Frank Rich in the NYT on what Obama should do now.
###
Paul Krugman has a blog post about deflation that includes this frightening graph.
Feel free to read about deflation; he's likely right (as we've argued before). Me, I prefer to absorb the graph.
Wages are in the tank, Mr. Prez. Now about those cuts to Social Security...
Feel free to read about deflation; he's likely right (as we've argued before). Me, I prefer to absorb the graph.
Wages are in the tank, Mr. Prez. Now about those cuts to Social Security...
###
Juan Cole on MSNBC's long history of throwing liberals under the bus.
###
###
From a good rant at the Dems by David Sirota:
The facts are painfully apparent. Though hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people in D.C. are professionally paid to pretend these facts require debate and analysis and parsing and speculation and press releases and pithy Tweets and Sunday Show roundtables and C-SPAN symposia and to-camera cable-TV rants and lengthy thousand-page books, they don't require any of that. The facts are simple. The facts are obvious. The facts are undeniable to anyone not paid fistfulls of sweaty money to lie or sensationalize:
1. The Democratic Party shit on its base with its policies, as noted above.
2. This demoralized the Democratic base, which responded by not turning out to vote. As CBS News notes, "Hispanics, African Americans, union members and young people were among the many core Democratic groups that turned out in large numbers in the 2008 elections (but) turnout among these groups dropped off substantially, even below their previous midterm levels."
3. In cause-and-effect style, the result of all this was, as the Washington Post reports, a freshman congressional class that is primarily made up of angry, white, lunatic-conservative assholes.
So yes, all of you who are wasting all of our time pretending this isn't the basic point-A-to-point-B story of the election -- and there are a lot of you out there -- please, if not for me, then for everyone else: Go fuck yourself.
###
Obama drops global warming plans
Our future has "surrender" written all over it Link
###
Good post by BruinKid at Kos:
Bill Maher blasts false equivalencies in amazing New Rule
And finally, New Rule, if you're going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon and Stephen, it seems to me that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and the reasonable, and not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties.
Keith Olbermann is right, when he says he's not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop.
Now, getting over 200,000 people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement, and gave me hope. And what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August! Although it weighed the same.BruinKid makes some good points too;
We all get things wrong sometimes. I don't agree with Jon or Stephen or Bill or anyone else 100% of the time. And we shouldn't. If we did, we're nothing more than sycophants or robots, dutifully repeating what we're told.Then we'd be them. Shudder...
###
Tristero on Matt Taibbi's book:
Don't try to get along with bullies. Convince 'em to get along with you. People sometimes act better after you deck 'em. If they don't, deck 'em again until they do. Ganging up on big bullies is plenty OK.
Taibbi's attitude towards the political landscape of America in the Third Millenium is, in some ways, similar to Thomas Frank's, that there's a bait and switch being pulled, that the real action is not the social issues - it never is - but rather the money. The looting of America by the Biggest, Ballsiest Crooks Ever is the only genuinely important story. For Taibbi, the teabaggers' racism, sexism, xenophobia, libertarianism, and other extremisms seem to serve much the same function as geologists see for trees and grass: sure, it's striking sometimes, but ultimately, it's merely hair that covers the bald truth about the world. I'm not sure I entirely agree - but damn, when you read Matt describe what's really been going on, without any sugar coating or euphemisms, and with that throat-slittingly sharp style... damn if Taibbi doesn't have a point:It's always been about the money. And power. Progressive ideals will always lose to those willing to do anything to achieve money and power until we realize that kumbaya is sometimes best delivered as a tattoo on our knuckles.
Don't try to get along with bullies. Convince 'em to get along with you. People sometimes act better after you deck 'em. If they don't, deck 'em again until they do. Ganging up on big bullies is plenty OK.
###
Paul Krugman is absolutely right here.
###
The party of Hoover will not help the unemployed unless "it is paid for."
Here's an idea: If they want spending cuts, let's give it to them. Let's start by cutting the second engine program for the F-35.
And when they want to extend the Bush tax cuts, let's pay for that by canceling every highway project in Texas and Louisiana.
###
To all of the conservatards who are applauding the suspension/firing of Keith Olbermann
Have you retracted your outrage over Juan Williams being fired by NPR?
The stated reason, after all, was the same in both cases: Violating the network's code of conduct.
Or is this just another tired case of "it's OK if you're a Republican"?
The stated reason, after all, was the same in both cases: Violating the network's code of conduct.
Or is this just another tired case of "it's OK if you're a Republican"?
###
###
An open letter to the "take our country back" crowd.
###
"Darrell Issa will issue subpoenas nonstop like some sort of deranged FOX News reality show. Peak wingnut may very well arrive in the next two years, if only because Issa is like a caricature of Dan Burton drawn by Timothy McVeigh." - Tim F, Link
###
Obama begins two hundred million trillion dollar Asian vacation
