It looks like the Dirty Fucking Hippies were right about this too:
The broadest measure of the economy, known as the gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of less than 1 percent in the first half of 2011, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. The figures for the first quarter and the second quarter, 0.4 percent and 1.3 percent respectively, were well below what economists were expecting, and signified a sharp slowdown from the early months of the recovery.
The government also revised data going all the way back to 2003 that showed the recession was deeper, and the recovery weaker, than initially believed.
Murkins tighten their belt when times are tough, the government should too. It’s just common sense.
Corner Stone
I’ve been spending more on mercs, like our govt has since 2003.
Is it just me?
Dexter
Default will solve all problems.
/Wingnut logic.
gene108
I don’t care anymore. I figure, if the government runs out of money, there won’t be a sheriff and courts to evict me, when I stop paying my mortgage because I don’t have job.
Then all I have to do is get sufficiently armed to make sure no one can pry me out of my condo.
Stock up on canned foods and I should be good to go.
Barb (formerly Gex)
I guess we’re going to shrink the economy until we can drown it in the bathtub along with government.
JPL
gene108 Don’t forget the peanut butter and those fake granola bars that will last forever.
Cat Lady
Right on cue the banner ad is for “Invest in Gold”. You can’t eat gold, last I heard. I wonder what cat tastes like – chicken?
ETA: Cat wonders what humans taste like, also too – fish?
beltane
When these numbers are revised, as they inevitably will be, we will see that we are once again technically in a recession, not that it ever felt we were out of a recession.
This austerity bullshit is every bit as stupid as saving money on heating fuel by burning your home’s exterior doors. Hippies know this, while serious people only know what their hallucinations tell them.
Barb (formerly Gex)
I didn’t realize I was supposed to be stocking up for post-civilization times. I’m so screwed. It’s good to have a dog, I guess, but he’s too friendly and useless to be much of an advantage. And I doubt my programming skills will be much use either, and I’m terrible at performing physical labor.
You guys can eat me first, I guess.
somethingblue
GDP, SchmeeDP.
People who fret about this stuff are refusing to see the larger picture. Come August 2, Dinosaur Jesus will descend, wearing his flag pin, eliminate the national debt and cut everybody’s taxes.
Or at least everyone who’s a job-creator and not a secret Kenyan or in a Sharia-law gay marriage.
Mark S.
@beltane:
Well, and what their betters tell them to think.
Seebach
I just don’t get how the idea that the less money being spent, the better, in a recession. How is that common sense?
mr. whipple
I’m curious about what the hippies were right about in this instance.
James Hare
Whatever happened to “I got this shit.”
Thanks, early 20th century Congress, for setting this up.
Martin
@Cat Lady:
Sure you can. Lacks protein though. The upshot is that you’ll shit gold, and well, then you can feel all special and important and stuff.
Jewish Steel
Tightening my merkin belt even as I type this…
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
So, is it normal to go all the way back into the middle of the previous administration’s first term to revise data?
hhex65
Murkins tighten their…
Heritage Foundation’s Economic Policy Director Yosemite Sam was on the NewsHour saying pretty much the same thing, as well as reiterating that he HATES that rabbit.
Frankensteinbeck
Seebach:
It’s not. This is about not doing anything Obama wants. Period. They’d like an order of tax cuts on the side and might have gotten them, but the ‘austerity’ is about not giving Obama what he wants. Anything he wants. Ever.
Mark S.
Apropos of nothing, here are the opening credits to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
We could sure use a guy like Clint Eastwood’s character in Congress. I don’t know if he could get us out of this recession, but at least he’d shoot all the teabaggers.
Martin
We sent him tea partiers instead of Democrats.
Corner Stone
@mr. whipple:
Everything, you lil bitch.
dr. bloor
@Barb:
Ix-nay on the annibal-cay okes-jay. Earlier today, I was informed that a one-off line involving cannibalism, Gilligan’s island and the Palin kids was in extremely poor taste.
beltane
@Barb (formerly Gex): There’s no such thing as post-civilization times. Even the Dark Ages were not without civilization; it’s just that their form of civilization was violent, brutal, and unfair. The idea of stocking up on canned goods is also pretty silly as a long-term solution; a total break-down of society is not the same thing as a passing hurricane. Also, all our well-armed rugged individuals would be easy pickings for the local crime families that would take the place of government. In the absence of a strong state, the family and tribe always reign supreme because that’s the type of animals we are.
General Stuck
There was a lot of poison in the economy when this shit broke apart, and it is going to take some longer for that poison to wring itself out of the system, and that just hasn’t been completed yet.
There has been plenty of government spending in addition to the stimulus, that was new. All the austerity, or deficit reduction for the non hyperbole types, hasn’t even made it into law yet. And if the Reid bill, or something like it gets passed, the cuts are mostly backloaded for years down the line.
It seems more to me that employers are looking at the crazy motherfuckers running the House of Reps, and keeping their powder and capital dry for expanding and hiring. Can anyone blame them?
Weekly jobless claims dipped under 400 grand this week and is a good sign of maybe a better hiring month for July. But this shit was 30 years in the making, and is going to take a while to fix, and with insane tea tards and wingnuts blocking everything that moves with a D or an O attached to it.
dr. bloor
@mr. whipple:
Why don’t you ask your friends over in Great Britain, or are they too busy celebrating the flatline economy that the DFHs knew would result from their austerity budget?
mr. whipple
Why talk like that, asshole?
JPL
Seebach What is this common sense you speak of???
beltane
@mr. whipple: It’s a reference to the long-forgotten stimulus being too small, and all attention being focused on the deficit instead of job creation. Our government is like an ER doctor deciding to treat a gunshot victim by removing his ingrown toenail.
Corner Stone
@mr. whipple: Sorry.
I meant, “We were right about everything, kind sir.”
gwangung
Where I think the hippies might have been “wrong” was that there was no real strategy to handle this misplaced attention other than to speak louder and speak harder.
mr. whipple
beltane: if it’s a case of always being right but never being listened to, maybe it’s time to rethink a communications strategy.
Or else spending a lifetime impotently bitching on the internets.
Ron
My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
General Stuck
It is way overblown what effect the government or a president can have on job creation. They can do some things to soften the ebbs and flows of the economy, until whatever aligns the stars back up for a period of expansion. I mean why do you think they called it “stimulus”?, not for being the vehicle that creates jobs, that is the private sector, and they have their own measuring sticks when it’s time to jump back in game and hire people.
Mark S.
@mr. whipple:
I think it’s more the case of not having the same interests as the top 1%.
Frankensteinbeck
beltane:
We certainly needed more stimulus. We need more now. Unfortunately… well, look at the current GOP House and how they’ve behaved during the debt ceiling debate. They dug in their heels the moment Obama was elected, and they’ve only gotten more recalcitrant. Unless we boot them out in 2012 or the GOP finally splits, I don’t see how we get any spending increases, and it’ll take every trick to keep them from cutting the budget to ribbons. Which, again, is what we’re seeing right now.
General Stuck:
Granted, probably nothing could have just plain fixed this problem. But the hippies were right that more stimulus spending would help. And so was everyone else but the conservative fringe (IE, the whole GOP and some blue dogs). Everyone wanted more. Nobody but the hippies thinks we could have gotten more, but more would have been good!
srv
You know, there isn’t anything wrong with this country that the plot of an old Charlton Heston flick could not fix.
dr. bloor
I agree that there are limits to what the government can do, but in the very least they should avoid doing the wrong thing, which in this case means focusing on taking money out of the economy.
As for the stimulus, the point isn’t to “create jobs” directly, but to give people more money to spend on goods and services. When that happens, corporations will hire more workers in response to greater demand. As Krugman, DeLong, Atrios etc. have pointed out ad infinitum, the problem right now is that nobody has any money to spend.
NonyNony
@mr. whiple
The “hippies” were telling people in power things they didn’t want to believe were true. So they were ignored. You can’t fix stupid and you can’t figure out a communication strategy to get someone to understand something when their job requires them to not understand it.
Hippies are right about lots of things – about why we shouldn’t invade Iraq, about global climate change, about reigning in the banks with better regulation, about the stimulus being too small. Nobody listens to them not because the people in power don’t like hippies, but because the hippies tell the people in power things they don’t want to hear. Such is life.
jl
Those with guts will follow the market signals and… BUY US Treasury securities! Yipeee! You in or you out?
Interests rate fall as Treasury officials discuss delaying auctions next week.
What Kills Us Makes Us Stronger!!: Treasury Bond Price Edition
Brad DeLong, July 29, 2011
” Yes, it is insane. But Ms Market’s apparent belief is that a U.S. “default event” would have no affect on the chances of payment of the coupons and principal on the 10-Year Treasury bond in the long run, but would exert a powerful depressing effect on the economy in the short run, hence a greater excess supply of savings, a lessened demand for risk, and higher prices for long U.S. Treasury bonds. ”
From DeLong’s link to further commentary:
” The meeting [between Treasury and] the 20 primary dealers… focused on the bill auctions next week and a possible delay of the quarterly debt refunding sales, which involves the auction of new three year, 10 year and 30 year securities.
The news accelerated the fall in Treasury yields in mid-afternoon trading on Friday, with the 10-year note at 2.79 per cent, down 16 basis points, its lowest level since November. ”
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/07/what-kills-us-makes-us-stronger-treasury-bond-price-edition.html
Barb (formerly Gex)
beltaneOh shit. My tribe is supremely fucked up and I could barely count on them as a child.
JPL
Wasn’t 2003 about the time the President told everyone to buy houses because they should. I actually think it was later than that but not sure when Greenspan was preaching that fixed mortgage rates were bad because to many folks kept to much money tied up. Adjustable rates were the going thing. Come on folks take that money out and refinance.
Yup good times.
FlipYrWhig
Maybe more like an ER doctor treating a gunshot victim, noticing a funny discoloration on his neck, and coming up with two choices: send him to a dermatologist, or just shoot him again.
Derf
Gee, thanks for the post. Because the other 5 blog posts weren’t enough to make sure people know about the GDP numbers today. Funny how we never get 5 posts when good numbers come out. Like the unemployment numbers yesterday.
You people are hilarious. Bunch of morons addicted to bad news….lol!
boss bitch
Except politics where they shit for brains, won’t listen to others and then are SHOCKED and dismayed as to why voters don’t run to the polls to vote for them.
gwangung
Well, “hippies” weren’t the only ones saying that….
Gwiwer
It pains me to admit this, but I’m quickly approaching the conclusion that this country is too stupid and/or crazy to survive much longer, at least in any recognizable form. I tried to hold out hope, but every day, or lately every hour, seems to bring news that makes me increasingly more pessimistic and nihilistic. I’m starting to think that the only sensible option left is to figure out how to abandon ship before the wingnuts and sociopaths drag me down with them. I’m starting to seriously consider potential options for a new country of residence.
boss bitch
Here is some light reading for what is proposed SO FAR.
Know before you go…
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61238228/How-The-Revised-Reid-Amendment-Compares-To-The-Revised-Boehner-Bill
jl
@42 FlipyrWhig
And, what’s wrong with shooting the patient again?
It’s called ’empiric treatment’. Or homeopathy.
Or something. Whatever. As long as you get to shoot the patient.
beltane
@Frankensteinbeck: I agree with you. I was just answering the question of what the hippie reference is about. This austerity tsunami has developed a momentum of its own, and even in countries with a more vibrant Left than what we have here,it has shown itself to be unstoppable.
jl
@41 JPL:
The CRA made GWB say that, the poor bullied guy.
General Stuck
I think there is more to it than just that, and when these things develop, the interaction between consumers spending and the point where corps decide to get back in the game can become a positive feedback loop that has a number of drivers to it.
But they are right in a meta sense of a basic imbalance between supply and demand created by conservative econ philosophy the nation has devolved to over three decades. But that is a longer term problem that needs work on, to balance it back out with progressive demand friendly policies of all sorts.
For the short term, I think they are right that we shouldn’t be making massive cuts in spending, at the present time. But a ten year budget, with cuts backloaded to when hopefully things are better, is also part of the Keynesian philosophy for long term debt reduction.
OzoneR
No one ever doubted the DFH’s were right, if we did, we’d just ignore them and laugh at them.
The DFH have no fucking clue how to be activists for what they want. They spend more time griping on their own, rather than taking the message progressive do try to spread and running with them. I sense that’s because they just want to be forever on the right side of losing battles rather than actually implementing policy.
FlipYrWhig
@ NonyNony:
Anyone got a strategy for getting some hippies into power? Perhaps some kind of coalition with some non-hippies who have money, resulting in translating a modicum of good hippie ideas into policy? Or some kind of hippie virus that makes more hippies, doing away with the need for that whole half-a-loaf coalition business?
Chris T.
@dr. bloor: The rich folks do. But we’re saving it for the upcoming bargains.
@jl: Just as I predicted a day or two ago.
jl
Things are going slightly worse in Europe than they are here. I guess bond purchasers feel better putting their money in a place (the U.S.) with a fake debt crisis, than a place (Europe) where monetary union problems may produce a real economic crisis.
The trick will be to pass something with cuts put off to the future. That will allow time to erase the cuts (and I predict that effective pressure to erase the bogus cuts in the bogus legislation to fix the bogus debt crisis will begin immediately after it is passed (at least for rich people and corporations, what little cuts they have).
(Edit: forgot to finish my thought, which was financial panic due to bogus debt crisis more likely to begin with downturn in real economy due to unwise short run cuts than the bogus crisis itself and resulting political wrangling. If that scenario occurs, then it will be a real mess, flirting with depression again.)
If Europe continues edging towards a slow motion continent wide bank run (which some think is happening now) or a break up of the Euro, we could see the odd spectacle of a political and constitutional crisis in the US, a downgrade (should an credit agency be so bold as to follow through), with little impact on rates for securities with year or more maturities.
Europe is suffering from Very Serious People too, like the U.S. The real danger would be in Europe gets all DFH, and can get a robust recovery going while the U.S. continues to fool around with destructive nonsense.
FlipYrWhig
@ beltane:
Secular Euroweenies probably outlawed the bully pulpit over there.
Trollenschlongen
That’s what your president says, anyway.
Kane
True hippie values mean you’re not really supposed to care about or attach to any of this. Hippies don’t give a damn for the hollow ego stroke of being right all along.
jl
@54 ChrisT
Give a link and I will read it (later, I have to go now).
boss bitch
Please Hippies, tell us where were the votes for a larger stimulus. Not one DFH has answered this question since its been asked. Even “Kthug” had to (barely)admit the votes weren’t there. Took him several months but he got there.
Getting a policy right is easy. Most of the arguments on this site are about HOW to get those things done. HOW to get past the obstacles. DFH’s dismiss the HOW and wonder why the powers that be don’t listen.
jwb
jl: the market apparently believes that whatever happens in terms of default in the short term, in the long term the interest will be paid, the economy is going bank into the tanker big time, and our government is so dysfunctional that it won’t be able to do anything about it. Given the low point of the yields was at about 2%, there’s still some money to be made if we do in fact slip back into serious recession.
jl
@61 jwb, I am not so optimistic, or pessimistic, or cynical, or whatever, as you. I think serious money to be made if recovery continues to be weaker than previously expected. A serious recession might cause too much disruption in real economy to support expected financial flows.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Fortunately, when President Obama acts, he creates reality for all of us. And while we’re studying that reality – judiciously, as we will – he’ll act again, creating other new realities, which we can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. He is History’s most eloquent, fiercest, and most historical Actor, and… and we, all of us, will be left to just study what he does.
.
.
OzoneR
I don’t think many of them are actually interested in gaining power.
Mark S.
@jl:
I’ve been wondering if that’s on the horizon. That shit’s way above my paygrade, so I can’t even fake an intelligent comment on it.
slightly_peeved
@beltane:
The rhetoric isn’t unstoppable; Ed Miliband has been hammering Cameron on it.
But then, that could well work in the UK, because Miliband has a party that will do coordinated pushback on the Tories until the next election. US Democrats don’t do coordinated, and they don’t seem as patient. I think UK Labour know they’re not having any affect on policy until the next election.
jwb
General Stuck: We should not only not be making cuts right now, we should be spending massively. Extremely low interest rates, out of work construction workers, replace crumbling infrastructure—it’s a perfect match that would have set us up for another 40 years or so. But no we’re frittering it away just like we frittered away the Clinton surplus on a silly massive tax cut and a completely unnecessary war. — I don’t know about DeLong, but Krugman would certainly agree with you that the the medium to long term deficit needs to be addressed, though he doesn’t think it’s overly dire and he thinks the current economic mess is a far greater threat to the long-term deficit than is not doing anything about the long-term deficit now.
dr. bloor
I’m actually less boggled by most of the cuts suggested by Reid and some of the others are making right now, because it’s true there’s a gap to close, and he seems to be as focused as possible on getting the low-hanging fruit. I’d rather they didn’t just now, but I can see the thinking, and I’m old enough to know that “END THE WARS AND RAISE TAXES” isn’t going anywhere.
OTOH, the apathetic–or maybe fatalistic–attitude about stimulus and job creation on the Hill makes me nuts. Can’t solve structural unemployment right away? Well, that’s OK, but do what you can. 7.5% is a hell of a lot better than 9%, economically and politically.
Joeyess
yes, they were.
fuckwit
OK, I’ll bite:
1) Redraw Congressional districts to reflect geography not demographics (Obama mentioned this in passing, and I was surprised nobody else had noticed how Gerrymandering has stepped up the crazy).
2) Public financing for campaigns. State, Federal, dog-catcher, I don’t give a fuck. If one dollar is one vote, then we DO NOT have democracy, we have rich-ocracy. One PERSON one vote is a democracy, and having more money should not give you more votes. This is not hard.
3) Eliminate corporate personhood. Corporations don’t have rights, because they are not people, and only people have rights and votes (see #2 above).
Now, none of those three things will ever fucking happen, partially because they are each mutually dependent upon each other in order to happen– really, none would ever happen until all three happened, which is never. And so the crazy continues.
FlipYrWhig
I kinda have a crush on Krugman going back many years, but I feel like he in particular is over-confident that when you have the right ideas, and prove it, you win the argument. And that mentality is widespread in the blogosphere. But I don’t think it works that way in politics. You can easily be right and yet not be able to persuade anyone to follow your lead. And when that happens, what can you do? You can try sharpening the rhetoric, but what if that doesn’t work either? What if you get stuck in a situation where you’re totally right and the guy you’re arguing with just says, “Don’t care” and “Make me”?
jwb
jl: I don’t have a good feel for how the bond market works when interest rates get this low, but it seems like there is a limit to what can be made as we approach the zero bound.
aisce
@ boss bitch
where were the votes? in the senate. all fifty of them (plus biden). but reconciliation instructions were used for something else instead. the administration bet it all on health insurance reform (and some unrelated student loan reform as a throw-in). it’s a bet that will pay off for the country longer term, but damn if they don’t look like incompetent asses right now on jobs and wages.
for such a “steely eyed pragmatist,” you seem unusually butthurt about it.
as for other things in this thread:
1. lol at the people spinning the weekly unemployment numbers. psychology of round numbers is weird. 398,000 is good news? because it’s “under 400k?” what if it gets revised upwards next week? or what if it had come in at 403,000? would that have been bad news? it’s a whole 1.3% difference!
2. you would think some of those new generation billionaires from silicon valley and private equity land who claim to support liberal causes would throw more of their money around in political ventures like the right wing energy players do, for example. makes you wonder why nobody of the purported left has ever made an effort to control a significant media property in this country in the vein of rupert murdoch. don’t give me that air america shit.
slightly_peeved
Welcome to parliamentary democracy, USA. The minority party doesn’t really get to do anything but bitch until the next election.
Martin
Well, they’re not willing to destroy the success of their companies to do that. It’s easy to boycott iPhones or Facebook, hard to boycott coal power plants.
jwb
FlipYrWhig: He’s an academic, and as an academic the best argument is suppose to win. Of course, he’s also an economist, and from everything I’ve been reading about the discipline, it seems that certain lines of argument are barred from being taught at some schools and excluded from publication in many prestigious journals. In any case, he doesn’t fully recognize that the best argument will frequently lose the politics.
OzoneR
By repealing the Voting Rights Act? A liberal triumph?
Also, because two of them require constitutional amendments
Corner Stone
@boss bitch:
bitch, derp derp derp.
except for where you and all your fellow travelers have been so fucking successful at politics, right?
I mean, you and your 12% have got this, amirite?
Corner Stone
@boss bitch: hey, show me where you are without me.
Yeah. Not so much getting done without me and my ilk, eh?
PGE
Even if the votes weren’t there at the time, that’s no reason for the President not to have pushed for a larger stimulus, and accepted a smaller one in the end. He’d then be in the position to tell congress “I was right, you were wrong, correct your mistake”. As it is, he owns a failed policy. If he’d listened to the hippies he wouldn’t.
FlipYrWhig
What kind of hippie were you in your heyday, Corner Stone?
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: The dirtiest kind.
FlipYrWhig
Good thing that’s exactly what he did, then. Remember how the Specter group took a hack out of the package at the end? And Obama accepted it? I guess that’s why the hippies never give him grief about that decision.
FlipYrWhig
@ Corner Stone : From what I know of my mom’s youth, there’s a possibility you’re my real father.
OzoneR
Except the economy was in free fall and we needed to actually, you know, DO something
You’re kidding right? The left would have called him a sellout for not continuing the fight for a larger stimulus (why do I know, because this is the strategy he used on Bush tax cuts, fight for them, then when you lose, get something in return for giving in and he still got blasted by the left), and the right would say the failure of the stimulus shows a larger one would have been worse.
This is why DFH suck.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: I’d never raise anyone with your sensibilities. Or lack thereof.
You’re ex-communicated!
Corner Stone
@OzoneR: We’ll never ever know except for your fevered little brain, will we?
Because they never fucking bothered.
FlipYrWhig
@ Corner Stone : You’re as free as a bird now.
AAA Bonds
LOL, OOPS
OzoneR
@Corner Stone
Do I really have to ask again to stop responding to me?
Since you did, we do know what would’ve happened because that’s what happened when they did bother on other issues.
AAA Bonds
I hereby ban the following people from responding to me:
AAA Bonds
Boy, I bet Paul Krugman wishes he could do that!
Corner Stone
@OzoneR: Yes. You need to keep asking me to stop responding to you.
In fact, you may consider putting together a concise 12 page response of why I should continue letting you spread your garbage nonsense across this site, with no rebuttal.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: I prefer Dust in the Wind.
Corner Stone
@AAA Bonds:
“Nothing can be done!”
OzoneR
Well I guess I’ll just have to repeat “Because you’ve acted like a c#nt to me ever since I started commenting here a few months ago and I want no interaction with you” over and over again for 12 pages.
Also, what rebuttal. You’re only rebuttal is to accuse me (and other people apparently) of being someone else who you had a problem with a long time ago.
Chris T.
@jl (54): it was just some comments in another thread here on b-j, but I don’t remember which one.
It basically boils down to: the principal and interest on the bonds will get paid, and the usual “flight to quality” will increase demand for Treasuries, while supply will have dried up. Even those who want to flee T-bonds and T-bills are, for the most part, unable to do so (because of the sheer dollar volumes involved—the only alternatives today with large enough markets are CDSs and currency trades and both are far too risky for those wanting to “flee” Treasuries due to risk!).
Over the short to medium term (months, maybe even a few years), spreads should widen substantially. Muni bond prices will drop as their yields rise, forcing states and cities to cut services and raise taxes. As Krugman noted earlier, we’re right on the 1937 path.
The tl;dr version: history may not repeat, but it rhymes. Great Recession rhymes with Great Depression. Look to the boom and bust cycles that happened in 1929, or the panics of 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, etc.
Xenos
@Chris T.: ‘Depression’ was a euphemism for ‘panic’, and was used until there was a depression so bad that they had to come up with the euphemism ‘recession’ in 1937. This recession is so bad that we will have a new euphemism for the downturn of 2022.
Corner Stone
@OzoneR: You flat lie and other times spread mild disinformation here.
You keep doing that and I’m gonna keep bashing you.
You fucking worthless git.
sneezy
@ Barb (formerly Gex)
Oooh, well put. Very nice!
OzoneR
@ Corner Stone
Take an ambien and get some sleep, you’re overstimulated.
boss bitch
you must be on crack. So Obama allows the US to go into a depression but that’s cool ’cause he’ll be able to say, ‘See I was right’? why am I even surprised at this twisted thinking? You do realize that once the public knows that he could have compromised and prevented a depression that they’d demand his head on a platter?
FFS! like I said — policy? easy. politics? shit for brains.
stinkdaddy
@boss bitch: So what you’re saying is you you completely missed the part about settling for a smaller stimulus? Nobody said “hold out for a bigger one.” They said ask for a bigger one, accept the one he got anyway, then use the leverage gained when the smaller one didn’t get the job done to ask for another.
Instead the Obama admin pulled the usual schtick of acting like they had gotten the best bill possible, and not only look like idiots with horribly-blown UE projections but they don’t have any room to suggest we try again.
If I had this much trouble with basic reading comprehension I’d probably avoid discussing the makeup of other peoples’ brains. Maybe that’s just me.
FlipYrWhig
@ stinkdaddy : So now the fact that there was, indeed, a larger stimulus on the table before Specter et al took a hatchet to it doesn’t matter, because Obama didn’t properly and convincingly emote while accepting it? Wasn’t the point supposed to be that he should have asked for more and only accepted less if he had to? Because that’s exactly what happened. Seems to me that the actual criticism should be that he hasn’t done a good job of making the case for _additional_ stimulus. That’d be a lot more straightforward than this whole structure of what his demeanor should have been the last time.
Keith G
I have been having problems with my browser, so this comment is just a test.