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."

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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)."

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

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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'?"

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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.

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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

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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."

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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."

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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."

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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."

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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:"

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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

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The Feast of the Hostage Taker

What Krugman says... again. Expect another epic cave. But, hey, what do the dirty fucking hippies know anyway, right?

Held Hostage Over the Debt Ceiling - NYTimes.com:

"But the president can’t call the extortionists’ bluff unless he’s willing to confront them, and accept the associated risks.

According to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, Mr. Obama has told Democrats not to draw any “line in the sand” in debt negotiations. Well, count me among those who find this strategy completely baffling. At some point — and sooner rather than later — the president has to draw a line. Otherwise, he might as well move out of the White House, and hand the keys over to the Tea Party."

Daily Kos: Krugman gets this right:

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Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Charges Against the N.S.A.’s Thomas Drake : The New Yorker:

"When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.”"

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Looky! Someone is feeling all mavericky again. Good effort, St. McCain, but your legacy from hence forth will be known as Palinized. And please tell your daughter to stop calling people 'honey'. She's a 20-something from Arizona, not a 50-something waitress from Tupelo.

McCain: Torture did not lead to bin Laden | The Raw Story

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Don't tell me what to never do.

Dr. Mardy Grothe: 'Neverisms': 11 Things You Should Never Do, Never Say, Never Forget (PHOTOS)

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Unwise Center

This article is as comprehensive as I've read regarding what is being called the Hackleburg tornado. Hard to put into words, but somehow they did.

132 Miles of Devastation: EF-5 tornado deadliest in United States in last 56 years | al.com

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I get a bit put off by the bastardization of the word 'elite' when what they really mean is 'privileged-hasn'tworkarealjobever-powerhungry-assholes'.

But, yeah, what the professors says... again.

The Unwisdom of Elites - NYTimes.com:

"The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Let me focus mainly on what happened in the United States, then say a few words about Europe."

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Maybe the Democrats will finally realize this on 1/2013 when President Huntsman is being sworn in. Doubt it, though. That lot doesn't do much learnin' from past mistakes.

Appealing To The “Center” Drives Away Voters:

"The way to grow your voting base is NOT to try to “appeal” to some group that is not left or right, but is “between” something called left and right. To get more voters — especially the “independent” ones who won’t identify with a party — is to take stands, be more committed to progressive positions, and to articulate them more clearly."

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The operative here is 'with the right policies' so, not gonna happen in the States.

Renewable energies could supply 80 percent of world’s demand by 2050: UN report | The Raw Story:

"ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Governments approved on Monday a U.N. report projecting that renewable energies such as solar, wind or hydropower could leap to supply almost 80 percent of the world's demand by 2050, with the right policies."

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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."

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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."

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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."
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"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."

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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.'"

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Wait for it...

The scariest car crash ever caught on video was real

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Duh.

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

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