MORE ON THAT Capitol Hill shoving incident.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” “China on Friday accused the US of protectionist and biased trade policies less than a week before president Barack Obama’s first visit to Beijing. n a stinging rebuke to Washington, China’s commerce ministry promised to take measures to protect its domestic industry after the US slapped anti-dumping duties on $2.6bn of Chinese steel pipe imports. The duties are part of a growing roster of trade conflicts between the two countries, despite a high-level meeting last week in China aimed at reducing tensions.”

JERRY POURNELLE: “Unemployment is over 10%. It wasn’t supposed to get that high. TARP was supposed to fix that. . . . If the health care bill passes, it will fundamentally convert these United States into a different kind of popular democracy, which generally means rule by a unionized bureaucracy organized to vote. Once that much of the economy is run by government, economic recovery as many hope for will simply be impossible. Permanent unemployment at 7% or so; median income perhaps 10% higher than it is now, but not much higher; and a long period of stagflation. Reluctance to take on new employees, and great incentive to export jobs. Is this a picture of the future? We will have to see, as Congress debates the health care and carbon tax bills. . . . With Detroit a ruin and manufacturing industries on the ropes, small business is the only possible engine of recovery from what they don’t call a Depression; so the Congress is going to add an 8% tax on employing people. We already have the longest period of increasing unemployment since the Great Depression; I presume we are going for a really big record setting period of increasing unemployment. . . . The incentives are now to the job black market — hire illegal immigrants who don’t have to have health insurance — or to export the job if that can possibly be done.”

HEALTHCARE BILL PASSES HOUSE, 220-215. Elections matter.

IF WE DON’T GET NATIONAL HEALTHCARE, THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON!

Participants also said Obama had referred to this week’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed. His remarks put in perspective that the hardships soldiers endure for the country are “what sacrifice really is,” as opposed to “casting a vote that might lose an election for you,” said Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J.

Well, there you are then.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DROP THE BALL: “While DHS was busy putting tea parties and anyone who dares fly the official military Gadsen flag on the domestic terrorist watch list, a real terrorist was spouting off online, glorifying suicide bombings and our mission in Iraq. I mean, I’m sure if I drink enough I might be able to understand the perception that a bunch of middle-class people peacefully dissenting with certain Washington policies are way more dangerous than a dude who talked about terrorist stuff on social sites and had gotten authorities’ attention six months ago.”

Yeah, Napolitano, et al. seem to have had their priorities misplaced. Here’s more on what they missed. And don’t forget what NPR reported.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “Ah, but those middle class protesters are a threat to politicians’ power. Terrorists are just a threat to their constituents’ lives. See the difference?” Such a cynic.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Washington Post: Officials may not have heeded warning signs. “Law enforcement officials also faced questions about whether they had missed possible warning signs. Six months ago, investigators came across Internet postings, allegedly by Hasan, that indicated sympathy for suicide bombers and empathized with the plight of Muslim civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a federal official briefed on the situation. The official, and another source, said investigators never confirmed whether Hasan was the author of the postings and did not pursue the matter.” Too busy worrying about Glenn Beck viewers, military veterans, and Tea Party organizers, I guess.

FORT HOOD UPDATE: Telegraph: Texas army killer linked to September 11 terrorists. “Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ’spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.”

RECOVERY! Freddie Mac posts $5 billion loss. “Freddie Mac, the second largest provider of U.S. residential mortgage funding, on Friday posted a loss of $5 billion in the third quarter and predicted it would need more government support amid a ‘prolonged deterioration’ in housing.”

MORE SKEPTICISM regarding Barney Frank’s professed unfamiliarity with pot. I think he’s being as honest as he has been on the stimulus and healthcare. . . .

THE JOYS OF MONOPOLY.

STEPHEN GREEN: The week in blogs.

SUNNY THOUGHTS FROM ARNOLD KLING: “Everything the Fed has been doing over the past fifteen months makes sense if you think of their goal as transferring wealth from taxpayers to banks. If you try to explain it as an attempt to implement an expansionary monetary policy, you won’t even get past my high school students.”

OBAMA, AYN, CAESAR, SCOZZAFAVA: The latest PJM Political is online, in case you missed it on XM/Sirius.

JULES CRITTENDEN ON phony “backlash” fears. The fact that the powers-that-be are so afraid that ordinary Americans will suddenly form a mindless angry mob tells you more about powers-that-be, and what they fear, than about ordinary Americans . . ..

HARNESSING SPACE INTERNET PROTOCOLS with Android.

BUSTING GLENN GREENWALD FOR DISHONESTY ABOUT THE POSITIONS OF PEOPLE HE DISAGREES WITH. My experience with Greenwald is that such is typical.

A LIST OF KEY CONGRESSMEMBERS ON HEALTH CARE.

GENOME SEQUENCING for under five grand.

WANT TO HELP WOUNDED WARRIORS? Support Project Valour-IT.

DICTATORSHIPS AND DOUBLE STANDARDS: Tough on Fiji, Soft on Iran.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple empire. Including an iPhone / Droid comparison.

UPDATE: Okay, played with a Droid at the Verizon store. I found the slideout keyboard nice, but the touch pad a bit clunky — though that might be b/c they still had the plastic cover on the demo model. No Kindle App, though, which is a deal-killer for me. No doubt they’ll come up with one later.

YOU CAN FIGHT CITY HALL: An election victory for the Tucson Tea Party. Next week they’re dropping by Rep. Gabriell Giffords’ office. . . .

SCENES FROM “THE MEAT MARKET.” Plus, in the comments we learn that the Florida International law faculty is “easily the best looking faculty appointments committee in D.C. Like the cast of CSI Miami.” Well, yes, but that’s because I’m not on the appointments committee for Tennessee this year. Hey, quit laughing!

PAUL MCCARTNEY SAYS THE BEATLES WEREN’T THAT GOOD when they started out. I’ve heard that first Beatles demo and, well, it sucked. I wouldn’t have signed them either. Which only says that (1) the guy who did sign them had a great ear for raw talent; and (2) there’s no substitute for experience.

On a related note, though, the InstaDaughter has been very into the Beatles lately (all her friends are into ’60s and’70s stuff now: Beatles, Stones, Cream, Kinks, etc.) and listening to a lot of those songs I’m struck again by McCartney’s virtuosity on the bass. Listen to the bass line on, say, Rain sometime. Being a Beatle, he rises above mere talk of performance skill, but, really he was amazing, particularly for the time.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: What recovery? Unemployment shoots past 10 percent.

FORT HOOD: Blaming The Victims. Again.

ED DRISCOLL: Godwin Weeps. A little more help for Robert Gibbs. Though I’ve met Mike Godwin, and he seems more likely to snort derisively than to weep . . . .

THIS IS COOL: MarineTraffic.com, tracking ships around the world. Try zooming for detail. (Via Caterina Fake on Facebook).

IN THE MAIL: From Steven Landsburg, The Big Questions: Tackling The Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics.

Title’s not bad, but I think More Sex Is Safer Sex has got it beat . . .

OBAMACARE: Shutting Off The R&D Spigot? That’s been my worry all along.

IT’S OKAY, HE’S NOT A REPUBLICAN: Barney Frank Present During Pot Bust. “Congressman Barney Frank was present during a marijuana arrest at James Ready’s home in Ogunquit, Maine. Ready is well-known for his relationship with Congressman Frank.” Now if this were Sarah Palin’s ex-stepcousin-in-law it would be real news . . .

I’m finding this kinda hard to believe, though:

Congressman Frank tells FOX25 that he was surprised and disappointed with what police found. He also tells us that he wouldn’t recognize a marijuana plant if he saw one because he is, “not a great outdoorsman,” and ,”wouldn’t recognize most plants.”

I thought only Republicans were supposed to be that stodgy and out-of-it. Anyway, Moe Lane offers him some help to avoid future unpleasantness.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

“Surprised and disappointed”? Frank has gone off-script.

“Shocked, shocked …!” is supposed to be the preferred adjective of Corrupt Public Officialdom.

I could see Claude Rains as Barney Frank, actually.

COLLEGES: Affirmative action for men?

Well, men are an underrepresented minority.

OBAMA RIDES TO CHRIS DODD’S RESCUE: Dodd Getting Presidential Help in Reelection Campaign.

Embattled Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.), whose low approval ratings make him one of the most vulnerable Democrats seeking re-election next year, gets help from President Obama tonight.

Obama will appear at a $1,000-per person fundraising event for Dodd in Stamford.

Dodd is crucial to Obama’s hopes for getting the overhaul of the regulation of financial services passed. The House Financial Services Committee is currently marking up the measure. Yesterday it approved the component that would create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. . . .

Dodd’s low approval ratings stem from several factors, including the sluggish economy and questions raised about favorable treatment he received on a mortgage from Countrywide Home Loans.

Dodd will need all the help he can get, though Obama’s record with Corzine and Deeds may worry him.

MIKE FLYNN: SEIU And Political Intimidation In St. Louis.

THOUGHTS ON the fall of communism.

SO I’VE BEEN USING THE NEW GPS for about a week, and it seems swell. The traffic feature seems to work — it warns me if I’m heading into traffic even if I don’t have a route programmed, and it seems to be reasonably accurate — I haven’t hit a traffic jam that it hasn’t warned me of, anyway. And, most impressively, the suction-cup windshield attachment actually works. The last one was a joke that fell off within an hour every time. I don’t know if the suction cup is better, or if it’s just that the new one is a lot lighter . . . .

Plus, it’s eco-friendly. I’m a Green Hero!

SOME PEOPLE ARE PUSHING THE STORY THAT HASAN WAS INVOLVED IN THE OBAMA TRANSITION, but that appears to be an unfair stretch. As you can see from the updates to this Gawker story, he seems to have attended some public events and gotten his name on a list of “participants,” but not to have actually been part of the process.

I DIDN’T LIKE THE EDITORIALIZING ON THIS CHART, and reader Paul Golba writes:

I wanted to comment about the House Republican Conference chart that you have on your blog. It is a piece of chartmanship, using a chart to mislead without actually making things up. You’ll notice that the bottom of the chart is roughly 7% with the top being the current 10.2%. While the numbers themselves are accurate, this setup uses a cherry picked range to make the differences look more dramatic. If the vertical range was 0% to 15%, which would be a fairly standard range for this sort of thing, the effect would be less impressive.

With that said, I would say this is just a minor violation of chartmanship. A chart with an unbiased setup still looks really bad. This just makes it look worse.

So how about this one?

JENNIFER RUBIN: Something Is Missing. Actually, I think I this is a law-professor thing. In the classroom you discuss all sorts of things without getting heated up, and you try to minimize the effect of any distractions on the lesson plan. I’m not sure it translates that well to the Presidency, though.

BOINGBOING: Leaked text of secret copyright treaty vs. bland bureaucratic press-release describing same.

HMM: Army Tests Sole-Killer Theory As Details Emerge. “Military and federal investigators pointedly refused to release further details on how the shootings happened, why there were initial reports of multiple attackers and why officials took several hours to correct news media reports that Major Hasan had been killed. Most significant, officials were not prepared to say whether the attack was the act of a lone and troubled man or connected to terrorist groups, foreign or domestic.” As I said before, early reports are often wrong. Stay tuned.

NEW YORK TIMES: Broader Measure of Unemployment Stands at 17.5%.

HMM: Muslim Veterans Group Says No Reports of Harassment of Islamic Soldiers. “A Muslim veteran affairs organization says it has not received reports of harassment from Islamic soldiers, contrary to claims by a relative of the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base.”

BLOGGER YOANI SANCHEZ ARRESTED AND BEATEN IN CUBA, along with other top Cuban bloggers. Dictators really don’t like bloggers, do they? Well, the feeling is mutual. . . .

MOE LANE OFFERS more memory-jogging for Robert Gibbs.

USA TODAY: Vulnerable Democratic freshman abandon the health care bill.

COBURN THREATENING TO have Senate healthcare bill read on Senate floor. I think we should require that all bills be read aloud, which would ensure that at least someone has read them all the way through . . . .

ANOTHER REPORT FROM THE ASHEVILLE TEA PARTY’S “House Call” On Heath Shuler. With photos.

OFFERING ROBERT GIBBS A LITTLE HELP. He can always use it!

FOR CERTAIN VALUES OF THE WORD “WE,” ANYWAY: Chris Matthews: We may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hood.

Plus this: “You’ll know it’s okay to start speculating about Hasan’s motives when cops find a Glenn Beck book on his bookshelf. In fact, if the same ‘PTSD by proxy’ elements had been present in Hasan’s bio but it turned out he’d attended a tea party or two, we’d already be well into hour 30 of a full-on media speculation orgy.”

BUY A $15,000 POLICY, or go to jail.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Worst. Talking Point. Ever. “If this is the best the Democrats can come up with, they are in deep, deep trouble.” Worries about unemployment, like taxes, are for the little people.

UPDATE: “All I can say is that it is nice to see that the Dems are finally supporting trickle down economics.” Heh.

THOUGHTS ON FORT HOOD FROM JERRY POURNELLE: “The politically correct spin is coming like a tidal wave. He is a crazy guy who happens to be a Muslim. All of that misses the point: he was disloyal to the United States, and said so openly and many times; yet he remained a commissioned officer of the United States. That is the point that is being overlooked. Whether the disloyalty is due to a psychotic episode or some other cause is not important.”

Related: Why wasn’t Hasan investigated?

IT’S THE Friday Sale at Amazon.

JAMES TARANTO: Unemployment tops 10%. Let’s wreck health care!

A CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER who isn’t.

UNDER HEALTH CARE “REFORM,” WILL LIVER TRANSPLANTS BE HANDLED WITH SIMILAR CARE? Post Office Returns 107,831 Tax Refund Checks to IRS Due to Faulty Addresses. “The number of undeliverable refund checks is up 16% this year.”

WE’RE NOT THUGS: White House Strongly Denies Threatening Dem Who Appeared On Fox.

POLICY DECISIONS slow H1N1 vaccine production.

SAD AND SWEET: 6-Year-Old Girl with Brain Cancer Hid Love Notes for Her Parents to Find After Her Death. “When 6-year-old Elena Desserich was diagnosed with brain cancer, she began hiding hundreds of little love notes around the house for her parents to find after she was gone.” Pictures of some of them at the link.

UPDATE: Reader Ernest Gudath writes:

Two things.

1. That web site cauesd my firefox to run at 100% CPU Usage for several minutes. The mouse was inoperative. I finally had to shut it down using Task Manager..

2. Numerous comments suggest that it is not on the level.

Worked fine for me, but beware.

SHOCKER: Chicago Tribune: Illinois data on stimulus-related jobs saved, created don’t add up.

MORE THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW about the bacteria inhabiting your body.

IT’S NOT A CUTTING BOARD. It’s a “Chef’s Board!”

ED MORRISSEY interviews Carly Fiorina. Live at 3 pm.

STATE AGENTS RAID ACORN OFFICES IN NEW ORLEANS.

REPUGNANT RIDES: The 10 Ugliest Cars at SEMA 2009.

VIDEO: Moby Grape live, on the Mike Douglas show.

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW BLOWS IT: “Some obscure tea-bagging operation”?

Columbia Journalism Review goes after a fellow non-profit news organization, ProPublica, for a ProPublica article on wasteful stimulus spending. Columbia Journalism Review criticizes ProPublica for using a quotation from a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, which Columbia Journalism Review sneeringly and condescendingly and dismissively and, well, offensively, characterizes as “some obscure tea-bagging operation.” Citizens Against Government Waste has been around since 1984, and its 2007 IRS Form 990 indicates it had revenue and expenses of about $4.4 million, more if you include an affiliated 501(c)4 group. It claims “more than one million members and supporters.” Its directors as of the 2007 Form 990 included Vin Weber, who is a big deal. Its annual “pig book” report is widely covered.

I’m on the CJR spam list, and it seems to me that the quality of work there has fallen notably over the past several years, while the CJR has grown progressively more politicized. That they’ve reached the point of attacking ProPublica — hardly a right-leaning organization itself — is indicative.

RALPH PETERS: Fort Hood’s 9/11.

UPDATE: More from Bob Owens.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ann Althouse: “There are a lot of questions here, and we need to be brave about asking them.”

MORE: Thomas Kenniff at the Washington Post.

Plus, in praise of decisiveness.

TALKING LAW AND ROBOTICS at Stanford Law School next week.

OVER AT THE HILL, talking about how Congress should address rising unemployment. I’m pretty sure a bloated healthcare “reform” bill isn’t going to help . . . .

ASKING THE TOUGH QUESTIONS, getting the squishy answers.

TAPPER: Kind of a — a theoretical question, but what — at what point does an attack become considered a terrorist attack, even — even if it’s a domestic terrorist attack?

GIBBS: I don’t know that I would have the theoretical background to — to answer that. I would pose that to somebody at — at the FBI. But, again, I don’t know that we’re at a point yet where we fully understand motive.

I think the answer is, “if we can tie it to Fox News.” . . .

DOUG MATACONIS: Remember, Nidal Hasan Isn’t The Only Muslim In The United States Military. “Some of them have died for their country.”

TAXPROF: How to Audit-Proof Your Tax Return: Don’t e-File.

HOT AIR: The woman who stopped a mass murderer.

BAD NEWS FOR LAW STUDENTS: Associate Pay May Need to Return to 1998 Levels, Consultant Says.

WANT TO HELP WOUNDED WARRIORS? Support Project Valour-IT.

COPYCAT? At least 2 dead, 6 injured in shooting at office building in Orlando.

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from the Orlando Sentinel.

IT NEVER STOPS: Baguette Dropped From Bird’s Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really).

SO HOW’S THAT STIMULUS THING WORKING FOR YOU? I think the graphic would be stronger without the editorializing; the numbers are stark enough on their own.

THEY NEED A SEXIER NAME THAN “ALGAE FUEL.” HOW ABOUT “HYPERFUEL?” BP prepares output of new biofuels – algae diesel and butanol – starting in 2010.

IN THE MAIL: Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.

ROBERT REICH: Forget healthcare, focus on employment. “Obama’s focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable health care is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent. Yet the administration’s efforts to date on this more basic concern have been neither particularly visible nor coherent.”

BYRON YORK: Democrat Trap: Pelosi’s Wrath Or Voter Backlash. Sounds like a pretty easy choice to me . . . .

THOMAS SOWELL ON HOW organ-transplant restrictions are killing people.

NEW AD: “If the government can’t run a flu program, can we trust it to run America’s entire health care system?”

I don’t know about that, but charges of favoritism are already appearing.

RETURN OF THE INFLATION TAX: “All of those twentysomethings who voted for Barack Obama last year are about to experience the change they haven’t been waiting for: the return of income tax bracket creep. Buried in Nancy Pelosi’s health-care bill is a provision that will partially repeal tax indexing for inflation, meaning that as their earnings rise over a lifetime these youngsters can look forward to paying higher rates even if their income gains aren’t real.”

Good grief, these people really are trying to bring back the Carter era. Or worse.

SQUASHING THE MODERATES, but not in the GOP.

OBAMA’S “My Pet Goat” Moment?

IS UNEMPLOYMENT NOW a leading, rather than a lagging, indicator? “Unemployment may now be something of a leading indicator because business executives make decisions about whether to invest in new jobs much quicker and based on more accurate data.”

And reader James Doherty writes: “It seems we have passed a grim milestone.”

EXPLOSIVE: Ft. Hood suspect reportedly shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’. (Via The BlogProf). On NPR I heard — I can’t find the story on their website yet — that he had given a presentation on the Koran at a professional conference where he claimed that unbelievers should be beheaded, burned, etc. to the discomfiture of the attendees.

UPDATE: Here’s the NPR segment. Key bit:

He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.

He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’

Kind of reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit on “The Shooting of Buckwheat.” You know: “What was he like?” “Nice guy, quiet, kept to himself.” “Are you surprised he shot Buckwheat?” “Oh, no — it’s all he ever talked about.”

MORE: Reader Dan Friedman writes to note that AP has changed the headline in the “Allahu Akhbar” story — the report is still there, now buried in the middle, but the headline now reads “Neighbor: Fort Hood suspect emptied his apartment.” Soft-pedaling?

STILL MORE: Interestingly, the substance of the NPR segment linked above is the same, but now the words are different, and the segment is in a different order. I transcribed the above while listening online earlier; I don’t know if they’ve substituted a different segment, or what.

MORE STILL: I spoke with a very nice woman named Emily at NPR listener services, who told me that these links aren’t stable until the afternoon, when the final West Coast version is laid down and transcribed. So this is a different live interchange than the one I transcribed earlier, explaining why the substance is the same but the wording is different. She said it may change again before 3 pm Eastern. That’s not very blog friendly! But she explained that they roll the story out in different order across the country because of different time zones. Oh, well. There’s actually some additional news in the new version, which is that Walter Reed has been told not to talk to anyone outside the military, even the FBI.

And more from NPR: “A source tells NPR’s Joseph Shapiro that Hasan was put on probation early in his postgraduate work at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues, according to the source, who worked with him at the time.” I’ve gotten flak in the past over my praise of NPR, but they do good work, though they’d benefit from more diversity. They’re certainly playing this straighter, and less PC, than a lot of media outlets.

FINALLY: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “You’re right on NPR. I heard them this morning. They’ve been pretty good on this. We shouldn’t spit nails at people because they have a slant. Lord knows, I do. We all do. As long as they get the facts right they’re doing their job. At the end of the day people of good will on the left and the right are going to have to live together. Newsweek and some other places, they’re not doing their job as well. But I’ve already run off at the keyboard about that…”

INTERESTING: More Democrats watch Fox than CNN and MSNBC combined.

NEW YORK FALLOUT: Paterson Empowered By Obama’s Election Woes: Gov. Still Plans To Run Despite President’s Request He Not.

BRUCE BAWER: Fort Hood Massacre: A Day of Courage And Cowardice.

UPDATE: NBC Chicago: “Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting.”

STIMULUS! “The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.” (Via NewsAlert). The stimulus package isn’t living up to the promises they made, is it? But health care will be different, I’m sure.

UPDATE: IBD:

One bright note: Temporary employment popped 33,700. Along with August-September revisions, that’s the third straight monthly gain. Temp jobs tend to be a leading indicator for employment overall.

Still, the workweek remained at a record-low 33 hours. Firms typically increase hours for current staff before going out and hiring new workers.

There were 5.6 million Americans who have been out of work for 26 weeks or more — 35% of all the jobless.

The underemployment rate — which includes discouraged workers and part-time staff that would like to work full time — climbed to 17.5%, the highest on records going back to 1994.

That gloomy report could further weigh on President Obama, who came into office promising swift, bold action to avoid double-digit unemployment.

Just possibly.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Those “Double Digit” Words Obama Might Like To Have Back.

MORE: Hope, Change, and 10.2 Percent Employment. “Naturally, according to the ‘experts’ it’s more than expected.”

STILL MORE: ABC News: Year After Obama vs. McCain It’s Obama vs. the Economy. So far the economy seems to be doing about as well as McCain did . . . .

HEH: Introducing: Yosi Needs A Hug, by Gary Eaton.

IT WASN’T JUST IN WASHINGTON: Asheville, NC reader Coral Jeffries emails about an anti-Obamacare rally in her hometown:

I attended the protest at Rep. Heath Shuler’s office at noon today with my 10 year old daughter and 83 year old mother. My daughter took these photos with my cell phone. There were about 100 people in attendance and many brought letters for the congressman. In spite of today’s AARP endorsement, at lease 50% if the crowd looked to be above 65 years of age. The purpose of the gathering was not to hear speeches but a few people spoke of the need for jobs, balancing the budget and preserving our freedom from government intrusions.

One of Rep. Shuler’s employees received our petitions and read a prepared statement saying that he was not in favor of a “robust public option”. There was murmuring about what “robust” meant.

Hmm. Good question.

ILYA SOMIN on health care mandates and federalism.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” “The bottom line: the Obama team picked the wrong horse, found itself in a diplomatic dead end, found a mechanism to abandon its failed gambit, and now supports elections — the very position that the Honduran interim government and the administration’s critics have been urging from the beginning. Well, in fairness, it is a display of diplomatic genius compared with Obama’s Middle East policy.”

YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK: “It was a decision we made. There was no reasoning behind it.” Now that’s an excuse I can believe!