"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

The "Washington can't do anything about jobs" is just so much Republican-style blather; they never think the government capable of anything until it comes time for tax cuts and sweetheart deals that benefit them - then we have to hear about how this is the only way to rev up the economy.

Although commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette,[1] there is no record of these words ever having been uttered by her; they first appear in The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his putative autobiographical work (completed in 1769, when Marie Antoinette was 13), where he wrote the following in Book 6:

Enfin je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit : Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

Finally I recalled the last resort of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: "Let them eat brioche."

I didn't hear the MSNBC segment, but here's just part of a recent Pearlstein column on jobs and the recession:

"Most important would be for the federal government to step up its spending for infrastructure, basic research, clean-energy development and expanded public higher education. After 20 years of badly underfunding public investment, the first stimulus package was a step in the right direction. A second package would create additional high-paying jobs now, while generating higher growth and tax revenues for decades. A boost in government investment would also provide the perfect political cover for moving aggressively to reduce the government's "consumption" spending by reforming entitlements, reducing farm subsidies and business tax breaks, and eliminating underperforming social and military programs.

"Given how we got into this mess, we're probably stuck with several more years of slow growth in jobs and income. The only important question is whether we'll use this opportunity to lay the foundation for another generation of sustained prosperity, or get sidetracked by chasing after short-term stimulus and overzealous deficit reduction."

Pearlstein has no of more an overprivileged, oblivious "villager" mentality than you or I do.

I've also never heard or seen Pearlstein claim to "understand real Americans," whatever that even means.  He's not a political commentator, he's a business/financial/economic reporter and now columnist.

This is pathetic. You can back over the posts at TPM and Hullabaloo and find frigging reams o-crap on the Tea-Baggers and the Birthers.

The new village bloggers proved they're bit as mixed up as the millionaire celebrity talking heads.

Frigging worthless. The union backroom deal right before the MA vote, the early money invitations to wall st and big health care, and the relentless boasts about transparency, closing gitmo, hcr reform, and trying to pretend the Pentagon wanted more troops for Afghanistan confirm just how out of touch this gang is top to bottom.

I read better analysis in the comments section of most blogs. Silly Sully just issued his own exculpatory post on why the Edwards hustle wasn't a story.

The left blogosphere spent about ten to one hundred times more energy exploring Sarah Palin's family sex life than pushing for jobs.