Election 2008--CLOSED

[brokebacktom]

Bush admits he was wrong about Iraq. No kidding. Well, some did say that it would have taken this long or longer. Some Say it would cost more than the few millions $ that Bush said it would. Some said we need thousands more soldiers than what was sent. What happen to those people? They were attacked politically, fired or puched out of his own party. So, now he saids he is sorry, while we go bankrupt. He is pure EVIL. Sorry for ranting on.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/05/bush-iraq-war-longer-more_n_148709.html

[Dave Cullen]

Democrats: Obama needs hands-on economic approach

Democrats are growing impatient with President-elect Barack Obama's refusal to inject himself in the major economic crises confronting the country. Obama has sidestepped some policy questions by saying there is only one president at a time. But the dodge is wearing thin. "He's going to have to be more assertive than he's been," House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told consumer advocates Thursday.

Frank, who has been dealing with both the bailout of the financial industry and a proposed rescue of Detroit automakers, said Obama needs to play a more significant role on economic issues.

Barney Frank's line is hysterical. But I think he's dead wrong.

"One president at a time" is a good excuse, but the real issue is, "You only get one presidency, ever."

It's always tempting to be drawn by what's hot at the moment, and seems critical, but a wise person insists on staying back looking at the whole forest and refuses to rush in to address trees, even when they are big ones, and on fire.

Much smarter take: I've got one shot at this. What are ALL my priorities for the first year? How can I address this economic meltdown with the biggest impact? How do I orchestrate the whole thing?

And go from there. If saving car companies is the #1 priority on that list, and/or the item he wants to start the ball rolling with, then he should be in there publicly getting his hands dirty. If it's not, then he should be doing what he's probably doing: working quietly behind the scenes to do what he can to stave off their bankruptcy for six weeks.

It would be really foolish to fritter away his one shot at big sweeping change on a lot of fronts by getting into individual fights before he's marshaled all his forces and put together his plan.

I think he's playing it really smart.

[Dave Cullen]

Barney Frank has also been part of the rumblings--which have grown ear-splitting--on whether Obama is trying too hard to be bi-partisan.

Salon Editor Joan Walsh has a great post addressing them--essentially posing the question, and airing some of her fears:

http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=56457

I am the world's biggest Kumbaya singing conciliator, and I'd love Obama to prove me and Barney Frank wrong, but I don't know that there's going to be a whole lot of Republicans singing Kumbaya when President Obama takes over in January. I actually hope I'm wrong; I think our problems are too big for Obama to solve them while facing partisan warfare from the GOP. But I think he's going to have to show his toughness and willingness to take sides, on behalf of working and middle class folks, sooner rather than later.

There are great comments in that post too, many of them along the lines of "let Obama be Obama," which I think is wise. I'd take it much furhter, though.

 It's way easy to fall into this either/or trap of should Obama be "concilliatory" or "tough"? It's also easy to fall into the trap of seeing Obama's tactical choices as either the way Bush behaved or the way Clinton behaved. (We tend to see back one admin or maybe two, and convince ourselves that that's how the world works now--which it always does, until someone steps up and makes it work very differntly.)

We don't have to look back too many years--28 in fact--for a model which falls into none of those categories. And I beleive Obama has that right in mind, because he cited Reagan in a moment of candor during the primaries, as the one recent model of president who really changed trajectory of the country.

Reagan didn't do it by attacking the Dems. He did it by more or less chuckling at the notion that roadblocks to his mandate should be taken seriously.

He said This is the mandate, this is what you elected me for, and this is what's going to happen.  And when Congress bickered, I remember quite vividly how he went on TV and told the public they needed to go over the heads of Congress, and unite with him to make the deal he and we (voters) had agreed on. He urged us to besiege Congress with phone calls and telegraphs (pre-email), and they did.

He scared the shit out of Congress and they rolled over and gave him everything.

Calls and telegraphs were among the props Reagan employed, but what he really did was take control of the situation, go directly to the public, and alert us that our plan was being threatened by the Congressional fuddy duddies. He didn't make it about Dems, he made it about Old Guard/Congress getting in the way. And he made it about us.

(Jim Baker politics vs. Karl Rove. Day. Night.

Reagan was certainly not "concilliatory."  Nor was he partisan, and there was none of that attack-dog stuff.

When you face bickering factions (or children), the winning hand is not to lunge in and bicker the loudest. It's to walk right past the bickering to the annoyed audience, and say, essentially, "Ugh. Look at this bickering. Let's ignore this. Now here's what we're going to do, I need you with me, let's go this way . . ."

FDR led that way, and so did Reagn, and possibly Kennedy. The very president Obama has frequently cited as his models.

I'm so glad he's in charge.

[garyd]

"And just to be clear: although this essay argues that Friedman was wrong on some issues, and sometimes seemed less than honest with his readers, I regard him as a great economist and a great man."

LOL, now why did just KNOW that you would single out that sentence.
It is not that I necessarily disagree it is just that I am not sure Krugman knows that Friedman was intentionally being disingenuous.

The reason I have a burr in my sock about Friedman is that I worked for an economist who was one of F's star pupils.  The thinking was that a "depression" could //would never happen again.  That was in the early nineties, and I kept my mouth shut but wondered -- really?  because they had faith that the waves of mergers, layoffs, deregulation, leveraged buyouts, etc., were all part of the free market, when to me much of it seemed built on a house of cards.

Yes, and though I am a firm capitalist, I have never understood that element of capitalism.
In other words, it is so entrenched in the quest for constant growth. So when company management recognizes it can not meet the holy grail of 15% annual growth internally it starts looking to acquisition and merger.  All of a sudden we are left with basically three grocery chains in the entire country. (as an example)
On the other hand, the true backbone of the economy is small businesses and for them to attempt doubling every five years is absurd.
I wish one of these genius economists would address this issue.

Also, you may be preescient, but I imagine Friedman truly believed that a "depression" could/would never happen again.  So many of the underlying cancers of the great depression had been addressed (FDIC, banking regulations, margin call percentages, etc).  One of the major problems is that we allowed oversight to become lax.  This combined with the financial markets creation of exotic instruments like "collateralized bond obligations" along with other derivative products nearly, once again, put the entire economy into the dumper.  We should have learned from the inverse derivative fiasco of several years ago but apparently we did not. 

But we had Friedman and Alan Greenspan blessing most of it.  If Greenspan ever said a cautionary word, it was "irrational exuberance" and he was speaking to the financiers to remember their long-term goal -- wealth.  But goals became increasingly short-term, until we finally got our CEO pres and sidekick who made the most of their 8 year treasury raid, damn the consequences.

Well, he "blessed" it I think for the reasons in my comment above.
He was also around for just too long a time.  He attained some sort of "guru" status and had to be extremely careful in what he said.

hmmmm -- okay I can see how that would turn Obama off but maybe in my innocence I believe it's best if the economists are picked purely for their theory, and Krugman has consistently allayed fears about saving social security and health care, pointing out that it is perfectly rational and affordable for government to do those things.  But I'm sure he will happily advise the White House from his current pulpit.

Oh, I think he would happily advise. I hope he is asked. (and I imagine he will be asked at some level)

Oh no I can't explain the math but in any case that research was decades old and I'm sure could use some updating, as there are different forces (like outsourcing) in play today.  The judges of this prize cited this research but they were also impressed with his more recent criticism of the powers that be(were) in Washington.

yeah, that was really my point.  The theory, at least as far as I can tell, does not address the outsourcing situation which, it seems to me, is addressed by the earlier theories of diminishing return.

Agreed.  We have been the victims of de-regulation AND lack of oversight.

The problem I have with this comment, is , once again, of generalization. 
Deregulation can be a good thing.  Airline, telephone, natural gas were all good deregulation moves. Even electricity is some instances.  One of the problems in California is that it was never really deregulated and a giant and complicated bureaucracy was constructed that made it easy for Enron atrocities to occur.
I think we agree that banks and most financial institutions require close oversight at the very least.
Banks did continue to have oversight but the examiners were ignored.

Should I break down and buy one?  Or wait for the next generation?  I've heard that the batteries run down too quickly. 

I have a first generation and have experienced no problems. (even battery)
The bugs in the new 3G version have been addressed, I think.
So as with all high tech stuff, buy as much as you think you can afford.  It all goes obsolete so fast anyway.
For reasons I shouldn't go into, I am very positively prejudiced toward iPhones but I do truly think they are totally cool no matter what my personal prejudices may be.

[Rosewood]

What is this 'kumbaya' thing?
Let's put Harry Belafonte or Pete Seeger or WHOEVER it was that first sang this
little ditty to rest for God's sake. (Not that Belafonte isn't an intriguing
AND handsome fellow.)

But isn't there another more INTERESTING way to express across the board
comradery? If I hear someone use this arcane word one more time I'm going
to run out in the street and scream bloddy murder.

Well, not really.
But honestly, aren't any of you fed up with the way we latch onto words
and/or sayings and just keep using them and using them and using them until
their triteness just makes you want to bust a gut or, at the very least,
explode a brain vein?

Words and/or phrases that should be banned instantly from the language:

More bang for the buck.
Kumbaya.
Gravitas.
To tell you the truth.
To be honest with you.
At the end of the day.
Hit the ground running.
With all due respect...

[janjo]

And "Lessons will be learned," when they never are!

[garyd]

Well, to tell you the truth, Kumbaya should have been thrown into the collective camp fire long ago but it still seems to hold a certain amount of gravitas with the boomer set,(all of whom continue to search for just a bit more bang for our buck), and, to be honest with you, we are having such trouble with our knees and other assorted joints that it is nigh on impossible for us to run at all much less hit the ground running.  With all due respect to this venerable group, we should try to reinvent ourselves  since, at the end of the day, our days are numbered anyway. 

[Rosewood]

Okay, Gary,
I'm now preparing to run out into the street and get arrested.
And to think I owe it all to you!

[garyd]

Okay, Gary,
I'm now preparing to run out into the street and get arrested.
And to think I owe it all to you!

No, no, no. 
Don't do anything that drastic.
Just think of me in this way:
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[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

[
Interesting quote.  Not sure what Obama can really do, without expressly granted authority, more than he is already doing.  He can't appear to be staging a coup. 

The best I've heard is that, as a Senator, he can introduce legislation.  Maybe he will.

Hmm, you might want to check your sources on that one Ellen.
I think his resignation from the Senate was effective November 16th though his office stays open for an additional 60 days for archival and other purposes.

ooops, thanks -- except I think I heard someone on the News Hour suggest this -- I thought just last week, ever since this call for Obama to do something has been gaining momentum.

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

And "Lessons will be learned," when they never are!

Yeah, -- and like gary said above, we should have learned --

after the past 8 years I could only shake my head -- the lessons were out there and in fact most people could see what was happening (because I know I could see it, and I'm not the only person with eyes) but for some reason, the climate or the pendulum or nobody was singing kumbaya or more apt -- "where have all the flowers gone" -- and mostly, because Cheney and Bush stonewalled every investigation (above the law syndrome) the lesson we have learned is "maybe we can get away with this stuff until it becomes illegal again."

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

All of a sudden we are left with basically three grocery chains in the entire country. (as an example)

And all too big to fail!

[BayCityJohn]

All of a sudden we are left with basically three grocery chains in the entire country. (as an example)

And all too big to fail!

Food shortages - the next hidden crisis I'm sure. I've been reading a few different blogs and forums where people are talking about empty shelves in local supermarkets. Maybe it's just normal for the post-Thanksgiving week, but I don't remember the shelves being as low stocked as they have been lately.

[BayCityJohn]

Demand the Truth

HRC’s Religion and Faith program launches response to untruthful NY Times ad.

12/5/2008

Today, members of the Human Rights Campaign's Religion Council responded forcefully to a full-page ad in the New York Times that implies there is an organized attempt to foment mob intimidation and violence toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints due to its actions dehumanizing lesbian and gay people in the recent election campaign, particularly in California around passage of Proposition 8, which stripped gay families of the right to a civil marriage.  The ad was sponsored by NoMobVeto.org, a project of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

When did the LDS Church become the victim?  It’s hard to believe, but that is exactly what it is trying to convince the public of.  It is continuing to spend an excess of dollars in an attempt to mislead the public and transform its image.  But the truth is that this is the same church that conducted a national broadcast to every temple, calling on members to organize and write checks to the Prop 8 campaign.  The same church that donated more than half of the $40 million behind Prop 8, even though California Mormons represent just 2 percent of the state's population.  Yes, it’s the same church. 

Don’t allow them to replace the truth with their own version of the truth. Use our Religion Council’s message today to take action and demand the truth:

• Click here to write a letter to the New York Times
  
• Click here to send an email to the Becket Fund, the organization that paid for the misleading New York Times ad
  
• Click here to share your personal story with NoMobVeto.org and let them know how the passage of Prop 8 affected your life      

http://www.hrc.org/news/11623.htm

You can view the NY TIMES ad here:

http://www.hrc.org/content_images/nytimes-no_mob_veto.jpg

[michaelflanagansf]

Food shortages - the next hidden crisis I'm sure.

Darn.  I was hoping for alien invasion.