"President Obama will turn this country around"--John McCain

++Those footsteps you hear are progressive trying to sneak back into the Obama Camp because the President took some strong steps this week that convinced those who had been disappointed that he would put up a fight.

++Left-wing bloggers were screaming that the President should appoint Richard Cordray as Consumer Protection head during recess. Actuallly they were shocked that he filled the remaining seats on the National Labor Relations Board at the same time. They didn't realize that Obama actually laid a trap for Congressional Republicans when he asked them to raise the debt ceiling. These smart guys said they couldn't because Congess was in "recess", which Mitch McConnell claims the Senate wasn't when the President made his appointments. Yesterday, James Clyburn, Democrat from South Carolina,tried to introduce the bill to extend the payroll tax break for a year and he was shut down because the House republicans said, "the House was in recess."

++The U.S. Chamber of Commerce vows to sue the Obama Administration over these appointments. But the George W. Bush legal advisers, with the exception of Torture Memo author Yoo, and noted constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe side with the administration. In any event, the Republican canididates, who denounced the appointments, clearly oppose consumer protection and labor rights--a real great place to put yourself in 2012. What's probably worse is that Richard Cordray came out firing on his plans to regulate non-bank lenders, who have abused customers.

++In case you missed it, President Obama dealt a death blow to neoconservatives with his announcement of a new defense strategy this week. For the first time, Obama put his mark on national security strategy amd moved away from the George W. Bush strategy, which some of us were uncomfortable with his following. Obama is moving our focus toward the Pacific, the center of economic gravity in the world, and downgrading the ability of the United States to fight prolonged land wars. His strategy comes in the face of severe budget cuts mandated by the failure of the Super Committee to reach an agreement over the debt. But he made a powerful case that defense spending has far outstripped anything over the past ten years and that the United States can adequately defend itself if its defense budget exceeded the first seven of its competitors combined. Interestingly, Steve Clemons was the only D.C. insider who picked up that this resembled Don Rumsfeld's original plan prior to 9/11. But it got howls of criticism from the Republicans but strangely is favored by the Republican grass-roots.

++Keeping on a roll, the President announced a program of Summer Jobs for 180,000 low-income young people and a total of 250,000 summer jobs for the young this summer.

++The President decided that he better give federal workers a slight raise, since they hadn't received one for the last two years.

++The President anounced a reform in Green-Cards, which will prevent families from being separated because one or more them are illegals. It's too complicated for me to understand but it will affect thousands of families. It takes off the sting of Obama's deportation record and only highlights the Republican struggle with the Hispanic vote.

++For me, Secretary of the Interior Salazar extended by twenty years the moratorium on uranium-mining around the Grand Canyon. The proposal for uranium-mining, which the Republicans have been presssing for the last two years, always remined me of the Honeymooners episode when Rakph Kramden invested in uranium mines in my Asbury Park. It was absolutely nuts and the threat to the integrity of the Grand Canyon was constantly shown in study after study. Good move.

++The unemployment rate dropped to 8.5% this week as 220,000 private sector jobs were added. A few brighter spots was that it looks like the drops of public sector jobs, a chronic syndrome caused by cash-strapped states with balance budget amendments, appear to be ending. The job number means that 2011 out performed all but one of George W's years and we have had 22 months straight of private job growth. Whether President Obama will get credit for this remains to be seen. Rick Santorum said the job numbers were the result of Americans believing Republicans will win the next election. And Mitt said he would bring the unemployment rate down to 8.9%--in other words make it go up.

++The Obama administration submitted its court brief to the Supreme Court arguing for the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. This month also kicked in the part of the health care bill that calls for insurance companies to spend 80-85% of their income on actual healthcare and not bonuses for their executives.