Originally posted at centrist blog The Motley Moose

TalkingPointsMemo points out an (unsurprisingly) ridiculous claim from the April 7th "Morning Joe" show on MSNBC. President Obama, despite being a self made millionaire several times over (the sort of thing I thought Republicans admired) has, apparently, never earned a "paycheck" in his life.

SCARBOROUGH: Think about this: We have a president who has never received a paycheck. ... This guy -- think about it -- he's running Detroit, he's running Wall Street, he's gonna run other sectors of our economy. Andrew, he's never received a check from a profit-making business in his entire life. Not one check. ... Think about the radicalism of that!

Watch it below:

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The fight for 2012 is here. Beltway media insiders rejoice!

Who's it going to be? Spunky Sarah? Moneyed Mitt? Holy Huckabee? Some dark-horse candidate flying under the radar? One thing is for sure: While the media clamors for every tiny detail in the looming battle for the Republican presidential nomination, the real fight for 2012 is taking place right before their very eyes.

Conventional-wisdom channelers in Washington, wittingly or not, have already been put to use by conservatives so determined to win that few facts remain untwisted. The fight over the 2010 census, which will ultimately dictate how congressional districts are drawn in 2012 and potentially influence party control of Congress for years to come, has already started.

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I don't know why I watch Morning Joe when I get up in the early morn... He started out today with a statement that stimulation packages don't really work and LIBERAL BLOGGERS go out of their way to prove that they do, especially since they go all the way back to the New Deal to justify such stimulus.  Apparently a blogger like me is participating in "groupthink" and is campaigning for "bank nationalization" and is against tax cuts (even though, as Mika pointed out, there are many ways to point out how tax cuts haven't worked and have made matters worse.)

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I'm just going to make this short, but I'd love to hear some of the opinions here on this. Ratigan on Morning Joe just illuminated me to the concept of taking the private investment idea from the current bailout and creating "Hope Bonds", a shitty name for what sounds like a good idea, one I hadn't seen or noticed thus far.

Would that work? It seems like it might. Lord knows war bonds helped the country through in WWII. Not only would this allow everyone to benefit from what could eventually be a decent return, it would give Americans a chance to put money in our own economy instead of relying on China. And doing it in a way that appealed to our better natures.

It could bring us together, make everyone feel like they are a part of government, and might just give everybody a little bit of optimism about our ability to recover.

And at a time when everyone's talking about us moving towards socialism, it'd be nice to demonstrate that the character of this nation remains independent. I greatly like the idea of everyone being able to chip in, and from a strictly political standpoint, it reminds everyone of Obama's campaign financing, so it might be a decent long-term boost to his political chances.

Thoughts? Even if I've called you a dick, I'd still like to hear thoughts.

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Hey folks, I wanted to share my latest column with everyone here at MyDD. If you like what you see, feel free to recommend this diary and share it with your friends.

-K

It's probably a good thing that cable news generally doesn't draw much of an audience from the 18- to 24-year-old demographic. Otherwise, history professors across the nation could very well be witnessing the undoing of their work to educate students about the dire economic climate the United States faced for much of the 1930s.

Those who have been watching cable news lately have undoubtedly noticed the litany of conservative media figures attempting to rewrite history by denigrating the tremendous successes of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal policies in what amounts to an orchestrated effort to derail the economic recovery plans of President Obama.

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