I watched a number of Sunday news shows today. I already wrote about the McLaughlin group, which I saw Friday evening. For the moment, until we solve our antenna issue, we have been limited to talk shows that are on NBC and PBS, which are pretty numerous. We've lost Stephanopolous and Face the Nation, which I regret but that's the way it is. Hopefully in the future that can be fixed. Living in a rural area like we do means that in terms of connectivity that we are like a third world country. Our dialup internet connection barely functions, and we don't have access to cable TV. I guess we could get satellite, but I'm not really interested in that kind of intrusion.

Today, the major subjects were Obama's poll numbers and the lag in the economy, health care legislation, and Palin for the most part.

Obama has slipped in the polls compared to his early numbers. That's not really surprising. But, and the administration's spin meisters can spin it here and yonder, the economy hasn't yet responded to the "stimulus" with any great gusto. Biden said that "everyone" got it wrong in terms of how bad it is. Oh Oh. He shouldn't have said that! They have one poll in Ohio on the economy which shows Obama under 50%

For once, though, I have to agree (gag me with a spoon) with Charles Krauthamer, who said that his poll numbers now don't matter, and what Obama is looking for is some recovery late next year before the mid-term elections. Nina Totenberg speculated that Obama could be looking at losing seats in congress. Of course, that is normal for a 1st term president, but I think it's way too soon to be saying anything like that.

A lot of the pundits are saying that the economic mess is now Obama's to own. I don't necessarily agree with that. The problems are so severe, and combined with any number of messes that Bush left Obama, I think most people believe that Obama is trying, is intelligent, and are not ready to judge him adversely yet.

But, this ties in with the interview that Maria B. from Wall Street Journal Report had with Paul Krugman. I only hope that continued criticism from blogs like this one pushed NBC to make her interview a point of view other than her big shot CEO corporate buddies. Geez, she and her rich friends are so out of touch with most of America.

Krugman has been consistent in saying from the beginning that Obama's "stimulus" bill wasn't going to be enough. He repeated his oft made call for more stimulus. But more interestingly, he said one thing that I hadn't heard anyone else say - and that is that the cost of the health care bill was insignificant compared with the total projected cost of healthcare in the U.S. for the next decade. Many politicians are flogging the cost of health care reform as a reason to abandon change. A Nobel Prize winning economist saying that the cost was minor undercuts totally the political exploitation of the issue. Bartiromo didn't say a word. One thing that was expressed more than once was that Obama, who decided early on that letting congress come up with the health care reform stood a better chance of getting thru if it was initiated by congress, is going to have to get involved and take a stand eventually and "knock heads around" in congress if he really wants something to pass. Perhaps it isn't quite time yet, but the time is near, and I believe that is correct.

Most of the pundits believe that Palin has been hurt politically, and will forever, on the political front, be labelled a quitter - a label that will stop her from getting very far. I agree. I hate to even mention her. She is so shallow and not worthy of the attention. I couldn't believe that McCain, on Meet the Press, still is defending her. Of course, he is right, although he didn't mention it specifically, but sort of generally referred to it, that his statement, the morning that Lehman Bros. collapsed, that the economy was "fundamentally strong" was the main cause of his campaign failure.

One thing I have to note, because I think we will see the term in the future, is that Helene Cooper, on Chris Matthews, sort of stumbled on her words, talking about how the team of David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel spins events well to keep Obama out of too much trouble, and seemed to refer to them as "AxelRahm." That's what I thought I heard, and it was noted on the show. If that term takes hold, she could very well get credited with coining it.

All in all, I give it the "slow news day" rating.