history of lynching in this country is, sadly, a long and brutal one. Uncountable human beings -- mostly black males in the South -- were grabbed by what can only be called an angry mob, and summarily executed without benefit of a trial by a jury of their peers for their perceived wrongdoing. In many cases (if not most), this wrongdoing was fictional, it bears pointing out. The history of such lynchings is a sad and shameful chapter in America's story. Lynchings didn't happen in a vacuum, of course, since the broader (and more shameful) history of racial relations formed the backdrop in which such lynchings took place.

All of us should be aware (and ashamed) of this history. That such things took place in our country is something all Americans should know. This almost goes without saying. But what apparently does need saying is the reverse -- that the history of lynching should not be abused and belittled by politicians in hyperbolic fashion to make a much smaller point. Even if -- or perhaps especially if -- the politician in question is an African-American.

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To his supporters, one of Ron Paul's most endearing qualities is his forthrightness. Paul doesn't mince words, he tells you to your face exactly what he thinks. And, to give the man credit, he keeps to his positions even when it would be a lot easier for him to either fudge an answer or tone down his beliefs, the way most politicians do (at certain times).

So it came as no surprise to anyone familiar with Congressman Paul's politics that he would appear this weekend on television -- while Hurricane Irene was still churning up the East Coast -- to reiterate his belief that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does more harm than good, and shouldn't be a function of the federal government in the first place. For those unaware of the full extent of libertarian thinking on such subjects, it was perhaps a little shocking to hear a Republican candidate for president clearly stating that getting rid of FEMA was part and parcel of the "big government" versus "small government" political debate.

What is astonishing is that nobody seems to have noticed, at least not to the point of taking exception with Paul's stance on FEMA. Ron Paul finally broke through the "media blackout" of his campaign, and appeared this weekend in several national television interviews, making statements like: "We should be like 1900; we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960. I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district." And nobody bothers to address his position?

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[For those of you expecting your weekly dose of "Friday Talking Points" here, we apologize because this week's column has been pre-empted to bring you a very special message today, instead.]

A new statue of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior is about to be dedicated in Washington; as a memorial to the man, his life's work, his commitment to non-violence, and the words he used to so eloquently define the struggle against injustice millions of Americans used to face every single day. The ceremony has been delayed, due to the threat of a hurricane hitting the D.C. area this weekend, but it was originally scheduled to mark the 48th anniversary of his most famous speech, given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

This speech will forever be known as his "I Have A Dream" speech, and portions of it are as familiar to every American as F.D.R.'s "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," J.F.K.'s "Ask not what your country can do for you," and even Abraham Lincoln's immortal "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" address on the hallowed battlefields of Gettysburg.

This is all as it should be. It's a powerful speech, after all. But Dr. King's legacy is a lot deeper than two or three heavily-edited clips from one speech. By now, we've all seen video of the following lines, many times over:

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To most Democrats, Texas Governor Rick Perry's candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination has so far seemed somewhat of a joke. At least until now, that is. The Lefty blogosphere has indeed been having a field day ever since Perry announced, over some of Perry's off-the-cuff comments, both past and present. Today's news, however, should go a long way towards forcing Democrats to start taking Perry seriously -- because according to multiple opinion polls (the first national polls released after Perry jumped in the race), Mitt Romney is no longer the "frontrunner." Perry is. By double-digits. [Poll data is available from both Real Clear Politics and the Huffington Post, if you're interested.]

This should force pundits across the political spectrum to re-evaluate Rick Perry's campaign. Instead of seeing through the lens of: "what my circle of friends thinks of Rick Perry's gaffes," this time the pundits should focus a little more closely on: "what Republican primary voters think of Rick Perry as a candidate." Because, so far, they seem to be flocking to support Perry -- to the visible detriment of Mitt Romney's standing in the polls.

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[Note: This article has been corrected since it first ran. See below.]

President Obama, when he first announced the United States' intervention in the Libyan revolution, was assailed from all sides for his war plan. Five months ago, both Democrats and Republicans were offering up pointed criticisms for just about every aspect of Obama's decision. Whatever Obama did, there were large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats quite willing to loudly second-guess him. Including Representative Dennis Kucinich (a Democrat), who called President Obama's actions "an impeachable offense."

These criticisms were often contradictory (coming from the same people, at times), and were scathing and absolutely relentless: Obama had waited too long, Obama had moved too quickly, Obama should have gotten Congress' approval, Obama shouldn't have gotten the U.N.'s approval, America should just invade in a land war, America should just drop a bomb on Ghaddafi and be done with it, the rebels were in reality Al Qaeda, why are we intervening in Libya and not elsewhere in the Arab Spring, America can't afford another war, air power alone never wins wars, America will be forced to put "boots on the ground" whether we like it or not, America should be leading the war, Obama is "leading from behind," we're letting the French take control (?!?), Obama is kowtowing to the Arab League, another war in a Muslim country will just serve to inflame the region, what about the War Powers Act, we're going to wind up occupying Libya no matter what happens, the "ragtag" rebels will never win, the best the rebels can hope for will be a stalemate, Libya will end up partitioned with Ghaddafi holding on to the west of the country, Ghaddafi will unleash international terrorists against us, Obama didn't come home from South America when it began, Obama is "dithering," Obama didn't explain to the American public what was going on, and (an old favorite) America will end up in a quagmire. Back at the beginning of the war, Salon ran an amusing flowchart to track the Republican complaints, which isn't all that far from the reality Obama faced at the time (although the chart is admittedly partisan, because it doesn't address the criticism directed towards the president from his own party).

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It's silly season in the political world, once again. And this year -- just like every year a Democrat occupies the White House -- an old favorite of a story is making the rounds. It involves some very thinly-veneered outrage, which is completely fabricated and hypocritical in the extreme.

President Obama is on vacation. This fact is being subject to ridicule from Republicans, and their enablers in the media. Which has prompted me to -- in the fashion of Bill Maher -- come up with a New Rule. My New Rule is this: nobody is allowed to get on their moral high horse on television over the president's vacation if they have taken more vacation time than he has in the past year. To make it even more effective, I would also sincerely enjoy it if the blow-dried media types on television had to offer up the following with their snarky reporting on Obama's vacation: "Full disclosure, I took three weeks off this year and flew my family to Fiji and then Japan and Australia, a vacation far more lavish than the one the president is currently enjoying."

If that's too much to ask, how about the media correctly reporting this "outrage" -- in full context. "Republicans in Congress are expressing outrage over the president's ten-day vacation. Of course, it was rather hard to reach most of these members of Congress, since they are all off enjoying their own five-week long vacation. By the time they return to Washington in September, Congress will have taken more vacation time this year alone than Obama has for his entire term. Making their 'outrage' over Obama's vacation schedule more than just a little hypocritical."

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