The latest survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for April says that employers hired 244,000 new workers over the course of the month. But the topline unemployment rate rose to 9.0%, and the employment-population ratio actually dipped to 58.4%, which is actually 0.3% lower than a year ago.

Lori Montgomery took a trip down memory lane today, looking at the choices made over the past decade – most of them when Republicans held the Presidency and both houses of Congress – that led to the explosion in the national debt, when CBO forecasters predicted a full payoff of obligations at the time. It’s a bit shameful that we even have to have this discussion, that you have to point out that massive tax cuts for the rich and unfunded health care benefits and two wars will increase the debt. And two recessions, including the largest one since the Depression, can account for most of the rest.

People want to disparage this whole thing as not a “real” issue – present company included. But what it says about America circa 2011 is very real.

I’m not sure there’s anyone who believes that the Obama Administration will suddenly reject a budget bill that came out of a bipartisan process. The Administration has encouraged the Gang of Six. They’ve sat in on negotiations. They’ve put their credibility on the line, by saying that Democrats and Republicans have to come together on a balanced approach. Now, if the bipartisan negotiations produce an unbalanced result, will they simply dismissed it? I don’t see that happening at all.

The past week has seen a pronounced evolution in the writing of Dana Milbank. Earlier in the week he severely criticized the incestuous relationship between the political and media culture in Washington – including engaging in a healthy dose of self-criticism – revealed by the Kurt Bardella email scandal. Where did this newfound self-awareness come from? Perhaps that can be explained by his latest piece. See, Milbank discovered that, regardless of his prominence in the DC journalism community or access to power, to the banks he was still nothing but a mark.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report is sure to provide a powerful reinforcement to the growing lack of faith in elites and especially the financial industry. Because they will outline, in painstaking detail, how the financial meltdown of 2008 was completely avoidable – the result of policy failure at the highest levels of government and Wall Street, failures that bordered on criminal and that have never been fully adjudicated.

Certainly, there are those on the Hill who think “fight harder” is the Plan B. Raul Grijalva wants the GOP to deal with the unemployment and tax-increasing effects and see how they handle it.

That is not my position. Or rather, I come at it in a different way. . . .

David Broder, seemingly the songwriter behind that awful Kid Rock tune yesterday, comes up today with his prescription to save Barack Obama’s presidency: a third war with a Muslim country.

It’s a sad commentary on American politics that the only honest man left on the playing field, when it comes to the deficit, is Alan Greenspan.

As David Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin report in the Washington Post, despite the BP oil disaster, despite its direct ties to our addiction to oil, the spill has resulted in almost no groundswell for environmental change.