Quotes of the day - WashPost's James Downie on the Obama-Boehner speech kerfuffle: "If this was an attempt to make the Republicans look unreasonable, then, in almost every conceivable way, it failed spectacularly." Read the whole thing, as they say.

In other news, Ann Althouse thinks that this was all White House theatrics designed to cover up a lack of substance: "His bluff was called, so the theatrics look particularly lame, but he may even prefer our gabbing about the lameness of the failed theatrics to our scrutiny of the actual substance of the plan."

My guess is that Obama's "very specific" plan is going to be a tossed salad of small-ball and vague ideas like extending the payroll tax cut which (somehow!) leads to more jobs, not counting the jobs that have already failed to materialize. There's no way he'll put forth some bold idea which will smack of election-year desperation.