The various lists of things Obama could and should do won’t get very far until the President acknowledges the views he’s accepted and listened to fall woefully short of what the country’s problems need.

The Democratic Party, while not yet in denial, is not running on a platform to address any of nation’s critical problems. They’re silent. And without knowing what, if anything, they plan to do about the monstrous issues facing the country, they’ve given the voters no reason to vote for them.

Charles Ferguson has made a documentary that must be seen if you want to understand why the same people who let the housing bubble and the 2008 financial meltdown happen are still in charge. But if you can’t go out and see Inside Job right away (it opened in New York and Los Angeles Friday), read Ferguson’s article, “Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics,” summarizing his case in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In early 2009, the Administration proposed to put the banks through “stress tests” to see how they’d survive more adverse scenarios. So why didn’t the economic team also have a test in case their own recovery plans proved to be insufficient?

These are hopeful days. The four horsemen of the establishment look like they are leaving the White House. Peter Orszag, who apparently was the most conservative of them all (and who just lobbied for more tax cuts for the rich), has left his position as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Larry Summers is leaving his position as director of National Economic Council. Rahm Emanuel might be out by October. And Tim Geithner is also rumored to be leaving after the election.

With Friday’s appointment of Elizabeth Warren as an “adviser” to have input in the shaping and launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Tuesday’s rapidly-arranged announcement that Larry Summers will be stepping down as head of the White House National Economic Council and this morning’s suggestion that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel could be resigning before the end of October to pursue the Chicago mayor’s seat, progressives have more reason to be optimistic this week than they have had in quite some time. But since this President was elected through the hard work of progressives who since then have been largely shut out of his administration and even ridiculed by him and other administration figures, it makes sense to look a little more closely at these events and how they are likely to lead to further disappointments.

The White House just released a statement that the President’s Chief Economic Adviser, Larry Summers, will leave the Administration and return to Harvard University by the end of the year

Maureen Dowd,echoing Press Secretary Gibbs, ridicules Obama base as beret wearing, goateed anarchists.

Does one get the feeling that the more powerless we feel, collectively, about the rising levels of economic exploitation exacted upon us and the accelerating rate of ecocide committed on the planet by corporate oligarchs, the more celebrity “news” and other tropes of empty distraction and denial will froth forth from the idiot imaginings of the pop culture douche-scape?

If you want to see what half of a Great Depression (a.k.a. a “Great Recession” looks like, take a look at this graph of the extent and duration of unemployment for each of the last six recessions.