cleek - December 1, 2009 | 11:58 am · Link

and yet, you keep going back.

they get paid by the ad impression, you know.

El Cid - December 1, 2009 | 11:58 am · Link

LGF says thanks, but no thanks to the United Neo-Confederate Glenn Beck White Nationalist UltraBaptist Talibangelitard Teabagger Free Market™ Liberation Front which has finally dominated the GOP.

Rhoda - December 1, 2009 | 11:59 am · Link

What freaks me out is what David Brooks isn’t saying.

President Obama faces such a devilishly complex set of constraints that the policy he announces will be partially unsatisfying to every American and to every member of his administration. The fights inside have been so brutal that there have been accusations that the Defense and State Departments have withheld documents from the president to bias his thinking.

This, coupled with Politico not following up on the no nothing in Afghanistan is our fault Cheney comment is what’s wrong with the media.

I mean, hello, you’re a top columnist and you’ve got dish that apparently folks feel that State and Defense were holding back information vital to the president’s decision making and you don’t spill? What the hell? That’s Pulitzer material, man!

Puts the 3 month and endless meetings into perspective if on top of everything Obama has to wonder what they AREN’T telling him.

Ash - December 1, 2009 | 12:03 pm · Link

@cleek: Well as they’ve said before, they read this shit so we don’t have to. Though sometimes I do accidentally click on a link and curse myself and my stubby fingers.

gwangung - December 1, 2009 | 12:05 pm · Link

@Rhoda:

I mean, hello, you’re a top columnist and you’ve got dish that apparently folks feel that State and Defense were holding back information vital to the president’s decision making and you don’t spill? What the hell? That’s Pulitzer material, man!

Um, yeah. Isn’t that what they call news?

Maude - December 1, 2009 | 12:08 pm · Link

Hoover was not happy with FDR at all and he said so at every opportunity. His biography is full of self justification. He was bitter about being blamed.
When FDR came in, people were scared. Today, the banksters and Republicans aren’t scared.
FDR has a ton of opposition.
Reagan tried to completely dismantle FDR’s regulations on the financial industry.
Clinton got rid of the basic firewall between investment and commercial banks and that produced too big to fail.
My only question is: why do stupid people have voice boxes?

Ash - December 1, 2009 | 12:09 pm · Link

@Rhoda: Do journalists even care about Pulitzers anymore? Generally, to get one, you have to go through analysis and fact checking and hunting down sources and corroboration and re-writes and…..phew. I wore myself out just typing all of that. Imagine how those poor journalists must feel!

El Cid - December 1, 2009 | 12:13 pm · Link

@Elizabelle: Hoover was a complete and utter d-bag on the New Deal and on how Roosevelt and the Democrats were screwing up the nation and spending us into oblivion and destroying freedom.

Here HH is in 1935 speaking on those matters to the California Republican Assembly:

...[W]e can with diligence dig the facts out from under these methods, and despite all these obstacles can compute with fair certainty from the present commitments where the nation will be in another fifteen months.
...
The first conclusion is that all losses counted in the expenditures are now running over $8,000,000,000 a year. The annual deficit is running nearly three and a half billions, and each dollar of deficit is of course added to the national debt.
...
The second conclusion is that the unpaid government obligations which will fall upon the taxpayer at the end of the Roosevelt administration will exceed $35,000,000,000.
...
The third conclusion is that this peacetime debt will at the end of 1936 exceed our World War debt by ten billions, and the cost of the New Deal threatens to exceed that of the Great War.
...
Incidentally, outside of recoverable loans, the Roosevelt administration spending will exceed the Hoover administration by from $14,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000. I always have difficulty trying to comprehend what $14,000,000,000 or even $3,500,000,000 really is. But I know that even the mere $3,500,000,000 would buy me 90,000,000 suits of clothes. At least that is about one suit for every mile between the earth and the sun.
...
It is of course true that during the last years of the last Republican administration deficits were incurred. Just as advance information on misrepresentation, I may state that the deficits of those years were not as large as are being made to appear by the New Deal publications. They include expenditures which the New Deal now excludes in publishing its own accounts. They also include over two billions of loans to industry, agriculture, and banks, which have since been mostly collected and spent by the New Deal administration. But the important thing is that the Republican administration genuinely endeavored to balance the whole government budget. That was not a pious subterfuge. It was a definite program. The record shows that in the year 1931 the Democratic Congress was urged by the Republican administration to enact additional revenues of $1,200,000,000 and to co-operate in a cut of $600,000,000 of less pressing expenditures. Only a part of this revenue was wrung from the Democratic Congress after nearly six months of fighting, delay, and obstruction, punctuated by vetoes of pork-barrel appropriations. Even then over half of the recommended decreases in expenditures were rejected. Again in 1932, $700,000,000 of additional revenues and $300,000,000 of additional reductions in expenditures were urged, and again, after months of delay, were refused altogether.
...
It is not overstatement to say that had the Republican principles of balancing the budget been accepted in 1931 and 1932, the final stone in the foundation of permanent recovery would have been laid three years ago instead of deferred for years hence.

And, of course, Hoover was right. The massive debt from the New Deal impoverished the nation so much that in the 1950s and 1960s the nation’s middle classes collapsed, starvation was rampant, and the vast majority of the nation was forced to beg in the streets, live under bridges, and hope that the nation’s raw agricultural and primary product exports would be purchased by our vastly wealthier international trading partners.

Savage Henry - December 1, 2009 | 12:17 pm · Link

@ El Cid

Pure win

JGabriel - December 1, 2009 | 12:24 pm · Link

El Cid:

Hoover was a complete and utter d-bag on the New Deal and on how Roosevelt and the Democrats were screwing up the nation and spending us into oblivion and destroying freedom.

Like a Dick Cheney without the torture fetish?

.

AngusTheGodOfMeat - December 1, 2009 | 12:25 pm · Link

Moderation? I will just repost until it works.

The Politico’s meta-narrative piece combined with a double shot of Cheney makes me feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut.

I am inclined to believe that you actually light up like a neon sign outside a Las Vegas casino.

Either that, or this blog gig has to be a masochist’s dream.

AngusTheGodOfMeat - December 1, 2009 | 12:26 pm · Link

Kicked in the gut.

eemom - December 1, 2009 | 12:34 pm · Link

this sounded interesting: Alex Koppelman over at Salon reports that the Little Green Footballs dude has Gone Cole, i.e., officially renounced his wingnuthood.

sorry, this infernal machine I have at work won’t let me do linky.

Zifnab - December 1, 2009 | 12:36 pm · Link

@Maude:

My only question is: why do stupid people have voice boxes?

They’ve got megaphones. Because megaphones cost money. And they’ve got lots of money.

It’s a beautiful cycle. The rich get richer, rig the system to benefit themselves, get richer, rig the system to further benefit themselves. Whether that system raises the tide and carries all ships or leeches off the masses to fuel their own girth is inconsequential to the titans of industry.

Deregulating the banks and allowing the regulatory black hole of derivatives basically endorsed the printing of free money for everyone with the right connections. It’s exactly what all the “Buying on margin” crap during the 20s got us, except expanded by orders of magnitude brought about by innovations of the 21st century. The only difference between today and eighty years ago was the myriad safeguards and backstops we’ve put in place since then.

Those social reforms saved the majority of Americans from experiencing another Great Depression. But they also insulated the same people from the massive shock of fiscal collapse. And the upshot is a braver financial industry, a more callous public, and a weaker blowback from liberals. Had we picked up John McCain as President in 2008, the shit would have continued to hit the fan and – by 2012 – perhaps we’d have gotten the counterwave necessary for a full FDR. But then we’d have a lot more suffering to propel it.

It’s something of a paradox for liberals. In order to justify the serious reforms a functional economy demands, you need to make people feel the pain that the economic programs are designed to buffer against. You need to watch your business fail and your house get foreclosed and your parents eating cat food, or you simply won’t care enough to toss aside Reagenism.

AngusTheGodOfMeat - December 1, 2009 | 12:39 pm · Link

I am inclined to believe that you actually light up like a neon sign outside a Las Vegas casino.

Either that, or this blog gig has to be a masochist’s dream.

cleek - December 1, 2009 | 12:40 pm · Link

In order to justify the serious reforms a functional economy demands, you need to make people feel the pain that the economic programs are designed to buffer against.

well, not really “make”...

the pain is inevitable, once you start down the road of deregulation.

Leelee for Obama - December 1, 2009 | 12:40 pm · Link

@Elizabelle:

Thinking on Hoover and the disconnect: When I hear “responsible” people talking about healthcare reform and the deficit, I wonder how they value the 45,000 Americans dead annually because of no or insufficient healthcare (Harvard study).—-
People who value numbers more than other people.

Same as it ever was, Elizabelle. Bottom line, that’s the ticket. Tax cuts, war borrowing, cut domestic spending, Wolverines! Also.

ricky - December 1, 2009 | 12:43 pm · Link

If you change the title of the Politico piece to Seven Stories the Press Doesn’t Want the Public to Know About It it would be accurate. The problem for the press is that most of the public that matters already does know.

Mark S. - December 1, 2009 | 12:45 pm · Link

5. Americans want their POTUS to be an exceptionalist, and Obama ain’t an exceptionalist.

Because Americans love it when the rest of the world hates us.

I wonder how true this actually is. Most Americans don’t really care about foreign policy until we are in a war. Do they constantly need reminders from their president that we are the bestest country in the world? I would be interested in some good polling on American attitudes on foreign policy, because I suspect most people do not think like Bill Kristol.

donovong - December 1, 2009 | 12:47 pm · Link

I am inclined to believe that you actually light up like a neon sign.

Either that, or this blog gig has to be a masochist’s dream.

Also.

comrade scott's agenda of rage - December 1, 2009 | 12:48 pm · Link

Simply look at virtually all of the Politico’s hacks and who’ve they’ve worked for and it’s easy to see why all of the dead tree media and their broadcasting/cable brethren are in the world of hurt they find themselves in these days.

Midnight Marauder - December 1, 2009 | 12:49 pm · Link

@AngusTheGodOfMeat:

Wow, not even my Binford Super Parser can figure out why my post at 20 is in moderation. That’s quite an interesting piece of software you guys have there.

I think the dual life you’re living might have something to do with it.

kommrade reproductive vigor - December 1, 2009 | 12:52 pm · Link

So much stupid, and it’s the same stupid over and over again.

Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Jason B at Work - December 1, 2009 | 12:55 pm · Link

@AngusTheGodOfMeat: I saw your first post just fine. There may have been a delay or something, but by the time I got to it, it was there at least.

Zifnab - December 1, 2009 | 12:56 pm · Link

@Maude:

I keep harping on Clinton repealing Glass Stegal. That gets me furious. Also the Commodities Mod. Act of 2000. In that sense, I think that Clinton was wingnuttier than the wingnuts.

Clinton didn’t fight the issue. But there were well over 60 votes in support of these moves in the Senate and a majority in the House. He didn’t want to disrupt fund raising for his allies by pissing off the bankers with a veto that was just going to get overturned. But it’s not like he wrote the bills.

The cruel fact is that even when we have a Democratic Supermajority, the liberals are still in the minority and even the moderates don’t have more than even odds. Clinton wasn’t going to fight a battle he didn’t think he could win. It’s another example of cowardice on the part of our party. But I wouldn’t run off and call Clinton a wingnut.

Cris - December 1, 2009 | 12:59 pm · Link

@Maude: Let’s play Red Queen and Off With Their Heads.

The Queen of Hearts.

Elizabelle - December 1, 2009 | 1:03 pm · Link

@eemom:

GONE COLE: is it in the Lexicon?

Can add “see Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs” as part of definition.

Because here is his post on “not going off the cliff” with the current GOP. Personally, I would number them differently, but any of us could have come up with most of them. Welcome to the rational world, Mr. Johnson.

(And hope BJ doesn’t get in trouble for my posting his entry in entirety):

WHY I PARTED WAYS WITH THE RIGHT

http://littlegreenfootballs.co....._The_Right

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

Maude - December 1, 2009 | 1:06 pm · Link

@Cris: I was close wasn’t I?

Zinfab, Clinton clobbered the poor and those trying for disability coverage. I was harmed by his actions and I’m not just calling him names. He out Reaganed Reagan. (sp? it looks wrong) Raygun, that’s better.
He was just another benefit himself during his presidency type.
I don’t excuse Dems either.

Svensker - December 1, 2009 | 1:09 pm · Link

@Mark S.:

Do they constantly need reminders from their president that we are the bestest country in the world?

I think a big chunk of the country does. American exceptionalism has been drilled into us by this point. See how far you get in any discussion with almost anyone—Repuke or Dem (except Libertarians or Far Lefties)—if you seriously suggest shutting down some of our hundreds of bases around the world. You will be dismissed as Not Serious. Why? Because we are the biggest and bestest and shut up that’s why.

AngusTheGodOfMeat - December 1, 2009 | 1:18 pm · Link

@Svensker:

I dunno, I do keep hearing “I got you babe ….”

Stooleo - December 1, 2009 | 1:23 pm · Link

Sully going Johnson, going Cole.

Elie - December 1, 2009 | 1:48 pm · Link

Maude and others:

We on the left tend to complain that our values and issues never get to be front burner in the US. That is so true but we are as much to “blame” for it as anyone.

The union movement has been allowed to become corrupt and to be broken into pieces over decades as workers received less and less and states allowed “right to work” laws to undermine the political and financial power of the worker..

We have too often relied on top down approaches to leadership rather than educating and brining along young folks at the grass roots. Very few of us have been active in community organizing. We have used antiquated and ineffective tools such as marches instead of down in the grissle organizing to get things done for real people where folks would see and appreciate what progressivism and liberalism meant for them.

In our community very recently, 2 progressive council people were kicked out of office for some right wingers with a lot of money from the outside. In the whole mess, there were 4,000 votes that could have easily swung the election, from an important constituency, the gay population, that were not adequately made aware of the need for their votes and why. The 4000 precious votes went only for the single partner issue since these folks did not vote for anything else. Missed opportunity but also poor planning and outreach by the left/progressives…

This is community stuff. It doesnt happen at the national level first. The national follows what happens at home, over and over.

If we want progressive and liberal policies and values to again become central, we are going to have to build it from scratch from the bottom. Over time, our elected leaders will reflect that perspective and have the population support to actually carry out those initiatives. Until then, we are asking them to reflect what we can’t give them in enough numbers to protect them and our interests politically.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this

catclub - December 1, 2009 | 1:53 pm · Link

Elizabelle @ 53

That list, except for perhaps 6 and 10, is and has
been SOP
for the right since forever.

If you replaced ‘Support for’ with ‘Core Value is’,
in all item in the list,
then you get Charles Johnson’s actual problem
with the wackalooon right.