The House Oversight Committee held its first hearing since Darrell Issa got the gavel today, and it’s on TARP and foreclosures. And that bifurcation is accurate – the Republicans on the panel, for the most part, are asking about TARP, and the Democrats are asking about foreclosures.

The Marines have replaced the commander in charge of the Quantico base, where Bradley Manning has been held in severe isolation for more than seven months. Commander James Averhart, as commander of the Quantico base, had authority over the conditions of Manning’s detention. Last week Averhart punished Bradley Manning, ignoring the advice of military psychiatrists, by putting him on suicide watch for 48 hours.

If I were President Obama’s English professor, I would take points off for not footnoting his sources.

The speech the President gave shouldn’t look this good by comparison. Sadly, it did.

Fresh off Obama imploring the country to “win the [vaguely defined, and definitely not defined as preventing climate change] future,” Calculated Risk has a new chart, showing the decline in unemployment by state. It’s useful to show not just which states are unemployment clusterfucks (Michigan remains near the top, though CA and FL passed it in overall unemployment last month), but also where it’s getting better.

Obama talked about how anything is possible in America, but for 15-25 million unemployed, that’s no longer true. He talked about the ability for someone with a dream to rise to the top, but for someone who’s had their home taken from them illegally, that’s not true. He talked about the spirit of entrepreneurship making this country great, but unless that entrepreneurship is a financial innovation, that’s not really true. This isn’t an upwardly mobile country anymore, statistically speaking. And it’s a country, in the short term, in crisis.

If Obama actually thinks there are wasteful discretionary programs, like ethanol subsidies and farm subsidies, he should just directly call for those programs to be eliminated. If ending a bunch of bad corporate welfare programs results in an overall cut in discretionary spending, that is good.

But after listening to and reading his speech, I’m struck by how disconnected that speech is from the harsh realities facing the country. To be sure, the President notes that in some areas, America is falling behind China or India and is ranked 9th, or umpteenth, or something other than “we’re number one!” So what? Is that really the problem we should worry about?

• Big media reax here, here, here, and here.
• Blog reax here, here, here and here.
• Paul Krugman on the Ryan response.
• Oops.
• Heh.

What did you think of the speech? My reaction: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It wouldn’t really bother me much if we went back to submitting the thing in writing.