The deficit and the upcoming congressional extension of the national debt ceiling was the main story of the day and really of the last couple weeks. It really shows how Obama has lost control of the Washington DC agenda. I mean, he put out a budget back a couple months ago and now has completely abandoned that and is acting like that never happened. He's now the big time budget cutter.

It wasn't that long ago that he was arguing for increased government spending - the stimulus - and complaining because it wasn't big enough. And, there are a number of high profile economists out there that say that we are making too big of a deal about the deficit and that what is needed at this point is more government spending. But Obama has abandoned defending that for some reason.

I can understand the argument in favor of more government spending really. In akin to the thinking that one of the ways that you can redistribute wealth is to simply print more money and give it to the people with less. What that does is to devalue each individual piece of money. That causes the wealth of those who have a lot to go down, but for those that don't have much, any little bit helps, so getting even a little bit more is a positive. In the end, what that does, according to the theory, is to even out the money.

However, in today's global economy, where international currencies are played against other, there is a global impact on devaluing your currency too much by increasing the money supply. Oil prices might go thru the roof, and other things could happen which could cripple your economy. But if you just pull the rug out from under the economy by cutting off government spending, there are going to be similar impacts.

So I think the republicans are getting a free ride by Obama jumping on the spending cuts bandwagon so strongly. Sure, budgets are best balanced and paid for, but you can't equate an individual or household budget with the budget of one of largest, most industrialized nations in the world. Especially one that has one of the most extreme gaps between the super wealthy and most everyone else.

But Obama has made the gamble that even though he has angered the left (by necessity he would argue) by compromising on a number of issues important to the left, that enough of them will still vote for him to fill out his election coalition. Maybe yes maybe no. It is true that a lot of the young and minority vote that didn't vote in the midterms will come out to support him, and that he will be hard to beat.

And that brings up another of the big issues that was discussed today - the results of recent polls. The one discussed mostly today was one of the mainstream polls - NY Times - I believe. That showed that most people think that the country is going in the wrong direction and that they are not feeling good about the economy - numbers that would spell trouble for most presidents seeking reelection. But, it seems that more people are blaming congress for the problems than the president. So, he isn't doomed.

But, if gasoline prices and other inflation continue to make it almost impossible for the average person to pay for their monthly expenses out of their paycheck, the more that any good will that the general public may have for Obama will start to wear thin. At least that's what the pundits think. The problem for the republicans is that no one really believes that some republican presidential candidate is going to be able to do anything more than Obama is doing, let alone want to do it. Everyone knows that the republicans are more in the corporations' pockets than the democrats, although not by much anymore.

Obama is going to have the justice department go after the oil speculators. Good luck. I hope he gets them. Seems like another campaign promise to me - and, he has a record of abandoning many of those kind of promises. So I'm not holding my breath on that one. And, I think that if the public perceives that Obama has made one too many promises that he going to turn his back on, they just might turn their back on him.