Wherein I Thank The Lord For A 9 to 5 Job

Boy, I guess I hadn't realized how much of a positive impact not seeing the national cable news shows during the day has had on my life. It's been nearly a year since I've been around during the day with the shoutcasts on in the background, and the editorial decisions they make on what is news just fascinates me. On this day, with the economy continuing to crumble, commercial real estate now looking for a bailout, and the incoming Administration's thoughts on both the size of the economic stimulus and the doubling of forces in Afghanistan coming into focus, the big stories are... Republicans like Peter King said bad things about Caroline Kennedy and Fourthbranch Cheney said bad things about Joe Biden? Wow, it really is like junior high school in media world. They're all frustrated theater directors, I guess, and they want to construct human drama using soap opera techniques instead of the consequential issues and actions that impact people's lives.

Nevertheless, it was good to hear the name "Joe Biden" on any cable news show, considering that he'll become the second in line to the most powerful job in the world. And it was even better to hear some of his views and responsibilities in that role. For example, he's going to be heading up a task force aimed at increasing the ranks of the middle class, which I'm fairly certain based on the policies of the last eight years was not a priority.

As vice president, Joe Biden will oversee an Obama administration effort to find ways of building up the ranks of the middle class, that ambiguously defined segment of society most Americans identify with.

The task force will include four Cabinet members as well as other presidential advisers, the Obama transition team announced Sunday.

The goal is to recommend proposals to ensure the middle class is "no longer being left behind," Biden said. The proposals could include executive orders and legislative plans.

"Our charge is to look at existing and future policies across the board and use a yard stick to measure how they are impacting the working and middle-class families," Biden said in a statement released Sunday. "Is the number of these families growing? Are they prospering? President-elect Obama and I know the economic health of working families has eroded, and we intend to turn that around."

The fact that progressive economist Jared Bernstein has been named Biden's chief economic advisor will be a great aid to this effort, and it's a very encouraging sign at a time when all we have are signs. So is the fact, chief to the cable shoutcast musings, that he fully rejects the unitary executive concept popularized by Bush/Cheney, and how that has played out in practice with respect to Guantanamo:

The vice president-elect said he would “restore the balance” to the office, and he offered his own critical assessment of Mr. Cheney, saying the vice president’s recommendations to Mr. Bush on the war and counterterrorism issues were “not healthy for our foreign policy, not healthy for our national security.”

“His notion of a unitary executive,” Mr. Biden said, “meaning that, in time of war, essentially all power, you know, goes to the executive, I think is dead wrong.”

Mr. Biden said that he was still committed to closing the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that he remained critical of the Bush administration’s surveillance and detention programs, saying, “we have created, not dissuaded, more terrorists as a consequence of this policy.”

However, the news isn't entirely glowing. Biden uses the foolish "looking forward, not backward" construction when answering whether he supports prosecuting Bush Administration officials for war crimes, when of course only deterrence from committing those crimes will provide a bulwark to ensuring a future without them. He said that "The questions of whether or not a criminal act has been committed…is something the Justice Department decides ... that’s a decision I’d look to the Justice Department to make,” and hopefully that means he'd stay out of any DoJ investigations or indictments, but let's just say I'm not hopeful.

And his response to the Rick Warren controversy was similarly unappealing:

Barack Obama said you've got to reach out. You've got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

We can't continue to be a red and blue country. We can't be divided like we have been. And he's made good on his promise.

And I would say to the gay and lesbian community, they have nothing to worry about. Barack Obama, every aspect of his life, every aspect of his public life, and every commitment he's made relating to equality for all people, will be things that he will stick with and that they should view this in the spirit in which he offered the opportunity to -- to Mr. Warren.

I eagerly await seeing Obama and David Duke appearing on stage together, in the spirit of reaching out.

Of course, MSNBC's Mike Barnicle told me I'm in the minority on this argument based on my geography, saying on Hardball today that "If you take Cambridge, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Georgetown, Santa Monica and San Francisco out of the argument, there is no argument." Of course, it's just an axiom of faith that alienating millions of key supporters is a universal good. That's how the media reported it on the few occasions when Bush moved against conservative orthodoxy, as on the Medicare prescription drug bill (at least on its face) and immigration reform, right?

Yeah, I don't remember seeing that either. In the Beltway you only get points for kicking the LEFT.