. . "As Chris Van Hollen notes, this is good timing, given Obama???s speech this week on austerity???s continuing damage to the middle class and on the coming confrontation over spending this fall. * Paul Krugman, on why Obama???s speech was valuable, even if (as the more superficial punditry had it) some of the ideas were old: What we got instead was a narrative, which is no small thing, since it was" . .