Latest Column

As Joe Klein says to Karen Tumulty, “move over Sally, there’s a new shill for Obama in town”.
.
Hey Joe, show us some of your hidden Journo-list emails where you colluded and conspired. They should make for great reading, yes?

Thanks for the link Joe. It’s July. The political junkies follow and comment on this stuff all the time. Most people tune out the rhetoric until a month or two before the elections. Remember right after the republican convention in 2008 when McCain/Palin were ahead in the polls? President McCain got his ass kicked in November because people started paying attention and decided that both him and Palin would best serve their counrty by not occupying the White House.

Remember how Hillary was a shoe-in for the nomination? She’s Secretary of State now for the guy that actually won. The right thinks they’ve got this election sewn up. Wait until the average voters and non junkies start to listen to the candidates and don’t channel surf when a campaign ad pops up. I expect the democrats to suffer some pretty substantial losses, but are the republicans going to get enough votes to over-ride an Obama veto? Are they even going to get control? Do they expect that if they get 51 seats in the senate that a President from the democratic party is going to look at it as a mandate when the republicans think their 41 seats is a mandate now? I think I’ll wait until November 3rd before I hand out chairmanships and prime office space.

Not as great as this little gem from Rusty:
.
“I am also not a religious zealot or fundamentalist, but this also REEKS in connections to writings I have read on how the Anti-Christ will take over the world. Just saying. Get out your copies of the Late Great Planet Earth and other various once widely believed science fiction books on the apocalypse. ”
.
http://www.teapartypatriots.org/Status.aspx?username=newfreedomblog

Again, Rusty? Although I am a relatively new poster, I have been a reader of Swampland for some time. I can’t help but noticing that you are a reliable (and redundant) responder–
to.every.single.post. Are you worried that some other readers / posters might not know what your point of view (already) is? Can you at least leave a little time for response for some others who might want to discuss this topic on its face and not have to endure yet another us vs. them post? Sheesh.

Oh goodie my stalker momentoad is back. Lucky me.

I’m sorry blossum. Did you want to post the first comment on the Joe Klein blows smoke up the average American’s A$$ meme?
.
I’m sorry. I’ll wait a little longer for you to get your comment in first next time.

And while the antics of the right-wing and GOP candidates garner more media attention, the Democratic campaign effort is just starting…

ms blossum38, are you decondivawannbe who was throughly spanked by Mr Rosen in another thread. Is this your new name decondiva? It sure reads like you if it isn’t.
.
But really ms blossum38, you should get to know someone on here before you begin your attacks. Perhaps you may like those individuals. But, I know in the liberal school of blog commenting, the first rule of thumb is to attack any commenter with garbage, if that doesn’t work try to ridicule them. And, if that fails, simply call them a “racist”.
.
Have a nice day ms bloosum38, it was a pleasure to get to know you better, and perhaps we can have a sane and rationale discussion in the future. I’ll even let you post first on a new thread. Promise.

What Joe Klein got right:

(1) That the GOP’s pandering to the TeaBagger movement is offsetting the public’s dissatisfaction with the Democrats and will cost the GOP winnable races (e.g. Reid’s seat in Nevada).

(2) That the FinReg legislation is not widely perceived as a successful response to the structural problems on Wall Street.

What Joe Klein missed:

(1) It’s the economy, stupid. Klein glosses over the failure of the Democrats to sufficiently respond to the weak economy, and unemployment specifically:

By the way, the lack of faith in the President’s ability to fix the economy seems entirely rational to me: another short-term stimulus burst is needed, and so are long-term deficit-reduction fixes, but both seem beyond the Administration’s capability right now.

Klein casually states that a greater stimulus burst is needed but tosses off that it is “beyond the Administration’s capability.”

Let us pause and reflect for a moment. The Democrats are the party of FDR and ostensibly accept Keynesian economics. The Democrats control both houses of Congress and the WH. Any student of modern political history should be gobsmacked at the unwillingness, if not inability, of the White House to pass larger stimulus packages.

Not only should Democrats be in favor of a strong Keynesian response on fundamental policy grounds, but they have two extra reasons to favor them.

First, because of the insistence of Greenspan and Bernanke on propping up the Bush economy with ultra-low interest rates, there is not much in the way of monetary policy that can be done to drive economic growth.

Second, the downsides to excessive economic stimulus would all be felt in the middle-to long term: Excessive stimulus spending would be inflationary and, after the economy regained full capacity, would crowd out private sector growth.

But even if more stimulus were bad policy in the long-term, it is great politics for the short-term. Purely as politicians, the Democrats should have been funding every infrastructure project imaginable.

So, why does Klein avoid addressing the obvious question of why Democrats have inexplicably acted contrary to both their stated ideology and their political self-interest?

(2) Klein uses the typical journalistic cop-out of saying that people can’t understand the FinReg bill. Look, a certain segment of the population will always be ignorant and incapable of grasping the details of complex legislation. But that is true of all legislation, and yet some legislation IS popular. Klein avoids answering the question of why FinReg is not popular among people who are perfectly capable of understanding FinReg.

And just what are they going to promise this time grape? Transparency in government? nope, that lie is out for all to see. Fiscal responsibility? nope, thirteen trillion and counting upward at over one billion per day. New jobs in the private sector? nope, the only new jobs are government gimmee’s. How about “we are going to listen to the people”…. now, this just might be the biggest laugh of all. Yes sir, vote democratic and water will run uphill, there will be milk and honey on every table and you can borrow yourselves out of debt! Gee, I can hardly wait.

Rusty, do you have any grasp of how stupid you sound begging to read JournoList threads?
.
JournoList was an email listserv that was…wait for it…only open to center-left to left journalists, bloggers, and opinion writers. Being a “liberal” in some broadly-defined sense — and people can quibble over whether Klein, Ed Kilgore, or others truly fit that term — was a precondition for admission to the list.
.
Can you possibly grasp the idiocy of demanding to look at a liberal listserv to prove “liberal bias”?
.
There is a reason that liberals would never waste their time demanding to read private emails being circulated between, e.g. Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Dick Morris and other conservatives. Because they all have pro-GOP agendas that everyone assumes they are advancing.

No, I’m not deconstructiva. As I said, I’ve read Swampland posts and comments for a while, so I am familiar with your postings and those of others. I also observe many other blogs, news sites with their comments sections, along with my own membership in some private blogs.
After all this time, and after deciding to dip my toes in the churning water, I am stating my observation of you and your posts.
Another observation I’ve made about these sites is that long-time members get a little offended and/or nervous when a newbie comes along and makes comments. It’s as if you have to pass some hazing ritual to join the clique. (I’m talking both ends of the political spectrum.) Either someone is a “troll” or a “repug” or a “libtard,” or, yes, a “racist.”
(BTW: It’s “blossom,” not “blossum.”)

Shorter square1: Rusty, do you have any grasp of how stupid you sound?
..
Answer: No, obviously not.
..
This has been another episode of easy answers to simple questions.

Absolutely– and remember how the McCain camp won practically every week of the campaign, according to Mark Halperin et al, with their crafty spin on things like Obama’s speech in Germany? Winning Mark Halperin’s favor plus $2 gets you a cup of coffee at Starbucks and a thrashing in November.

Joe, how are the Blue Dogs “moderates”? Didn’t most of them support the budget-busting Bush tax and spending (Medicare Part D) plans and the invasion of Iraq? Why, in terms of policy preferences and polling data, is that moderate?

I’m well versed in message boards and all of that, having been a moderator for well over a year on a popular site, and I have to say Rusty, you’re the worst kind of commentor/poster out there. Yeah, there are trolls who go around to purposefully anger people. But that’s not your motive at all, you just truly believe that you are right when you aren’t, and what’s worse rather than carrying on a discussion you resort to insults.

In the words of Captain Hook, Bad Form rusty.

“Oh goodie my stalker momentoad is back. Lucky me.”
.
Just waiting to see if you’ll ever repudiate suggesting that President Obama might be the anti-Christ. Or do you truly believe that?
.
In the meantime, I’m just going to continue to remind folks that you’re a delusional paranoid who think the President is planning on declaring ‘marshall law’ to institute his Marxist utopia. Or are you reconsidering that as well?
.
And I actually kinda like ‘momentoad’. It reminds me of the hypnotoad from Futurama. Or in other words, sticks and stones may break my bones, but at least I’m sane.

(It’s also a not-so-subtle reminder that going thru the Journolist to cherry pick out-of-context quotes from off-the-record conversations doesn’t always shine a positive light on the author. Much like your posts on a TeaParty forum make you sound even more rabidly right-wing than you do here at Swampland. What with your anti-Christ ravings, and all that.)

Its an election year, and Dems don’t have control of the senate in order to stop a filibuster. To top it off, thanks to the relatively idiotic rules of the Senate, filibuster’s are easy threats to make since you don’t necessarily have to sit there and talk for hours. That means the Dems have to be willing to outsit the Republicans and call them on their bluff. I would love to see that, but it isn’t going to happen during an election year.

Further than that, there’s no guarantee another stimulus would actually *fix* anything. I kind of view a good stimulus as the spark plug in the engine. Without the gas though, that spark plug is useless. The fact remains that until the bubbles finally settle down and pop and citizens have money to spend, a stimulus will only give a temporary boost.

I have all sorts of things I blame this on. Rising transportation costs, lead to rising food prices, coupled with rising rent or home values pretty much put the squeeze on Americans. Add in debt, especially school loans and what you have is an over burdened population that simply won’t have the extra cash once the stimulus runs out.

I honestly feel that at this point, a treacherous deflationary cycle that lasts about a decade will be a harsh, but necessary reset button. At the end of all of that, it turns out, there really isn’t much the government can do other than declare all debt absolved and start fixing prices, which would be socialist and evil.

And just what are they going to promise this time grape? Transparency in government? nope, that lie is out for all to see.
.
Please. This administration has been a h-ll of a lot more transparent than the last. We still don’t even know who Dick Cheney met with in his secret energy meeting in 2001.
.
Fiscal responsibility? nope, thirteen trillion and counting upward at over one billion per day.
.
You can repeat this stupidity as many times as you’d like, Earl, but it doesn’t change the fact that 86% of that deficit you like to blame on Obama was accrued on the watch of George W. Bush.
.
New jobs in the private sector? nope, the only new jobs are government gimmee’s.
.
Only if you ignore the estimates by the CBO, Moody’s, IHS Global Insight, and Macroeconomic Advisers who place the number of private industry jobs created by the stimulus at between 1.6 million and 2.5 million. You know who had zero job growth in his first term in office? Dubya.
.
Brilliant as always, Earl. Stop taking hits off the anesthesia tanks.

“Klein glosses over the failure of the Democrats to sufficiently respond to the weak economy…”
.
Centrism cannot fail. The Democrats can only have failed centrism.