Leo Hindery Jr. & Leo W. Gerard write, in The Nation, about the lack of jobs in the still-yet-to-come recovery. And the numbers need some added perspective to grasp what’s happening without the confusion of percentages.

First, jobs were getting lost before Dec 2007. I was laid off by a real estate broker of 35 years, six months before the recession officially began. He didn’t close his doors till Dec 2007, but I was a cost-saving measure as the housing bubble popped, so I’m clearly a victim of the official recession.

Second, as they note in the article, there’s now 30 million Americans unemployed. And 14.5 million lost their jobs since the official start of the recession. By comparison, at the peak of the Great Depression, 22 million were jobless.

That’s right, in actual numbers more Americans are jobless now. 33% more are. And while that’s a smaller percentage of all working age Americans, we now have more Americans desperate, trying to survive. And that’s a dilemma our government still has no answer for.

And it’s predicted to get worse yet before it gets better. The bottom could be 9 months away.

Buddy, can you spare some work?

Via Brad DeLong, Dan Froomkin writes his last White House Watch blog for the WaPo, with a great blast at the MSM. And names names of the greater real journalists left.

For those who don’t recall, Dana Priest, with Anne Hull, broke the Walter Reed Hospital scandal. And Marcy Wheeler’s coverage of the outing of Valerie Plame, during the Scooter Libby trial, exceeded every MSM outlet in its depth and scope. So remember those names. I can recall how most have contributed and I intend to learn more about the others.

Faretheewell, Dan. I expect to read your stuff again.

Paul Krugman makes the case crystal clear that Obama needs to learn from his mistakes or affordable national healthcare is doomed.

At the beginning of this year, you may remember, Mr. Obama made an eloquent case for a strong economic stimulus — then delivered a proposal falling well short of what independent analysts (and, I suspect, his own economists) considered necessary. The goal, presumably, was to attract bipartisan support. But in the event, Mr. Obama was able to pick up only three Senate Republicans by making a plan that was already too weak even weaker.

At the time, some of us warned about what might happen: if unemployment surpassed the administration’s optimistic projections, Republicans wouldn’t accept the need for more stimulus. Instead, they’d declare the whole economic policy a failure. And that’s exactly how it’s playing out. With the unemployment rate now almost certain to pass 10 percent, there’s an overwhelming economic case for more stimulus. But as a political matter it’s going to be harder, not easier, to get that extra stimulus now than it would have been to get the plan right in the first place.

The point is that if you’re making big policy changes, the final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach.

Which brings us back to health care. It would be a crushing blow to progressive hopes if Mr. Obama doesn’t succeed in getting some form of universal care through Congress. But even so, reform isn’t worth having if you can only get it on terms so compromised that it’s doomed to fail.

This isn’t a left vs. right issue. It’s about who’ll get left out, again. And if Obama doesn’t know how best to use the bully pulpit on such a major issue, then he really is just an empty suit with lots of fancy words that won’t heal a damn thing.

It’s a private life matter when an elected official has love dillemmas to resolve, but it’s a public concern when he:

a) uses public funds to pay the airfare to visit his lover. And no, repaying it should not mean exoneration any more than it would if I stole your car, then brought it back;

b) takes a trip and discusses trade with a foreign representative in violation of US policy;

c) especially when discussing agricultural trade with a rep from a country that defaulted on its debts, harming major US farmers.

It seems Sanford owes a few more apologies and should be investigated for apparent law violations.

So another politician had a long-running affair and when it was about to be exposed by a newspaper, he called an impromptu press conference and ‘fessed up.

Big effing deal. Not only does the threatened exposure weaken his confession, it’s really about private lives and has no bearing on me at all.

And he really made quite a tawdry show of it, if you’re into soap operas, which I’m not. Yet I came away with several impressions of the event that I do think rate a mention beyond the standard media reports.

Amid his laundry list of apologies, he left out several important ones, like an apology:

a) to the literate, for all the spelling errors made in his emails to his lover and by her to him. Of course, ‘eamil’ instead of ‘email’ is likely just a typo. But ‘Unbeleivably’ is a direct violation of ‘i before e’. Apostrophes are used to replace letters, so I’am should have been ‘I’m’ or, being true to your Southern roots, ‘Ah’m’.

Seaview is two words and indepth is two, hyphenated. ‘Realized’ should have been ‘realize’ and ‘realy’ should be ‘really.’ And ‘embrassing’ was just embarrassing to read. I believe ‘trassmitted’ was supposed to be ‘transmitted.’ ‘Lightening’ is spelled ‘lightning.’ And it’s a ‘whirlwind’ tour, not a ‘world wind’ one.

There’s way more than those, but it’d be depressing to go on.

b) to the sexually non-repressed, for referencing things in unclear terms. I don’t even want to consider what you were thinking of when you wrote “I am most jealous of your salad under the palm tree.”

And you really mixed metaphors by stating ‘you already had a full tank of love in the emotional bank account.’ Or do you normally put gas in your bank?

And no Hollywood screenwriter would be forgiven if he added cheesy dialogue like “I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!”

Geeze Louise! Two magnificent parts? They’re called ‘breasts’, Mark. Roll the word around your tongue. It’s not magnificent to avoid descriptive language that defines body parts. It’s kind of middle school, don’t you think?

c) to the morons of the world, you really need to apologize as they all know that email isn’t really private, as you’ve now discovered. Wasn’t life simpler when we all had phones and could say these things directly without copies available for the whole world to see? When dumb people rise into high professions without figuring out this easy stuff, it makes me question the whole pecking order. It seems rife with dumb clucks at every level.

d) And no, I won’t ever forgive any political adulterer who’s been a public rebuker of any other adulterer or a rebuker of people who love people of like gender. Unless they apologize to the whole Clinton family, to all GLBT people and to every American who had to witness and pay for the travesty of an impeachment trial, or have been influenced to believe that gay people are morally wrong to act with love.

In the past 8 years, we’ve seen at least a dozen of these adulterous politicians. Some gave up chairmanships but almost none resigned from their elective offices like they insisted Bill Clinton should do.

Apologize and admit you were wrong to harass and judge them and GLBT people. Or your request for forgiveness rings too hollow to even be considered.

Finally, if you’re going to quote the Bible about what love is, please stop and consider what true love really is, beyond what the Scripture suggests. Love done in secret is actually lust. Real love is done openly, free and doesn’t have any need to hide behind lies.

People can end a relationship or marriage if they find themselves in love with another. When they try to maintain both relationships and one requires skulking, well that’s always going to hurt and betray someone. Grant the former love a clean break and skip the dilly-dally till that first relationship is complete. That’s being considerate and unselfish. It’s not so hard to figure out. The first clue comes when you find yourself lying and/or skulking.

Now, can we get back to something interesting? Your penis is yours and I don’t really care what you do with it.

UPDATE: One of the ongoing questions the mainstream press still has about Mark Sanford’s secret hottie is what he was referring to as the ‘two magnificent parts of yourself’ that she was holding ‘in the faded glow of night’s light.’

In an American Street exclusive, I’ve uncovered video evidence that defines her er, um…. ‘holdings’ precisely.

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Mystery solved. It was her moonbeams.