Avon Lake Democrats

  Speaker of the House John Boehner flipped on the payroll tax cut deal and then flopped with the public because of his inability to control his own caucus. In other words, Congressman Boehner was for the payroll tax cut before he was against it. Americans want strong leadership but the speaker doesn't have any more backbone than Mitt Romney. And Mitt Romney doesn't even have a backbone. Does Boehner's flip mean that Mitt's failure to take a strong, consistent position on any important issue is infecting the GOP? Sounds about right to me.

[Read Peter Fenn: John Boehner Is Letting the Inmates Run the Asylum]

Last week the speaker reportedly endorsed the Senate compromise to reduce payroll taxes but this week he's doing everything he can to kill it. Everybody is asking whether John Boehner lost control of the GOP caucus in the House of Representatives this week. The real question is whether he ever had any control. If the speaker had power, Congress could have solved the budget crisis months ago when the president and the speaker agreed to a $3 trillion package to reduce the deficit. When Boehner got back to his side of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Tea Party caucus told him to put his deal where the sun don't shine. House Republicans then settled for $1.2 trillion in debt reduction.

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.

Economists in the survey are less optimistic than Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has cited estimates for a 1.5 percent boost to gross domestic product. Even so, the program may bolster Obama’s re-election prospects by lowering a jobless rate that has stayed near 9 percent or more since April 2009.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared in the latest Republican presidential debate that he had never advocated turning Social Security over to the states. His denial was hard to fathom given his past rhetoric about the program.

"Let the states do it," he said last year, for example.

Romney, Perry and Huntsman each cherry-picked facts about job growth in their states when they were governor. Here we offer a broader look at the numbers, which sometimes tell a different story than the candidates.

During the GOP presidential candidates' debate on Sept. 7:

The gang of 6 plus 1 seems to be working towards a solution to the National debt crisis although there is still resistance from some legislators.

Osama bin Laden’s death is a political game-changer, though the size (and duration) of its impact is unknown… Does it change the nation’s psyche?... Does it change the nation’s policy in Afghanistan?... One thing’s for sure: It makes all the other issues -- Trump, the birth certificate, even the substantive debate over the debt ceiling -- seem small by comparison… Recalling Obama’s words on Al Qaeda and Pakistan back in Aug. 2007, and how his Democratic rivals attacked him for it… At 11:55 am ET, Obama awards two U.S. soldiers from the Korean War the Medal of Honor posthumously… And at 8:15 pm, he and the first lady host a dinner for bipartisan congressional leaders and their spouses.

From NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg
*** A game-changer: The 9/11 terrorist attacks fundamentally transformed American politics. They ensured that the 2004 presidential election would be fought over national security; they resulted in Democrats picking John Kerry as their nominee and Republicans picking New York City as their convention site; and they ultimately led to Bush’s re-election, albeit in a closely contested race. While it’s doubtful that Osama bin Laden’s death will have as long of a political impact -- especially in this fast-changing, short-term memory media landscape -- it will surely shape the contours of next year’s presidential race. For starters, it will hover over the first Republican debate set for this Thursday, even if it’s not a direct question. It also will highlight the GOP field’s foreign-policy and national-security credentials, or their lack thereof. And it amounts to Barack Obama’s top achievement as president. Last night changes everything (for now), but we also know how quickly it can dissipate.