Primary

Krugman.

Meh, Bleh, and Eek - NYTimes.com:

"At this point, we just have to accept it as a fact of life: Obama doesn’t, and maybe can’t, do outrage — no matter how much the situation calls for it. The purpose of last night’s speech, if there was one, was to rally the nation against crazy Republicans. But there were no memorable lines, no forceful statements of the very stark reality. “Now, now, that’s not reasonable” isn’t going to move multitudes.

It turns out, I’m sorry to say, that he wasn’t the one we were waiting for."

_______

He doesn't represent me. He doesn't represent Progressives. I will not vote for Obama in 2012. I do not believe he deserves re-election, the alternative be damned.

Obama and the Left: a problem for the WH? - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

"At this point, the only factor that can lead someone to deny the significance of this trend is willful blindness. And it's hard to imagine those numbers going anywhere but down as the realization sets in that it is the President who, now by his own admission, has been working hard to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, and as the President increasingly pursues what is clearly his 2012 strategy: casting himself as a trans-partisan centrist (his doing so vindicates, in my view, those of us who have long argued that there was nothing 'new' about Obama's politics; it was just slightly re-branded Clintonian, Third Way triangulation)."

_______

Mr. President, What is this "Shared Sacrifice" You Talk Of?

_______

Daily Kos: Short and Succinct on MY Social Security:

"'Entitlement' my ass, I PAID cash for my social security insurance! Our benefits aren't some kind of charity or handout. Congressional benefits -- free premium federal health care, enormous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, 3 weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days -- now THAT is welfare! And they have the nerve to call my retirement 'entitlement'?"

_______

For the sake of what's left of any soul of the Democratic Party, Obama needs to be challenged.

Bernie Sanders Says It Would Be A ‘Good Idea’ To Primary President Obama | ThinkProgress

SANDERS: Brian, believe me, I wish I had the answer to your question. Let me just suggest this. I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president, who believe that with regard to Social Security and other things, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president. Who cannot believe how weak he has been for whatever reason in negotiating with Republicans, and there’s deep disappointment. So my suggestion is, I think one of the reasons the president has made the move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama believes he’s doing. [...] So I would say to Ryan, discouragement is not an option. I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.

_______
_____
___

Noodle

Change. Dammit. Change.

The only deal is no deal:

"What am I willing to give up so that Congress will follow through on its constitutional obligation to protect the credit of the nation? Exactly what I'm willing to give up to ensure that the sun rises, that water is wet, and that Republicans will toady to the rich. Nothing, that's what I'll give up.

No matter how many times it may be said, and no matter who says it, there is no 'unique opportunity' here. There's no opportunity at all. There's not even any here, here."

_______

Ted Strickland: Dems' Concessions On Debt Debate Are 'Very Troubling':

"In an interview with The Huffington Post, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) aired his concern that the fiscal 'belt-tightening' President Obama and many Democrats have pursued has effectively diminished the party's brand. Democrats, he argued, have 'allowed the center of the political debate to be shifted so far to the right that we find ourselves debating on their territory and using Republican language.'

'It's very troubling,' he said."

_______

Daily Kos: Obama's Speak/Doublespeak on Entitlements:

"If you believe that targeting retirements at a time when unemployment is rising, as are CEO pay and bonuses, at a time when new jobs are not being created at a rate that is near enough to take a bite out of this recession, if you believe that targeting entitlements at this time is some sort of shared sacrifice, after we the taxpayer bailed out criminally negligent banking institutions for at times, fraudulent practices, and not a single one of 'em has gone to jail, then you my friend, are contributing to the destruction of the middle class, and the continued oppression of the working poor."

_______

The Very Serious People Still Want That Grand Bargain And Don't Care What It Does To The Economy -- Or Us | Crooks and Liars:

"Let's tell the emperor he has no clothes: Cutting spending during a prolonged recession is about as likely to reduce the long-term deficit as rubbing your lucky rabbit's foot. This is disaster capitalism, plain and simple:"

_______

Daily Kos: We’ve Already Lost So Cancel Any Perceivable Celebration:

"We have abandoned Keynes and common sense and moved in with Milton Freidman while partaking in shock doctrine austerity binge drinking, but we’re told we won’t get drunk. We’ll just have a few drinks while we forget what we are supposed to stand for as Democrats.

So what the hell are we celebrating anyway?"

_______

Prophetic.

AMERICAblog News: Taylor Marsh, 2007: Obama "wants to hold hands with the wingnuts to save some fantasy Social Security ‘crisis.’ "

_______

Because this makes as much sense as anything else these days...

Man wins right to wear pasta strainer on head in driver’s license photo | The Raw Story

_______
_____
___

Evil or Stupid

Krugman:

The Obama-Keynes Mystery - NYTimes.com:

"I’m not alone in marveling at the extent to which Obama has thrown his rhetorical weight behind anti-Keynesian economics; Ryan Avent is equally amazed, as are many others. And now he’s endorsing the structural unemployment story too.

To those defending Obama on the grounds that he’s saying what he has to politically, I have two answers. First, words matter — as people who rallied around Obama in the first place because of his eloquence should know. Yes, he has to make compromises on policy grounds — but that doesn’t mean he has to adopt the right’s rhetoric and arguments. The effect of his intellectual capitulation is that we now have only one side in the national argument.

Second, since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for actually knowing better? Maybe at some point we have to accept that he believes what he’s saying."

No, We Can’t? Or Won’t? - NYTimes.com

_______

Digby

Hullabaloo:

"Everyone's always trying to figure out what Barack Obama really wants. But it's not a mystery. He's been clear about it from the very beginning. What people have to face is the fact that he is a rigid leader who refuses to change course in the face of changing circumstances. Perhaps that's a strength at times. But in this one, it's a tragic weakness. We have over 9% official unemployment and probably double that in reality. The housing sector is still dead. Growth is anemic and very possibly about to go south. His grand bargain vision from 2009 was always anathema to the liberal project. Today it is destructive on an entirely different level."

_______

Richard (RJ) Eskow: A President On the Verge of a Political Breakdown:

"Yet instead of pushing for the spending that's needed, the President keeps reinforcing Republican arguments instead. According to the AP he told reporters in the Rose Garden that 'uncertainty over whether lawmakers will raise the nation's debt limit is keeping businesses from hiring.' (What was keeping them from hiring before that?) Economic advisor Austan Goolsbee evaded the issue of badly-needed stimulus funding as well as anyone could - that is, not very well at all - while repeating that ill-advised 'business confidence' mantra."

_______

Daily Kos: President Obama and the New Deal:

"In the past week, we witnessed the truly astonishing spectacle of a wide array of Democratic Congressional leaders feeling it necessary to stand up to a Democratic President in order to defend the programs and values that have defined the Democratic Party since the Great Depression. Just think about that. And now some consider it a victory that there probably won't be any immediate cuts to Social Security, even though there will be a trillion or more in overall budget cuts, without any major increases in revenue. And cutting Social Security is now safe to discuss on both sides of the aisle. To use digby's own comparison, only Nixon could go to China; and while Reagan and the Bushes did not even seriously try, a Democratic president may be opening the door to the dismantling of the New Deal."

________

With Entitlements on the Table, Obama Plans to Go Big on a Budget Deal | The Nation:

"Even still, it’s extremely disheartening; it demonstrates that, as always, Obama is willing to cater to the center-right in a huge way (entitlement cuts) for the sake of a small political advantage.

Moreover, this proposal is further evidence that the debt ceiling negotiations were an intentional decision on Obama’s part. The president genuinely believes in deficit reduction, and chose to use the debt ceiling as an opportunity to cut spending with significant bipartisan cover. Obama hasn’t been fooled into these negotiations, nor is he playing rope-a-dope or a complex game of 11-dimensional chess. This is what he wants."

_______

Obama's Political, Economic Advisers Say Jobless Rate Won't Matter in 2012 | MyFDL:

"Now the people who helped Obama defraud voters by channeling everyone’s hope for change have convinced themselves he won the election because they’re political geniuses.

The lastest example of this delusion is Obama’s senior campaign adviser, David Plouffe, who confidently told Bloomberg that going into the 2012 elections with over 8 percent unemployment and no meaningful jobs programs will not hurt Obama’s chances for reelection:"

_______

If the drinking game is 'How many Bush/Rove talking points can the Obama administration parrot and enact' then our country is headed towards alcohol poisoning.

Panetta makes 9/11 gaffe in Iraq | The Raw Story

_______
_____
___

Shivved

Jesus fucking Christ, for the sake of liberalism and this country, Ronald Wilson Obama must not be elected to another term.

Unbelievable.

Obama puts Social Security, Medicare cuts on the table | The Raw Story

Miles Mogulescu: Republicans and Obama are Like Thelma and Louise Racing Toward the Cliff:

"I wish I could see an exit from this theater before the movie ends in disaster."

And nobody gives a damn....

_______
_____
___

Let's Not Be Civil

Starting off with Krugman and Stiglitz today.

FINALLY! Damn right.

Let’s Not Be Civil - NYTimes.com:

"So let’s not be civil. Instead, let’s have a frank discussion of our differences. In particular, if Democrats believe that Republicans are talking cruel nonsense, they should say so — and take their case to the voters."

_______

Look up the etymology of the term 'heads will roll'.

Society | Vanity Fair:

"Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

_______

The real parasites, indeed.

When Alan Met Ayn: "Atlas Shrugged" And Our Tanked Economy | The Awl:

"For those who are inclined to find such ideas ludicrous, the book will fail, and utterly; its premises betray a bottomless ignorance of the deep interconnectedness of humankind, and the needs—economic, social, emotional, intellectual—of one human being for another. In the real world, someone is growing lettuce, someone else is writing a book or feeding a baby, yet another is designing the rails of a high-speed train. Someone else is teaching six-year-olds to read. All of us benefit from all of these activities—sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Each life can and does touch many thousands of others. The idea of the Nietszchean Superman who acts against his fellows (whom Rand called 'the mob' and 'looters' and whatnot) is consequently fatally flawed. Not even the Superest Superman can grow all his own food, make all his own paper, design and build his own cars and airplanes, etc. (Hadn't Rand ever read Robinson Crusoe?) Humanity is a collaborative project, as well as a project of individuals."
.....
"The real parasites, it turns out, are not the looting masses but the Objectivist elites (what is it that these hedge fund managers 'create' again?), rabidly pursuing their own 'happiness' at the cost of our social safety net, our environment and the prosperity and well-being of the world's people. So much for the triumph of individualism."

_______

AMERICAblog News: Conservative David Frum: Two cheers for the welfare state:

"If food stamps and unemployment insurance, and Medicaid'--an Axis of Not-Evil!--'mitigated those disasters, then two cheers for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid.'"

_______

Wait for it...

The scariest car crash ever caught on video was real

_______

Duh.

Cursing makes you feel better when hurt: study | The Raw Story

_______
_____
___

Social Un-Security

Don't kid yourself. Obama is coming after our social security.

If you aren't disgusted yet, you really aren't paying attention.

Tax Cut Deal A Hidden Threat To Social Security:

"WASHINGTON - The tax cut deal that President Obama struck with congressional Republicans contains a provision that could ultimately be the undoing of Social Security, say Senate Democrats and backers of the old-age and disability program."

_______

The Obama Tax Deal: Giving the Hostage Takers More Hostages | TPMCafe:

"However, after further thought and conversations with people around Washington (first and foremost, Nancy Altman, the co-director of Social Security Works), I have become convinced that this deal would be a disaster. Paul Krugman does a nice job laying out the limited benefits of the stimulus, but my greater concern is what happens to Social Security in this story. Effectively, this deal would give us a permanent two-percentage point reduction in the payroll tax in a Washington climate very hostile to Social Security."

_______

Daily Kos: The payroll tax holiday won't be temporary:

"But as I wrote yesterday, there's a problem: the payroll tax holiday won't be temporary. Sure, it's supposed to be for just one year, but if you think Republicans are going to miss an opportunity to demand permanent extension of a tax cut -- especially one that covers the cost of Social Security -- then you haven't been living in the same country as the rest of us. In fact, I can already hear Republicans saying that it must be extended, because now is not the time to raise taxes on the American public. And I can hear them now, laughing privately about the fiscal crisis that such an extension will cause for Social Security."

_______

Remember when Obama was a Democrat:

_______
_____
___

Swim, Eat, Pray You Don't Get Cancer... or Old.

Remember when the air at ground zero was deemed safe to breathe by the government in 2001. Notice all of the cancers and deaths occurring from ground zero workers now.

The government lied then and the government is lying now.

You are fucking crazy if you consume any gulf food for the next 100 years.

Sad day when you realize the black Democrat you supported is just as craven as the white Republican you hated.

Instead of splashing around in the gulf and eating its food for a couple of days, maybe Obama should go all in and move down to the gulf and feed his children gulf sea food everyday for the next 10 years. Let's see how that works out for him. Maybe then he can petition the government for help and have the Republicans that he's enabled prevent passage of any type of bill that might help the various cancers growing in his family members.

Spike Lee: US government lying about oil spill cleanup | Raw Story:

"Filmmaker Spike Lee is calling a 'lie' a U.S. government report that 75 percent of the spilled Gulf Coast oil is gone."

_______

Louisiana Fishermen Slam Claims that Oil Almost Gone, Seafood Safe | SolveClimate.com:

'The last thing I want to do is scare anyone away from the seafood down here,' said Dawn Nunez, standing at the counter of the shrimp wholesale business and deli she owns in the tiny fishing town of Hopedale. 'But if I’m not eating it or feeding it to my children, I can’t advise anyone else to eat it either.'

On their dock across the street, Dawn's husband Marty Nunez pulls a clump of oil-ridden marsh grass out of a plastic bag."

_______

Think Progress � DOJ gags scientists studying BP disaster.:

"In an explosive first-hand account, ecosystem biologist Linda Hooper-Bui describes how Obama administration and BP lawyers are making independent scientific analysis of the Gulf region an impossibility. Hooper-Bui has found that only scientists who are part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process to determine BP’s civil liability get full access to contaminated sites and research data. Pete Tuttle, USFWS environmental contaminant specialist and Department of Interior NRDA coordinator, admitted to The Scientist that “researchers wishing to formally participate in NRDA must sign a contract that includes a confidentiality agreement” that “prevents signees from releasing information from studies and findings until authorized by the Department of Justice at some later and unspecified date.” Hooper-Bui writes:"

_______

Scientists Find Evidence That Oil And Dispersant Mix Is Making Its Way Into The Foodchain:

"Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain."

_______

Scientists say up to 79% of oil remains in Gulf | Raw Story:

"A group of scientists have found that up to 79% of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico may still remain, contradicting earlier findings by a U.S. government study that found nearly 75% of the oil had dissipated.

Although the new estimate is based on the same data used by the U.S. government's study, the researchers came to radically different conclusions."

_______

Crabs provide evidence oil tainting Gulf food web | Raw Story:

'It would suggest the oil has reached a position where it can start moving up the food chain instead of just hanging in the water,' said Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans. 'Something likely will eat those oiled larvae ... and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on.'"

_______

Scientists: BP dispersants have made spill more toxic | Video Cafe:

"Last week, a group of independent scientists called for an 'immediate halt' to the use of dispersants. In what was called a 'consensus statement,' they warned that dispersants pose 'grave risks to marine life and human health.'"

_______

He doesn't listen to Democrats, duh.

NYT: Democrats in Congress should remind Obama of his campaign promises | Raw Story:

"'President Obama campaigned for office on an explicit promise to rein in these abuses,' the Times notes, citing a 2008 position paper which promised that 'as president, Barack Obama would revisit the Patriot Act to ensure that there is real and robust oversight of tools like National Security Letters, sneak-and-peek searches, and the use of the material witness provision.'

'But instead of implementing reasonable civil liberties protections, like taking requests for e-mail surveillance before a judge,' the editorial concludes, 'the administration is proposing changes to the law that would allow huge numbers of new electronic communications to be examined with no judicial oversight. Democrats in Congress can remind Mr. Obama of his campaign promises by refusing this request.'"

_______

Social Security is under its greatest threat from a Democrat and the uber-conservative cat-food commission he put together to develop cover for eliminating SS.

THEN the Democrat makes his regular Saturday morning address last weekend trying to scare voting Dems to the polls by saying that Republicans are trying to destroy SS.

Orwell would be proud, Obama.

Whacking the Old Folks | The Nation:

"What's extraordinary about this assault on Social Security is that a Democratic president is leading it. Obama is arm in arm with GOP conservatives like Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson, who for decades has demonized Social Security as a grave threat to the Republic and has spread some $12 million among economists, think tanks, foundations and assorted front groups to sell his case. If Obama pulls the deal off, this will be his version of 'Nixon goes to China'—a leader proving his manhood by going against his party's convictions. Even if he fails, the president will get some protective cover on the deficit issue. After all, he is targeting Big Government's most beloved and trusted program—the New Deal's most prominent pillar.

Obama's initiative rests on two falsehoods spread by Peterson's propaganda—the notion that Social Security somehow contributes to the swollen federal deficits and that cutting benefits will address this problem. Obama and his advisers do not say this in so many words, but their rhetoric implies that Social Security is a big source of the deficit problem. Major media promote the same falsehoods."

_______

Deficit-cutting ax may fall on Social Security - Yahoo! News:

"The Social Security system today faces a threat greater than the drive for partial privatization by George W. Bush.

'That's not hyperbolic,' says Nancy Altman, codirector of Social Security Works, a group dedicated to preserving the system that provides income for 50 million retirees, the disabled, millions of children, and more. Her fear is that President Obama's bipartisan National Com�mis�sion on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will recommend cuts in Social Security benefits as one means to reduce the burgeoning federal budget deficit. If 14 of 18 commissioners agree on a deficit-cutting plan, it could be passed at a lame-duck session of Congress without the extensive hearings and discussions that normally precede such an important measure.

'There would be little chance for the public to have an influence,' says Ms. Altman."

_______
_____
___