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"The president is missing," Paul Krugman writes - or at least his version of what Obama should...
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Monday, April 11, 2011, 5:50 PM ET"The president is missing," Paul Krugman writes - or at least his version of what Obama should be: "the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected." By "caving in so completely" on the "terrible" budget deal, Obama "set a baseline for even bigger concessions over the next few months."
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This news story has 47 comments:
Don't you guys get enough ad revenue without having to bait the trolls?
OMG, I actually hope the jerk is right.
Actually - disgusting!
A joke, a farce; we should all be weeping for this country.
Sorry to break it to you.
The social security trust fund, has already been embezzled.
so if you dont want government healthcare, simply refuse to join and pay for healthcare from your own pocket or buy private insurance (both of which are available to you)
Next, there are more wealthy dems in the congress than reps
in fact 6 of the top 10 are dems
(easier to be liberal when you are rich or dont care about money)
Your simplistic left wing populism with no evidence to back up any of your statements is amusing.
But we took your concerns seriously and we sent the police to capture the wealthy red-handed stealing retirement savings and health insurance at the Treasury but all they found was a lot of empty beer bottles, pizza cartons and IOU's left behind by Congress.
Go work on your tan.
Every now and then I look up and actually hear what you say, Terry. You get a thumbs-up from me tonight.
(a) the more conservative elements of the Republican Party are overplaying their hand and thereby alienating significant elements of the public, and
(b) within six weeks time when the debt ceiling issue is foremost, he, the President, will have re-characterized and regained control of the issues entailed
Now that Congressman Ryan’s proposal for debt reduction has become established in the public mind as Republican policy, the way is open for the President to make a counterproposal and, presumably, the debt ceiling issue becomes subsumed within the larger issues or recovery and debt reduction over time in accordance with a stated agenda.
My real points are that last weekends events are only part of a much larger debate, that the President’s goal last weekend was to gain the tactical high ground for the broader battle ahead and, in any event, it is simply too early to judge the tactics being followed by the various players or to predict the ultimate outcome.
Your quite correct that in my earlier comment I was just making some guesses and inferences which subsequent events will prove to have been without foundation. Time will tell.
Americans are smarter than this. Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me. This moronic Keynesian policy the progressives still cling to will be our undoing! We are in a De-leveraging "Super Cycle", it is ignorant to think we could work through all this in a year or two, or three. The recent leverage heaped back on the system will collapse it once and for all. Bernanke, and all those responsible need to be held accountable! Hey Paul, history will record your name. I tend to believe it will not be in a favorable light.
We are Americans! We will overcome anything.
You can bet your ass it will be painful.
50 years of debt gluttony will do that for you.
But as long as "we" stick together and rely on each other, we will come through. The individual is paramount! Collective anything just isn't cool! I pray to God to watch over this wonderful little experiment we call,
The United States of America.
Jerry
Lets face it. Obama is a nice guy. He's smart as a college professor should be. He's a good speaker in terms of sounding themes. He is well-meaning. But thats about it. He avoids conflict. He is disengaged with ordinary people. He lectures rather than inspires now that he's in office.
It is unfortunate that he inherited a terrible fiscal situation. Maybe under different circumstances he would have actually done things differently, but we'll never know. At this point he's just doing whatever he's told he needs to do to get re-elected (or doing whatever his political hacks say he needs to do to get re-elected - I think they don't give the American people enough credit to know when someone isn't leading).
Krugman can see the battle has been lost - more cuts are coming and even the Democrats will line up to reduce various programs. Perhaps if Obama had taken control of the stimulus package instead of giving it to Reid/Pelosi we actually might have built some things that would pay dividends for many years and people would be more open to Obama's way of thinking - but thats all water under the bridge and we all know it. The time has come to cut wide and deep - to take our medicine before things get truly bad for the country.
I see another angle on Obama which overall can be summarized as a lack of leadership.
He has made a practice of running against specific ideas or people like GWB who had an 8 year track record that he could second guess all the while only offering high level squishy ideas of what he would support many of which were apple pie. His campaign rhetoric was like an extra-terresterial who landed on earth and questioned why we followed such quaint ideas by men who did not know that much. This of course was gushed over by the GWB hating press. And people wanted to believe how simple it was for this self-proclaimed superior being because they wanted all problems to go away of wars and finance so they could go back to their lives. And they were willing to ignore the fact he had no experience on this earth.
Even if Obama did not inherit a bad fiscal situation his lack of leadership is in all areas. He has shown no economic or fiscal leadership by most measures. His foreign policy is a joke and he is lucky to have Hillary on point with Bill in the shadows. All the international ga ga for Obama is gone as everyone sees him as an empty suit. The recent Libya policy or whatever it could be called is the worst approach to a military conflict we have seen since the Vietnam War and we know what a disaster that became.
Obama will do whatever it takes to get re-elected as 3 square meals a day in the WH is pretty cool so I am sure he will look for the winning hand regardless of what cards are dealt. Krugman on the other hand is more of a politician than an economist and wants to go down with the ship.
Both of them are flawed.
Krugman appears to be long Crony Capitalism, short the middle class, American family.
(Ebworthen, credit due)
He is trying to herd cats !!!
It is not the debt ceiling that will destroy Obama but rather the debt itself. That is a mountain coming down.
After 8 years of Bush, we were desperate for some real "hope & change". Obama had the right media message at the right time in history and as I said previously, the Pubs assisted with probably one of the worst prez/VP combo that they could possibly come up with.
So while the Dems kicked Hillary in the teeth, the Pubs let their inner child loose and put up McCain/Palin.
Shedidn't get caught plagiarizing her college papers, she was smart enough to write her own.
Whether she is qualified to be President or not is another question that does not have any objective standards that are applied to all candidates because the real goal is just to take Palin down. If lack of experience was an issue then Obama should have kicked off the bus first but our press is great at applying double standards because they are so biased and vindictive. So now here we are with likely the best candidate in Hillary not making the cut and us staring at a 2nd term of empty rhetoric from Obama.
Love Palin or hate Palin she sure brings out the worse behavior in the press and the Dems and that is shameful to watch.
What I find intresting why people even care about her. She is very personable, your girl next door, pretty too. But that is about it. She is not qualified to be a president , neither was Bush junior for that matter. Obama apepared to be qualified but now it is becoming apparent that he has no base and therfore no power.
We need somebody capable and utterly boring and unfacsinating in power ( someone who is used to hard work), not a celebrity like Palin or Obama.
I think if Palin was as ugly as Madeline Albright, Janet Reno, or Hillary that might be more likely to accept her. LOL
www.hadlock.org/images...
"Obama appeared to be qualified"
Please elaborate on what basis you make that statement. Community organizer? Get real. Perhaps it was all the "here" votes.
Ironic isn't it that one of the few votes he actually did, not to raise the deficit limit, he now "regrets".
Follow this with the Rockefeller/Nixon/Bush "Moderate" Government Republican that will do anything to remain the power of the Republican Party.
Together, these two Political Factions will join forces to hold off the Tea Party Conservatives any real Independents and small Government that may be in their way, Politically.
We can all wait for the Income Tax Increase in the future, they will start with the "Rich" but, everyone know there are not enough of this group, so, they will move down the Income Chain to the Middle Class earners. All the while, protecting the Federal and State Employment Force of Political Workers and Contributors.
When we all figure out that "The Political Class" is the real problem, and need to be confronted and identified. And soon. Maybe, we could start to see the start of reducing the size and cost of State and Federal Government. Maybe.
How is that different from a republican politicians. All of them will do anything to stay in power, this is why they are professional politicans in the first place.
People better prepare, because we're done.
Obama play them and is now rising!