Via Lambert, Booman thinks Obama’s speech on the economy today was “pretty pathetic.”
Setting aside that his delivery was uncharacteristically terrible, the president’s statement on the economy today was pretty pathetic.
This ain’t getting it done on any level.
Whoa!! Am I reading that right? He wasn’t thrilled with what Gibbsy had to say this morning either:
This is not good enough:
Asked if the stimulus bill was too small, [White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs says: “I think it makes sense to step back just for a second. … Nobody had, in January of 2009, a sufficient grasp of … what we were facing.” He adds that any stimulus was “unlikely to fill” the hole the financial meltdown created.
“What the Recovery Act did was prevent us from sliding even into a deeper recession with greater economic contraction, with greater job loss than we have experienced because of it,” he says.
I generally ignore Obama’s speeches, so I had to go find this one to see what the mighty O had to say this time. Here’s the speech. You be the judge: is it any weaker than most Obama speeches?
What song would you pick to welcome Booman back from Kool-Aid land? I’m going with John Sebastian.
Welcome back to the reality community, Booman.
Filed under: General Tagged: | Booman Tribune, Koolaid detox
Earl is now a Category 4 hurricane, and it still looks like it will hit the east coast, ruining Labor Day weekend for Long Island, Cape Cod, etc. But the margin of error is still 300 miles.
Of course we’ll get rain even it Earl blows out to sea.
Just frickin’ great. There goes dinner plans next weekend.
Life sucks sometimes, doesn’t it? But there’s still plenty of time for Earl to poop out.
It must be that Hell froze over, because I saw Booman on Memeorandum and could not link to it all day. I guess no one else could believe it either. Ha!
Sorry. I can’t handle another BO speech.
That’s OK. I read it and it’s already faded from my mind, so it must not have been too memorable.
They never are, except as sedatives.
Me either.
Hillary 2012
Read somewhere the first stimulus was to small.. but was it really? How many trillion$$ went to bonuses and why are the welfare recipients sitting on gobs of cash now?
Do another one without regulations, duh…….sounds like another rethug wet dream. Bush III comes through for them again and it’s all the Dims idea.
Someone said Kos was a friend of their’s(BTD) – that he just went insane this particular political cycle. So many of the others seem to have done that too – welcome them back? May I suggest Whitney Houston’s vid – yckma. Sorry I can’t embed it.
That’s really funny. BTD’s “friend” banned him from posting on Daily Kos.
Did I understand you, BTD was banned from kos?
Yes, that’s why he started posting at other blogs. Kos said he could come back if he groveled, but he wouldn’t so that was it. He was banned because he was so abusive to commenters. There were so many complaints that the admins finally vote to suspend him. I can’t remember exactly what he would have had to do to be reinstated.
Btw, BTD was really good during the primaries. I found some of the really good stuff he was writing and I think he will make an appearance in the next installment of “Rummaging throught the archives”
He was also good at mocking the Obama bloggers.
He was good, but he still supported Obama. He just couldn’t take that final step to cut the cord with Kos and the other blogger boys.
I like the fact that BTD was ‘abusive”…good lord I get sick of the continuous boring poltiness on line. I just smack him back. I don’t know, I hate when sites have monitors and the power goes to their head. primaries 2004 were the worst, such insipid behavior from closet back stabbers and such…yech
I was really sorry when they banned BTD. I always got a kick out of his tantrums.
Markos is a personal friend of Jeralyn’s (even godmother of his child or something?) and she never tolerated any critique of him.
But in stating so she has used “we” as meaning TL about this friendship.
Maybe instead she should have borrowed BTD’s “speaking for me only”?
Yeah he seems even more bored with doing his job than usual.
Hoping Earl follows Danielle – out to sea without crossing land. Would not wish it on anyone. Last year was a very quiet H season – hope this one is to.
You and me both!
For random fun, go to:
http://itsthisforthat.com/
It’s a startup company product generator. The creators were at a startup weekend and noticed most of the presentations/pitches were an X for Y, and so they made this auto generator. It makes a new one every time you refresh.
I liked: Eco-Friendly Marketplace for Star Trek Conventions!
Hi all, hope everyone is doing ok. OT: when a famous person is indicted (say Roger Clemens or Paris Hilton) are they subjected to UDS like the common folk in the dockets? Do they have to go thru all federal mandated drug testing? TIA
What happen to Booman? Did his last cheque bounce?
sorry, meant what Happened to Booman?
Nobody had, in January of 2009, a sufficient grasp of … what we were facing.”
Nobody. They keep coming up with alternate ways of pronouncing “no one could have predicted…”
Except Krugman and many other economists were screaming with their hair on fire that the stimulus was too small. So was our own Dakinikat.
Yeah. Who coulda known? *snort*
Though IMO, the problem isn’t only that the stimulus was too small. It’s that it was not targeted where it needed to go.
Germany did a much smaller stimulus than we did and got a BIG bang for their buck in GDP, because they used it to actually…um…STIMULATE, do infrastructure, big jobs programs, etc – rather than the bulk of it going to cronies and pork and buying votes for 2010.
yup, I posted over and over and over …. and i didn’t even have a 3000 variable forecasting behemoth program to figure that out
Don’t need a pocket calculator to figure that out
well, I think I had to use a calculator to do the Okun’s law calculation on what amount, at the very least, would get rid of 10% unemployment at this level of GDP output gap.
But I’m betting you knew instinctively it should be directed for effect. It was worse than too small.
I think we all did. The magnitude of the problem was so great that only an equally magnitudiness money infusion could fix it. And then there was Japan’s Lost Decade that we all saw as a perfect example of what not to do. So, what did we do? We repeated it!
It was the triumph of hope over experience.
well, if you want to move the unemployment rate down 1% you need somewhere around 2% growth rate in GDP. So, if you want to drop it back to 5 or 6 % you need to get the growth rate up to a real high level, it can’t just hang around 1 -2 % or it just stabilizes the current unemployment rate.
Gosh Dak, that’s like logical or something. Too bad there isn’t anyone in the WH that can think, you know, logically. {{bangs head on desk}}
klaatu barada nikto
Neat trick: Enter about:robots as the URL in a Firefox browser and look at the title bar.
yeah, except lots of people did predict it.
I have a new slogan to add to the estimed (can a slogan be estimed?) “we are the ones we have been waiting for” and “yes we can”.
Tada: “at least we stopped the economy from sucking worse than it sucks now”
or how about “30 percent less suckage than you could have had”.
Obama gave a speech?
spit take!
What lame pucky. I distinctly remember Krugman and probably others saying it wasn’t a big enough stimulus. Well, if no one could have predicted, then why isn’t someone fired?
Preach on!!!!!
I believe chistina roemer recommended $1.2 trillion and was shot down by Larry summers. Didn’t she quit recently?
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/29/how-obama-got-rolled-by-wall-street.html
She considered that to be a conservative estimate too.
Rolled by Wall Street? Bankrolled, maybe.
“WE CAN’T LISTEN TO HER, SHE HAS GIRL PARTS. They effect your brain and everyone knows girls can’t do math”.
Larry Summers…….
and she did quit to let her son go to high school in SF, that’s the story anyway
I don’t know how she could stand it as long as she did frankly.
it was rumored that she complained to Rahm a lot about Summers …
Ha, like Rahm gave a crap.
No, DT, Rahm’s mother gave a crap.
And then she named it “Rahm”.
I said it here over and over and yes, Christie Romer said it also, believe she wanted something like 1.6 and she’s an authority on something like this … you can read more about that in the Newsweek piece on how Wall Street Rolled Obama
Yes you did. Is it simply coincidence that many of these thenings that “no on could have predicted” get predicted here on a regular basis?
Heh.
Btw, check out Joan Walsh’s lastest. I think she has been one of the biggest apologists around.
Do we have to?
She’s always saying stuff like, “he doesn’t do what I want because I don’t love him enough”. I hate reading doormats.
I read it. So, NOW she was right about him all along.
But WE are just racists.
I hate the media.
Obama: “I think the next couple of years, we’ve got to focus on debt and deficits.”
Oh boy…
can you say return to recession? boys and girls? YES YOU CAN!!!
Ooooh, I’ve got a tingle going up my leg. No wait, that’s something in the dumpster with me crawling up my leg. But I still believe in him completely and know for a fact that he’s playing really clever 11-dimensional chess. We’re all just not at his level to understand it.
It’s just terrible.
Too bad for us you didn’t do anything right earlier.
sorry–I meant latest instead of lastest.
Here’s the Joan Walsh piece. Wow, the Obots must have all gone to detox together.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/index.html
An intervention?
I don’t know why they just don’t face it ! Obama is a DINO.
She only made on fundamental mistake. She left Obama out of the group of charlatans propped up by the forces of great wealth. Seems to me he’s charlatan #1.
Hell yes, Ralph. I figure Obummer became Charlatan #1 the day after the Malefactors Of Great Wealth went to Hillary and said, “We’ll make you President if you’ll bail out our unsound gambles and kill Social Security for us”–and she told them to go directly to Hell, do not pass “Go”, do not collect $200.
Walsh:
Ok, how many people think that the unemployed are going to give a rat’s ass whether poor widdle Obama is raked over the coals by those nasty wasty Republicans? Raise your hands if you think they will shed any tears over this?
Yeah, me neither.
Joan and Paul should pop a xanax and relax. No one will believe it but no one cares either. Build him up, tear im down, it’s all the same to the people who are scrounging for mortgage money.
Wait, let me stop looking for food in the dumpster and worry about one multimillionaire saying bad things about another multimillionaire. Nope, just too hungry to worry about them. I hear they all vacation a lot though. Must be nice.
no one’s going to go after Obama with subpoenas and investigations… Obama is a Republican and a dream come true for a repug congress…
I was doing some free association while I read this piece, here’s what came up with:
Rats. Sinking ships. Loose lips. Nothing so bad as a reformed reformer.
Every time I see Walsh on MSNBC she is making excuses for Obama–in a pollyana sort of way. Almost naive. I’ll really be interested to see what ratings he gets tomorrow night with ‘yet another’ speech. It’s like a junkie getting a fix with him.
As RD said up above, Walsh is a doormat.
Anytime I see Walsh on MSNBC, I change the channel.
Ugh.
yes–and people keep hurting. The ‘no sense of urgency’ in the WH just screams ‘I don’t care.’
Maybe I am feeling more vulnerable than usual, but it seems like the level of bad news has been ratcheting up. I think part of the problem is that electing Obama left this country with a leadership vacuum. I never thought he was ready to be POTUS, but BO doesn’t even seem to have the capacity to grow into the job.
Best thing about the Emmys last weekend, Bill Maher lost again for record 0 and 26. Apparently they do have some taste over there:
http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_goldderby/2010/08/bill-maher-remains-emmys-biggest-loser-at-0-and-26.html
Funny, we always knew he was a loser.
Wow, the Palin hate is out in full force. Bristol Palin is going to be on dancing with the stars for their next season. I just surfed around to a number of sites talking about it and the comments are stunning. The hate is pretty bad. A lot of it is like what we heard when Sarah ran for VP, namely shouldn’t she be at home raising her child. Seriously, such 50′s era view of women, coming from alleged progressive types. Amazing. WTF is going on in this world. As myiq says, there’s something about [the] Palin[s].
This will be the next shiny object for the Obots to point and obsess over so they won’t notice how bad the Oprecious really is and what losers they are for selecting him.
Not to jump on the Palin bashing, but why would Palin go on DWTS? Is she kinda passive aggressive towards her mom? What was her last engagement with Levi Johnston all about?
I’m seriously wondering, because I don’t think she behaves in a manner that would help her mom.
I don’t think gratuitous shots at the Palins are OK, although Sarah Palin is the master of gratuitous and sometimes vicious shots but people don’t take her own on that.
There could easily be something like that going on with Bristol (towards her mother). She seems to be doing a number of things that don’t help her mother. The bane of all politicians, their siblings or children. Nothing but grief.
There’s definitely something going on there.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily something going on. I think she is a young woman stuck with a loser as the father of her child and she’s making terrible choices.
WTV,
you don’t ever sleep do you? Maybe you have the oddest rhythm from any living being.
I live in Europe and very often we are on the Intertubz at the same time.
actually was just trying to catch up on the blog real quick since I took monday off from blogging.
You people and your crazy hours. Oh wait…
At this time?
Isn’t it like 2 am where you are?
3:04am
2:10 am here… usually the best time to have a fun chat on here with Seriously
I’m guessing it’s 9:09am where you are?
Yup.
I’m blogging with zombies. Somebody please help me!
Aaaar, must eat brains…
Why does it matter why she’s going on DWTS? I don’t know maybe she’s doing it as an opportunity to put some money in the bank for hersef and her child? Seriously, is that too much a stretch for anyone ?
Bristol is a teenage mother. It isn’t like she probably has a ton of job opportunities wide open to her at this point. Why wouldn’t she accept a gig that gives her a couple of grand for a single episode and exposure?
You know any high caliber politician out there whose kid does stuff like that?
If we’re speaking more generally about close family, there’s of course Carter’s brother, Billy. Ah, how could we forget Billy Beer. I don’t know off hand, but I suspect there have been lots of embarrassing children and siblings before.
don’t forget about “the Brothers Rodham”
Rudy Giuliani’s son. Jeebus I wanted to smack him.
You guys just gave me all the bad ones.
Sure. In her day and her way, Patti Davis (Reagan) did stuff like that, with her books and activism and “acting” career and of course appearing on the cover of Playboy with her breasts cupped by a black man.
Yes, Patti Davis. And, recently there was Giuliani’s daughter caught for shoplifting.
Were all these examples helpful to the politician in question?
Didn’t some of them actually show more than a pssive aggressive behavior?
Ron Reagan Jr. in his underwear on SNL.
Al Gore’s son in the high-speed Prius chase.
Politician’s kids do dumb stuff sometimes.
I think they’re just people and maybe it’s something passive aggressive, maybe it’s not. I just wouldn’t assume. Maybe they’re just people who didn’t choose to be related to someone who would automatically bring more attention to them whenever they screw up. Bristol’s really young and as I said she’s making poor choices imho. Time will tell. I just generally don’t like to go after the kids unless there’s some political fraud or financial scheme they participated in themselves.
Look at the Bush twins. I think they turned out really well-spoken and nice adults, and it’s not their fault for who they were related to or their acting out as young adults automatically made the news.
Chelsea is such a shining star for all she had to go through and endure. Hillary did a great job keeping the vultures away and standing firm. Hopefully the Obama girls will benefit from the example Hill set for the Obamas to shield their girls.
Have to agree with WTV about the Bush twins, though at least one of them did her share of partying that embarrassed her parents.
Kids do stupid things. I sure did. And plenty of politician’s kids do.
The thing about Sarah Palin, for me, is that I don’t agree with her politics but the way ObamaDems have gone after her, attacked her and her family, piled on and on and on, is IMO only adding to the corrosive atmosphere Paul Krugman refers to in his recent column. Democrats used to be the good guys fighting the good fight, now that’s been fractured.
Btw Sarah Palin herself contribute to that atmosphere.
Let’s just take the last couple of weeks:
1- She competes with Newt over who can outhate “Moslems”
2- She asks Dr Laura not to “retreat” but to “reload” after the latter has been screamed the N-word 11 times (!) and asked a Black woman not marry outside her race if she can’t take it.
She followed that with her “shackle” tweet.
3- She calls feminists she disagrees with a “cackle”, whatever that means.
well I agree Palin’s rhetoric is awful, which is why as I have expressed many times, I don’t think she’s any kind of solution. but Palin’s rhetoric isn’t Bristol’s fault. And as I said in my post over the weekend, tearing down Palin’s womanhood or caricaturing her as backwards will do nothing to shut down the rhetoric or rightwing agenda. Doing so just surrenders the moral high ground, and it’s so counterproductive at that, it doesn’t even work.
I wasn’t bringing the 2 in any type of relation. I was just responding to Zaladonis.
I accidentally hit send too soon, was updating on that while you were responding, mablue. My basic point is that all the Palin hysteria on the left is counterproductive and surrendering the moral highground for no reason.
Nixon had an embarrassing brother too, Donald. And so did the Bushes, Neil?
I think there’s something going on there.
Maybe an attempt to sabotage the more successful relative, in some cases subconsciously and in others outright.
Oh absolutely she does!
My point is ObamaDems abdicated the high ground, and IMO lost the right to complain about Bush or Palin or Limbaugh or anyone else on the right doing it because they protect and defend Obama doing it.
Sorry, messed my blockquoting again.
fixed it for ya, Z.
I know one who goes on the View his own self.
Hollywood is throwing a big bag of money at anything Palin related, partially because people want to see Palin and partially because it diminshes her.
I’ve been especially noticing the diminishment of calling her “former” Governor Palin. When’s the last time Governors Huckabee or Romney were called former?
where are they saying that? I want to go tell them to shut up. Really, do they say that when some liberal mother is on the show? Don’t these people know they are now as hateful, petty and shallow as the Clinton haters in the 90s?
OK, let’s all meet in Arlington, VA next month. The Washington Shakespeare company will be presenting sections of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing in Klingon. You know you haven’t heard Shakespeare until you’ve heard it in the original Klingon:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082702649.html
Speaking of Klingons:
Dating Tips With Worf.
Watch out for Klingon propaganda:
Klingons in the Whitehouse:
He might have added that unlike real Klingons, the Chimperial advisers had no honor.
Speaking of inventing languages, here’s Tolkien reading an Elvish poem:
So I saw Krugman was the centerpiece of discussion in the AM thread…
with liberal “fighters” like Krugman (who has said that the D is all that matters when it comes to D vs. R) who needs Republicans? Saying the D is all that matters is giving the milk away for free. that’s just my personal perspective. I still find his take on the economy very valuable, because he is very good at breaking down complex issues and making them entirely accessible. But, I am wary of his take on the political side of things when it comes to D vs. R. You don’t get the Dems to stop caving by caving to them pre-emptively.
I think we had that discussion here about that. I remembered you posting the excerpt of the conversation and I maintain that you totally misunderstood him.
He was calling out Scott Brown on his BS that he would go to DC and be an independent voice, and PK was saying these guys go to DC and vote according to their label (D or R). What’s false about that?
well I wrote here against Scott Brown’s politics all along and I never liked him. I think the biggest problem with him isn’t the R, it’s that he’s another empty suit.
But Krugman didn’t just say that only about Scott Brown. I didn’t misunderstand him. He said that all that matters about a candidate when voting is to vote based on the D and the R and that voters haven’t caught onto that.
Again what’s false about that? That’s just a matter of facts. He didn’t say he condones it, but was probably weary of voter falling for the “I’m gonna go to DC and shake the place” horse crap.
This goes to my larger problem, we don’t even give a PK the benefit of the doubt here. The tendency is to condemn him and then treat him like some pariah.
what’s false here is that voters voted for Democrats in 2008 and got a healthcare bill that’s origins were at the Heritage foundation. They got Geithner and Summers, and Romer is leaving. They have Elizabeth Warren being fought for head of the Consumer Financial protection bureau even though she’s the one who fought for it. They have Alan Simpson getting to stay after making such nasty vile comments that do affect public policy, while Robert Gibbs was fairly confident in ushering Helen Thomas off the stage, bashing the “professional left” and someone at the top of the Obama Admin and not just Vilsack had a protocol in place that led to Shirley Sherrod’s being fired for no reason.
We agree on all those points. But how does that make Krugman the problem, especially in this context?
Isn’t Krugman the loudest voice out there complaining that Obama and the Ds in Congress are not Liberal enough?
Krugman’s not the problem, he is an enabler of the problem. I think Bob Herbert has been a lot louder and stronger in calling out this Administration and Congress than Krugman has.
WTV already said it, and better than I will, but I’m going to reiterate because it’s right to the point: what’s false about that is Obama’s policies and political behavior has been more like R than D. Or anyway the D that some of us have been part of, identified with, supporting for decades.
Paul Krugman is almost always spot-on with economics and financial matters but he has a real problem about Obama, as many Democrats have. These Democrats who got Obama elected, helped in any way, and have protected and defended him are, IMO, very much to blame for what’s happened and will happen because of Obama. The information was publicly available to see who Obama is and what would result from him winning the Presidency; some of us saw it very clearly early on and spoke out daily to the end. Krugman, with his access to a microphone that reaches not only millions of people worldwide but also, clearly, into the White House, has enabled Obama rather than pressuring him to do the right thing. Obama’s a narcissist, probably a sociopath, and doesn’t give a rat’s patootie what anybody says about anybody else in his Administration, he only responds to criticism leveled directly at him and only by certain people at certain times — and Krugman failed to use his opportunities to do that.
Do we want to measure dB?
I think Krugman is louder, in addition to the fact that he still has far more chips with me than Bob Herbert, who I’ll confess turned the corner much earlier than the other Obama-fluffers.
Zaladonis,
you’re way off. I can understand your grievances with Obama and the Ds, but this is just ricdiculous:
Have you been reading Krugman at all? Geez!!!
Tweet from Ebert (@ebertchicago):
Beck’s next rally is planned for Nov. 22 in Dallas, at Dealey Plaza.
LOL!
Btw, do you read his blog? It’s really good.
another birthday ruined
To change the subject completely–I just discovered this old punk classic recently.
WARNING: the lead singer’s voice has been described as being able to punch holes in sheet metal.
Possibly NSFW.
Maybe that stimulus was too low, but lots of money was misspent, like money for weatherstripping and grants that didn’t get the most bang for the dollar.. The stimulus had all the earmarks (pun intended) of having been put together by a committee. But that’s why Obama had the backing of Kennedy and Pelosi. They were going to be in charge and all Obama had to do was sign the bills. The plan looked so perfect to them. Losers.
The markets are rattled. The Nikkei 225 dropped 3.55%. Other market are down, but not as much. Lots of economic data coming out this week.
Yes, as I said from the beginning (and I think Krugman did, too), Obama’s stimulus bill wasn’t only too small, it was bloated with pork. Really revolting. It should have been about jobs jobs jobs, big and bold and potent.
I swear to God I resist saying this SO often, but if Hillary Clinton had been President, we’d have had an economic policy that would’ve got the engine of our economy reset in a healthy direction, dealing effectively with unemployment, foreclosures, new industry like alternative energy, genuine health care reform and financial services reform, and on and on.
Word.
Isn’t there about $15 trillion in needed infrastructure repair on this nation’s roads and bridges? We would have been better off funding that and unemployment so the bills didn’t have to go up for a vote every few months.
Soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan.
Monday
AP
7 US troops killed in 2 south Afghan bomb attacks
Tuesday
AP
4 American troops killed in a roadside bomb explosion in eastern Afghanistan.
They’re going to continue to die in Iraq as well.
End the war my ass.
Nope, it’s spot-on.
Krugman calls out Democrats and members of Obama’s administration and sometimes “the Obama Administration,” but virtually never Obama himself. In that Obama-loyalist way he treats Obama like a superior victim when in truth Obama’s the leader of the problem.
Krugman had no such reticence about calling out Bush, which he was right to do.
I think you expect from Krugman the type of Obama-bashing you would get from Hot Air or Michelle Malkin, that’s not gonna happen.
Krugman hasn’t missed an opportunity to substantively criticize Obama’s policies and his attitude.
I don’t see how you can credibly accuse him of being an enabler or behaving in an “Obama-loyalist way”.
Any example is appreciated.
The examples of what I’m saying are in his columns over and over, including the most recent that BB posted.
You say my claim is “ridiculous,” so it should be easy to produce examples from his columns of Krugman directly calling out Obama — just Obama, not members of his administration or “the Obama Administration” or other variations of mentioning Obama’s name at the same time diffusing criticism away from Obama himself.
And please already with the “Obama bashing” nonsense.
BTW, I would love to be wrong becase I like Paul Krugman a lot and I miss reading him regularly. So I eagerly await your examples of Krugman calling out Obama singly and directly that I’ve missed because I often skip his columns the past year.
it does not help for Krugman to talk about how the WH just isn’t getting it now. He should have put pressure on *before* midterms season, when it could have made the difference. Krugman is an extremely intelligent person (scary smart! if it weren’t for him alone, I would have canceled my NYT subscription in 2008…I’m still subscribed now, but not on a paying subscription), so I don’t give him a pass for this. He knew exactly what he was doing when he still supported Obama on Obamacare, however reluctantly so. That was purely out of not wanting the GOP to score a win (because all that matters at the end for Krugman is the D or the R).
That was the wrong approach to take to get a better policy. Krugman was so hyperfocused on the possibility of the GOP scoring a win that he wasn’t able to fight from a position of strength on arguing for a better healthcare policy while there was still a chance to improve it. He fought from a place of defeat–that the left could not get more became a foregone conclusion.
Making noise now about the Obama white house’s tonedeafness, after the fact, is a convenient attempt at bridging the enthusiasm gap, imho. Lot of good it does now other than to convince voters there’s still some reason to still keep holding out faith that people like Krugman can get through to this WH/these Dems.
after elections season is over, let’s face it. Unless there are some big big changes in the way the left responds to the Dems and the left is able to instill some fear in the Axelrahm crowd that the left cannot be counted on to “come home” in 2012, Dems will go back to selling out even more than before. Obama will cite Republicans picking up seats as further excuse to the Dem base that he’d really like to do all the things that we want him to do but it’s those darn GOP obstructionists, they have his hand tied. Krugman and Yglesias and the rest will write more columns about how America is just ungovernable and nothing can be done.
Herbert, unlike Krugman, was calling out the Dems before midterms season. He gets credit from me on that. And, in my books, Herbert started out with *negative* points the way he played things in 2008. So I didn’t start out trusting him either when he first started criticizing the weakness of the Democratic agenda. But he’s earned the credit for speaking up and putting the pressure on where others have not during this Administration so far.
Krugman is very good at understanding who the Dem is between two ostensible Dems (Hillary and Obama). It’s when the D/R situation comes into play that I am wary of his analysis. He will still fall on the side of D just to stick it to the Rs.
I don’t agree with giving the GOP any passes just to stick it to Obama and the Dems. The GOP does not get any pass from me. The stench of their policies and politics is just as putrid as it ever was, Obama or no Obama. So I don’t believe in Krugman’s strategy of giving passes from the opposite direction either…such as falling back on the idea that it’s better to pass Obamacare than let the Rs score any win. That’s all just a game of nyah nyah nee boo boo. empty Partisanship for the sake of itself. In the long term, the Krugman strategy is bad for the health of the Democratic party and for the brand of anything left-of-center.
mablue, I think you misunderstand a lot of the criticism here of Krugman. It is because we respect him so much in the first place that we are so disappointed in him. I still respect his insights on the economy and along with Dakinikat he’s one of my go-to reads when I’m confused about something on economics or finance.
I just think Krugman is wrong on the current lot of Dems and enables them at crucial push-come-to-shove points where a more Tough Love approach is needed.
WTV,
I don’t get this:
Isn’t Krugman being criticised because he has mellowed out recently? He was at his harshest at the beginning of this administration, way before anyone thought there would ever a midterm season. Did you read the stuff the WH staff was saying about him, especially Rahm Emanuel?
Haven’t I read here over and over again how he got served some Kool Aid at that infamous off-the-record dinner?
As for this:
He supported HCR, very reluctantly, as I did. I think it’s better than nothing and I believe like PK said “we will spend years fixing this thing”. It doesn’t make a supporter of Obama or a Kool Aid drnker.
I think Dems will be forced to go ahead with the good measures in the legislation.
On this, some of us may be wrong, and ypou guys who oppose it may be right. However, I expect you to give us the courtesy that we are genuine in our beliefs not out of loyalty for Obama or the Ds, just like I believe you don’t like this legislation because the bad outweighs the good, not because you hate Obama and don’t want him to have any type of “victory”.
I believe you are genuine, mablue.
I think Krugman wimped out early on during the healthcare battle… maybe it was the dinner, maybe not. But, I read all his writings on healthcare and he definitely seemed more worried about the GOP scoring a win than anything else.
He was a reluctant supporter. I think he was told at the dinner “listen K-thug, this is all we can get through Congress” (which was the case because Obama kowtowed to RW Dems, a fact Krugman lamented.)
How many posts and op-ed did Kruman write lambasting the “Centrists” for sabotaging the Liberal Agenda? Too many to count.
I’m just surprised how easily ALL he did and is doing for “our” causes gets flushed down the toilet. We’re not dealing with Markos, Arianna or Booman here.
Again, that’s wrong.
It is NOT the case that Obama’s HCR was “all we can get through Congress” because Obama kowtowed to RW Dems.
Obama’s HCR was what it was because of Obama and the deals HE made with Pharma and Big Insurance and for-profit hospitals, not because of RW Dems pressuring him.
This is what I’m talking about. Blaming “RW Dems” or Republicans … anybody but Obama himself. Call it Kool-Aid, call it whatever you want, there is something profoundly wrong with that — especially when it comes from people who have no problem calling out Bush or Clinton or Reagan when they rightfully should.
“He supported HCR, very reluctantly, as I did.”
I’ve been following the back and forth, and I think this finally gets to the heart of the matter.
It’s a disagreement about policy. MAblue supported the HCR bill, and many here disagree. MAblue doesn’t agree with the critique of Krugman because he agrees with Krugman’s political conclusion, while others here don’t.
I agree with the latter group, personally, as in my opinion it helped, unfortunately, to cement the rightward shift in the national Democratic party that we were all so worried about when Obama won the nomination.
Obama is not naive, he’s not a superior victim, he doesn’t have high ideals that lowly Democrats and Republicans just won’t let him realize.
Barack Obama is an unprincipled con man, nothing more. And every single liberal, progressive, Democratic voice in America that has protected and defended him has played a part in this unfolding disaster.
We could have turned a corner after 8 horrible years of Bush but we didn’t, it’s getting worse and will continue to get worse and there are people responsible for that.
Honk honk honk!!!
Let’s not jump to conclusions. The fact that Booman finally norticed Obama is a lousy speaker doesn’t change the fact that he voted for a guy who admires Ronald Reagan.
Any thoughts on Rebecca Traister’s upcoming book about the 2008 election, hinted at in this NYT op ed?
Don’t know enough about the author to know whether it might be worth reading.
*****A
I wouldn’t advise spending any money on Traister’s book. But maybe peruse it at a bookstore.
Yeah, Traister’s a Modo in training.
When I was in Denver, she called PUMA HQ looking for an interview. We were headed out the door to a rally at the MSNBC kiosk. I told her that I didn’t have time to talk but she should meet us there. She never showed up but proceeded to write some piece of trash about voters like us that parroted the same old tired cliches: we were old, working class, uneducated, blah, blah, blah.
What could she possible say that I’d be interested in reading? She spent most of 2008 sitting at the popular kids’ lunch table and completely dismissed us as a bunch of losers. Yet we could make or break the Democratic party this fall if we decide to sit it out. (See Corzine and Martha Coakley) Traister’s crowd does. not. get. it. yet. Neither does the rest of the lefty blogosphere. If you want the Democrats to do the right thing, you need to demand it *before* an election, not afterwards.
Screw her and the Salon pony she rode in on.
Traister is thirdwave… they’ll never fully understood what they had in Hillary, they’ll keep finding fault with her and searching for their own Sarah, just going from one Elmer Gantry to the next elma gantry.
remember how people who thought Hillary was the wrong woman or had “her own baggage” and then turned around and scoffed at Palin being no Hillary?
The thirdwavers are so busy looking for their own Sarah that when their/my generation’s Hillary comes along, they’ll probably be booing her for being no Sarah.
Ah….she sounds like Jeralynn’s soulmate. Ugh.
The next two nights at work will be very busy, so I may not drop by for a while.