Obama has a tin ear

Unions first? Really?

About a year and a half ago, in this very forum, I suggested that jobs, jobs jobs should be the president's priority. Inexplicably, he ignored me.

More recently, I told him to put some bankers in jail. He seems to be ignoring that, too. Amazing, huh?

So now I will tell him that to focus on funding jobs for teachers, firefighters and cops is a really, really stupid fumble, one that gives Republicans a fact they can use as proof that Obama is just a special interest president.

And this on the eve of great success in Libya. Good Lord, hire a conservative to serve pragmatism with breakfast. Are you reading The Economist as often as you should, sir?

Mr. President, most of us out here without jobs do not have union representation. Teachers and firefighters and cops are very hard to fire, already have organizations fighting for them, and have pretty nice advantages. They are not the most in need, individually or as a "class," and buying them off does not quickly create the most jobs.

Sheesh, we should not have to say this. Giving unions our money is great politics when times are good, but now you have to do something bold to take care of the rest of us who also voted for you, who also worked for you, so we can make money, so we can buy things, so we can pay taxes and so those taxes can then be used to hire more teachers, firefighters and cops.

Horse, then cart. Horse pulls cart. It's that simple.

That's how you best leverage dollars, economically and politically. Build some damn roads and bridges, retirement homes for now broke baby-boomers, build schools where they are falling apart, add research facilities onto colleges to study why adding fly ash makes concrete into nearly indestructible pavement. Then put that pavement under trucks delivering stuff to build more stuff.

Pour money into small banks in stressed communities -- I mean pour it in, and pay them 4% to loan it at 2 % for twenty years to any business that wants to grow, and certainly any business that can return jobs to America or creates jobs that can not be exported. Let the money multiply as it moves through the economy and lifts us out of some pretty dire straights (cue the music).

Don't just give it to the unions, sir. It makes you look like a chump and a shallow pol. It is beneath the stature of a president who who saved the U.S. auto industry, got Bin Laden and put fear into terrorists, passed what may someday be viewed as the beginning of health care reform and whose new direction of foreign policy has aided democracy around the world and just deposed a vile dictator who murdered with impunity for 40 years.

I think Right Wing pundits should eat a bag of bugs for every self-righteous, mocking use of "Lead from Behind." I want to see Rush do it.

C'mon. There is still time to fix this. Have faith in America, not just the ideologues. For you to meet the opposition in the middle, you have to come farther than half way. Don't waste this crisis.