Comments Posted By michael reynolds
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If Howard Fineman said it it's almost sure to be wrong. (I'm still waiting for the mirror image Time and Newsweek covers announcing that all is lost, woe is us, before I get heavily back into the stock market.)
Here's my bet: a year from today (March 11, 2010) we'll have found a bottom to the stock market and the housing market. Employment will be coming back up, crossing 7.5%. And Obama will be polling at 55% or better.
Obama quickly achieved consensus on Iraq (remember Iraq?); he set new policy on Gitmo and torture; he rushed additional forces to Afghanistan; he overturned the ban on stem cell funding; passed a rather major stimulus bill; laid out an also rather major mortgage rescue plan. That's in 50 days.
He hasn't done as well on banks. But it may simply be that there are no good options. It's possible that your party (with some assists from my party) and a bunch of MBA geniuses so thoroughly screwed the pooch that there's no unscrewing it.
Of course maybe Geithner's just a putz. But I'll stand by my bet.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 11.03.2009 @ 13:35
Oh, so it's a loading problem. I thought the blank page represented your deepest thoughts.
Sorry. You can't really expect me to let a set-up like that go.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 11.03.2009 @ 14:23
ON FAILURE - OBAMA'S AND AMERICA'S
Postagoras:
Apparently the Democrats showed they wanted Bush to fail in Iraq by giving him every single soldier or marine he asked for, every single dollar, every single weapon.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 9.03.2009 @ 12:03
Foobar:
I'm 54 and have yet to see a budget -- Republican or Democrat -- that added up. How did an "off-budget" trillion for Iraq add up? How did Mr. Bush's prescription drug plan add up? How has the baby boomer medicare/medicaid surge ever come close to adding up?
You don't start balancing the budget in the middle of a deep recession, you balance it when times are good. Mr. Clinton and a GOP congress did that (more or less.) Mr. Bush and a GOP congress sent the country hurtling into a massive deficit and debt increase, simultaneously increasing the size of government and cutting taxes.
Now we have no better choice than to keep digging into deeper debt. The Obama taxes come into play in 2011. Hopefully we'll be out of the worst of this by then. No one knows, of course. But hopefully. So what we have right now is a massive increase in debt, a hefty tax cut for most people that happens right away, and a tax increase down the road to begin cutting some of the debt we're taking on now as a consequence of previous mismanagement.
As for aluminum smelters, can't help you on that. But we have to play the long game here, not just freak out the way Mr. Bush did in response to his crises. Over the long term we need a health care solution and we need to cut energy use. (And whatever the economic climate Republicans always say "no!" to both.) We are in this shit precisely because no one in American politics ever looks beyond the next election. Mr. Obama is finally trying to do that and avoid the next crisis and the next after that.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.03.2009 @ 15:12
Foobar:
An energy tax only costs a business if a business fails to conserve energy. Americans are staggeringly inefficient when it comes to energy use. I just spent 8 months living in Italy, probably using half the energy I use back in the States. Why? Because energy was expensive, and, because it was expensive, the society as a whole created an ethos of energy-saving. Cut your use and guess what? You won't pay any more. And over time you'll improve the national security posture of the US as well as help the environment.
As for destroying small business with tax increases: bull. Mr. Obama is putting the marginal rates back where they were under Clinton. I seem to recall we did pretty well under Clinton. 35% is happy days, but 39.6% is the apocalypse? Pffft.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.03.2009 @ 14:02
I for one do grant you the sincerity of your beliefs. I never doubted the sincerity.
That's precisely why I think, and have said, that 1856 and you're Whigs. You can't change enough to survive. The comet's already hit and you're all some species ending in "saurus."
Modern Republicanism has gone from William F. Buckley to Rush Limbaugh. You used to win the college educated vote, now you lose it. You've given up on African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, moderates, intellectuals, creatives. You're anathema in places like Silicon Valley and successful in places that have lots of tornadoes. And as a party you have no capacity to reverse that.
But not all is gloomy. After all, Lincoln started his political career as a Whig. You need to split the remains of the GOP into a party of Rush Limbaugh and a party of David Brooks, as the Whigs split themselves between the Republicans, the American Party, the northern Democrats and assorted fragments. After all, as Mr. Obama has reminded us: a crisis is an opportunity.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.03.2009 @ 12:16
A TIPPING POINT ON OBAMA IN SIGHT?
Moshe:
You're asking an essentially irrelevant question. We're in the realm of politics, not of science or even of political science. You and a thousand other people can argue over what the true, academic definition of "conservatism" is. Just as Marxists will argue Lenin vs. Trotsky vs. Mao and engage in endless scholastic exercises over the "true" Marxism, so conservatives will do.
It doesn't matter at this point. What matters is that we saw what happened to the USSR and to the PRC and to Cuba. That's communism, regardless of what some Marxist professor may have to say on the subject.
We saw what happened under Reagan, under Mr. Bush pere, under Newt Gingrich, and under Mr. Bush fils. As a practical political matter that's conservatism. It has been tried, and it has failed.
From this point you can continue the academic debate. In fact I think it's an interesting thing to do and might actually be useful somewhere down the road. But right now the conservative brand in politics means: cutting taxes, eliminating regulation, gay-bashing, race-baiting, pro-life, invading more-or-less randomly-chosen countries, and a style of expression that has rage and contempt at its core.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.03.2009 @ 22:32
Moshe:
I hear the same from Marxists. See, Marxism isn't to blame because the USSR was never truly Marxist.
You only want to take responsibility for a perfect, pure expression of your ideology. Doesn't work that way. The happy ideal that no doubt exists inside your head is irrelevant. We're stuck, sadly, with the real world, and the real world version of conservatism.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.03.2009 @ 10:20
Yes, it's important to continue chipping away at Obama and pray that the economy will crash so we can all suffer for four years. Then, we'll elect Bobby Jindal. Who will lead us straight back to the disastrous Republican policies that got us here in the first place.
It's a genius plan.
Fail America! Fail! And a little Jindal shall lead us!
People, are you drunk? The alternative to Obama isn't you. You caused the problem. You have no solutions. No one trusts you. No one believes in you. You're a national laughingstock.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 7.03.2009 @ 19:43
Wall Street. Would that be the same Wall Street that went up and up and up as we sailed blithely into this economic disaster?
Is there some reason we should trust the brilliance of Wall Street? How about the economic media? The Republican Party? The punditocracy?
I know it's a crazy notion, but I tend to suspect the judgment of people who have been spectacularly wrong in the past.
In fact, the more Wall Street, the GOP, CNBC and the punditocracy congeals around a single story line, the more optimistic I will become. All I need now is a Time Magazine cover confirming that Obama is a failure and we're all doomed. That's when I'll start seriously buying stock.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 7.03.2009 @ 13:57
