IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, ALEX BEAM:

It is inevitable in modern American politics that each new president inaugurates his own brand of bushwa – rubbish, lies, eyewash, whatever you choose to call it – that reminds one of nothing so much as the previous guy’s bushwa. Mr. Obama is no exception. . . . Remember signing statements? Those were the dastardly little postscripts George Bush attached to legislation that he didn’t completely approve of. Signing statements ignore the “fundamental principle’’ of the separation of powers, the American Bar Association huffed. On the campaign trail, candidate Obama was asked, “Do you promise not to use presidential [signing statements] to get your way?’’ “Yes,’’ he answered. “I taught the Constitution for 10 years, I believe in the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We are not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress.’’

That was easy!

Less easy is explaining away his six signing statements so far, an impressive one-a-month clip. “Signing statements serve a legitimate function in our system,’’ Obama now says, “at least when based on well-founded constitutional objections.’’ Mr. President, meet my friend George Orwell, inventor of Newspeak, who memorably wrote, “Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.’’

New bushwa same as the old bushwa? It’s a lot less different than we had been led to believe.

Hope and Change Same!

CNN, AP SPIN misleading employment headlines. Hey, they want to get invited to spend next July 4th partying off the record with the Prez.

UPDATE: Economic reporting, then and now.

AT THE G-8, an area of Franco-American agreement.

Kind of reminds me of this Nixon/Brezhnev shot, only with more agreement.

This, on the other hand, not so much. . . .

YOUR ECONOMIC GLOOM ROUNDUP.

NOW IT NEEDS DEFENDING? Biden defends fed stimulus. But this man can draw a crowd! “About 200 people gathered behind the former American Can company building to hear Biden speak.”

Only some of them were the ones he was defending it from:

Biden indirectly addressed Boehner and a group of protesters gathered outside of the factory. . . . The organizers of the Cincinnati Tea Party, a group opposed to using federal funds for local projects, issued a statement against stimulus spending.

More coverage here:

The Cincinnati Tea Party used the Vice President’s visit to reiterate the group’s opposition to using federal funds for local projects. Mike Wilson, the President of the Cincinnati Tea Party, joined others in a gathering this afternoon to voice their concerns. Wilson said, “We were told that the stimulus was necessary to prevent unemployment from reaching a peak of 9.1% in the second quarter of 2010. We were told that the stimulus would create a lower peak of 8 % in the third quarter of 2009. Last week’s official number of 9.5% showed that the Tea Parties organizers were right and the Obama-Biden administration was wrong.”

And also here. Nice job of piggybacking on the Biden story by the Cincinnati Tea Party folks.

IT’S NOT OVER: Thousands protest in Iran, defying crackdown vow.

THE HILL: More spelling errors plague Obama releases. Does the “Quayle-o-Meter” go to 11? And yeah, this is picayune stuff that shouldn’t matter. But will it? It would sure matter if it were a Palin Administration . . . .

UH OH: Brown Manure, Not Green Shoots: The Situation Is Even Worse Than The Headlines.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Hankamer emails:

Interesting article, and somewhat parallels my experience. I’ve “gone Galt” myself, taking 6 weeks leave without pay. Business is very slow, we’ve already got too many people wasting away on overhead. SinceI don’t need the money (right now), I volunteered to take some time off in the hope that someone else won’t get laid off.

The one positive in all this is that I think that (at my marginal tax rate) I’ve denied the (state and federal) government some $4,000 in income taxes.

Well, that’s something.

PAPER TIGERS? ACORN and MoveOn marchers outnumbered 10-1.

They were also outnumbered in North Carolina.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll emails: “As Richard Geno and I discussed in my video (and I saw firsthand), the pro-socialized medicine protesters were very much outnumbered in San Jose on Sunday. Scroll to about 5:20 in the video for our conversation, as well as the footage I shot at the scene.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader points out that last time ACORN sent out the troops they were outnumbered by the media. Yeah, but the media are their troops too, right? So I’m not sure that one counts . . . .

IS YOUR PET FAT?

DEMOCRACY VS. OBAMA AND THE DICTATORS: PJTV REPORTS FROM TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS.

Maybe Honduras should ask for foreign volunteers to help defend it. A sort of Lincoln Brigade . . . .

AIN’T NO SUNSHINE.

GIGANTICO: An interesting future-oriented blog.

MICKEY KAUS CHARGES HYPOCRISY: “If he were a GOP, TPM would be all over it, no? Sen. Inouye acts on behalf of a constituent, who turns out to be in large part himself (a troubled bank in which his ownership share makes up ‘the bulk of his personal wealth’). … Yet Josh Marshall stays silent.”

But hey, it’s not as if Marshall pretends to be balanced or nonpartisan. And there are plenty of other bloggers to cover it. On the other hand, a lot of Big Media folks rely too narrowly on TPM and Kos. . . .

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Sizing Up The Tea Parties. Maybe it’s better if this stuff happens below the national-media radar. . . .

IS THERE A PEE-POWERED GADGET in your future?

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH FOUND ON EASTER ISLAND? Well, sort of.

CASH FOR CLUNKERS: See if your car qualifies.

ME AND KATHERINE MANGU-WARD AT THE L.A. TIMES: Who’s the next GOP star?

TRAVELING WITH your own coffee grinder? That would be taking things too far.

My Capresso grinder, by the way, just quit working the other day. I mean, when you turn it on it makes noises and things go round and round, but somehow no coffee gets ground. I took it apart, cleaned everything and saw no problems, and put it back together, but it still doesn’t work. Maybe I’ll go with that KitchenAid.

SO MUCH FOR THE FIERCE MORAL URGENCY (CONT’D): Indefinite Detention, With Or Without Trial. “So the Obama administration is all for due process, as long as it produces the correct result. Obama already has said that Guantanamo detainees who cannot be successfully tried by military commissions or civilian courts can still be imprisoned indefinitely if they are considered too dangerous to release. Now Johnson is saying that even those who are prosecuted can be kept imprisoned regardless of the verdict. The only point of prosecuting them, it seems, is to create an impression of due process while continuing the Bush detention policies that Obama condemned during the campaign.”

A LOOK AT cyber-security in the United States.

POLITICO: Independents begin to edge away from President Obama. “In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.” He ran as different kind of politician than he’s governing as. He hopes to ram through stuff that will cement his position before the rubes catch on. It’ll be close.

STEVE CHAPMAN: The Secret of Palin’s Staying Power: Why Sex Appeal Matters in Politics.

PROTESTS AND GENERAL STRIKE IN IRAN: Michael Ledeen is updating.