April fools

• The Republicans in the House
• South Dakota (with its too-intrusive anti-abortion policy and its not-intrusive-enough firearms laws)
• Mississippi (the state where it's safer to stay in the womb, with highest child mortality rate in the country)
• The Koch brothers
• General Electric
• The culture wars: sheer idiocy vs. total chaos
• Michele Bachmann
• Newt Gingrich
• U.S. energy policy
• Everyone, everywhere, who denies our role in global warming
• Donald Trump
• Orrin Hatch (The only thing I ever liked about the guy was that he used to play bridge with Teddy Kennedy.)
• AMC and the producers of "Madmen"
• The NFL
• Today's weather

Marketing Tips for the Administration

Time to do some marketing, Mr. President. (And you Congressional Democrats.)

Run a series of ads spotlighting the individual Americans who are benefiting from the stimulus package. Let the people speak for themselves about their jobs and how their lives have changed as a result.

Run a series of ads spotlighting the various projects across the country that have been funded by the stimulus package. Let the project/site manager and/or the people working on the project speak.

Include a counter in the corner that ticks away, rolling up the numbers of how many jobs have been created -- just keep it ticking away, still going as each ad ends (to show it's an ongoing process).

Stop ceding this ground to the Republicans and TeaBaggers. You can win the battle for people's hearts and minds.

Stop telling everyone what you're doing and the impact it's had on people's lives -- show us. Over and over and over again. On TV. On the radio. Online.