The President Orders The Pentagon To Expand The Syrian Target List; Job Growth Weak, Market Plunges -- Look At That Revision

I normally don't have stand-alone posts like this, but the headline struck me as quite remarkable. I can just see President O'Bama in "the tank" discussing war plans with his military brass. Why does Quentin Tarantino flash in front of me?

Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino
This must really be messing with the minds of the dovish liberal Democrats in Massachusetts -- their party going to war. Gotta love it. [I wrote the above before getting to the WSJ. The op-ed in today's WSJ: Obama's Syria problem -- his own democrats.

One political party is proving especially troublesome for President Obama in his quest for congressional authorization to strike Syria. Its members are trashing his strategy and priorities.

One congressman calls the situation "embarrassing"; another vows to "vote and work against the president's request"; still another has launched "dontattacksyria.com." The party's outside partisan groups are mobilizing against an affirmative vote.

Yes, this is the Democratic Party.

The press is obsessed with the Republican reaction to Mr. Obama's resolution. But the party facing the biggest split over the vote—and whose actions will have the greatest ramifications for the presidency—is Mr. Obama's.

Things are not looking good for the president, and that's no surprise. Mr. Obama's liberal governance—cramming the economic stimulus, the health-care law, a cascade of regulations down voters' throats—led to the 2010 revolt. That midterm obliterated Blue Dogs and hawkish Democrats who would have been most supportive of the president's Syria mission. The remains of Mr. Obama's House caucus tilts significantly more to the left. It has been indulged by the president's lead-from-behind foreign policy and is unprepared to step up to Mr. Obama's call.

And so it goes.]

I think President O'Bama should have dumped Joe Biden and replaced him with John McCain as his vice president.

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Wow, the job numbers came in really, really marginal, and the market plunges, down 110 points in early trading. Or maybe folks realize that President O'Bama will be directing military operations in a new war in the Mideast.

The job report, as reported by TheDailyTicker:

A weak jobs report just landed with a thud on Wall Street.

The numbers: 169,000 new jobs were created in August, just missing consensus estimates. There was a huge revision down for July however -- from 162,000 to 104,000. And the unemployment rate dropped to 7.3%.

Give it a bit to see how the market settles this morning and whether this number could push the Fed to delay the taper.

But stepping back, it’s important to remember where this jobs data really fits in the bigger picture of a labor market that has been severely stunted since falling off a cliff during the recession. Typically what gets all the attention is how the data came in relative to expectations, but that's too myopic of a view now.

And that's why we're going to war. To get Americans' minds off a) the economy, and, b) O'Bamacare.