Too Dumb to Thrive

Joe Klein:
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It’s very, very, very counter-productive to call the people who rely on your profession for information about their government “dumb”.
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I’ll leave all the other characterizations of your piece I could make aside for the moment, just so you can ruminate on that concept.
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Thanks in advance for taking the time to think this through, Joe Klein.

Seconding sz, is it not possible to publish an article, say, reporting on the effects of the stimulus, if BHO (or some RNC liar) doesn’t issue a statement about it first?

Yes – I agree. People are dumb and misinformed and, worse, they seem proud of it! Everywhere I drive I see signs of road construction courtesy of stimulus — and I’m grateful for the improved roads and sidewalks. And I’m grateful we still have banks and a global economy, thanks to TARP. People refuse to believe that stimulus projects were not political earmarks, and they refuse to learn differently.

It’s time for Americans to grow up and get over their whining and what’s-in-it-for-me-right-now attitude. Think ahead folks – do you really want another generation to pass before health care is reformed? As to what’s in it for any of us, we pre-Medicare folks with health insurance are exactly one job and one serious illness/accident away from financial ruin.

Since I consider the stimulus the equivalent of activity to “stop the bleeding” of jobs, I don’t consider it a waste.
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But…. just like a body that has suffered a grievious wound,
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I’m still looking for that part of the treatment that was supposed to “close the wound” and start the healing.
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Without that, the transfusion is going to bleed out and the patient will start to go downhill again.
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It’s not that the transfusion wasn’t needed – it just was never intended to be the entire treatment.

What Stuart said. Americans are poorly served by all of their news outlets, except maybe Talking Points Memo. Fox lies don’t persuade 75% of Americans about anything; only the 27 percenters (link: http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html ) watch that network.
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This email at TPM was very much on point:

We KNOW from myriad polls that voters have no idea what actual provisions are in the health care reform bills. And when questioned, most reporters will point to some overall piece from months back about the issue. But reporters LIKE to write about the political deal making, rather than the policy issues, so that’s what people know.

Finally, this may seem like a harsh attack on political reporters. Well, yeah. It kind of is.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/01/pox_on_the_double-poxers.php?ref=fpblg

Hmm..Americans are stupid, selfish, short-sighted, spoiled, whinging babies who refuse to believe what you tell them is the case, which is why they don’t support your policy prescriptions

I’ll bet Americans can hardly wait to hear more information coming from you! You’re trustworthiness incarnate!
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Are you running for elected office, by any chance?

Joe,
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In the minds of most people, the stimulus and bailouts are conflated. None of the big banks or their bosses have been taken out and whupped. This is why people think its been a waste. Seriously, whichever party goes after the big banks hardest in the next year pwns the 2010 elections, regardless of anything else. Sooner or later the politicians will figure this out.

“This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed.”

Except that I have been reading reports from ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN Ny Times, Washington Post, ETC. everyone but FOX, and have seen very little on this.
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It just doesn’t make good press. So blame FOX, if you will, or the public, if you must,. but the failure comes down to the press.
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I know you guys disagree, but for the average person, we get the headlines, Edward’s mistyress, Tiger,s Mistress, Health Care death panles, Sahra Palin, republican Talking points, I.E. No. Now if I was able to spend 10 hours a day on this I might be able to ferret some of this stuff out, but unlike you, I make my living in a non political world. We depend on you tp bring us what is important that our Government is doing.

Gte witrh it!

JK: I actually suspect that a different problem is at stake for a large portion of that poll (though there is undoubtedly a lot of those who are narrowing in on that particular point).
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Obama sold the Stimulus as a jobs saver – which, fine, it was. He claimed the Stimulus would keep unemployment rates below 6% – which everyone knew it couldn’t do. The unemployment rate is now 11% – maybe higher than we might’ve expected at the time of the Stimulus but not outside the limits of logical analysis. From the perspective of that, people think the Stimulus has failed and they’d have good reason to be – it wasn’t properly sold. I don’t think that counters either conclusions you’ve made, I just don’t feel that you can claim people are idiots because of it. In this case, both sides were disingenuous with it, only the Democrats shouldn’t have been even though it would’ve hurt them in the short term and made it harder to sell to the public with Fox News asking the question “Why are we passing it if we’re still going to be bleeding jobs?” The Democrats paid for it dearly.

[...] are too dumb to appreciate the awesomeness of President Obama's economic stimulus package. StumbleUpon| Digg| [...]

Not quite, Stuart. The truth is, most Americans pay almost no attention to their government. People who read their news, online for that matter, aren’t typical Americans. At the most, Joe might be irking thousands of people with this post. For a lack of a better metaphor, Joe is preaching to the choir.

I’m still looking for that part of the treatment that was supposed to “close the wound” and start the healing.

That is in the House health care bill. Unfortunately, it will never see the light of day. =P

This isn’t the choir.
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We don’t think that Americans are “dodos” undeserving of their fantastic press corps and superb government.
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Americans are being poorly served by their nominally democratic institutions, and so, quite appropriately, don’t feel compelled to pay attention to that which they can’t control…and which sucks ass.

“Why are we passing it if we’re still going to be bleeding jobs?”
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Why give the victim of an auto accident a transfusion if they’re not going to get up and walk away right afterward, with no further treatment?

Well said, well reasoned.

When we received our W2s people that I work with were perplexed about the difference in their real income and their reportable income.
I told that’s the stimulus package you all were ragging on a year ago.
Thank President Obama and STFU.

Uh oh. I think you might be one of “them”. Because, Joe Klein wasn’t referring to us as “dumb”, he was talking about them: the great unwashed, the Bubbas and Bobbie Sues, the mouth breathing Middle America. You know, them.
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Joe Klein is a sophisticated liberal, speaking to we sophisticated liberals and encouraging us to go forth and educate the mouth breathers.
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For instance, we can explain to them that the fact that hundreds of thousands more work permits were given to foreigners than any stimulus jobs “created or saved” (details at that link) doesn’t matter. We’ll need to use “advanced” math, the kind they teach us sophisticated liberals.
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We can also explain to them that even as millions of Americans are unemployed, the fact that the Obama admin is pulling out all the stops to add 200,000 new legal workers to the market doesn’t matter (details at the link). The fact that that will not only hurt American workers, but it will also hurt the country it’s sold as helping by braindraining them and making them more dependent on the U.S. doesn’t matter. We’ll need to use some more of that “advanced” math, the kind they teach us sophisticated liberals.

The collective wisdom of the American people will always be smarter than America’s politicians.

afguy: which goes back to my list of Obama’s top 5 mistakes last week. I felt he should’ve said “this isn’t a cure-all, this is just what we clearly need as quickly as possible. As we analyze the economy over the coming year, more stimulus packages will be passed as it becomes clearer where we can provide the most help”.

This isn’t the choir.

You misunderstood my metaphor. The choir in this case are people who have the wherewithal and initiative to seek out and internalize various sources of information (that may even be contradicting) and come to their own conclusions. If huge numbers of Americans are willfully ignorant, it makes little difference how excellent the press corp may or may not be.

Joe Klein:

“Too dumb to thrive” seems to be an apt title for the current state of journalism. What is even more harmful is a class of folks (liberals) who believe are blinded by their arrogance to how truly ignorant they are.You can repeat nonsense continually (and you do) but it does not make it fact.
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One of the biggest canards, which you gladly repeat is the lie of saving teachers and fireman with stimulus funds. Why is it never mentioned that what was truly saved were the dead weight bureaucrats? Corporations laid off thousands of folks as their revenues fell. The amount of public employees laid off are a fraction of the unemployed. California that has a $20+ billion budget deficit actually increased employees on the public dole. The state and local government have mirrored the federal government in growing regardless of the economic environment thinking taxes will always grow. here is never a program that sees a cut or an elimination. You squeal like a school girl if the is a cut in the rate of growth not the actual growth.. The cuts are described as draconian.
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I am also amused about your mention of tax cuts. Conservative are skewered for mentioning tax cuts as a way to help work our way out of this problem. So are you now a tax relief convert or just a hypocritical journalist.?

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You and the left continue to mock Fox news and the supposed mentally inferior people on the right. Yet they understand far more than you and your accomplices on the left. You ahd a president with a fawning press who was on TV, radio etc. nearly everyday for the past year. The people know exactly what is going on. The misinformation has been coming from the White House with help of the press.

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And now the rats are jumping ship

That is in the House health care bill. Unfortunately, it will never see the light of day. =P
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That would have closed ONE of the main wounds, hotbbq. It might have slowed down or stopped the loss of blood. But, not sure how that would have put a lot of people back to work.
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That’s another injury that needed to be treated just as certainly as the one you named. The one that will help the country to start getting economically better as a whole, an NOT just stop getting worse.
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Right now, we are telling the national “patient” to think positive thoughts about the transfusion and, before you know it, they’ll start to get better with no further treatment.

Just another example of how the most brilliant political campaign team in recent history has completely lost the message war once they were ensconced in the White House.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Well, I live in Texas and I can attest that you are absolutely right.

American citizens are ignorant and freaking proud of it. For many, facts bounce off them.

I don’t characterize ordinary folks as “willfully ignorant”, I just think that they’re prioritizing their attentions like normal people.
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The more divorced they are from democratic institutions, i.e. poorly served, the less incentive they have to beat themselves over the head with information that always concludes “What you think/want/need doesn’t matter.”
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The press corps is, in the best case scenario, objective and condescendingly anthropological with respect to Americans’ interests. It surely doesn’t exist to server or inform ordinary people.
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The state is comprised of a party of disinterested technocrats debating a party of popular denialists, both acting in bad faith, and an unaccountable bureaucracy that serves its own interests first, the interests of industry and finance second –and this is when things are working at their best. The incumbency rate is over 90%.
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The privileges of political and media elites are literally inherited. People know this. They know that the chances of their interests being served are inextricably bound to insiders’ “political reality.” They are painfully aware of how ostracized they are from real participation in systems that both bray endless fabrications, and treat ordinary people like economic cannon fodder, when they so choose to be aware.
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Democratic institutions have failed people, not the other way around. To pretend otherwise is to perpetuate the lack of accountability that characterizes the political-media class responsible for the country’s decline, and the souring of the electorate.

As we analyze the economy over the coming year, more stimulus packages will be passed as it becomes clearer where we can provide the most help”.
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Hope so, forgotten,
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Otherwise the patient may get so low that no amount of new blood will save them.
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How many patients die because the cause or severity of an injury are mis-diagnosed and proper treatment begins too late?
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I think the difference here is that the financial “head” in this country (Wall Street?) believes that it can thrive independently of the economic gangrene that is beginning in the extremities.
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What are we prepared to do if the head refuses to admit that there is a problem?

Well, I live in Texas and I can attest that you are absolutely right.
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Ain’t just Texas, fourlegs. Count Ky there too.

Well, afguy and fourlegs, blame me, I’m from Massachusetts.
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Nowhere has a lock on stupid.

Hahaha Joe saying it’s our fault? Too dumb to thrive? Yeah, like the people in the government, the vast majority who have never run a business and many who have never even worked in the private sector trying to make rules regulating the private sector. THAT is what sounds dumb to me.

Klein totally hit the nail on the head. Most Americans are too lazy, too self-abosrbed and too short-sighted to participate in a Democracy — something the Founding Fathers were worried might become a problem.

In short, we deserve this mess. And frankly, what we deserve is two terms of Sarah Palin. The smoking wreckage of those eight years — since Bush’s eight-year debacle weren’t enough — might finally get Americans to start paying attention, thinking for the long-term and stop being so self-absorbed and instant gratification based.

We are, as a country, too dumb to live.

Yes, Americans are so selfish. As evidenced by the massive outpour of voluntary financial support given to the Haiti relief cause.

Don’t you think that voter cynicism is largely to blame for this? And what’s to blame for voter cynicism? Our entrenched two-party system, corrupt/disingenuous politicians, and a ratings-driven media.

Stuart, I take great exception to your blaming the media for the laziness of the American people to be informed on the issues. It would take someone about 3.5 seconds to find a thorough explanation of what’s in the various health care bills, the stimulus package, etc.

Conservative are skewered for mentioning tax cuts as a way to help work our way out of this problem.
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free,
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Last year’s ice storm trashed the power and road infrastructure here in Ky. Bridges are falling apart and my tires tell me that the roads here are getting worse and worse, esp. over the last year. The Ky gov’t has slashed spending at all levels here, including educational spending by 12-15% 5 of the last 7 years. Faculty turnover is high and positions aren’t being filled when the occupant resigns/retires. Right when we need quality higher education the worse, we are relying on part-timers so we don’t have to pay them any benefits.
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Refresh my memory – how will cutting taxes help them out of their present predicament?

I don’t characterize ordinary folks as “willfully ignorant”, I just think that they’re prioritizing their attentions like normal people.

We just aren’t going to see eye to eye on this one I’m afraid. Our government is democratic republic. It requires the constant and vigilant will of the people to work properly. I believe that the system has reached this point because “normal” people stopped being interested in government long ago, not because they felt they weren’t getting a fair shake, but rather for the most part the government works well enough for them not to bother. You seem to think that the people are merely a victim of forces beyond their control. You may be right, but I don’t accept that.

Precisely.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for finally stating the obvious. What has continued to amaze me in the ongoing commentary from pundits and the American public both is the lack of knowedge about the issues they are talking about. It seems very apparent that people respond with anger, one-upmanship and an “us against them” approach. There are few constructive suggestions to counter their arguemnts. More of an “I’m right, you”re wrong” and “our way or the highway” approach.

That’s great we live in a country of free speech, but let’s move to some analysis and education on issues and then some creative suggestions for change and some compromise.

This give and take isn’t happening because people are not even aware what policies exist and the nuts and bolts of what is being proposed.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “socialist” thrown around when talking about Obama and when I ask people to define what “socialist” means and why they are using it, they just give me a blank look. They have no clue what the definition is much less how it relates to their lives or current programs and policies. But they are ready to hurl that term in a derogative fashion to repudiate whatever they don’t agree with.

The same goes for things like health care reform. Pundits and the public demagogue this issue but when I ask “what is it about the policy you don’t like and how will it affect you” most people don’t even know what is contained in the bill. They throw back their usual threats like “it’s going to sink this country”, we’re angry and this administration better get the message”.

Okay, I’m all for a dialogue on this and want to hear their side of things but they are completely clueless as to what they are talking about. How can we have any meaningful conversation or debate on how this country is going to move forward if people fail to educate themselves on the most basic and rudimentary facts and instead rely on “hot-button” words to get their message out.

My teenage son asked me yesterday why all these people rant on but never seem to suggest anything constructive as to how they’d like to see things run. My comment: They are too busy watching their 52″ plasma Tv’s – probably a reality show that borders on the IQ of a rock , on their cell phone, playing a video game or watching YouTube. Nothing wrong with any of these in moderation but let’s face it – we are a nation pretty much of self-adoration and not much self-education.

3.5 seconds to find 14,000,000 million pages from google you mean, few hours to get the correct information from that, and that from one subject. Part of the problem is the information overload, and what is true or not.
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Now you can argue one can get the info directly from the Government except that it includes definitions that run for ever with, as defined paragraph 1.3a2 of the Means to the end act of 1934.
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I hate to break it to you, but we need the press to do it’s work, unfortunately they do not agree, so I wonder why they are there at all.
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..probably a reality show that borders on the IQ of a rock..
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You aren’t by any chance referring to the Kardashians or coverage of Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery, are you?
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There are a number of shows on TV that I tell my sons that watching them will cost you brain cells.

[...] Joe Klein wishes he could give a lecture to average Americans — the "Too Dumb to Thrive" who probably don’t read his magazine’s Swampland blog anyway — on the virtues of [...]

[...] mean, really fed up It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you [...]

Gee Joe. I’m smart enough to know I will never be as smart as you, let alone as smart as Obama. I wasn’t as smart as Jimmy Carter either.

kurtmudgeon

JK,

I think you are blaming the wrong people. The fault lies with the White House and its inability to explain the stimulus package in simple terms most Americans understand and the over-selling on how many jobs it would save. It would be much better to use an absolute number that a percentage of the unemployment rate. In addition, you are the first one to mention tax cuts and stimulus in the same sentence. Why aren’t we hearing this from the Obama administration?

It is time for the Obama administration to come out of the Beltway. Obama has often stated he was concerned he would be closed in, once elected. Unfortuately, his emphasis on health care demostrated his worst nightmare coming true. Where are his people who are supposed to keep an ear to the ground and be on top of the pulse of the general populace?

Are the American people “stupid”? Your arrogance is appalling, but I appreciate your candor. The American people are not stupid. Don’t forget, these are the same folks who elected Obama in the first place. However, we can be selfish and very short sighted. We want good government, but we don’t want to pay for it. We don’t want to be taxed, yet we are not willing to sacrifice to bring down our debt.

No politician who wants to be re-elected will propose trimming the budget, lest he or she be called cruel and unfeeling. The Republicans, bless their hearts, have often tried to cut spending, only to get whacked at the polls. Some goes for those Democrats who tried to raise taxes to pay for what we get.

Ronald Reagan tried “staving the beast” and that turned out be an utter failure. W. tried to reform Social Security and that failed. Obama is trying with health care reform, but the American people want their goodies and don’t want to pay for them.

People can complain about our politicians, but when it comes to spending money, they do what we ask. If you are really concerned about the deficit, you need to suggest to your congressperson and/or Senators ways where the budget can be cut (where you are willing to take the hit) or whether you will take a tax hike.

Me, personally, I would like to look at that defense budget, and look at any possible corporate welfare programs. I would totally reorganize Medicare and Medicaid and I would use means testing and raise the retirement age for social security (I am 42 now, and I would be willing to wait until I am 70 to receive anything. If I die before then, then the government wins and I lose, but I am will to take my chances).

If middle America is as concerned about the deficit as polls indicate, they must be willing to take some hits, and not just balance the budget on the backs of the poor. if I really want something, I should be willing to pay for it out of my own pocket, including health insurance.

We’ll probably not see eye-to-eye as long as we’re both simplifying the issue down to “it’s the lazy/stupid people” vs “it’s the broken institutions”, as if it’s all one or the other.
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Joe Klein has cited a public that’s “flagrantly ill-informed”, without mentioning the culpability of his entire profession, and not just his political enemies at GOP-dominated Fox News.
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He has mindlessly defended the New Democrat regime instead of critically evaluating its effects on folks’ lives ($60 or $80 bucks doesn’t help when you’re being foreclosed on, and the credit card rate was just jacked up, so your bills have doubled, and you and your spouse are both now out of work).
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Does he ask if the Obama Administration and the New Democrats were reasonable to cut the stimulus spending down in the hopes of obtaining “Republican cover”? Does he ask if a politically-derived, too-small stimulus is the worst of all worlds, spending and debt without the relief and, you know, stimulus? Does he mention the failure of cramdown (allowing bankruptcy judges to modify loans to keep people in their houses) to pass with a Democratic majority, or the silence of the Obama Administration on almost every single proposal to help people cope with this disaster, when that help comes at the expense of industry or finance? Does he know anything other than Administration talking points?
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He has called people “dodos” for essentially not understanding what’s good for them, which is a particularly Third Way mindset. That’s the mindset that said that repealing bank/insurance industry merger prohibitions was a good idea, the mindset that said NAFTA was a good idea (we’d all just get a better class of jobs, the theory went), the mindset that takes “off the table” health care solutions that are proven to work in other countries, because they don’t do enough to benefit existing industry players. That’s the Third Way philosophy that he and the rest of the New Democrats blindly adore.
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The problem isn’t that Obama hasn’t “explained” the stimulus package, the problem is that Obama hasn’t proposed doing anything besides that half-measure “the stimulus” to mitigate unemployment, foreclosure, debt and the financial system’s failure to do its part in stimulating the economy. He’s also dithered away a year on the tyranny of a New Democrat “solution” to the health care crisis that literally promises not to affect anyone other than a minority of Americans –in the best case scenario.
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Joe Klein’s arguments are classic, technocrat, centrist diatribes against populism, and, ultimately, people.
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It’s not that the American people are well-informed, they’re not. It’s not that they even are always aware of what their interests are, they’re not. But to primarily characterize the situation with a dissatisfied electorate as emanating from their lack of understanding of what’s good for them is inaccurate, and reveals much of the dystrophy of elites like Joe Klein, and not the character of the American people.
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You and I both aren’t doing the issue justice when we put it in these reductive, opposing terms, but Joe Klein has made the point of this piece that the American people are primarily culpable for being dullards. I think that’s a bald misstatement of reality, given how badly the masters-of-the-universe political, financial, industry and media elites have run the country into the ground, and so I say that the culpability primarily rests with the perpetually unaccountable.
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When institutions fail, people genuinely suffer. Elites like Joe Klein don’t.

There are smart people and dumb people. There are smart journalists and dumb journalists. Smart people will seek out smart journalists. Unfortunately they will not find them in most of the traditional media. The smug, dumb journalists think they are experts on every subject. Dick Gregory said the other day that he had made no mistakes on Meet the Press. Pretty dumb statement I would say.
Joe Klein says the administration did a poor job of explaining and defending the stimulus package. Fox news misinforms (breaking news). Pretty dumb statement I would say.
How about instead of interviewing administration people with talking points and opponents with talking points and each other, the “journalists” talk to and cite real experts.
When and if the administration gets into discussion of climate change, watch the stupid. FOX will be into full denial mode. The pundocracy will be full of false equivalency. Joe Klein will wait a few months to see how things are evolving and then be outraged. As usual, the villagers will be experts on the subject. ECHO, ECHO, ECHO.

[...] Joe Klein: “It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.” [...]

“The collective wisdom of the American people will always be smarter than America’s politicians.”
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There’s a big part of your problem right there. “Conservative” dogma and propaganda, widely promulgated by the mainstream press, have, over the past thirty years, made this country too dumb for democracy. When we settle for the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck, Stephanopolis, Roberts and Gregory as the “experts” we should rely on to tell us what’s what, we doom ourselves to false belief and ignorance.

Well, people tend to believe that they’re well informed if they watch the news. But if you watch the news, the best-case scenario is that you see a quote from Milquetoast Democrat A, attacked by Firebrand Republican B, and then some Broderbot saying that the truth must be in the middle and both sides should come together.
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I paid a great deal of attention to the news, so I supported the invasion of Iraq. I trusted the New York Times, from Judy Miller to Bill Keller to Thomas Friedman. Obviously, had I been a more discriminating news consumer, I would have known that El Baradei was almost certainly right and Cheney was almost certainly wrong; because I trusted the US media, and maybe just out of jingoism, I was dead wrong.
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I was in my 20s when all this was going on, so it was easy enough for me to pull out of it, and join the reality-based community. But other people are busy doing other stuff, and don’t realize what a terrible job the media does at reporting the news– then and now.

made this country too dumb for democracy
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I know you don’t mean that. You couldn’t possibly mean that.

You have made some excellent points, however when it comes to SS and Medicare, it has been classified as an entitlement, that is negative. It actually is an insurance program that we have been paying for since our working days started. It is not an entitlement, freely given.
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The GOP has been after it for years and has left those younger folks wondering if they will even see it.
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There goes the Press calling it the entitlement, just as the GOP wants it, and the Democrats fail to correct.

It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.

Err, DUMMY… Klein, the DODO is extinct. So how could there be a nation of “dodos.”

Given the obnoxious, crazy, and elitist tone of your 500+ words of manure, I guess the bird you are grasping for is the “OSTRICH”…

(And no, I’m not referencing that crazy but funny Democrat shill: that’s Susan Estrich.)

…As this is the one which supposedly buries its head in the sand.

Talking of birds, here’s one just for you, Klein.

My middle finger.

Climate change traditional media discussion:
Chris Matthews Tourettes syndrome will make him
able to yell and answer his own questions.
FOX News It is a hoax. From morning to night, from
chyrons to smirking reports, it will be classified as
a hoax. They will cite themselves. “People are
questioning”. This means Beck brought it up
earlier.
Sunday Talk Shows Well you know. They will talk to
each other and ignore real experts.
Network News 5 minutes of reporting
CNN 20 of CNN’s disignated smartest people in the
world will gather to show us how smart they are
David Gregory Will ask the same question 50 times
hoping for a gotcha. When answered no follow up
and question of veracity
It is all so predictable.

A brief illustrated summary of the American political process today:

http://www.gocomics.com/slowpoke/2010/01/25/

Us being officially a “nation of dodos,” Rusty, Spoob [sic] and the neocons must be in hog heaven right now.

The Obama Administration needs someone to fill the role that Michael Deaver did for Reagan.

You just validated Klein’s argurment with your last sentence. Or rather, lack of a complete sentence.

I venture to say that the media’s job is to find fault somewhere (if not outright create it).

afguy:

It seems the state of KY has been collecting a gas tax of at least 36.9 cents/gal for years. The supposed intent for states and the federal government to charge a gasoline tax was for roads and infrastructure. Many of the states and the federal government have managed to spend the money on everything but its intent. Check and see how many folks are employed in administrative positions for the bridge and road department and you will discover why your tires are wearing out.

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Your education argument is amusing. A quick check and the average teachers salary is around $46,400 versus a median income for Kentucky of around $40,000. Spending per student is $8,839 near the national average of $9,000. You decry teachers retiring/leaving at a time when quality teachers are needed.. Yet only 3.9% o fthe KY teachers are certified. Although, the newly certified teachers are increasing as KY ranks 11th in new certifications. So getting rid of higher salary unqualified teachers is a bad thing why?
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You also lament budget cuts for the last 7-8 years. Coincidentally, that is about the time KY SAT and ACT scores for high school seniors finally started to increase (and continue to do so) after being flat from 1990-2002.

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One interesting fact in the KY budgets is they have 27% more school bus drivers than they have school buses. Not sure what that means but efficient it may not be. Or maybe KY uses a co-pilot system for school buses.

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“Refresh my memory – how will cutting taxes help them out of their present predicament?”

I won’t tax you with a long explanation. States receive money from sales taxes and income taxes, generally. If you cut people’s taxes they have more money to spend and buy things (sales taxes). If people buy enough things, businesses hire more people to provide goods to sell (more income taxes). These people have income now to spend (sales taxes). Raising taxes never created a single job.

I think that when a lot of people are asked about the stimulus package that they also lump their feelings about TARP and the AIG bailout and the GM and Chrysler bailouts into their answer. And that makes a certain amount of sense. The government may view them all as separate programs but to me as a taxpayer it’s all just part of the government’s crisis response and overall it’s hard not to conclude that the government’s response to the economic crisis favored big politicially connected players over working people. An extra $60 a month from a tax break doesn’t salve the wound I feel when AIG employees take home big bonuses from the taxpayer till.

“The collective wisdom of the American people will always be smarter than America’s politicians.”
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True. despite the best efforts of “Regressive/socialist/crypto-Marxist” dogma and propaganda, widely promulgated by the leftist mainstream press, have, over the past thirty years, tried to make this country too dumb for a constitutional Republic. When we settle for the raving ilk of Olbermann, Matthews, Gregory, Maddow, Couric, Klein, Krugman, et al, as the “experts” whom we rely on to tell us what’s what, we doom ourselves to false belief in socialism and ignorance.

Truth be told I don’t think it’s ignorance. Though there are plenty of ignorant, uniformed Americans. It is just easier to believe a negative about a government program than it is to believe a positive.

When you start from the position of I don’t trust the government then you are predisposed to believe or just assume what ever they are doing is wrong and isn’t working.

Ahh…well…ahh…

We want good government, but we don’t want to pay for it. We don’t want to be taxed, yet we are not willing to sacrifice to bring down our debt.

Why in God’s name should the people who’ve come out the worst in all of this, the majority of people who’ve seen their share of this economy’s wealth plummet in the last 3 decades, the people who just saw a gigantic, trillion-dollar-plus tax cut for the “productive” members of society turn into a mountain of debt in a near-depression, the people who are experiencing the bulk of 11% unemployment…why should those people sacrifice first? Why is it selfish or wrong of them to ask for elites to clean up the mess that the elites created?
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Why do people need to “sacrifice” to pay for the mistakes, failures and outright profiteering of the people at the top? Why shouldn’t elites sacrifice, for a change? Why do we need “sacrifice” instead of New Deal II?

I would totally reorganize Medicare and Medicaid

But the cost of health care in the United States, including the price that Medicare pays for health care, is twice the cost of every other comparable country. How will you “reorganize” the fact that Medicare simply pays too much for health care products and services? How do you “reorganize” inflationary health care prices? And Medicare is actually the most efficient of the health care delivery mechanisms…

W. tried to reform Social Security and that failed.

Ummm…W tried to privatize Social Security, i.e. invest its funds in the same financial institutions that have just bankrupted the country for years.
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You’re actually making Joe’s case, you know, but not really how you think…
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Where are you getting your ideas from?

Mr. Klein,

I posted some similar thoughts on my website yesterday…:

http://rahmup.com/

Paige Yannone

Mr. Klein,

You are the reason that magazines and newspapers are failing across the board. You are arrogant, elitist, and almost as narcissistic as the moron in the White House.

Anyone that reads the rag you call a magazine is an stupid… you, the media, and the left, much like a gin soaked drunk on a week long bender will have to wake up some time… and when you do… the hangover is going to suck.

Obamanomics is a joke…

Brophinator

27.1
You just validated Klein’s argurment with your last sentence. Or rather, lack of a complete sentence.
gatormom7

Let us play:

You begin your gramatically incorrect “critique” with a split infinitive. I’m also not happy about the tense. “You have validated…” is better.

You end with an incomplete sentence. Isn’t that what you were trying to stick on me?

Dude… if you are going to play a grammar Nazi, it would be more effective if you were not a dumbass.

I have to admit being attacked by you is rateht like being savaged by a dead sheep.

Too Dumb to Thrive

More like ‘Too Lazy, Close-Minded, Greedy, and/or Disinterested to Thrive’.

/start rant

Lazy: Like Sunday morning talk shows inviting now-inconsequential know-nothing Senator McCain to opine once again about the state of the nation…Like taking the news lead from ideologues with an axe to grind without doing fifteen minutes’ worth of due diligence in order to find out if the story is legitimate or not.

Close-Minded: Legions of Dittoheads and their enablers refusing to consider any solution but the ones that fit their ideology…and that were responsible for the mess in the first place.

Greedy: Ownership of news organizations’ first concern is with beating last quarters’ profits, not with paying for bureau desks, fact checkers, and analysis…The amount of money spent by various industries to preserve or build upon their profits. Individualists whose interior fantasies about being ‘self-made’ makes them blind to what makes a society work.

Disinterested: The biggest problem; lack of curiousity, at least until something bad affects someone personally…at which point that person looks for someone to blame, ’cause it’s definitely not their fault for not paying attention much, much earlier.

/end rant

Want a better country? Make better people.

[...] Joe Klein in writes in Time Magazine today that he sees two reasons why so many people finde the stimulus package wasteful, is because Obama did not explain it well or the people are too dumb to understand its benefits:  1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far. 2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed. It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.  [...]

holly, I feel we probably agree on nothing. But this is very funny.

I agree you are too dumb!

Joe Klein are you getting the gist of the responses to your post?

How do you feel about the bailouts and bonuses of the GM Chrysler, Fannie and Freddie bailouts which we, the taxpayer, are on the hook for that exceeds the AIG bailout?

Really? Every time you search for something on Google you have to read 14,000,000 pages to find what you are looking for? I could come up with 10 very good, non partisan, summaries of the health care bill in minutes. And frankly, most of them would come from the media. Surely people know the difference between opinion journalism and fact based journalism? And if they don’t, whose fault is that?

When things look normal there is no news. If your kid’s teacher still has a job, when planes land safely, no problem.

It took less than a year for Independent voters to forget everything they learned about Republican governance for the past eight years and start to blame Obama and the Democrats for the Republican’s gross malfeasance. Millions of people trust people like Limbaugh, Beck and Palin over their own lying eyes. Vast numbers of them don’t believe in evolution or global warming. Look around you, Stuart, people simply can’t tell the truth of things any longer and have given up trying in favor of entertainment and tribal identity.

[...] the stimulus has been a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Sigh. Joe Klein over at Time Magazine has a slew of good points about the stimulus: the inclusion of $275-300B of tax cuts to 95% of Americans, the $250B of direct [...]

I wonder if the Press will come to realise that its function is to inform and not Pontificate, or are they to dumb to perform?

People don’t know facts about the health care bill, either. Sure, Obama/Dem messaging should be a whole lot better. But they also have to bear in mind that the media is not interested in informing anyone about anything. It’s not about opinion vs. factual journalism, it’s that the factual journalism doesn’t convey facts, just (GOP) emotions.
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http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/is-health-care-reform-popular.html

The truth is, that a lot of Americans are indeed stupid. A lot are lazy. And the rest are just too busy to do all this work and therefore they rightly leave it to their elected officials to do the work they were hired to do. The problem is that the first two groups of people have the loudest voices and drown everything else out. The media, of course, loves the first two groups, and are certainly, in that regard, complicit in the cancerous spread of vitriol and misinformation that pervades this information age knee jerk climate.

@freeinpa: don’t much care for any of the bailouts. AIG is just an example.

Lazy: Like Sunday morning talk shows inviting now-inconsequential know-nothing Senator McCain

Could have been worse. But thank goodness Obama didn’t make a 148th appearance. Thanks to President Obama, dumb is the new smart.

Close-Minded:

There’s nothing more close-minded than a reactionary “leftist.” You would think two hundred years of proof of failure of a malicious, poverty-inducing ideology would give them pause. But no.

Greedy:

The greed and theivery of the statist, big government crooks knows no bounds. They will steal your money, your liberty, and your life. And claim, laughably it is for your own good.

Disinterested:

You mean, presumably, “uninterested.” Look it up, then report back.

You know what needs to happen. The GOVERNMENT should pass a law to make people “interested.” That’s the way to do it.

Want a better country?

Apparently leftists want to practise eugenics. Conservatives say get rid of crypto-Marxists, such Obama and the elitist gang which has hijacked the Republic.

Mr. Klein: You are right we all morons.

I need to drink more Kool-Aid from the Huffington Post pool to smarten me up.

I will strive to understand how the Obama Administration works.

Thanks for the kick in the pants.

[...] This is why there is a political tsunami rising through out the land against everyone in DC (not just the Democrats, not just the politicians, but the entire political industrial complex): [...]

[...] Joe Klein thinks you’re stupid — “too dumb to thrive“, in fact, for thinking that the stimulus has been wasted. We “ill-informed” [...]

Here is what we have to look forward to:
The new SCOTUS ruling on corporate political free speech will allow the corporations to bombard the traditional media with advocacy ads. The traditional media will love the revenue. The echo chamber will play these ads to determine who is being hurt by them. Very few will question their truth or what the motive of the corportation might be.

[...] The increasingly irrelevant Time magazine’s Joe Klein thinks we’re all idiots: [...]

PS: I will call my cable company tomorrow and have Fox News removed and watch only MSNBC.

Thanks again.

The “magical $60 to $80 per month you’ve been finding in your paycheck”. You arrogant asshat, it was my frickin’ money to begin with, not Bambi’s. I know that’s a tough concept for moonbats like you.

http://factsarestubbornthings.net

Got to love it Joe klien and hollycrud both Pontificating! Ah the world is a better place allready.

Yes the republicans are to blame for a health care bill drawn behind closed doors with payoffs to political allies and stimulus package that would stop unemployment at 8% and for dead of night unlimited backing to Fannie and Freddie that has already cost the taxpayer more than the bank collapse (Fannie & Freddie bonuses not included). Any more delusions you wish to share?
===

Everybody lies but the left. Except they lie all the time. Yes the great unwashed don’t believe global warming and that’s only because they were right. Report after report now coming out shows fraud and wrong conclusions being forced. It is now the biggest lie next to we will have health care reform with lower costs, more services and lower deficits.
===

Bwahhhaahhaha! Independents have figured out they would rather throw their lot with Republicans than the morally bankrupt left.

I disagree. Start with a definitional description of “stimulus” the public would agree with, like: fairly immediate, direct, dramatic, urgent, focused, temporary and exceptional, with outcomes that are measurable and/or observable in the near term.

If you spend money for things much different than that, people will justifiably conclude you’ve missed the boat in terms of it being a “stimulus”.

That said, it is reasonable to label that spending “wasteful”, i.e., spending on thihgs that are not essential under the circumstances. That’s NOT to say the spending is “bad” per se, but if you are promising “big stimulus”, you are implying “significant response”… right?

Many have reached the conclusion that a very substantial percentage of whatever government spends money on is wasteful. Even the programs they generally see benefits from are rife with some combinations of excess, abuse, corruption, and inefficiency. Their reference point is themselves and other people they know. Most of those are careful about their personal spending, shop for good value and price, think about downstream ramifications of today’s spending, etc.

I think it is HEALTHY for citizens to assume waste. Obama himself, in a campaign interview, promised to go line by line through spending bills to cut out duplication, spending that has outlived its usefulness, spending that conflicts with other spending, and agencies that are not showing results. To my knowledge, that’s a promise that has NOT been kept. So when you borrow money in order to spend MORE, and you have not investigated what current spending could be curtailed in order to redirect those dollars toward things that COULD actually stimulate the economy, the word “waste” comes to mind pretty easily, does it not?

If you put a few tenspots in my paycheck, but I know damned well that tax increases and other government debt and interest (that must be paid someday) is right around the corner, I will NOT spend that money if I can get by. I’ll bank it for the more expensive future. Which is to say, it will not contribute to an economic surge.

[...] CYNTHIA Of course not! STACY Would you be livid if I had a drink or two? CYNTHIA Nonsense. STACY Would you be wounded if I never sent you flowers? CYNTHIA Never. STACY Well, why can’t a lefty be like you? One righty in a million may just [...]

The main problem with you, Mr. Klein, is you are too dumb to realize that what we have done is to send out money into a bunch of programs, many of which should NEVER have been funded.

Gee, $275 Billion went to schools? Did it get distributed by population, because that means California should’ve gotten about $28-30 BILLION. Odd, because that would mean about a 50% addition to the existing budget.

Or was it just handed out evenly with California receiving 1/50th or $5.5 Billion. That sure seems wrong — since we PAID IN far more.

Of course, all those JOBS were saved/created. Like the 9 jobs created because 9 pairs of workboots were ordered.

Who’s the dumb one?

[...] to blame? Not the Democrats. Never them. It's YOUR fault, says Joe Klein in his post titled Too Dumb To Thrive:It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you [...]

[...] to blame? Not the Democrats. Never them. It’s YOUR fault, says Joe Klein in his post titled Too Dumb To Thrive: It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you [...]

I think that you’re forgetting some important things in your anger and despair, shepherdwong.
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Primarily, you don’t seem to recall that trust is inextricably involved in the acceptance of information.
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People are rightly mistrustful of sources that don’t seem to reflect their interests, and so, yes, relying on tribal identity is ultimately all that many folks have to go on.
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What if we had a party and a President who said this right out of the gate ( link to the words of a President who knew how to unite Americans against their enemies ) ?:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
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In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
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More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
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Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
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Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.
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They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Whose side is that f*cking guy on? It’s pretty clear, isn’t it?
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Today’s Democrats, from Obama on down, aren’t capable of making those kind of statements, aren’t capable of the kind of reform that gave electricity to every citizen of West Texas and East Kentucky, the kind of reform that put the banks back to Small Enough to Fail Without Killing Everyone Else, and the kind of trust that looking out for the majority of Americans’ interests engenders.
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They’re not capable, because they don’t believe it themselves. They’re in the thrall of a sick, twisted ideology that sees such public interests as fundamentally lopsided, and not balanced. That’s the curse of the Third Way that afflicts the Democratic party. That’s why the Republicans have been able to use what’s next after interests –identity– to capture more public trust than the Democrats can.
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We, we liberals, have lost that ability, too.
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It’s our fault, not the American people’s, that we aren’t persuasive, that we don’t offer the trust of shared interests to folks. When liberals come to know that, then we will have made good ground on that lack of trust, shepherdwong.
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There’s all kinds of things wrong with the institutions of the political-media, as I have posted earlier in response to Joe’s defenders. There’s also plenty wrong with us liberals these days, shepherdwong.

I take it hollycrud is the demon offspring of freeinpa and rustyreturns?

“…unlimited backing to Fannie and Freddie that has already cost the taxpayer more than the bank collapse…”
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“…the great unwashed don’t believe global warming and that’s only because they were right.”
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I don’t see how you can deny it, Stuart. You argue this nonsense every day here. How can this representative democracy survive millions of its voters being possessed of ridiculous beliefs that five minutes of research and a child’s intellect can prove false? How can it survive having something like half of its public officials elected on the premise that they office they seek “is the problem” and that it must never be funded with taxes? How can we ever hope to be smart enough to manage our terrifying technological advancement and power when no real experts are ever allowed on the TV, just blow-dried talking heads who understand nothing outside their elitist, Beltway bubble and “conservative” (corporatist) professional liars and fellow propagandists?”

“That’s why the Republicans have been able to use what’s next after interests –identity– to capture more public trust than the Democrats can.”
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Actually poll after poll show that Democrats capture more public trust than Republicans, for all the obvious (to us) reasons. The fact that many other choose “identity”, rather than relative truth and understanding, is exactly my point. Better rhetoric from Democrats won’t change that and they’re already getting better governance, by far, from Democrats. It’s completely stupid and irrational and I think you know it.
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You really hate the Democrats, don’t you?

Also posted on page 3:

“That’s why the Republicans have been able to use what’s next after interests –identity– to capture more public trust than the Democrats can.”
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Actually poll after poll show that Democrats capture more public trust than Republicans, for all the obvious (to us) reasons. The fact that many other choose “identity”, rather than relative truth and understanding, is exactly my point. Better rhetoric from Democrats won’t change that and they’re already getting better governance, by far, from Democrats. It’s completely stupid and irrational and I think you know it.
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You really hate the Democrats, don’t you?

Incoherent right-whinge rambling is not a substitute for an argument, h-crud.

You mean, presumably, “uninterested.”
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Either or:
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1.Having no stake or interest in the outcome; free of bias, impartial.
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2. Lacking interest, uninterested; indifferent; apathetic.
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Someone upthread mentioned that you can’t be a good grammar Nazi and be dumb. Do you remember who wrote that, h-crud?

Joe. Joe, Joe, Joe. Somehow you imagine that $60 – $80 a month is “stimulus” ? I think the American people have seen this “stimulus” for what it really is – a load of politics (I refrained from using the bovine fecal bag metaphor). That you’re criticizing us for not appreciating it is actually evidence of something far more pervasive within the Progressive movement (and clear on through to the throne of Big “O” himself) – you’re entirely out of touch with what real people, the citizens of this coutry, actually want.

If you and the other brainiacs swimming around in that insular world you call academia would take a moment to play a game called “REALITY” you’d understand something incredibly important:

THE THRILL IS GONE

That’s right. The honeymoon is over. Obama and his clan of academicians have proven, once and for all, the old maxim: “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. IN PRACTICE, THERE IS.”

There are just two words to describe the Obamanomic mess: EPIC FAIL

Want to know how to fix it?

As a conservative for his advice, and then TAKE IT AND USE IT.

Mr Klein now turns against the american people.
Stupid nation does not understand the great Obama presidency.
And Fox news!
Like here in Europe, the left is arrogant and presumptuous!
To get votes they pamper the public only to call them imbecils when they do not buy their incompetence.
OH HOW THE WORLD MISSES REAGAN!!!

Mr Klein now turns against the american people. Stupid nation does not understand the great Obama presidency. And Fox news! Like here in Europe, the left is arrogant and presumptuous! To get votes they pamper the public only to call them imbecils when they do not buy their incompetence. OH HOW THE WORLD MISSES REAGAN!!!

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/25/too-dumb-to-thrive/#ixzz0defh4ENF

“It’s our fault, not the American people’s, that we aren’t persuasive, that we don’t offer the trust of shared interests to folks. When liberals come to know that, then we will have made good ground on that lack of trust, shepherdwong.”
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Nonsense. First, real liberals aren’t allowed to make any argument, persuasive or otherwise, to the public at large, they’ve been embargoed by the corporatist media. Second, people are too inculcated with much hatred, mistrust or false belief to even listen to them. What don’t you get about people being incapable of recognizing the truth when they hear it? The evidence surrounds you. And it’s certainly not the fault of liberals.

I hate the New Democrats, but not personally.
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Those polls are in the wake of Republican incompetence and abuse of power, and you know that, shepherdwong. As peoples’ lives fail to improve, and elites are further (blatantly) enriched, and as the corruption of the legislature on shameless display becomes even more commonplace, and as the wars drag on for no purpose, and as blame-casting lies completely become the currency of our discourse, these poll numbers will decline.
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Dude, even if HCR passes, and it does an ounce of good for somebody, enough to make a column in a paper somewhere, it won’t start to do so until 2013 or 2014.
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I don’t think that we’re getting better governance, just a different bad. It doesn’t mean that the centrists do the same things as the rightists, or even that they’re as bad at some policies as the rightists, it’s that they’re still bad at governance, just in a different way.
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It’s not stupid and irrational to blame New Democrats for that sorry state of affairs, but every institution –the press corps, Republicans, Democrats– blurs that distinction over and over again.

[...] will only be semi-snarky because Joe Klein raises a good question about the stim bill and people’s total lack of understanding of what it [...]

…and yes, it appears that Obama is no FDR (though, we avoided a great depression – this time – that probably made his brand of populism possible). So what? We should choose Sarah Palin to lead us? You sound a little crazy blaming Democrats and, especially, liberals, for that choice.

Dear Mr. Klein,

Has performing self-intercourse with a low-yield thermonuclear weapon ever occurred to you as a viable career move. If not, please ponder it now become you beclown yourself further.

Sincerely,
Gerard Van der Leun

Perhaps Joe Klein should find another line of work. He seems to be the one in denial. The Stimulus was supposed to Stimulate the Economy. It failed. Yes, it gave money to people, money that had already been paid by someone else via taxes. The folks in government thought people would go out and spend that money to stimulate the economy. They didn’t. They used it to pay bills so the ones that are too dumb to understand are the people in government and the “journalists” who write about them. I didn’t get a cent of stimulus, my paycheck did not change. I’m okay with that. My parents who are on social security did though. Their $250.00 a piece was used to pay medical bills that Medicare doesn’t cover. But there’s thousands of dollars in medical bills for them still to be paid and we just received their 2010 information on what their social security will be this year and guess what- it’s less than last year!! The letter said it was in keeping with inflation. Joe Klein needs a reality check because he’s clueless.

grape_c-word

1. You are incorrect. “Disinterested” is NOT a synonym for “uninterested” This is a common mistake nade by people of all political stripes, I am sorry to say.

I suggest you consult the leading authority on the English language, instead of the clown-dictionary you quote. That would be the OED which sits on my desk. But is readily available from amazon, I believe.

2. Now try to grasp this. I am NOT, and have never been a “grammar Nazi.” I couldn’t care less about all sorts of poor English usage in fast moving blogs.

But when a person responds to a post, ignores the content but only makes a snarky comment about the structure of a sentence, they better make damn sure it doesn’t make exactly the same error of which I am accused.

Seems only fair, doncha thunk grape_c-word?

Just checked the White House Job Clock.

406,937,813 jobs created or saved so far today.

The president’s amazing success continues.

Well done Mr Obama. Kudos.

“It’s not stupid and irrational to blame New Democrats for that sorry state of affairs, but every institution –the press corps, Republicans, Democrats– blurs that distinction over and over again.”
.
You’ve got it exactly backwards, Stuart. “New Democrats” exist exactly because of those institutions – corporate, media and their “conservative” agents. They’re a product of what I’m talking about and just like their Republican co-conspirators, they couldn’t get elected without vast, inculcated false beliefs about politics and policy.

[...] Klein has a good piece laying out the truth but I also think it’s a textbook example of how not to talk about gaps in the public’s [...]

The problem is not surviving those who may be ill-informed. The problem is surviving the arrogant who believe they and they alone have the truth regardless of the facts.

Your responses get more delusional and paranoid by the day. With no intent of degradation, you truly need to seek help. Elvis has left the building and you are riding shotgun.

[...] one-year tax cut in U.S. history was pushed through by a Democrat. Over at Time, pundit Joe Klein vents his frustration over the popular misunderstanding of the stimulus bill. Maybe Ms. Dorson’s state or local [...]

You start out with intelligent discourse, but end your comments with small-minded, name-calling rhetoric.

Do you have anything else to offer than shrill, rude comments. Once again, your comments validated Klein’s arguments.

[...] tell Joe Klein, who blames the American “dodos” for not understanding that the stimulus is good for us all, that he’s a little late. Mencken [...]

It is correct to say that the most of the public doesn’t know much about politics or public policy. What I’m getting at is that the larger problem, one reason why people are so ignorant, may be that many people don’t know whom to believe, as a direct result of the thirty year campaign to demonize liberalism and even expertise. In other words, people are ignorant for certain reasons and those reasons include massive disinformation, a corrupt press and the cultivation of partisan psychology. Considering the nearly mono-directional nature of the most egregious – some of us would say obvious – lying, there’s no other explanation for why anyone would still trust any Republican.

I linked over here from “The Weekly Standard” just to see what Klein had written. Same old “we’re superior” liberal elitist claptrap one might expect.

I was, however, surprised at the number of comments. I didn’t think that many people read “Time” any more. There is no real reason to. One could read “The Nation” or “Time” and get about the same result. There is certainly no reason to read both.

The problem is surviving the arrogant who believe they and they alone have the truth regardless of the facts.”
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Yes, that’s exactly right. Typically those so consumed by partisan fealty that they have no ability to discern the actual facts because they have been brainwashed to believe those who manipulate and lie to them for power and profit.

“Yes, that’s exactly right. Typically those so consumed by partisan fealty that they have no ability to discern the actual facts because they have been brainwashed to believe those who manipulate and lie to them for power and profit.”

==
That’s a good first step in your treatmetn. You finally understand yourself.

[...] Joe Klein at Swampland at Time: Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it’s been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you’ve been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills. [...]

stuart,

Where do I get my ideas from? Just from looking at the world from my own personal point of view. I would describe myself as a civil libertarian. I consider myself liberal on social issues, while believing in free market economics.

I think the problem is our government spends too much money. I am not opposed to taxing, as you describe it, the “elite”. After all, as a percentage of their total income, the rich pay much less than the middle class. I just don’t think you can tax yourself out of the problem.

When I say “reorganize”, that may be a too strong of a term. What I mean is we need to change the way we pay. We need to pay for results, not “fee for services”. Why does McAllen, Texas costs us over $15,000 per medicaid patient, when we are paying less than half that much at the Mayo Clinic and get better results? We really change the way we pay or we will go broke.

Social Security? It must be a generational thing, but as a Generation X-er, I don’t expect to see much when I turn 65. Social Security worked when it was created, because you had 15 people paying in for every recipient. Now the ratio is 3 to 1 and eventually it will be 2 to 1. Reagan delayed the problem by raising taxes 5 times in 7 years. Now working people are paying more in these taxes than in income taxes.

I think the federal government spends too much money. If you read my full post, I point to military spending and corporate welfare as the biggest problems, but entitlement spending is the largest chunk, so it will have to take a hit if we really want to cut the deficit. However, when it comes to entitlement spending, it is the poor who get the least, and they are usually the ones to take the first hit, because no one in Congress represents their interests.

Furthermore, when I talk about middle class, I am clearly in that category. If I got to take a hit, well, then I got to take a hit.

I linked over here from “The Weekly Standard” just to see what Klein had written. Same old “we’re superior” liberal elitist claptrap one might expect.
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Thanks, I always wonder where the one time flood of neocons comes from when Joe writes something.

“You finally understand yourself.”
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Hope so. That is the first step to understanding everything else. Too bad for you, though.

h-crud: Try Merriam-Webster. Informal usage, suitable for blog comments.
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I couldn’t care less about all sorts of poor English usage in fast moving blogs.
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Then why mention it in the first place?

Klein’s a fascist who gets his talking points direct from Obama.

The Marxist Time Magazine employs him because he’s a known liar and can’t get work in a real publication.

I am feeling rather dumb about this. Over at http://www.recovery.gov it shows the 288B in tax cuts Joe Klein mentions, but as of 01/15/10, only 92.8B was paid out.

The site also says the Recovery Act works, in part, by

- Cutting taxes for 129 million working households by providing an $800 Making Work Pay tax credit for qualified individuals

– Expanding the Child Tax Credit.

Then hopping to the IRS site to learn more about the Making Work Pay tax credit, it says the maximum tax credit is normally $400 for a single taxpayer and $800 for a married couple.

Does he mean the money is literally magical in that

- a $400 tax credit turns into $60 per month and a $800 tax credit turns into $80 a month?

- even though only 92.8B of the tax credits were paid out, it’s the equivalent of 288B being spent?

Stuart,

While Joe may be an “elitist”, a point can be made that Americans don’t always agree with what we intellectuals might think is in their best interests.

I read your critique of the Obama administration regarding the “stimulus” package and I can’t say I disagree with your statements. However, most Americans would read your statements and conclude you are a “Socialist”, who wants to tear down the free market system.

Afterall, the Teabaggers would be the biggest beneficaries of what you propose, just they are likely to be the loudest in opposition. Where is their enlightened self-interest? The fact that the elites would look at the Teabaggers response to your position and conclude they are stupid.

I am just a dumb-unwashed-redneck from Alabama. I need a talking head from FOX to tell me about this since Joe’s tingling whatever will never mention it. Do I believe there is global warming – yes. Is it solely man made – no.

“Pachauri, the IPCC chief, is under attack on another front, as well, as newspaper reports in India have commented repeatedly on his reportedly lavish lifestyle. TERI receives funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, both of which did not respond to requests for comment from FoxNews.com. Reports indicate that there also are concerns in the United Kingdom surrounding 10 million British pounds in funding for TERI, and questions about TERI’s objectivity.

“It’s about time that somebody started following the money trail to the big interests that want to prosper from the green regime, while the rest of the economy is crushed,” Orient told FoxNews.com. “It’s not as though the amount were a trickle.”

[...] Or why progressives never get anywhere. As far as the public is concerned, they can’t get past the requisite insults. Rogerian [...]

Dear Mr. Klein:

Countrary to popular belief, we are not all stupid out here. We work and would like to keep the value that we produce. Please don’t insult with the line that we are somehow benefiting from an increase in withholding (that’s the money that we loan to the feds anyway! Why shouldn’t we get to keep it all until April 15?).

How about this one: the feds stop spending like there is no tomorrow (I hear you protest as you stand, tin cup in hand, on the corner of 5th and Lex: “Can your kids spare another trillion for my redistribution?”). Pathetic at best, dishonest at worst.

My background? Oh, just another unwashed idiot: B.A., M.A., J.D, M.S Supply Chain, lawyer, business professional, decorated vet, patriot.

As you slowly become aware of the wave that builds before you, you should know that we are many. We pay attention, we watch, we listen, we read, we reason, we deliberate, and, most importantly, we reject your slight of hand — the idea that somehow giving us back a little bit of the money that was ours in the first place is an act of great of economic genius.

May your children forgive your errors as they some day attempt to dig out of the job-killing, economy-imploding, future-stealing government spending and debt you support.

Shame on you.

Can someone please answer a question for me: HOW can the $288 billion in tax relief for 95% of citizens be money spent? As the article pointed out, that magical $60 – $80 a month I’ve been seeing in my paycheck every month is MY MONEY I EARNED!!! I know this because that money is NOT there now that I’m filing my taxes!!!!!

[...] Joe Klein: “It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.” Link to this post! Posted in Politics | « An Edwards Sex Tape? You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. [...]

Joe you idiot. In one sentence you bash Fox viewers as being “misinformed”, then in the next you tell about the difficulties of democracy, a week after the most misinforming hack on the planet, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, tells us that he would cheat if needed to vote Coakley in. He’d “vote 20 times if he had to”. Call a spade a spade. Until you do, you have no credibility.

And besides all that, you’re just plain stupid. The stimulus was a fraud, a sham, a colossal waste of our children’s money.

What $60 to $80 in my paycheck?

My brother doesn’t see it in his either, seeing how’s been unemployed since May.

The stimulus didn’t work. The whole concept of having a government spend it’s way out of a recession is bogus. Americans understand this. Why don’t you?

fhmadvocat:
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I hope that you don’t think that I’m being hostile, I’m not, and it’s not my intent to appear that way.
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Thanks so much for your response. As a fellow Gen-Xer, I certainly understand and share much of your political outlook. What you’ve mentioned is beyond familiar to me.
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That said, I just don’t think that you’re in possession of many of the facts, and that’s why some of what you’ve written is good analysis…minus those key facts, which makes it not-so-good analysis. I don’t fault you overmuch for it, I’d just like to share some of those facts, which aren’t necessarily discussed in detail in much of the health care coverage you’d get from, say, Time.
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For example, when you say:

Why does McAllen, Texas costs us over $15,000 per medicaid patient, when we are paying less than half that much at the Mayo Clinic and get better results?

, I immediately say to myself “Yes, yes, yes, I read Atul Gawande’s piece in the New Yorker, too, and there are enormous problems with it.” ( link to http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawandeNew Yorker piece emblematic of incomplete health care press coverage )
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Gawande, as you do, mentions that McAllen, TX pays $15,000 per person per year, and that’s correct. Also that price tag is an abomination, as he rightly points out.
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But Gawande does something strange after that, something that much of the health care coverage replicates:

In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.

So, according to Gawande, there’s another (oddly obscured) figure we could take away from his piece: the national average price of health care in the US is around $7500 per person per year.
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Got that? Gawande rightly notes, albeit without actually naming the figure, that the average price of health care in the US is $7500. That’s $15,000 divided by two (“almost twice the national average“).
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OK, now, with that resolved, Gawande goes on to make a case about fee-per-service, blah-blah-blah, and how we ought to get the McAllen TX’s of the United State more in line with the Mayo’s of the United States. Right? That’s a fair paraphrasing, I think.
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What Gawande inexplicably doesn’t mention is this incredible fact: $7500 per person per year, the average price of health care in the US, is literally over twice the average cost of health care in the developed world.
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Let me say that again: the average price in the US, the price that Gawande thinks we should be aiming for, the price that we might achieve if we started to get rid of fee-for-service, that $7500, is over twice what the rest of the wealth world pays for the same or better care.
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Here is a link to OECD health care data per country ( link to OECD data on health care spending ), and it shows this for the year 2007 (hence the small variation on $7500, the price from 2006):

US: $7290
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Norway: $4763
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Switzerland: $4417
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Canada: $3895
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France: $3601
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Germany: $3588
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Sweden: $3362
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Great Britain: $2992
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OECD average: $2964
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Italy: $2686
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Spain: $2671
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Japan: $2581

Let me condense that for you:
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US: $7290 vs
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Germany: $3588 vs
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wealthy country average: $2964 vs
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Japan: $2581
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So the obvious question is: “Why didn’t Gawande think to look at what other countries pay, before telling us what we need to do to reduce health care costs?”
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The other obvious question is “Where the crap is all of that money going?”
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So when you’re in possession of more than just the “usual facts” about the US price tag of health care, and you expand that knowledge from more than just a comparison of corrupt, backwards McAllen, TX and the Mayo Clinic to encompass countries that get just as good or better health care results than we do –and prove health care, not “cover”, literally everybody– you might change your opinion of what an “overhaul” of Medicare and Medicaid (or the entire US system) means.
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Don’t take my word for it, fhmadvocat, look it up yourself. Google “OECD” and “health care” and you’ll find a bunch of comparative data about percentage of GDP, and so on.
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The problem is, you’d never know that information from reading the weirdly US-centric pieces describing the problem of health care, and it seems to line up directly with the solutions being proposed by Democrats. It’s as if these writers and publishers were only considering the situation from the perspective of the current Administration, and their focus on US numbers, and the “cost curve” in purely US terms.
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That’s also why criticism of the press corps should be forthcoming, if we’re to talk about how the US population is uninformed about the world, don’t you think?

[...] Klein says if you think like this you’re just Too Dumb to Thrive. Klein believes we should be thanking The One for our big tax cut. Hey, I’m always in favor [...]

Don’t assume that one who comments here is a Time reader. The column appeared on the website Memeorandum, and that I DO look at every day.

Maybe when that stimulus money starts flowing my way I can subscribe to some periodicals, besides The Week. Used to get Newsweek, USNews, Fortune, Forbes, and The Economist. Now I read a few pages of Time in the dentist’s office — a couple of times a year, but that’s about it.

[...] the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it’s been wasted on them. Go to Blog Post – © POPNEWS | POPULAR NEWS FROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD. var cookie = [...]

I believe the term Mr. Klein was aching to use was “peasants” but that would have seemed, I dunno, *elitist* ?

“It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.”

Well done Mr. Klein. It’s a shame to see so few actually do their research much less using multiple sources.

Quality viewing these days is Glenn Beck and American Idol – and you wonder why Americans can’t compete?

It also hurts when the msm seems itself to be under or misinformed. Where are the tough follow up questions? – Heck, where are the tough questions, period.

Case in point – Ms. Palin, comes out with the fire-brand folksy schtick – she’s as dumb as a box of rocks, and is in no way shape or form prepared to be VP – but…try convincing fox viewers. They’ll buy schtick over substance because they only know what they’ve been spoonfed, and obviously don’t have the mental capacity to do their own research. Or…they’re even more intellectually handicapped than she is, so to them she looks like a Rhodes scholar. Gullible and dumb, but it works.

Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public.

Odd, since only something like 52% of the American public actually pays federal income taxes, once you factor in everything like tax credits, etc.

Maybe everyday Americans are too dumb to thrive. But Joe Klein is apparently too dumb to do basic math.

Sorry, but Ms. Palin IS a Rhodes scholar compared to the twit that actually holds the Vice Presidency, but tey convincing the Kool-Aid drinking CNN viewers!

Sorry, but Ms. Palin IS a Rhodes scholar compared to the twit that actually holds the Vice Presidency, but try convincing the Kool-Aid drinking CNN viewers!

I am just one of the unwashed-dumb-racist Alabamains that joe absolutely despises.
However, I know that this administration does not have a clue on security. Thank you Fox for asking the hard question:
“Wallace then asked Gibbs whether a 50-minute interrogation was enough: “You really don’t think that if you’d interrogated him longer that you might have gotten more information, since we now know that al Qaeda in Yemen…”

Gibbs interrupted: “FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him.”

“All they could?” Wallace asked.

“Yeah.”

That is a preposterous claim.

“Given that even the smallest of details can have significant intelligence value there is no way a 50 minute interview could be sufficient to get all the information he could offer,” says Representative Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee and a former FBI special agent. “It is not likely that the interviewing agents even had the complete background on him to even get into the detailed questioning necessary to flush out all of the information he knew.”

Thank you for explaining this to Joe in terms that he would have to understand, even if he chooses not to accept the point.

It might be interesting if more of us who are out of step with the Obama administrations gyrations, mathemagic, and rhetoric mentioned our backgrounds to show we aren’t numbskulls.

Me. BS degree (full academic ride, top 20 university), MBA, studied law at U of Chicago, profit center manager and business owner, military officer. Anyone can do this if they have brains and drive, by the way, so I am not “special”. Just a serious minded citizen, retired … which only means I now have time to think about things rather than being a “go with the flow” workaholic. I now realize how much political crappola I missed for 3+ decades.

[...] Black Conservative provides a clue: Joe Klein writes in Time Magazine today that he sees two reasons why so many people find the stimulus package wasteful, is because Obama [...]

Wow, the mask has now come completely off.

The raving liberal elitist finally shows his true feelings.

A couple of uncomfortable points:

1. America has been educated in public schools overwhelmingly run by liberal forces for the past 50 years, so if you think the citizens are uninformed or misinformed about civics, send a thank you note to the teacher’s union.

2. The mainstream media (so-called because they reach the highest number of people) has a chance every single day of the year to inform their readers/viewers/listeners about what is going on in the world. They choose to give them information that fits their liberal bias (see “How Obama Got Elected”). The people have grown tired of their self-serving liberal bias, non-reporting-just-spouting-liberal-talking-points ways and that is why they are all bleeding money and dying out like dinosaurs. (except for Fox of course).

3. Fox News has 3 – 4 million viewers on any given night (per show)… yes, they dominate their competitors completely, but they are only 1 network out of many. There are over 300 million people in the U.S…. if the public uninformed, it is not Fox’s fault. (see “How Obama Got Elected” to find out which side was the most informed when it came to the election.)

4. Maybe, just maybe the people understand much better than you give them credit for… maybe they are starting to pay attention to the statistics like the ones in this article. (the real truth about the dire situation we are in thanks to over-spending politicians).

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Dougherty/jan222010.html

Sorry, Joe. Americans are much smarter than you think they are… they have just been poorly served by useful idiots in the media, like yourself, and they are waking up to that fact… and it is not going to be pretty at the ballot box come this November.

I’m afraid this little tantrum of your might be just one of many.

Yeah, that’d be us;too dumb to thrive. Too dumb, worrying about our children having a better standard of living than us, to thrive. To rooted in ideology, worrying about breaking the nation’s financial back so that some GD school teachers can keep their tenure and continue to misinform out children, to thrive. Too worried, thinking about how our country has fallen into the hands of people who are harming it terribly, to thrive.
That’s us. That’s me. But apparently not Joe Klein, who’d rather see the nightmare of things like socialized medicine come to pass. Well Joe, I’ll cling to my guns here in Pennsylvania (though I’ll admit there will be no religion clinging in my house) and we’ll see how the rest of Bee Ho’s term ( hopefully it will be just one) works out for this country. You stay in New York, sipping your latte’ and feeling morally superior to a guy in PA who has created several jobs for people, decent paying, medical insurance providing jobs, despite the current economic and business hating climate that exists thanks to people like you.

Sorry Suart,
I googled “what’s in the stimulus package”.

I got this detailed list from the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/STIMULUS_FINAL_0217.html

This great drill down list from NYT:
http://projects.nytimes.com/44th_president/stimulus

This short summary from MSNBC:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/17/1748381.aspx

As well as numerous articles like this one:
http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/deals/what-does-the-stimulus-mean-for-you/

Anybody who can type “what’s in the stimulus package” could find out in about 30 seconds. All from major media outlets.

The media can’t make the public read it, however.

Absolutely. People like me—top of my law school class, ex-Wall Street lawyer, 25 years building a very successful business that employs hundreds of people, in the financial markets every day for over 30 years—we are just too stupid to understand how $350 billion to SEIU members at state and local levels is helping us. We are just not smart enough to see how the federal government shutting down the credit markets with various policies is really benefitting us. As we and our fellow benighted members fo the business, legal and financial coimmunities see everything we have worked our whole lives to build melt down the drain, we look to magazine opinion writers for wisdom, guidance and a better example, through these dark days. We just don’t get it, do we?

I agree with you completely Joe! Well said. Ignorance is NOT bliss, it is just ignorance!

People get to live ignorantly blissful because there a re a lot of talented people working very hard to make sure the whole thing doesn’t go to hell.

That 3/4 of the people believe that the stimulus hasn’t helped means 3/4 of the people don’t know how to get good information and that is the fault of the media and the law which allows Fox News to lie purposefully without repercussion!

Funny, isn’t it, how the same Americans who were so smart as to elect Obama are now suddenly stupid, because they are horrified by his doing the opposite of what he promised them he would do? Yes, we are just far too dumb to realize that losing our jobs, our pensions, our businesses, our futures, while the government bails out labor unions, Wall Street and their campaign contributors, is really doing us all so very much good. Would that we were brilliant magazine writers, driven by college dorm political theory, so we could understand our own businesses better.

Great responses. Care to double-down with “too dumb and angry to thrive”?

[...] Originally Posted by SmytheKing On the other side, there's this article: tax-breaks-for-almost-everyone: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance Why the Obama administration hasn't pointed this out and let people know about it as much as the Health Insurance Bill is beyond me. At the end of the day, people care about their money. You can argue whether or not that is good all you want, but it's how it is. If people are getting more money back in taxes, and they can claim more now, TELL them. Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com [...]

[...] Too Dumb to Thrive Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans [...] [...]

[...] to Time Magazine’s Joe Klein, it just goes to show you the “Sheeple” are “Too Dumb To Thrive“: … they may be right: it’s been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item [...]

We know we’re all stupid in your eyes Joe.

So why don’t you and your would-be-dictator Washington D. C. friends just go away and leave us to live our stupid lives without your bitter, ineffective meddling? We don’t need you. We don’t want you. We want to live our lives and be free to make our own choices.

Your elite concern is not welcome. We don’t thank you. We’ll never thank you. Because we don’t want your “help”. And we especially don’t want it at our own expense. Just butt out.

If Joe Klein would get his head out of his posterior, he would realize why the “the flagrantly uninformed” public KNOWS the stimulus isn’t working. Stop parroting Democrat talking points and tell us this, Joe–If the stimulus is working so well:

Where are the freaking jobs????

We were promised that this numbingly expensive “stimulus” program would hold unemployment to 8% Wrong! Unemployment is now over 10% nationwide and over 12% in my state, California.

Having failed to stimulate the economy with the first train wreck of a stimulus package, Obama wants to “double down” on his first failure with a second “stimulus” package.

And we’re the uninformed ones??

Mr. Klein,

I spend hours, HOURS, every day reading financial blogs when I could and should be doing something much more productive. I read these blogs because I am appalled at what the self-described “elites” in Washington DC and on Wall Street are doing to our country. The fact is, I no longer trust what you well-paid mainstream media types deliver up on a daily basis. You, David Brooks, etc. have become part of the establishment which you are supposed to be covering.

I supported Mr. Obama’s election effort because I hoped that he would institute a new era of transparency and accountability in Washington and restore confidence in our financial system. Instead, we have gotten 12 months of “business as usual, only worse.”

Are people confused about the plethora of programs introduced over the past year? Of course they are. Are they suspicious of them of as well? You bet. And well they should be. The well-connected have been saved when they should have been allowed to suffer the consequences of their own poor business decisions. The taxpayer is now saddled with their losses. That stimulus money you boast about is taxpayer money, not Washington’s money. We are supposed to be grateful? And if not, we’re “dodos”? Seems you may need to get some fresh air.

Riddle me this: Where are the jobs supposed to come from in this so-called recovery? Cleaning Boomer bed pans and working in call centers? Where’s our manufacturing base gone (and I don’t mean GM)? Shipped abroad, that’s where, along with a lot of well-paying jobs that used to support the middle class in this country.

Perhaps you should spend some time reading what I’m reading, and then you might understand why independents like myself are nearly boiling over with rage at what’s being done in Washington.

Mike Shedlock:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Karl Denninger:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net

Ilargi and Stoneleigh (pen names):
http://www.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com

Calling taxpaying Americans “dodos” for being angry at how their money is being wasted is like blaming a crime victim for the crime, and sniffing that they got what they deserved.

Signed,
Not a Dodo

[...] I make an argument that liberals think you are stupid, then they provide the evidence: It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you [...]

[...] right…in an unbelievable display of liberal elitism titled, Too Dumb to Thrive, Joe Klein argues that you’re just too dumb to understand that the Government is here to help [...]

Question, Joe, do you know what the definition of “elitist” is? You think you do, but I’m fairly sure you don’t. As in, about the same confidence I have that President Obama was born in Hawaii.
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The fact that Time has not yet given you a hint to curb your unmitigated, egotistical bombast – in fact, they’ve given you the star platform on numerous occasions – really speaks to the mindset that runs the magazine. Balanced, for sure!

I’ll believe you’re right just as soon as you get another mortgage on your house and waste the money. Then max out all your credit cards, then borrow more money from a loan shark; waste all of that too.

If you can show me how to borrow and spend your way to prosperity I’ll believe that it can be done… but I’ve never seen it before.

If you end up homeless panhandling at the overpass; say hello to the last person who took that challenge.

Oh, and you don’t get to use the the trick the U.S. did last year and buy 80% of your own debt… although if you do I think you end up going to jail; not looking solvent.

From your unwashed redneck in Alabama
Quoting from the WSJ
“Inthe process, Clinton learned one thing: In a nation where roughly 20% describe themselves as liberal, 40% as conservative, and 40% as moderate, there’s not a high price for shutting out the left. As for history, Mr. Clinton went on to become the only Democrat since FDR to win and serve two full terms as president.

There’s no sign that Mr. Obama buys any of this. His team argues, apparently oblivious to the inherent condescension, that no intelligent American could possibly oppose his health-care agenda on substance.

It’s all just a big misunderstanding, says the White House. We just need to explain it better—like recasting a second stimulus as a “jobs bill,” selling health-care reform as “deficit reduction,” and throwing in a lot of speech references to the “middle class.”

For his part, Mr. Obama is clear. He says he’d rather be a one-termer than give up on his agenda. But this State of the Union, with the president’s approval ratings sinking, Democrats have to be asking themselves: Do Mr. Obama’s chances of getting his agenda through really go up if the congressmen and senators listening to his words come to the conclusion he’s a short-timer?

“Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted.”
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Even more amazing is that nine out of ten nitwits in the corrupt, dying left-wing MSM think the stimu-less DID work.
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If the people are, as you suggest, ill-informed about the stimu-less, maybe it’s because they were told it would keep unemployment below 8%. Instead, as unemployment keeps rising, they’re being fed all kinds of lies and propaganda about “saved” jobs, jobs created in non-existent congressional districts, and constantly revised definitions of what constitutes a “job saved or created.” All while the deficit skyrockets to frightening heights, and the projections for the national debt and unfunded entitlements mandates skyrocket.
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But at least the cheerleading sheep of the MSM are happy with it.

Can we all at least agree that there’s a trust problem, that the American people tend not to trust the information they’re given?

[...] Klein says if you think like this you’re just Too Dumb to Thrive. Klein believes we should be thanking The One for our big tax cut. Hey, I’m always in favor [...]

Could Obama simply be mid level management when it comes to the new world order he’s working towards? He may not have a choice as to what direction to take, with pressure coming from the “top” to deliver.

NewsBusters — TIME’s Joe Klein: What’s the Matter with You Morons?!
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2010/01/25/times-joe-klein-whats-matter-you-morons

Yes, if only the stupid peons would read Time, instead of watching Fox News, they too could enjoy the Emperor’s New Clothes.
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Sounds like Joe Klein and Time Magazine have profit-envy.

[...] Too Dumb to Thrive [...]

Cognitive dissonance.

[...] poll that shows nearly three quarters of the country considers the stimulus package wasteful by indicting the cognitive capacities of the nation (in a post titled “Too Dumb to Thrive” no less). To [...]

Sorry Joe but burying America in more debt in order to pay off unions was criminal. How dare you belittle Americans who know this stimulus was a scam.

Last report just 30% of the stimulus had been distributed. By definition a stimulus is a short term infusion of capital into the economy to drive employment and growth, Based on that definition the stimulus failed. Based on the Dem definition which is ” inject as much money into the pockets of Dem voter groups in order to preserve our majority”.

[...] Klein has a typically abusive response entitled “Too Dumb to Thrive” wherein he upbraids the bovine public for being too stupid to understand what’s going [...]

“It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.”

that is very true: how many paid positions like yours does Time.com have where a dodo will fit right in and be at home?

Joey boy: You just don’t get it, do you? Talk about dumb… It’s not a question of smarts… it’s a question of trust.

1) Having been lied to by this president and his administration, I am disinclined to listen to ANYTHING HE SAYS.

2) Having witnessed what this congress is willing to do to pass legislation that I and, it appears, a majority of the American people don’t what… legislation which impinges on or directly reduces the freedoms I should enjoy as a U.S. Citizen, my spirit of cooperaton has “left the building.”

3) IMO, both this president and this congress are corrupt, crooked, and bent on change which I will not tolerant, and against which I will do all I can to combat.

4) It’s not a question of comprehension, Joe… it’s a question of whether or not someone treated like an idiot acts like one… or not.

Yeah, you people are just too dumb and too ungrateful to recognize the brilliance and creativity of borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars and dumping it on Democrat constituencies.

Indeed, the fact that this wonderful President’s poll numbers keep declining demonstrates that the people are getting dumber every day.

You peons are not worthy of this great leader, because you don’t even know what’s good for you.

[...] http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/… [...]

I agree what you said about msm in general and fox news in particular. I have long been a left winger, but over the past (two) decades it has become clear what the left is really doing. Top-down elitism from the left has slowly but surely taken over from top-down elitism from the right, since post modernity took over in the late 60s. Now, bottom-up populism from the right is winning back ground and I am all for it! No more postmodernism, cultural relativism/pessimism (godwins!), micro-multiculturalism in every city street, positive discrimination of those with enough distance not to threaten the powerful (leftist) elite. No more!!

“It’s funny how worked up we all get from reading a Blog.”– ARTS-IIIe

You all do realize that Blogs are just one persons opinion and not actual news?

Right?

I read some of the comments posted (had some time to waste) and chuckle at the time and research spent to post facts and numbers. It’s an obvious attempt to say “I’m smarter and more well informed than you.” when the simple fact that you are reading a blog instead of actual news belies that entire notion.

Waste of time.

Here’s one way for the “mouth breathing”, “well informed minority” of this country to know that they are wasting their time, when the writer calls people names then they have already lost the argument and there’s really no point reading any further.

Now you can’t blame the writer for being brief, they’ve got to snag your attention with some quick eye catching words and maybe a little something to peak your interest.

“Too Dumb to Thrive” fits that nicely.

If the article is too long or specific then the multitudes out there will have to spend even more time researching data to either back up or rebut the Blogger, wasting yet even more time.

Crap, I can’t belive I wasted all this time typing this…I fell into the classic bloggers trap.

ARTS-IIIe <-very obscure signature in order to remain "Cool" and hip.

Americans aren’t “dumb”. They are deliberately distracted, kept in the dark and fed guano by “pundits” like yourself, Mr. Klein.

Still waiting for your wisdom on this:

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/the-ceremony-of-innocence/

I don’t think people are dumb. They just happen to understand that the economy would be better off it the US government didn’t take money from people who create velocity in the economy and turnaround distribute it to people like themselves who either just spend it or put it a 1% savings account. People also understand that some of that money was given to them was borrowed on 30 year terms.

With two minutes left in the game you don’t call a halfback pass for Joseph Addai you leave the ball in Peyton’s hands.

[...] columnist says you’re dumb. The next highest (”stimulus”) amount was $275 billion in grants and loans to states. [...]

[...] about the financial impact of the bills.  Now it’s time to try and brown-nose those “too-stupid-to-know-how-good-they’ve -got-it” electorate.  You  know, the same folk who would have to suffer through the [...]

*(wasn’t around yesterday, but I want to comment briefly, if anyone is still reading…)
.
Joe mentions that “the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief”. But he fails to mention that the overwhelming consensus among economists is that tax relief is the least productive means of stimulus available to the federal government.
.
I linked to the following recently and want to re-mention it. Mark Zandi (cheif economist Moody’s) was invited to testify before the House as lawmakers were deciding what to include in the stimulus package. He testified that spending increases (UI benefits, food stamps, State aid, and infrastructure) far out-benefit tax relief, and that such relief is often counter-productive (link here, pg 5 shows spending multipliers).
.
The package was tilted toward tax-relief out of political expediency with an eye toward re-election rather than effectiveness; meanwhile, conservative media continues to bang-the-drum. Joe has written a post complaining about citizen ignorance while failing to educate his readers.
.
Joe’s two points are accurate, IMO. However, if he wants to complain about an ill-informed public, he should be better informed himself.

Joe, You need to spend some time studying addiction and dependence diseases. The victims of these maladies (alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive gambling, etc.) do not appreciate people who lead them into their dependency. And why should they, since their dependency generally ruins their life? When this progressive government induces people to depend on programs funded with OPM (sounds like opium, is equally addicting, stands for “other people’s money”), the most they can hope for from their victims is begrudging enmity.

Is this CNN poll taken only of its viewers? I suspect it may be. Yesterday I saw a couple of minutes of their stimulus spending “investigation,” a segment on aid to fish farms. The amount of money was relatively quite small, yet an outraged graphic proclaimed that our money was paying for “Fish Food!”

The segment went by so quickly that there was no time for any depth to this mini-story. No time to talk about how fish farms in the U.S. have been financially undercut by cheap fish products from overseas; about how other food producers in our country (especially corn, soy and rice) get billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies every year; about how a few dollars for “Fish Food” could help U.S. fish farmers weather the recession. No time to consider how a relatively tiny subsidy could well end up being cheaper than unemployment and Medicaid benefits to the fish farmers and their families.

At the same time, CNN was polling its viewers on the subject of stimulus spending. The poll then gets quickly spread by other media, as if it’s statistically legit.

If I’m wrong here, I’ll eat my words. If I’m right, here’s another example of cable infotainment’s ethical corruption.

I don’t know where Mr.Klein lives, but here in Georgia teachers have been furloughed and my property taxes went up $700 to help state and local governments cover their deficits. So I’m not quite as dumb as he may think I am when I say the stimulus was wasted.

A sizable chunk of that $288 billion in tax-relief could have gone to state governments so that teachers and property-owners wouldn’t have to suffer. In an effort to “govern from the center”, Obama has wasted a large portion of the stimulus funds.
.
Interestingly enough, the “magical $60 to $80 per month” in your paycheck (assuming accuracy, link Joe?) works out to around the $700 increase in your property taxes (I guess it is magic- watch it disappear). Instead, Georgia could have used that money to extend jobs and maintain tax rates.

Let me do the arithmetic, all other things being equal:
For the tax year 2008 when Bush was president my wife and I received a one time tax rebate of $1200.
In 2009 when the Son of Obama was president my wife’s and my taxes went down by a touted $800. That is a $400 increase. ??

Now it is true that the Obama tax plan, but not Bush’s, provided” tax” refunds to those who did not pay income taxes….Could these be the people that Joe Klein was calling dodos?

[...] of the day goes to Joe Klein of Time Magazine.  Here’s a snippet from a post titled, “Too Dumb to Thrive:” Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly [...]

[...] really it should come as no surprise that the American people have come to believe that the Obama stimulus has been a massive waste of [...]

[...] Magazine’s Joe Klein, pulls no punches in a post on the blog “Swampland” called “Too Dumb To [...]

“You all do realize that Blogs are just one persons opinion and not actual news? ”

If you limit yourself to listening to, or reading “NEWS” put out by the the daisy chain of the main stream media (ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBCNPRPBS,Time, Newsweak, NYT,WAPO,LAT etc,,etc) you will unable to seperate the facts from opinion.

[...] Joe Klein wrote on his magazine's Swampland blog (1/25/10) that the American public doesn't understand that the economy benefited from the Obama [...]

Stuart and Hotbbq – thank you both for well thought out articulate arguments that did not collapse into name calling. Very nice.

I think you are both arguing the chicken and the egg concept. Has society’s apathy lead to government mis-management or was it bad government that lead to the citizen’s apathy?

I will offer a third option that incorporates both that maybe our current state is inevitable in a free society. Prosperity has lead us down a path that has allowed citizens to become apathetic, government to become corrupted and institutionalized and the media to become lazy and polarized.

One last note, Hotbbq, I consider myself a Teabagger, live in the country, own 2 tractors and have chickens and would say that I actually agree with most of what Stuart is saying. Generalizing us mouth breathers does your arguement a dis-service…just sayin’

Maybe, Joe Klein, you have enough money that the recession hasn’t impacted you? If so, how the hell would you know if the stimulus has actually worked? You just accept what the WH tells you and irresponsibly assume (and you know what that means) the rest of the Americans that disagree are ignorant. Why is it that the Far Left is so darn condescending to those that have different beliefs? If anyone is dumb, it’s you, Joe Klein.

[...] Joe Klein wrote on his magazine’s Swampland blog (1/25/10) that the American public doesn’t understand that the economy benefited from the Obama [...]

I too dumb to know what do. Government hard! Joe Klein know what do. Him god or something!

Can you explain how taking money and then giving it back can ever stimulate the economy?

If government spending creates jobs, taking the money out of the economy in order to spend it must destroy jobs.

The money does not just magically appear. Even when the government prints it, that expansion of the money supply takes the money from the economy by inflation (devaluation of the currency by dilution).

Now if they take the money out of the economy and pave a rural highway that is not used by one additional car as a result. That is wasted compared to whatever the person they took it from would have spent it on.

Painting the fences when you are having financial troubles is wasting money. Most of the “shovel-ready” projects are just fence painting at best.

Perhaps some of us “dummies” are well aware of the categories of spending you mention, and realize they are not good things. You need to research what’s truly good for economic growth.

Poor Joe. Good pop novelist but not really smart enough to be a journalist. So he ended up another tax predator ruling class flak whoring himself out to blow blue smoke at the tax serfs. But they have gotten uppity Joseph. You might abandon your masters before you end up on trial and at the guillotine with them.

1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far.

You have got to be kidding me right. Lets see very little waste huh? How does this serve the American people

$300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.
- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.
- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.
- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.
- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.

This is your beloved government putting your money work Joe. If this makes you proud, then you have a big problem with priorities.

News flash to Joe Klein, ………. you said, “the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you’ve been finding in your paycheck since last spring.”

Are you sure that $60-80 per month isn’t just reduced withholdings (tax credit), which most if not all taxpayers will end up owing this April 15th??

If so, Joe, will you be honest enough to issue a correction to your article?? ………………..

i’m waiting, Joe, but not holding my breathe.

An explanation of why Joe and his class are so unmannered now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgXIL6X3HaU

Joe,

Time Magazine is too dumb to survive. Proof? Printing your articles!

kattest123:

First off, sophisticated liberal is an oxymoron. There is no such creature. The vast majority of you are thinking heads who overdid their illicit substances in college during the 70s, which you fail to remember. You represent about 5% of your party.

The rest of the poor schleps in the Democrat Party don’t read a book more than once a year, don’t invest, rent property, and believe that these United States could not exist without welfare, social security, (insert your trade union here), and the lottery. They are duped into thinking government can fix their problems; instead of them taking their own bootstraps, pulling hard on them, and standing on their own two feet with their own personal responsibility – which made this country the most productive place on the globe (until the progressives came along).

The progressive movement, which you represent, is the same red socialism we fought a cold war over. Progressives come in both parties. The battle has begun for the control of our future. In the end, Liberty comes with prosperity, and prosperity does not exist in the progressive lexicon. That word is replaced with mediocrity. Prosperity and liberty are for what to live, or for what to die.

What a “simple piece” from a “simple person”. But, what can you expect from a person with a degree in “American Civilization”? Must have been a challenging course, eh Joe?

Joe Klein is a bigger fool than I imagined. Additionally, Time editors are complicit or are even bigger fools to have agreed to this socialist crap.
I have lost my faith in your intellectual honesty.

joe Klien is just one of the reasons that Time Magazine is losing subscribers faster than CNN

Joe could be right. The more you look at the stats, more than half of the voters voted for the least experienced president in our history just a little over a year ago (I suspect that percentage reaches closer to 100% if you look around at the Time news room), Now we find out that 1 in 4 actually believes the stimulus package was at least in some way successful.

Maybe those people just didn’t understand the question.

Mr. Joe, no thanks for calling me “dumb”. You liberals are doing a fantastic job on getting us “dumb” people to join together and vote against your Liberal friends in office. Keep up the name-calling. It’s working for us. On that, thank you.

Time should seriously consider firing Mr. Klein. This is an absolute insult to their readers!

A superior article on the same topic: http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/advice-to-barack-obama-by-two#comment_1545400

[...] Poor Joe Klein from Time Magazine. [...]

This country is a republic not a democracy.

[...] Klein says if you think like this you’re just Too Dumb to Thrive. Klein believes we should be thanking The One for our big tax cut. Hey, I’m always in favor of [...]

NewsBusters: FOX Is The Most Trusted Name In News According To New Poll
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/01/26/fox-most-trusted-name-news-according-new-poll

[...] a dumbfounded Joe Klein of Time concluded, “nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second [...]

Joe,
If you weren’t suck a lickspittle, you might be useful. As is, you just wanna piss people off… which makes you worse than useless.

Try an original thought, you suck-up! How is it that you still even get paid to write this drivel ??!!

I guess your “genius” is, likewise, wasted on us, too. Will we never learn?

So, my two thoughts:

1. $288 billion to 95% of the American people, which I didn’t get being retired. Does that mean that only 5% of the American public is retired or unemployed, Joe? Yes, I think it was a waste of money.

2. My local fire station was closed, they’re letting inmates out early, and in California were paying much higher taxes. So Joe, where is the Pork that were entitled to here?

I am an average hard working person from IL. who thinks that the stimulus is working and will continue to work when the construction aspect of it kicks in this spring. Most people are to impatient or think “I don’t have no money in my hand so it must not be helping me!” Everyone needs to stop, take a breath, and give it a chance. This isn’t magic, it takes some time.

What we need is a third party. The Labor Party. Someone from a real life job that will help every day Americans, not the giant Corps. or the 1/2 of 1% who run the country now. Normal People who WORK not babble, b#@ch, and call names.

Hay Jhoe !!

We R STUk here on Lawng EyeLANd. PuLLEEze send

GuVerminT Help !?!

WE iz 2 Dumb to NOwE hOW MUSCH dA STIMooLIS PakaggE Is macKINg r LIfes BeddEr.

I geSS. Am I RITe?

PlEEZE Jhoe, we R so Confoosed.

Oh YeA, we FinallIE figgereD hoW to TurN on da TeLLEBISION, anD we SAWR Fox NOOS.

We LUVVed Dat.

But Sum OF da words DEY sed were 2 BIg for HoUR smaLL BraneS.

TanKKS Jhoe 4 MeKKIN sHURE DAt we STOOpiD Fox NOOS WACHERS UNTerSTAnDT HoW AMAYzINGG
Da STimOOlis WhatEVVEr iz.

TANKKs we will PaSZ on your GRATE NooS DaT da STImooLIZ iz doOWin sooo MUch fer US Dum PeePLE.

U R Da BesTesT RePORTTer in Da Woild, Jhoe !

Well Joe, I guess I must be in the too dumb camp.
You might want to take a look at the WSJ Bailout Tracker.
It shows where $ 723 Billion went and does not include
any $ 288 Billion in Tax Relief or $ 275 Billion in loans to states.

There are also stories out there that $ 350 Billion or so has not been spent yet and another $ 350 Billion can not even be
accounted for.

All that totals up to about $ 2 Trillion.

If my children’s teachers are still employed and the firemen are still there due to a $ 275 Billion Loan, this year,
what is going to keep them there next year?

Pretty clear I am not going to learn anything reading Time.

Hey Joe

There are only a little over 134 million Tax Returns filed in the US. 95% of That number is about 128 million.

$ 80 a month times 12 is just under $ 1,000 each.

$ 1000.00 times 128 Million people is $ 128 Billion

You want to explain to me where the other $ 160 Billion went?

Oh yes, I forgot, I’m the dumb one.

Joe Klein, you elitist washed up hippy-bearded slob, I have more know how about how this stimulus has hurt the economy in my pinky finger than you do in your whole blog. Allow me to show you how dumb YOU really are. I seem to recall the administration saying we have to pass the stimulus right now or the unemployment rate could go to 9%. Well, we passed it and the unemployment rate is now above 10%. I know this is complicated math for you Joe, but let me educate you. 9 comes before 10, and 8% percent which was the unemployment rate BEFORE the stimulus passed is less than 9. I know counting from 1-10 may be a bit beyond your abilities, but perhaps there is a teacher out there whose job was saved by the stimulus who could teach you.

PS

There are only 67 million Families in the US
13 million of those are single parent families

That leaves 54 million but not 100% of those are working moms.

Adding even 30 million “Joint” Taxpayers to the numbers above

gives us less than 160 million workers which calculates out

to less than $ 160 Billion which still leaves you with around

$ 130 Billion to account for Joe

Absolutely rediculous article and opinion, both by Joe Klein.

The people of this great country don’t need a degree in civics and to spend all their time figuring out what’s going on. All they need to do is look out the window. And obviously the billions of dollars having been spent in the “stimulus” program has NOT had the desired effect: NAMELY: stimulating the economy NOW. Not five years from now with some pie in the sky light rail project that no one will ever use.

No matter how many times The Great One tries to convince us otherwise, with writers like Joe Klein backing him up, if the average person’s life hasn’t been improved or at least stabilized, that’s enough evidence to prove that the stimulus has been an epic failure.

And lack of communication? Please. BO never shuts up and his adoring media base seem to be the only people not bored with listening to him.

Thank God I cancelled my subscription to Time Magazine years ago. According to Joe Klein, I was too stupid to understand it, anyway.

“The next highest amount was $275 billion in grants and loans to states. This is why your child’s teacher wasn’t laid off…and why the fire station has remained open, and why you’re not paying even higher state and local taxes to close the local budget hole.” Really Joe? I live in Northern California where fire stations have been closed, police officer positions have been cut, sheriff’s deputies and school teachers have been laid off. Guess what? No one from the Obama Administration took note, no one. And you know what? That is just fine. Our local and state politicians got us into this mess and it is their responsibility to get us out. So keep your liberal, “I’m-better-than-you,-smarter-than-you” lecture to yourself. We don’t need it from some biased, America hating journalist (yeah, Joe, that would be you) who works for a magazine that is losing circulation. Just remember this, your Obamessiah HAS DONE NOTHING AT ALL for California, not a thing. We will remember THAT fact come this November when Senator Boxer runs for re-election. She WILL be replaced.

I will not be renewing my subscription…

What does this guy see about what’s going on that I’m missing??

The envelope is here on my desk, ready to be mailed…I’ll cancel the check, no problem…it’s been an OK two years, I guess.

…money’s tight…I’ll just spend my twenty bucks on a pizza.

[...] really it should come as no surprise that the American people have come to believe that the Obama stimulus has been a massive waste of [...]

[...] but don’t belie his ideological leanings, or just how wacko the guy is.  So when he says something outrageous, that is something I rant about. Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 [...]

More outright fabrications from one of he most misinforming shills the administration has ensconced at Time. Yassuh, Massah Klein, we be gettin’ back to tha fields now sos yo kin continue ta tell us po ol’ fools how to think whilst you be pickin’ our pockets. We be good, we promise. Can you send us some mo’ garbage ta eat?

WOW Mr.Klein! You’re reeeeeeaaaallly smart! Gosh…I didn’t realize how dumb I was until I read your brilliant article!
Democracy…what a word! Too bad only smart people like you can be part of one!
Hey! the stimulus worked! I mean, just because the government raised the debt cap and will levy more tax money than they could ever return, I had second thoughts.
But, thank god Professor Klein is here! Everything’s just rosy now.

Is anyone dumber than Joe Klein? $787 ??? Where are those layers of editors and fact checkers?

Hey Joe,

I’m an Ivy League guy with three master’s degrees and I voted for Scott Brown. There are many of us out here. Maybe you should take a little time off to examine some of your assumptions about good citizenship and intelligence.

Hey Joe,

Ever stop and think you’re the one who is “misinformed” — or for that matter — a “dodo?”

- The Refounding Father

http://TheRefoundingFather.blogspot.com

Joe;
It is amazing how you so called smart guys can be so dumb. The argument is that we the masses are uninformed.
Now that is not the fault of the receiver of information but the fault of the sender. We all know that this can not be the cause because you are the sender and you are the smartest guy in the room. There must be a different reason!. I believe the reason is that these uniformed masses just do not believe you. They truly believe that you Lie to them or that your political leanings skew the information for some political purpose. Only you know for sure. The solution is to re-package the information so that it is more understandable. Is that not what the President is doing? Don’t change the message just change the way you say it. Of course this only works with a message that is better or the masses are as dumb as you think.

Your attention to CNN polls rather than it’s overall effect on the economy makes me think that the polling population was correct: it really was for political gain.

I’m also not clear how you get 3/4 polled. The poll specifically asked about “waste” and less than 1/4 polled said that it was a total waste. The rest thought that at least most of it was wasted and that would allow them to believe that the tax credits were effective.

I must agree about the communications issue. The Obama administration looks more and more like the Bush Administration every day. Make measureless claims about your sponsored legislation and then blame the public and the media for (mis)interpreting the only communication that they’re getting from you.

In the end, we don’t care how you feel about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t care about your theories and philosophy. We want results like those that mortgage companies, credit card companies, the IRS, and our own employers make of us.

[...] this view of the voters as angry, unreasoning and immature is Time’s Joe Klein, who in the headline of a blog post describes Americans as “Too Dumb to Thrive”: [...]

Sarah Palin didn’t make the statement, so the fact-check hounds weren’t called!

[...] up, Joe Klein explains: Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of [...]

Gee, Klein, we’re so stupid that we think it was a $787 BILLION ‘stimulus’ package, not just $787.

I wonder why it is that nobody wants to call themselves a liberal? I wonder why it is that the Democrat Party falls apart immediately upon getting any sort of power? Could it be that you have incredibly flawed policy ideas that all center upon the conceit that you’re so much smarter than anyone else, even though few of you have any real-world experience (only 10% of Obama’s cabinet has private sector experience)? Could it be that you have zero ability to self-analyze or self-reflect, and thus when you fail you always project, like little children, your frustrations with your own ignorance onto the ‘great unwashed’ with whom you constantly claim to sympathize?

The Democrat Party receives the most money from corporate interests, trial lawyers, the health insurance industry, and on and on. It is not a party of the people. It is a party of expanding government to keep itself in power so it can do things like, I don’t know, passing trillions of dollars in ‘stimulus’ and ‘health insurance reform’ that give money directly back to their industry enablers.

You are the ignorant people. Every single economic impact study has shown that the stimulus did nothing. We can track no jobs that it ‘saved or created’, except a few government bureaucracy jobs, which is why they inflate the numbers or generate them from whole cloth. In Congressional testimony the people in charge of distributing the various stimulus and bailouts routinely state that they have no idea where the money went.

The ‘tax relief’ thing you’re touting went to core Democrat constituents (the elderly and low-income) who ALREADY EITHER DON’T PAY TAXES OR PAY MINIMAL TAXES. Those of us who earn a living saw our taxes go UP. And slush funds to the states that gets spent on turtle tunnels, useless airports, and park renovation didn’t help anything.

Remember how without the stimulus we were supposed to see 10% unemployment, and with it we would never see more than 8%? Guess what, without farm rolls, manufacturing rolls, and the people who have just given up on finding a job, unemployment is at 11% NATIONALLY. It’s higher in many states.

This is why everyone laughs at left-wingers. You simply cannot accept reality. You read magazines like Time and Newsweek and watch MSNBC, all of whom fund the Democrat Party and pimp their idiotic ideas (like corn ethanol, how did that work out by the way?) and you complain about Fox News. You deny the reality in front of your face and insult people who are more intelligent than you. It’s absurd. You’re a group of little children throwing tantrums because it didn’t work out your way.

Get ready for your head to explode: TARP was a George W. Bush idea.

And guess what, the people who are against Obama’s spending are against TARP too. Know why? Because nobody knows where the TARP funds went. Well, that’s not entirely true, we know they went to cronies, but there’s no paper trail.

The belief that TARP ‘saved the banking system’ is as ignorant as the belief that stimulus ‘helped the economy’. It’s wishful thinking. The banking system can only be ‘saved’ if banks that engage in risky behavior are allowed to fail, and if we do intelligent things like get the government out of the housing market, and don’t allow banks to wager with government-backed funds (the Volcker Rule).

All TARP did was run up a bill that we’re going to have to pay for the rest of our lives, and our children’s lives, and their children’s lives, and so on. We’re all Keynesians now! Yep, we’re all equally screwed by an idea that has failed every time it has been tried.

I just love the irony of someone calling people stupid and then claiming the House ‘health care bill’ would fix anything.

You do know the House health care bill was written by the insurance lobby, right? The same lobby that gives most of its money to Democrats? That their big idea to ‘fix’ the system was to force everyone to buy ‘insurance’ (actually a cost subsidy) in an oligopoly under punishment of fine or imprisonment? That it could only achieve this through massive government funding which creates yet another unsustainable entitlement?

Crawl out of your fantasy land and into the sunlight.

I hate to burst Joe Klein’s bubble, but here in NJ, and, specifically, in my county of Cumberland & my city of Vineland, we are, indeed paying higher taxes. Higher property taxes, higher county taxes, higher fees, and guess what? We are facing the possibility of teacher and/or classroom aides being laid off. The arrogance of Klien in this editorial is unbelievable. The so-called shovel-ready jobs didn’t exist? Are you kidding me? That was the purported purpose of the stimulus. The creation (or “saving”, whatever that means) of new jobs was the primary reason the stimulus was passed. As to the magic money in our monthly paychecks, the 10% unemployed don’t have any paycheck, much less one with magic money, and personally, I didn’t have those magic dollars to spend on bills–the taxes in NJ wipe out any extra Obama might have given to me. We Americans are not “dumb”, but we are sick–we are gagging on the arrogance which continues to spew from people like Klein. We know math, and we know that Obama’s economic policies do not add up.

Mr. Klein believes Americans are stupid. Well I guess the fact that people do still buy TIME magazine, which somehow managed to entirely “miss” the tea party movement in it’s year in review issue, might make one believe that. Let me assure you it is not true. Americans are very bright, and although they may in fact, gloss over things for a while, eventually they always wake up and do the right thing, which is what we are beginning to see now.

Mr. Klein states that “the stimulus money has been wasted on them” I would challenge Mr. Klein to find one average working person that this money has actually helped!! The 60 to 80 dollars he refers to would not of been necessary, if tax cuts for all were permanently implemented…the way it is now all that was changed was the withholding rate not the actual tax rate..therefor many will owe this “magic money” back. Teachers and fireman would of been laid off, he suggests without this bill..really, there are no other categories of spending that could of been or would of been cut, if necessary….maybe the amount of money that went into the signs to announce “this project funded by”, maybe money given to study birds migration pattern or money given to the Arts Council could of been diverted to these more important needs.

Mr Klein also states that “it is difficult to have a democracy..” Mr. Klein, we are a Republic, I guess that since you are so knowledgeable, basics, like the Pledge of Allegiance, have disappeared from your memory. Speaking of basics, we do Mr. Klein understand the basics, which is why WE are FED UP. As any household knows, you cannot live on credit forever, eventually the bill comes due. You cannot continue to help everyone, they will bleed you dry and never help themselves. You cannot regulate stupidity, people need to be responsible for their own actions and choices You cannot take peoples livelihood and reason for innovation and expect them to continue to innovate.

[...] You Know That You Are Stupid? Time Magazines' Joe Klein seems to think so. Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com I think that Mr. Klein has his head up his [...]

[...] video shows exactly why Beck is so popular. In response to this pathetic screed by Time Magazine’s uber-liberal Joe Klein, Beck uses humor, sarcasm, and not a little bit of [...]

You should get your facts straight. Had it been only $787, no doubt Obama would have got all his SEIU goons to extract it from our collective hides.

We are lucky he only left it to ACORN to falsify election results.

Sounds great Joe. Let my dodo head get this straight. Tax payers gave 275 billion dollars to keep govt(public workers) employed who always are funded by private tax dollars. That makes sense, the private payroll numbers have tanked and private people who are working and not working are given the bill for your so called needed teachers, firefighters and politicians, etc.. Oh, I am sure a lot of that money has been or will be put in their pension accounts as well. Makes a lot of sense. You may think that I am a Libetarian, that I am, private highschool and college educated, that I am, unemployed from “financial services”, that I am. What got the whole US into this is: in a word…DEBT…public and private. Of course the most visible debt to a dodo head is real estate values. That is only a part of the problem. Looks like your progressive democratic socialist regime is dipping into the cookie jar again. This was also done by every administration, Dem or Rep since Reagan.. Don’t worry, the chicken has come to roost. I will only take care of my family and friends from now on, Joe…unless I become ulta rich and then I will fight you and your comrades until the day I die. Good Luck

Klein:

You believe that your Birkenstock wearing, Latte sipping, Ivy League School (University of Pennsylvania ?!?) pedigree makes you superior to us peons and entitles you to tell us so.

I first heard about your article on Glenn Beck (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584003,00.html) where, according to you, the “misinformed” go to get their information.

Having said that, there’s a few things you need to know in response to your accusations.

“Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it’s been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you’ve been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills.”

Here’s where much of the money went, not counting the hundreds of phantom districts that received money no one can trace.
Andy Stern’s SEIU made a killing. God knows he’s spent enough time visiting the White House to remind Obama of the payoff he’s got coming for all his hard campaign work.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/It_s-a-wonderful-life-working-for-the-government-8697601-80294522.html

Obama’s stimulus PR site, Recovery.gov, has a big credibility problem.

The supposed purpose of the site is “to allow taxpayers to see precisely what entities receive [stimulus] money in addition to how and where the money is spent.”

Here’s just some of the blatant discrepancies.

Phantom Congressional Districts.
Picking up on a story from ABC News about stimulus jobs created in phantom congressional districts, I found jobs/awards reported for the following Illinois “districts”: 0, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 28th, 33rd, 34th, 42nd, 44th, 53rd, and 59th. Or as Stephen Colbert would say, “the fightin’ 59th.” Too bad Colbert couldn’t “better know these districts,” because they don’t exist. Notes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “the federal government is attributing about $6.5 million in stimulus spending to non-existent congressional districts in Illinois.”

Counting Irregularities.
Recovery.gov touts state-by-state totals for jobs “created or saved.” Some of the counts are little more than guesses. For example, the Illinois Institute of Technology was awarded $97,900 to “purchase a high performance computer cluster” and related software. One job was counted created/saved; the related entry surmised: “I think the vendor of the computer equipment can retain about one job for this amount of purchase.” That’s totally unsubstantiated. Still, it was added to Illinois’s statewide jobs tally.

For some projects, the descriptive “job creation” information does not match the numerical “number of jobs” entry. One entry for Head Start in Illinois noted they would use $169,279 to “hire 2 additional staff and increase compensation of staff through a COLA to improve overall quality of program.” Yet under “number of jobs” they listed 63.65 positions, which counted toward the statewide jobs total.

Misallocation of Job Counts.
Recovery.gov breaks down the jobs created/saved by the stimulus by congressional district. For Illinois, the vast majority of jobs were supposedly created/saved in the 18th congressional district. With 16,996 jobs created/saved in the 18th district (the next largest jobs total is 3,444 in the 7th district). A closer look at the details shows that 14,233 of those central Illinois jobs came from the Illinois State Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which is located in state capital of Springfield. The State Office counted education jobs saved across the state, yet all were allocated to the 18th district. If the designers of Recovery.gov hope to sway future congressional votes with the district-by-district job numbers, they’re need to present credible information.

Where are the Private Sector Jobs?
You’ll remember that back in January 2009 ….Obama promised that 90 percent of the jobs saved or created by the stimulus would be in the private sector. So far, that’s not the case. If the 90 percent promise held up, 22,003 of the 24,448 Illinois jobs would be in the private sector. But looking at the data, the big job saver is a government entity, otherwise known as “Illinois, State of.” Some 14,233 jobs were saved in public education. The “Chicago Transit Authority” is another big job saver and/or creator, accounting for 2,071 jobs. Seen in this light, the stimulus was more of a state and local government bailout than a private-sector engine starter.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/18/surprise-recovery-gov-has-a-credibility-problem/

Over 75,000 bogus jobs.

Nationwide, the “Funemployment” rate is 15%. In my home state of Ohio, it’s 10%.

That paycheck increase? A whopping $13 extra in their weekly paychecks, while a $1,000 child tax credit would be extended to more low-income families that don’t make enough money to pay income taxes.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090214/ap_on_go_co/stimulus_stakes_who_gets_what

You said:

1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far.

Maybe he can explain why more of it went to “projects” like these:

- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.

- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.

- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.

- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.

- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill.

- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=59af3ebd-7bf9-4933-8279-8091b533464f

Your comment:

2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed.

I’ve read every ObamaCare bill put forth by the Democrats, I’ve done research on Obama’s Marxist philosophy, background, friends, mentors, and associates, and I’ve seen the consequences of his “wealth redistribution”, so I’m pretty knowledgeable even without the benefit of Glenn Beck.

As for this:
“It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.”

Let me clue you in about the basic activities of our government. First of all, we are a Democratic REPUBLIC.
The current crop of Democrats have demonstrated they have no respect for American citizens, the Bill of Rights, or the Constitution. Here’s a link to a summary of their incredible hubris:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/the-democrats-assault-on-america/

The founders who wrote the Constitution believed that a government that rules least rules best; in other words, they intended that government intrusion into the lives and well-being of Americans be limited.

Opponents of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid socialist train wreck get dismissed, disrespected, and denigrated by leftwingnut politicians and main stream media hacks, alike. We made a poweful impact throughout 2009; we shell-shocked the controlling Dem majority with a taste of real patriotic ‘community organizing’.

We know the Tea Party movement scares the living crap out of you liberal effetes. In your lexicon, that makes people like me one of the “uneducated”.

We’re educated enough to know that socialism is an epic fail. It stifles freedoms—from speech to business enterprise.

Now along comes another pompous “educated” asslown to inform the ignorant masses that we just ‘don’t know what’s good for us’.

[...] To Joe Klein From One of the ‘Ill Informed’ Filed under: Communism/Socialism, Leftist moonbats, Politics, The Media — sfcmac @ 21:25 Regarding a recent article of yours, where you described Americans as “too dumb to thrive”. (http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/25/too-dumb-to-thrive/) [...]

CABLE NEWS RACE
> TUES., JAN., 26, 2010
>
> FOXNEWS O’REILLY 3,581,000
> FOXNEWS BECK 3,196,000
> FOXNEWS HANNITY 3,133,000
> FOXNEWS BAIER 2,624,000
> FOXNEWS GRETA 2,415,000
> FOXNEWS SHEP 2,187,000
> CNNHN GRACE 914,000
> CNN BEHAR 949,000
> MSNBC OLBERMANN 818,000
> CNN KING 796,000
> MSNBC MADDOW 726,000

[...] to plug the drain that the economy was swirling down into. Whether people buy that or not — and I guess they don’t — is another [...]

[...] really it should come as no surprise that the American people have come to believe that the Obama stimulus has been a massive waste of [...]

[...] The United States is too dumb to thrive: [...]

[...] accurate but impolitic way to say this:  “Too Dumb to Thrive“, Joe Klein, blog of Time magazine, 25 January 2010 — “Absolutely amazing poll [...]

[...] 2-year-old. Echoing this view of the voters as angry, unreasoning and immature is Time’s Joe Klein, who in the headline of a blog post describes Americans as “Too Dumb to [...]

[...] United States is too dumb to thrive: Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787* stimulus package: nearly three out [...]

Quote: Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package:

Am I missing something….wasn’t it billions?

Quote: It turns out that what people are really upset about is all that wasteful money that has gone to political public works projects…except that the overwhelming portion of that money hasn’t been spent yet.

That may be, but on the biggest local road project there was a sign saying “brought to you by Barack Obama”….

The project was undoubtedly bought and paid for by local taxpayers in a local budget planned several years ago, but noting kept the group in power from making hay while the sun shone, so why shouldn’t they be blamed? Of did you think you would have it both ways?

Quote: very few documented cases of waste so far.

What about Acorn?

So far?

You mean there’s more?

Quote:
It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens.

Yet the left hates all the rest, and never stops making it clear, through the “media”. The old media, that is.

Quote:
It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government.

Free citizens still are allowed to read. And we DO read, but I assume soon there’ll be attacks on that, too.

That last sentence is about the fact that free citizens’ lone prime-time source of tv news has been under attack by the left for as long as it has been on the air. And it’s negatively referenced in this article, in fact.

Joe, you-all have all the other media tied up and gagged. You’ve got ‘em where you want ‘em, but you don’t like it that their viewer numbers are sinking. You think if Fox is gone folks will start watching the drive-by media again. They won’t.

Quote:
It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.

Well it sure is, but the dodos aren’t on the right, my man.

One symptom of craziness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That so completely defines the left.

Continuing the leftie war on business in the US is crazy, as we can see by the tragic results of the diminishing number of jobs, but the loony left, instead of recognizing their role in that outcome, continues to drive business out (contining the same things it has been doing and doing and doing) but still expects a different outcome!

Or, do they, really? Don’t they REALLY want everyone (except themselves) to be deaf, dumb, and blind?

I dropped my long-time subscription to TIME magazine about this time last year…unfortunately, I was just too dumb to get all the perspicacity presented on those hallowed pages by sages like Joe Klein.
margaret1115

[...] Largest single item in the $787 stimulus package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. "Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it's been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you've been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills. *** *** *** "So, two thoughts: "1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far. "2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed." Read more: Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com [...]

[...] Largest single item in the $787 stimulus package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. "Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it's been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you've been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills. *** *** *** "So, two thoughts: "1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far. "2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed." Read more: Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com [...]

[...] why you're not paying even higher state and local taxes to close the local budget hole. Read more: Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com "It turns out that what people are really upset about is all that wasteful money that has [...]

[...] Originally Posted by tomocox Do you think the One will be more dispised than GWB, or JEC by the end of his term? Hard to decide… Maybe he'll pull a Nixon and just leave, but then we'd have President Gaffy… His popularity is at 50% currently; at the same place in his first term Reagan was at 35%. "…two thoughts: "1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining [any of its actions! to the American people.] "2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed." "It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don't make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you're a nation of dodos." Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com [...]

[...] are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed." Read more: Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com yep, he sure helped us $8 a week for 2 years how generous of him his tax relief was $400 [...]

[...] you’re like Time’s Joe Klein (the inspiration behind this post), the problem is simple: Americans are too dumb to thrive. Unfortunately for Klein, Americans don’t like being called stupid: it smacks of elitism, which [...]

[...] magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, [...]

[...] A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” [...]

[...] A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive." [...]

[...] A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” [...]

[...] A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” [...]

[...] A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” [...]

[...] A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” [...]

Mr. Klein, I am trying mightily to restrain myself from a stream of profanity. Just what is the matter with Kansas? I don’t live in Kansas, but here it is: We don’t want the government to appropriate money from our neighbors, or borrow it from the Chinese, in order to distribute it as some idealogues see fit. If the f’n federal government did not appropriate so much cash from its citizens and instead allowed the states to provide more services with that cash, it would be more directly under the control of the citizenry and would be used far more efficiently. Some states would provide a liberal wonderland and some would pursue rugged individualism and some would fall somewhere in between. In any case, the citizens would have a more direct say in their lives.

I cannot understand the mindset that is so prevalent in the Left that we plebes should be happy when our elected leaders plunder the public treasury on our so-called behalf. There is no better example of our disdain for that than what has happened to Senator Ben Nelson since his health care deal became public.

Instead of lamenting our stupidity, you should be praising our strength of character and resolve.

[...] magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.” Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, [...]

[...] республиканское супер-меньшинство, но и тупой народ, не понимающий своей пользы. Обама же со своей [...]

FIRE JOE KLEIN!! FIRE JOE KLEIN!! FIRE JOE KLEIN!!

[...] blames all of Obama’s failures on the American people, who are just a bunch of dumb horses, too stupid to be led to led to water. Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of [...]

Joe, you miss the point. (Must still be distracted by an extension of Chris Matthews’ tingly leg feeling.) The results do not show that so much of the electorate is too dumb to be able to thrive; it’s that this same batch was too dumb to be able to vote.

[...] salvo came from Joe Klein who declared Americans, as he put it in the title of a blog post, “Too Dumb to Thrive.” Their offense? Thinking that the stimulus has been wasted. Klein hit these fools with a killer [...]

what a boob

Thank you, Mr. Klein, for pointing out how stupid we all are for not realizing the $15 – $20 that magically appears in our paychecks as the giant leap towards financial independence that you seem to see it as.

One third of Obama’s stimulus was spent as a huge tax rebate, which is simply squandered each week on a 12-pack and a few scratch-offs. Great economic stimulator there, by golly.

The second third of Obama’s stimulus was a bail-out to state governments. These are probably the only jobs that have been actually “saved”, but will be on the chopping block next year. No great stimulus here, either.

The third portion of Obama’s stimulus has yet to be spent. This is the portion that was supposed to create the 3.5 – 4 million jobs. Hard to do if you don’t release the funds, Joe. No stimulus here, either.

Roughly $560B spent on Economic Stimulus and Job Creation bill, yet still 20 million remain unemployed. Please explain to we poor, ignorant sources of tax revenue why this money was not really wasted once again?

[...] Or, so blares Joe Klein in a Time magazine online article, “Too dumb to thrive.” [...]

[...] magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive." Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, [...]

[...] -Time Magazine in an article titled Too Dumb to Thrive [...]

“The next highest amount was $275 billion in grants and loans to states. This is why your child’s teacher wasn’t laid off…and why the fire station has remained open, and why you’re not paying even higher state and local taxes to close the local budget hole.”

Here in NY the tax imposition is such that it drives away job creating businesses. Dysfunction in the capitol, featherbedding, entitlements and mismanagement have driven up the budget to unsustainable levels.

The one time patch is not a solution, cutting spending is. Even the simplest individual knows that continuing a manic policy of spending money you can’t possibly pay back is a recipe for disaster.

Experienced citizens, especially voters, have had the unhappy experience reinforced over years of abuse and neglect that their voice goes unheard. After seeing every promise to reform the spending practices, after continually voting in today’s “reformers” only to see them become tomorrow’s hacks has led many to conclude the individual has no impact on the policies and practices of their in name only “representatives”. Disaffected, they have walked away leaving the wolves to have their way with the hens.

Others are banding together in opposition groups, some quite harebrained, that are raising a cry that is having some effect, at least for the moment. I suspect it will peter out once the hoi polloi see that the new boss is no different than the old boss and either walk away or become radicalized.

“The next highest amount was $275 billion in grants and loans to states. This is why your child’s teacher wasn’t laid off…and why the fire station has remained open, and why you’re not paying even higher state and local taxes to close the local budget hole.”
————————————————————————————————
Here in NY the tax imposition is such that it drives away job creating businesses and diminishes the tax base itself. Dysfunction in the capitol, featherbedding, entitlements and mismanagement have driven up the budget to unsustainable levels.

The one time patch is not a solution, cutting spending is. Even the simplest individual knows that continuing a manic policy of spending money you can’t possibly pay back is a recipe for disaster.

Experienced citizens, especially voters, have had the unhappy experience reinforced over years of abuse and neglect that their voice goes unheard. After seeing every promise to reform the spending practices, after continually voting in today’s “reformers” only to see them become tomorrow’s hacks has led many to conclude the individual has no impact on the policies and practices of their in name only “representatives”. Disaffected, they have walked away leaving the wolves to have their way with the hens.

Others are banding together in opposition groups, some quite harebrained, that are raising a cry that is having some effect, at least for the moment. I suspect it will peter out once the hoi polloi see that the new boss is no different than the old boss and either walk away or become radicalized.

Apologies for the duplicate post above.

[...] want to place upon us.  After all, some of America’s top liberal minds say so: Bill Maher, Joe Klein of Time, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC…   In elections past, we’ve even been too stupid to [...]

Late, but, better than sour faced and demeaning!
THIS is the article that brought me to SWAMPLAND in the first place.
I have no idea why so many stick up the butt types are giving you grief for it.
I was lost as to how much got spent, and on what (now that most senators and congressmen have the right to hold back that information from the public) and was fending off idiots at ever turn for their constant barrage of “it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.”
I have no job and my own problems not withstanding, can probably not get a job, now.
Talking coming up on my sixtieth year in May, and for some reason, when employers see that, they just throw me in the trash bucket. Again, my problem.

I try to stay on the positive side of life, however, despite my yearly income of less than four digit figures, because we are each to blame for our own piece of ground.
And, Joe Klein, you are the guy who helped me back up when I was getting ready to just fold.

The heck with folding!
I posted your article in full (along with all credits going in the right direction, and did all that I could to get folk over to read it.
Now, I just plug in your address up there and send that out.
(I ain’t into plagiarism at all, or theft. I’m an artist and have the greatest respect for other people’s work.)

Too bad you have a small school of sharks circling you all the time, nit picking at the most innocuous of details.
In my book?
You d’MAN, Mr. Klein!
You d’MAN!

[...] of Americans – I’ll leave that to the likes of Jacob Weisberg, Kurt Anderson, Joel Klein, and others who claim to champion – but actually despise – the “common [...]

[...] — determined to control every part of the lives of those they judge “too dumb” (Time magazine) to be allowed choice. Forget the God talk and the founder mumbo-jumbo about individual [...]

[...] Joe Klein, of Time magazine: “It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if [...]

Joe Klein is too dumb to know that his career and all of his “print colleagues” are going to way of the dinosaurs. Bye bye and Good riddance!
That ‘TAX CUT’ he speaks of… you will be paying it back this April 15th. It was NOT a tax cut, it was a tax furlough. Big difference, but we are dumb right??? We are going to show you how dumb we are? Please keep thinking you’re smarter than us and keep spreading your disinformation. You reap what you sow!

[...] — determined to control every part of the lives of those they judge “too dumb” (Time magazine) to be allowed choice. Forget the God talk and the founder mumbo-jumbo about individual [...]

[...] — determined to control every part of the lives of those they judge “too dumb” (Time magazine) to be allowed [...]

nobody deserves two terms of Missy Sarah.
And I don’t think i believe what I heard last week about her eating the wolves she shoots.

A great way to stay current to the White House is write them a letter (e-mail)
You can outline your concerns and or just wish them a good day, but in the course of doing so, they will ask if you would like to be kept current, and they send regular updates on stuff.

Kind’a like wanting a diet plan that includes candy bars and ice cream?

Print is not “The way of the dinosaurs” but narrow minded retorts such as yours should be.

Print means it’s there for anyone to read and see for however long it survives.
The computer is still a toy. When the electricity goes out, I can still read my newspapers and magazines and books.

my apologies…
What is this?
I see it often enough, and have asked others…but, no answers have arrived.
The brackets and dots, the blurb-ery and then more brackets and dots?

hedging my bet. I see that you and the fellow (lady?) above you have both done the same thing, but i cannot discern a message here.
I was wondering if you would tell me what the brackets dots blurb brackets (and dots again) mean?

Thank you.

maxwelldog,

Those are links from other blogs and sites which reference this article. Irony: As one of Klein’s ass-kissers, you certainly qualify as “too dumb to thrive”.

since it was this report that brought it to my attention in the first place, I don’t see the connection to importance. Good article, even if a bit vinegar.
Folk need vinegar once and a while.
I see you’re in tune with spreading ‘vinegar’, too.
sfcmac, if sfc stands for what I think it does, you don’t really seem so first class.
But, I am slowly adjusting to the spit out replies and venomous intents. Quite a place here.
I keep missing the closet to hang up my manners, though.
Which is doubly funny if you consider I came out an E-2 (might have been a one, but then the army owes me some dollars) and here I am holding down the fort on civility.
(sometimes)

[...] especially Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers. Klein’s earlier blog post at Swampland a few weeks ago skewered Glenn and all of his fans. Well, basically, he tried to rip ALL patriotic Americans. [...]

[...] polls showed that a majority of Americans though the stimulus had been wasted Joe Klein of Time thundered, "It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you're a nation of dodos." [...]

[...] “Too Dumb to Thrive“, Joe Klein, blog of Time magazine, 25 January 2010 — “Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted.”  But it is a success for Republican propagandists! [...]

[...] complaint against 95% of Americans getting a tax cut (<- a vent from Time about the misunderstanding) under the new budget came from a post to the [...]

Joe K. , you work with the population you have, not the one you wish you had. Plus what StuartZ said also.

Nice.

Black tea partiers tell MSNBC where it can go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1CLPhz0DHM&feature=player_embedded#!

[...] meet with opposition (as though there could be no real disagreement). Or the plain rudeness in some quarters about our “nation of [...]

[...] about since he is in a wheelchair; in January of 2010 Klein called all the American people “too dumb to thrive” because they opposed Obama’s wild spending spree; in February he attacked the [...]

[...] about since he is in a wheelchair; in January of 2010 Klein called all the American people “too dumb to thrive” because they opposed Obama’s wild spending spree; in February he attacked the [...]

[...] in history. That’s right, that is, it corresponds to a set of conditions in the world. As Joe Klein puts [...]

[...] he loves to do quite often. If you don't believe me, read the entire 4 paragraph article yourself. Too Dumb to Thrive – Swampland – TIME.com Media Matters has once again manipulated peoples words, this time Joe Klein's, to falsely attack [...]

[...] Originally Posted by mpg The stimulus included a $288 billion tax cut? link please Too Dumb to Thrive | Swampland Apparently you can't use google [...]