THE ECONOMIST: How Not To Raise The Discourse. Well, when Eric Alterman is involved, not much discourse-raising will happen.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Something We Can Say With Certitude: The Economy Stinks!

Now the numbers are so bad — and November 2012 so close — that the Obama campaign has decided it must, as Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush put it, “temper some of the Morning-in-America optimism he’d hoped to run on.”

This is truly shocking. Not that the president’s team realizes its “Morning-in-America” parade is getting rained on, but that marching under that banner was ever considered in the first place. Even if the jobs numbers had come in as expected, at 150,000 — or even if they’d come in higher than expected at, say, 200,000, and stayed there for several months, we’re nowhere near Morning in America. Unfortunately, too much of the country appears to be closer to a Permanent Midnight.

As our Business Editor Peter Goodman puts it, the conditions underlying these numbers are “already familiar beyond the realm of professional economists and policymakers.” This is what most Americans, Goodman writes, “know in their bones, not from government reports and the abstract musings of economists, but from the everyday fears that accompany glancing at their checkbooks and their latest credit card bills: There is no relief in sight.”

Certainly not from this administration. Plus this:

For the administration to be credible in putting forth a jobs vision for the future it has to credibly acknowledge what’s happened in the past. And its plan will have to go beyond simply blaming its predecessors. “It could have been worse!” is not much of a battle cry.

Nope. Especially when it’s actually much worse than the Administration predicted things would be even without its ill-conceived, pork-laden stimulus plan.

UPDATE: Well, this won’t help: Obama defaults to economic blame game. “A cascade of bad economic and political news knocked President Barack Obama off his game today, and prompted him to revive his 2008-style criticism of his predecessor, and also to suggest that investors, consumers and even the media are responsible for today’s stalled economy.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Tom Grant writes: “Why doesn’t Obama just come out and say it? ‘It’s the voters’ fault, they trusted me.'”

Ah, yes, the Flounder Defense.

MORE: Reader Ron Hardin emails: “The Obama private-sector economic recovery plan: beatings will continue until morale improves.”

ED SCHULTZ: You People Are In Denial! “When Ed Schultz, a guy who just slithered back to TV after calling Laura Ingraham a slut, sounds like the most sane person on the panel, the left has a huge problem on their hands.” Or MSNBC, anyway.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Fannie Mae Scandal Is Bigger Than You Think:

The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction — and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener’s rogue body parts. If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle — a big if — then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981.

The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form: Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. By Gretchen Morgenson, one of America’s best business journalists who is currently at The New York Times, and noted financial analyst Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment gives the best available account of how the growing chaos in the mortgage and personal finance markets and the rampant bundling of dubious loans into exotically toxic securities plunged the world, and millions of American families, into the gravest financial crisis since World War Two. It is gripping reading as well, and its explanations are clear enough that readers without any background in finance will have no trouble following the plot. The villains? An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros. (Frank got a cushy job for a lover, Pelosi got a job and layoff protection for a son, Cisneros apparently got a license to mint money bilking Mexican-Americans of their life savings in cheesy housing developments.) . . . If the GOP can make this narrative mainstream, and put this picture into the heads of voters nationwide, the Democrats are toast. The party will have to reinvent itself (or as often happens in American politics, be rescued by equally stupid Republican missteps) before it can flourish.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Dangerous Mr. Khan.

UH OH: “There is very real threat of a flood that will leave St. Louis in chest-high water. The reason: Six old, huge, faulty dams that normally have reserve space for spring snow melt are nearly full now — before the spring floods start. Floodgates that haven’t been opened in 50 years have begun to open. Flooding has begun. And the human and economic toll could be ghastly.”

CHANGE: U.S. cancer drugs shortage has doctors scrambling. “Cancer medicines desperately needed by sick children and adults are in short supply, undermining the ability of U.S. doctors to administer treatments, top oncologists warned this week.”

YOUR ATF AT WORK: David Hardy rounds up consequences from the ATF’s Mexican gunrunning operation.

SUMMER JOB BUMMER: Teen Unemployment 24 Percent.

MY THEORY ON BARBARA WALTERS: SHORTAGE OF ARICEPT: Barbara Walters’ theory on Weinergate: It’s the Viagra.

CHARLIE COOK TO DEMOCRATS, ON THE ECONOMY: Own it!

BLINDNESS ON the revolving door.

AMITY SHLAES: What Paul Krugman Misses About 1937 Redux.

GENE HEALY ON THE LESSONS OF WEINERGATE: “Not only are political sex scandals great fun, they serve an important social purpose. They remind us that we should think twice before we cede more power to these clowns.”

WHAT DO DO when you’re not on the Internet.

A MASSIVE EXPLOSION ON THE SUN is caught on video.

The Sun apparently does all kinds of violent things, if recent scientific reports are correct.

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID: Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression.

A WEINERGATE LESSON? Beware Of “Feminist” Men.

Related thoughts from Jennifer Rubin: “As for the ‘I just don’t get it’ response of some young liberal men out there, I can only imagine that ideology so dominates their lives that they fail to see the harm in a public figure’s not-at-all-private conduct. Or perhaps they too see the Tweets as a harmless pastime. Maybe, for all the ‘sexual harassment’ training we’ve gotten, we’ve forgotten some essential training in ethics.”

AT AMAZON, wearable video cameras.

I THINK THE MESSAGE IS, “WE ARE BARBARIANS TO WHOM YOU SHOULD SHOW NO MERCY WHATSOEVER:” Beheading of Afghanistan politician seen as message from insurgents.

GLENN BECK ADOPTS THE PJTV MODEL. He’s even calling it GBTV. Thanks for the sincere flattery, Glenn!

RICHARD POLLOCK: With Austan Goolsbee’s departure, the collapse of the president’s economic team is nearly complete.

UPDATE: A Wall Street reader emails:

Debt at record high peacetime levels, food stamp use at record high, long-term unemployment at record high, federal regulatory reach at record high, dollar buying power at record low. Such consistent results can’t be result of random incompetence. A conspiracy-minded critic would say the White House economic team is leaving under a banner reading Mission Accomplished. None of *them* are unemployed on leaving DC.

For the ruling class, it’s never a depression.

SELF-DESCRIBED “PROGRESSIVE FEMINIST FANGIRLS” swoon for Anthony Weiner.

UPDATE: Weiner’s willing women. “He didn’t hide who he was — in fact, he used his power to lure women into his web. The women willingly ‘went there’ with him, in spite of the fact that he was married. He didn’t enhance his profile, he just relied on the fact that women would be so enamored to be conversing with a congressman that they’d keep it a secret. And, come to find out, he was right. Had he not inadvertently sent his now notorious photo to all of his followers, he’d no doubt be planning his next romantic endeavor.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Weinergate Gotterdammerung. I confess that those are two words I never expected to see used together.

GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE: Reader Norv Clontz writes: “In change today I got a single that was signed by Tim Geithner. I hadn’t noticed one in circulation before. Someone already wrote on it in red ink, ‘TAX CHEAT’.” Yeah, I haven’t noticed one of those yet. I guess I’ll start looking. Or maybe I’ll just look for the “TAX CHEAT” commentary. That guy is still selling the Tax Cheat Stamps. I guess the audit didn’t scare him away. . . .

UPDATE: I think the idea started here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “Hi Glenn. I loved seeing this post. We bought the ‘tax cheat’ stamp a long time ago and it languished on the shelf. Finally, a few months ago, those Tim Geithner one dollar bills started appearing in our change. EVERY ONE that passes through this house gets stamped. I’m glad the stamps are getting noticed. Let a million red stamps bloom!”

MORE: Another reader emails:

I’ve been looking forward to my first Geithner Federal Reserve note for the more than two years since the very second I read about the “Tax Cheat” stamp idea.

I had checked regularly and had never seen one here in California’s Central Valley – until I read today’s post on Instapundit.

I checked my wallet, and to my delight, there were five not-yet-marked Geithner one dollar notes.

Five new ones. A straight. All five in numerical sequence.

Wham, wham, wham, wham, wham.

I’m going to have to start looking at dollar bills.

FORBES: U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms. This must be more of that under-the-radar stuff Obama was talking about. “Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners to take this initiative seriously, stating that the U.N. ‘is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.’”

UPDATE: Basil Copeland writes that there’s less here than meets the eye:

The article you cited was old news made to look more current. The Bolton quote is from Nov 6, 2009, according to this.

Would it really be “under the radar” for Obama and Clinton to try to push something like through the Senate in an election year? I’d almost dare Obama to do it, because I think the timing would be political suicide.

On the other hand, these sorts of initiatives never really go away, they just go into remission. And the FactCheck piece doesn’t entirely refute the claims made above.