One and Done?  —  ONE day during the 2008 campaign, as Barack Obama read the foreboding news of the mounting economic and military catastrophes that W. was bequeathing his successor, he dryly remarked to aides: “Maybe I should throw the game.”  —  On the razor's edge of another recession …

What Democrats can do about Obama  —  From the debt ceiling fiasco to the recent rescheduling of a jobs speech at the behest of Speaker Boehner, it has not been a good summer for President Obama.  Like Chinese water torture, Gallup's daily tracking poll has shown a steady and unrelenting drip of bad news.

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult  —  Barbara Stanwyck: “We're both rotten!”  —  Fred MacMurray: “Yeah - only you're a little more rotten.”  -"Double Indemnity" (1944)  —  Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America.

Above is a picture of Governor Sarah Palin this morning....in Iowa with a crowd.  —  She is running and the pic was taken in Storm Lake, Iowa in a 1/2 marathon.  —  By the way, I understand she had a very good running time...I am trying to get that for you.

Academics dub tea partyers devout, racist  —  Two years after it burst onto the political scene, the tea party is getting a critical eye from political science academics who say the movement generally is populated by knowledgeable and religiously devout voters, but they are hypocritical …

Wrong, Jonathan Chait: Not “Everybody” Thought the Stimulus Was “Mind-Bogglingly Large”  —  Pictured: a nobody, according to Jon Chait.  (photo: Taekwonweirdo)  —  I naively thought Obama's offering to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would put an end to the “liberals are being unfair to Obama” …

Perry won't be demanding Greek columns  —  The most reported news out of the Rick Perry event yesterday in NH appears to be his position on a border fence. … I attended that event, stood about 15 feet from where he delivered those remarks and never heard an “angry shout”.

Postal Service Struggles to Stay Solvent, and Relevant  —  The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month …

We read so you don't have to: Michael Moore's ‘Here Comes Trouble’  —  Reliable liberal gadfly Michael Moore has denounced the Iraq war in an Oscar speech, campaigned for Ralph Nader, and ambushed General Motors chief executive Roger Smith and President George W. Bushon camera.

Barone: Speech fiasco an ‘audacity of weakness’  —  I can't remember a more stunning rebuke of a president by a congressional leader than Speaker John Boehner's refusal to agree to Barack Obama's demand — er, request — that he summon a joint session of Congress to hear the president's latest speech …

What We Learned: Packers Versus Politics  —  We hope you're having an enjoyable and relaxing Labor Day weekend.  Here's what we at The Hotline learned this week:  — When things start to go badly for a White House, everything seems to go wrong.  The scheduling flap over President Obama's jobs speech is an example of that maxim.

The Limping Middle Class  —  Robert B. Reich is the former secretary of labor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future.”  —  THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent …