I am Sam Adams

There’s been much bleating and whining these days about how Senate Republicans are refusing to confirm President Obama’s nominees. But lost in all this is how the completely dysfunctional Senate is holding up Republican nominees as well.

There’s not much in politics that allows me to say, “I’m old enough to remember when.” But here’s one: I’m old enough to remember when George W. Bush was president.

It was, after all, only four short years ago. And it didn’t go so well. The Bush economy is one of the worst on record. Median wages dropped. Poverty worsened. Inequality increased. Surpluses turned into deficits. Monthly job growth was weaker than it had been in any expansion since 1954. Economic growth was sluggish. And that’s before you count the financial crisis that unfurled on his watch. Add the collapse to the equation, and Bush’s record goes from “not so good” to “I can’t bear to look.”

“I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work repairing our roads, our bridges, schools, transit systems, along with saving the jobs of cops and teachers and firefighters, creating a new tax cut for businesses.  They said no. I went to the Speaker’s hometown, stood under a bridge that was crumbling.  Everybody acknowledges it needs to be rebuilt. Maybe he doesn’t drive anymore.  Maybe he doesn’t notice how messed up it was. They still said no. There are bridges between Kentucky and Ohio where some of the key Republican leadership come from, where folks are having to do detours an extra hour, hour-and-a-half drive every day on their commute because these bridges don’t work.  They still said no.”

The Office of Congressional Ethics has found no evidence of violations of insider-trading rules involving the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and will recommend that the case against him be closed.

President Obama has unleashed a particularly unusual fundraiser for his 2012 campaign.

One Internet ad starts with a two-toned blue background, like dozens of other pro-Obama spots. Then the furry star pops into the frame, tongue out and ready to frolic. “Join Pet Lovers for Obama,” the ad implores.

President Obama on Monday reaffirmed the United States’ defense commitment to Japan, calling the relationship the “linchpin” of security in the Far East.

Appearing with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda after their bilateral meeting, Obama hailed the recent agreement to relocate 9,000 U.S. Marines off Okinawa to other bases in the Western Pacific, saying the move will help allay concerns of Japanese residents of the island.

Starting with the November 2010 midterm elections and stretching through the summer debt ceiling fight and the fall 2011 “supercommittee” deliberations, much of the national debate over the past year-and-a-half has been focused on the issue of the country’s $16 trillion debt.

In our Monday Fix column, we argued that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney faces a very narrow path to the 270 electoral votes he needs to claim the presidency in November.

What we were most struck by while writing the piece was the fact that it’s been more than two decades since the Republican presidential nominee broke 300 electoral votes. During that same time, Democratic presidential nominees — Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and President Obama in 2008 — have won more than 350 electoral votes.

Proving that nothing is sacrosanct from partisan politics these days, the Obama and Romney campaigns are feuding over the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Specifically, President Obama’s team is raising doubts that the former Massachusetts governor would have acted to take out the al-Qaeda leader.