Science indicated that there needed to be tighter particulate control, and the Bush administration issued new guidelines. Environmental groups sued. Time passed. Once elected, Obama told the groups to withdraw the suits, the administration would put in tighter standards.

Now, with the endorsement of Boehner, Cantor, the US Chamber of Commerce and the whole right wing contingent, Obama decided to not even implement the Bush standards, much less more stringent standards.

To say it's appalling would be meaningless. Numb we've all become to being stabbed by the President. And this isn't an issue of getting something out of Congress - this was a 100% Executive Branch screwing. (t/l sidebar)

If this were New York City, the New York Times might be comparing the uprising to Cairo on its front page every day. But this is Wisconsin, celebrated as the heartland by the coastal elites, but in reality marginalized in the national political culture. . . .

This is a homegrown revolution, not one led or fed by outside forces or agitators in the grip of ideology. International unions and Democratic Party strategists based in Washington, DC, didn't start the fight, but were drawn into it by their rank and file and thousands of independent citizens across the state. . . .

Obama had been a regular visitor to Wisconsin until the fight over collective bargaining broke out in February. In a national television interview, he criticized the attack on labor rights, but he has been mostly silent while the drama unfolded. Many speculate that Obama and his advisers are concerned that too close an association with militant labor demonstrations will lose middle-class votes in several swing states. In addition, the president's team may have believed that class war in Wisconsin was inconsistent with his negotiations to avoid default by achieving a budget deal with the likes of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan.

For Democrats in Wisconsin, however, the sense of abandonment by the White House has been real, and could erode Obama's public support in 2012. Even on his Midwest listening tour in August, Obama's bus rolled right past the Wisconsin border.

"If Obama had come here in February," says Paul Soglin, "there would have been 150,000 people in ten-degree weather." Among many labor leaders, John Matthews, the longtime director of the Wisconsin teachers' union who pushed the original February walkouts, agrees with the need for Obama to step into the battle.

As long as Obama appears to be disengaged, his support is waning in Wisconsin. . . .

President Barack Obama will release a detailed deficit-cutting plan soon after his jobs speech, the White House said Friday, answering Republican critics who demanded more specifics during the debt-limit debate but reopening old wounds with the Democratic base.

In the speech Thursday, Obama will challenge the 12-member congressional supercommittee to exceed its $1.5 trillion goal for budget savings -- setting a higher target that would allow the additional money to fund tax breaks and other stimulus spending. But the "very specific" deficit recommendations that Obama promised last month won't come until after the speech, although the exact timing is unclear, White House officials said. link

so that Republicans can work better with Democrats.