The next several days will be a “stay-cation” for me, as my wife’s got a week off, and we’re planning on filling in every gap in our LA sightseeing experience. That doesn’t mean there will be no posts, but I may be wrapping up early some weekdays. Anyway, have a great weekend. College football’s back!

• The House Speaker’s statement on the August job numbers shows you the limits of a tax cut approach to the current economy. She notes that the Democrats have enacted “eight small business tax cuts” since the beginning of ’09. At what point do they recognize they don’t work all that well?

• Mark Thoma offers the economic case for a payroll tax cut, and then gives the political view: “I suppose proposing tax cuts to stimulate employment works well as a political ploy, the midterm election is coming, but the timing of all this — way later than it should have been to help the unemployed, but just right from a political perspective — makes it look to me like the administration is more interested in playing political games than in trying to actually help people.” Dean Baker also reiterates some of what he said to me about the proposal.

• Bob Shrum clues in to the need for Democrats to fully repudiate the Cat Food Commission. A privileged resolution would be really interesting politically.

• We’ll see the small business bill in the Senate’s upcoming work period, and probably some tax measures. But Harry Reid also says he’ll move a food safety bill as well.

• Jay Bybee has a bigger problem with littering than torture.

• I’m not buying this story about young people losing Democratic ID, first because the story itself doesn’t show much of a loss, and second because most younger people I know don’t identify with any party. That was certainly true of most of the young people I encountered on the Obama campaign in 2008.

• Good for the AP for not buying the spin on the “end of combat operations” in Iraq.

• Meanwhile, here come the oil companies into Iraq. It’ll be a classic dictator-led petro-state in no time.

• If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had to come out this early and warn that the Middle East peace talks were doomed, we may have something. I’m not totally convinced, but the louder those well-served by the conflict say it’s doomed, the more likely something really happens.

• Child porn scandal at the Pentagon. Seems more like a story, again, about the lack of accountability.

• Peter Orszag will write a column for the NYT. Can’t wait to see the internecine warfare with Krugman.

• Shorter banking industry: Hey, sorry about the bonuses.

• BP took off the capping stack from the well in the Gulf, suggesting that things are truly winding down. Meanwhile, regulators are investigating the next oil rig explosion.

• Obama’s Oval Office speech on Iraq appeared to work, but the key number here is his slipping approval on the economy, which will matter greatly in November.

• Sharron Angle says unemployment doesn’t benefit anyone. She meant to add “anyone who’s employed.”

• Great, let’s foist our evangelical women-haters on China now to promote abstinence-only policies that don’t work.

• To me, the strangest thing about this Hillary Clinton for President ad, which actually ran in New Orleans this week, is that the image looks nothing like Hillary Clinton.

• Reagan was the original Reagan Democrat. This 1948 speech in favor of Truman and Hubert Humphrey is far more compelling defense of liberal economic arguments than anything I see out of them today.

• I visited Christchurch once. Hope everyone’s OK, that’s a big earthquake for a city like that.