President Barack Obama's administration was supposed to follow a basic premise: never let a crisis go to waste. That was according to one of his own advisors, shortly after Obama took office. But so far, their track record on doing so has been decidedly mixed.

When Obama took office, there certainly was no shortage of crises awaiting them. To their credit, they moved swiftly on their stimulus package, which stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs to the point where last month was deemed a "bad" month, because only 40,000 private-sector jobs were created (along with 400,000 temporary Census jobs). That's a long way from when he took office, when 750,000 jobs were being lost each and every month -- an 800,000 jobs-per-month difference, in fact. Obama also used this crisis to pass his healthcare reform measure, which all but consumed an entire year for him and for Congress.

But Wall Street is still operating under the same rules they were when our economy almost collapsed. It's been almost a year and a half, and we have not changed the rules of the road for Wall Street (or Main Street, for that matter). On this issue, significant progress has at least been made. The House and Senate have named the membership of the conference committee which will hash out final language between the Wall Street reform bills which have already passed both houses. Obama says he wants a bill to sign by the Fourth of July, which may be optimistic but is certainly possible if the committee doesn't get bogged down. So we may not have all that long to wait before the financial crisis can truly have been said not to have "gone to waste" for Obama and Democrats in Congress.

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Many areas of the country take perverse pride in being "the worst" when it comes to politics, in much the same way most people take perverse pride in the fact that their local drivers are, quite obviously, the worst in the entire country. Perhaps it's just human nature. But in some places, the politics is noticeably more hardball than in others, even to outsiders. Which brings us to South Carolina.

South Carolinians are notorious for "bringing a gun to a knife fight" in the political arena. Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss certainly proved this a few years back, with the disgusting advertisement he ran against Max Cleland during his campaign (the less said about this ad the better). But this year may go down as one of the strangest in South Carolina's checkered political history (which includes being the first state to commit treason against the federal government, in case anyone's forgotten).

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The Wall Street reform effort in Congress will enter a new phase tomorrow, as the conference committee between the House and Senate will meet to begin hashing out the differences between the House and Senate versions which have already passed. The membership of this conference committee was announced today, and the committee will hold its first meeting tomorrow.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office released the list of Democratic House members who will be on this important conference committee. As always, Pelosi also had some feisty things to say about the Democratic position:

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Gosh, here's hoping everyone is having a super Tuesday today!

I'm sorry if that was a bit snide, but I have to say I'm getting a little sick of "super" Tuesdays. The term "Super Tuesday" has, in my opinion, now officially jumped the shark. Case in point: today's primaries are the second time the media has used this term during this year's primary season.

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Several states hold primaries this Tuesday, many of which may have implications beyond their state. For instance, the primary runoff election in Arkansas will likely be the closest-watched race (at least by Democrats), to see if challenger Bill Halter can pull an upset against sitting Senator Blanche Lincoln, who enraged many by her corporate-friendly work on the health reform. Other states will also have interesting races to watch, but today I'm going to concentrate on California's primary. Call me parochial if you will (I live in the Golden State), but there are a few California races worth watching tomorrow.

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The mainstream media, led by the intrepid White House press corps, closely followed by the inside-the-Beltway punditocracy, has declared what must happen for the oil to stop flowing into the Gulf of Mexico: President Obama needs to get angry at the oil.

I wish I were kidding, but sadly, I am not. This is the number one topic fluttering around the field of so-called conventional wisdom these days: Obama's not mad enough.

Salon has the full rundown on this, which I find I cannot improve upon:

Here are three questions CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid asked at yesterday's White House press briefing:

"You said earlier that the President is enraged. Is he enraged at BP specifically?"

"Frustration and rage are very different emotions, though. I haven't -- have we really seen rage from the President on this? I think most people would say no."

"Can you describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?"

Important questions! Is the president more frustrated, or mad? Doesn't he know that the oil will stop spilling into the Gulf if he just gets madder??

The article also has a list of links to other prominent "journalists" who have jumped on board the "Obama should get angry" bandwagon, in case you'd like more of the same idiocy. I feel kind of sorry for Chip, as he used to have a shred of integrity, back when he was just a "poll numbers guy" during the 2008 election season. Then he joined the White House press corps, and it's like he's had some sort of lobotomy or something. Maybe it's a prerequisite for the job, or something.

Sigh.

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[Short post today, my apologies.]

I read a story today in the Washington Post which deserves a lot more attention than it has so far gotten, and for that reason, I'm turning the bulk of this column over to an excerpt. This sort of thing truly enrages me, because it is institutionalized, legalized corruption at its finest. I'm beginning to think John McCain was right on the whole subject of earmarks -- just ban the practice altogether.

Washington, before it became a city, was a swamp. You can put fancy neoclassical buildings up everywhere, but it seems you can never get rid of the inherent swampiness of the town. Sigh.

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Finally, some good news

While I would immediately caution everyone not to get overly optimistic about what I'm about to say, President Obama's approval rating was looking up in April. Gains were modest, but were pretty much across the board. Although, as I said, the end of the month saw a slight reversal to this trend, likely the result of the drip, drip, drip nature (or, more properly, "gush, gush, gush") of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

More on all of that in a bit. As well as a special look, at the end here, at how Obama stacks up against Ronald Reagan's first term. We're interrupting our march backwards through time, comparing Obama to all previous presidents for whom polling data is available, to highlight the Obama versus Reagan picture. Of course, graphs comparing Obama with every previous president back to Eisenhower are always available at the Obama Poll Watch website, for your perusal.

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It is a great temptation for people in government to mete out harsh punishment after something happens which they do not agree with or support. Whenever some incident bursts onto the public consciousness and raises an outcry, government officials almost always feel the urge to use their power to explicitly punish whoever is responsible. The BP oil spill is just the most recent (and most glaring) example of this right now. But there's one problem with national politicians elbowing each other out of the way to punish individuals or companies in such a fashion -- it's not only illegal, it's downright unconstitutional to do so.

Here is the relevant text:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
-United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 9

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Memorial Day is the time to memorialize all the brave individuals who served our country throughout its history, and sometimes paid the ultimate price for doing so. But, in particular, this year I'd like to focus on all those who did their duty for their country, and fought for the American ideal of equality for all citizens -- even while they did not enjoy such rights themselves, either in the military or in American life at the time. These second-class citizens, one would think, would have even less reason than citizens accorded full rights under the law to risk death on a foreign battlefield, and therefore would not have volunteered to do so. One would be wrong in thinking this, however.

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