Picture it. I think it's possible that the Obama 2012 campaign could touch many people — people who are suffering, out of work, occupying Wall Street (or wherever) — by prompting them to get in touch with the great old feeling of the good old days... in 2008... when we were young... when we had dreams...
I know you may scoff and say that every single reference to the abstractions and fuzzy feelings of 3 years ago will only draw derision and intensify the pain. But there's so much pain... At some point, won't people want to take the drug that worked so well that other time. What intense pleasure! What brilliant hallucinations! It calls to you.
Well, not necessarily you. But you see my point?
This notion crossed my mind while I was watching this February 2008 video of Michelle Obama. I'd been searching for that old quote of hers, something like Barack will never allow you to go back to your old lives.
The actual quote is: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
My initial reaction to that today was that it was weird how much she's insulting people... and they love it. They wanted transformed lives, but look how bad things are today. We really were deprived of our "lives as usual," but not in a good way.
The larger context of the quote is:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.See? You have the problem of being cynical and isolated. You're too comfortable. You need to do a whole lot better. Barack Obama will require you to work. I know: ridiculous. Now. Lines like that stoke the very cynicism he demanded that we shed!
That was my initial reaction. But then I saw the potential. The cynicism may seem much more justified now, but it also hurts, and people remember when words like this made them feel as good as they've ever felt about politics in their whole lives.
Don't you see the potential for hordes of people to embrace the simple pleasures of nostalgia? When I drive my car, I turn on the satellite radio and put on the 60s channel, where I'm always young and carefree. It's 2011, but I can push the button for the 60s, musically. There's a political button marked 2008, and I think there's a decent chance there are a whole lot of people who would love to push it.
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185 comments:
There's a political button marked 2008, and I think there's a decent chance there are a whole lot of people who would love to push it.
...until they figure out how savagely they will be mocked for doing it...
Just what is Meade growing in that garden at Meadehouse?
Well, not necessarily you. But you see my point?
Oh, yeah.
Don't you see the potential for hordes of people to embrace the simple pleasures of nostalgia
Yes. Because people are idiots. Easily led around by the nose and willing to fall for fantasy instead of reason.
Just look at the "Occubaggers" and "Occutards". Marionettes dancing to Obama's tune and too stupid to realize how they are being used.
There will be those who suffer from this Obama nostalgia, though not many. They will be like the aging hippie living in a dome in Santa Cruz, still thinking that love grass can unite us all, ignoring the dead and wasted victims of meth, heroin, and cocaine.
Has he lost you?
Dude, WTF?
He has the incumbent's advantage.
And, the GOP can't really field a TOP OF THE TICKET ... that provides much enthusiasm.
I see neither Perry or Romney actually doing any better than McCain. Which puts the numbers anywhere from 44% to 47%.
The other issue will be how people will split their tickets? (Nothing is a sure thing, until we actually get there.) Believing in "numbers" that favor you ... is on par with believe the real-estate bubble would go on forever.
How did you feel in 2008? And how did you lose it Ann?
At the K-street happy hour at the Oval Room, I was surprised to see so many news people. The word is that: all progressive and liberal services want to make sure that GOP is stopped. There is a total and complete pledge to make sure Obama is re-elected. Suddenly, I felt that I am already part of the WINNING team (take that, Charlie Sheen). Wow! I was so high from last night that I just got up. After the drinks, I had a hot date with a lobbyist. She was excited that my ex was a GOP. I am in cloud nine.
Calling all Red Brigades!!
Comrade, have *YOU* been slipping into the Bad Old Habits??
Maybe YOU did not understand that in Year One, (or have you still been listening to the debunked and discredited Counter-Revolutionaries and Christianists lurking in our midst who speak of a "2008"?) you were called upon to become a NEW PERSON.
Have there been hardships? Of course, because the Reactionary elements have refused to shed their hateful false consciousness, their bourgeois privacy and isolationism, and embrace The One's plan for globaltopia!
Now we hope that doesn't include YOU, Comrade! But now is the time for SELF-CRITICISM!! How have you failed The One? It is you who are the problem! But The One will not allow problems; they must all go away! . . .
wv: "aircur" Michelleopathy, Year Five
Is the TOP OF THE TICKET "important?"
With Obama on top, there are very nervous candidates running for positions on the ticket. Including enough senators that the senate could flip.
In play for the presidency are 12 states. (FLIPPER STATES).
"THE PURPLE STRATEGIES" is the brainchild of Steve McMahon. where they are called "IN PLAY" ... as toss ups:
Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13), and Wisconsin (10).
"They will be like the aging hippie living..."
The Occupy Wall Street people remind me of hippies. There's a loss of rationality, an inarticulate cry.
"There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear," sang the Buffalo Springfield back in the 60s, in a line Paul Krugman used to begin his column the other day.
What the hell?
The song goes on to say: "A thousand people in the street/Singing songs and carrying signs/Mostly say, hooray for our side..."
That's about inarticulate, unfocused feelings about politics.
Sorry I didn't read the Paul Krugman column. Invoking that song rubbed me the wrong way. As Meade put it: That's the cliché intro to thousands of college newspaper editorials.
I'll go read the column. I'm just invoking it here to say: I'm seeing the return of hippies.
And why not? If there are no jobs, at some point, don't you think you should leap out into some wholly other way of thinking about life, that it's not about having a job, it's about being alive and sensing and feeling and loving everyone and being in touch with nature....
So, is Ann getting ready to endorse Obama for 2012?? I know, I know, not necessarily her. But she does have that satellite radio station featuring her '60's fix. Maybe Ann's brain chemistry requires the emotional reassurance of nostalgia, which could be assuaged with one more whirl on the Obama Magic Carpet Ride. But not necessarily her. Yeah, I get it.
"Well, not necessarily you. But you see my point?"
You had me at "not necessarily you"
I think the we-can't-survive-another-month-of-this-idiot unfocuses feeling will be pretty strong, when you consider the whole cloud.
A lot of anti-economics teaching will have to be part of the Obama campaign.
Since Michele Obama is so informed and involved, she likely views herself as right thinking which is funny when you think about it.
"Barack Obama will require you to work"
...turns into 99 week unemployment benefits and the lowest percentage of the population in the workforce since 1983.
Oh, she meant "you evil rich people"? No nostalgia from the thousandaires.
"Occupy Wall Street" has been a bust.
What New York City needs is a flooding rain.
Unlike most rain that comes straight down. New York City gets gusts of rain. They can hit you sideways. And, the puddles in the streets ... fly up at you every time a taxicab plasses by.
Umbrellas, when opened, in a good gust can fly up. And, become useless.
To say nothing of what will happen to all those assorted participants down on Wall Street. Where I bet private security is good enough ... you just can run in to use a bathroom.
What hasn't emerged is a recognizable face in front of the crowd. No "Jesse" And, no Al-Capone-Sharpton.
When the weather changes, this will blow away.
The "provate park" will reconfigure itself to have an entrence that's 22-inches wide. And, all the tables will be gone. Perhaps? They'll add oak trees?
And, whatever it takes to make keeping a park open to the public 24-hours every day ... getting licensed to sell food from trucks. You think I'm kidding?
You think it will get used by the homeless, now that they know this is there?
how weird is it in Madison? the dirtbaggers don't mean a thing other than an indictment of the subprime product your industry has been selling.
I think it's possible that the Obama 2012 campaign could touch many people — people who are suffering, out of work, occupying Wall Street (or wherever) — by prompting them to get in touch with the great old feeling of the good old days... in 2008
It would be extraordinary. In presidential elections the way it usually works 4 years later: are you better off now than you were 4 years ago? Like that.
Ann, maybe you need to think about getting more sleep, or perhaps a little more protein in your diet, some fresh air...
In a perverse way Obama is likely to be the beneficiary of the economic destruction he has fostered. With more unemployed, more poor people, more people on food stamps, more people evicted from their homes, more people in bankruptcy, and more young people mired in student debt, many voters will choose Obama who cares over a Republican who says take your medicine. There's lots of fear out there.
Obama 2012: Remember how great it was before I got elected?
In effect, Obama nostalgia is sixties nostalgia. The unreconstructed counterculture types who provided material support to his campaign are those that never opened their eyes to the realities of the sixties mantras. Drugs don't expand minds, they destroy them. Enforced equality results in institutionalized racism. Wealth redistribution destroys incentive. For the young OWS participants there is still time to be mugged by reality, perhaps when they realize that their futures have been mortgaged to pay for more liberal pie in the sky.
Althouse must have her own groovy little vortex and it keeps pulling her back in.
The only nostalgia about Barack Obama will be for the time when no one had ever heard of him.
Ann Althouse said...
The actual quote is: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
Not entirely true. He wants people uninformed and only involved in approved ways.
Barack Obama will require you to work.
Sounds a little like slavery, don't it?
When I drive my car, I turn on the satellite radio and put on the 60s channel, where I'm always young and carefree. It's 2011, but I can push the button for the 60s, musically.
I push the 50s channel on mine. The music was better and nowhere near as much nonsense.
And why not? If there are no jobs, at some point, don't you think you should leap out into some wholly other way of thinking about life, that it's not about having a job, it's about being alive and sensing and feeling and loving everyone and being in touch with nature....
Frankly, I'd assume they'd start worrying about putting food on the table at some point. A year from now, the percentage of what the pollsters politely call "discouraged workers" will probably equal or exceed the percentage GodZero wants to count as unemployed.
I've been thinking about the hippie nonsense the last few days and it could only have happened in prosperous times. They knew in their self-indulgent hearts Mommy and Daddy would take them back and Daddy would take them into his stock brokerage firm once the blush wears off which is exactly what happened.
10 years after Woodstock, a lot of the "flower children" were dancing the night away at Studio 54 after a hard day of risk arbitrage.
PS The only "Miss Me?" signs around are about ABO.
It's harder to be a a hopey changy blank slate after you've been President for 3-4 years.
For the first time in his life he has a record, and he's not exactly running on it.
Why are you saying that I am susceptible to this nostalgia? I'm perceiving it, consciously. I'm on the outside.
I perceived the nonsense of the emotionalism around Obama the first time. What you don't seem to get is that I voted for him in spite of that, not because of it.
To remind you one more time: I was ultimately presented with a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain. I made a sober, rational choice. Before you get all worked about how awful Obama has been, if you want to impress me at all, you need to go through the exercise of imagining what would have happened under McCain.
Unless you do that, you're as full of hot air as the Obama idolators.
"Frankly, I'd assume they'd start worrying about putting food on the table at some point."
First time around, the hippies got food stamps. It's easier to get food stamps these days. No one will go hungry!
For young people, whose dreams have been ripped away, why shouldn't they drop out of the commercial world that doesn't what them, that is crushing them? The older people have appropriated the future of the young. Do you expect the young to shun food stamps?
Some of you folks who snipe at Ann for her vote in 2008 overlook some painful realities.
The US economy would hardly be in better shape today under McCain, at least not so much that it would feel like real prosperity was around the corner. Debt is just too high,and real estate would be just as awful as it is now.
And then there's Europe in general and Greece in particular.
Imagine the political stain on the president had GM and Chrysler gone bankrupt. Never mind that bankruptcy might have been the best option. Unemployment would be high. As high as it is now? Does it matter? Under a McCain presidency, an awful lot of people would be saying, "God, I wish we'd given Barack Obama a chance."
The 2010 Republican landslide would not have happened. Pelosi would still be Speaker today.
It's a shame that Barack didn't start with himself. Reading her words now, it sounds like a compendium of all the things he didn't do.
I hated the music when I was young. The 70s sucked - it was the age of ugly.
And I still don't think McCain would've been better than BO. In 2008, Romney might have won but it was "McCain's turn" just like its "Romney's Turn" in 2012.
Well, it's not April 1...
Is our country so full of weak minds that Barack Obama really made anyone 'feel good about politics' in 2008?
Don't answer that, 'cause I know the answer, and it's unfortunate.
To anyone with half a wit and even modest observational experience Barack Obama was clearly unqualified. I knew within the first dozen random pages of 'Dreams From My Father' that I wanted no part of that man.
I can, however, understand how and why so many were suckered - Bush was a pathetically bad public speaker, while Obama appeared to have the easy turn of phrase that contrasted so strongly with the outgoing guy.
And so we got the Chauncey Gardiner Presidency.
Mind you, I never thought much of Clinton as a speaker either, there was something about his manner that said "I may not believe a word I'm saying, but they're lapping it up..."
In retrospect, it's clear that the best argument for Zero is that McCain would have been worse. And in many ways that's true (in important ways not - Sup Ct nominees, O'Care, the massive growth and direction of the Fed Admin).
I didn't vote for either.
Any button marked "2008" should be hooked to a cattle prod and labeled as an "educational toy."
For young people, whose dreams have been ripped away, why shouldn't they drop out of the commercial world that doesn't what them
Oh Boo freaking Hoo.
The young people have had their dreams and fantasies about how wonderful life should be....if only they were able to get everything they want....handed to them on a silver platter.
They need to get some historical perspective. They think they are the FIRST people to have their dreams crushed????
How about THESE people...or THESE ....OR THESE
There was no such thing as food stamps, unemployment insurance, medicaid. NO safety net other than the generosity and charity of others.
Yet these people who had their dreams crushed somehow managed to get the guts to find new dreams, make a better world and ......unfortunately have spawned these dregs of humanity who want to whine because they can't get a new Ipod and may have to stoop to doing manual labor.
Waaah. My college education, degree in liberal arts/bitter women's studies/basket weaving for dummies, didn't give me a magic job.
Boo FUCKING Hoo. Your widdle dweams have been cwushed.
AA At some point, won't people want to take the drug that worked so well that other time.
Marijuana?
Beer?
Chablis?
Vodka?
And yes -- we sooo want to go back to the way we were.
We want a do-over. (You do too?)
I am hoping 2012 will be the ultimate American Extreme Makeover.
Only we'll be able to pay our bills when we're done. And still have a Corian countertop to make unhealthy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with chips and cilantro on the side. And full cream ice cream for dessert. Just to annoy Michelle.
My nostalgia predates Obama's coronation.
"In a perverse way Obama is likely to be the beneficiary of the economic destruction he has fostered."
Obama has done nothing to foster the economic destruction that is still underway; worse, he has done nothing to stop the destruction that was underway when he took office, or to pursue those responsble for it.
This economic tsunami is the end result of decades of policy shifts intended to benefit the financial elites and to free them from previous restrictive safeguards on their behavior...the banks and financial institutions and big corporations..."Wall Street," as a handy label.
Idiotic comments such as this would have us believe that Obama--whom I abhor and did not vote for--stepped into office with all right in the land, America a gleaming fortress of full employment, zero homeless or poor, no jobs being displaced overseas, not a hint of trouble on the housing or banking landscape. It would have us believe the ahistorical idea that Barack the evil socialist stepped into office and immediately set about dismantling the prosperous edifice of America and its workforce, and in three short years has successfully wrought destruction and blight where before there was nought but honey and ambrosia, riches and triumph.
Obama is terrible because he stepped into office with so many people hoping he would help reverse the disasters engulfing the country, but he has revealed to those to whom it wasn't already apparent that he is merely the latest in a succession of Wall Street's minions in the White House.
Ann Althouse said...
To remind you one more time: I was ultimately presented with a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain.Before you get all worked about how awful Obama has been, if you want to impress me at all, you need to go through the exercise of imagining what would have happened under McCain.
Unless you do that, you're as full of hot air as the Obama idolators.
Attitude, attitude.
OK, no MaverickCare, no trillion dollar stimulus, no kowtowing, no Fast and Furious, no GM bailout, no drilling moratorium.
Amnesty, maybe.
Enough? (I just love it when you go all conlawprof)
"Frankly, I'd assume they'd start worrying about putting food on the table at some point."
First time around, the hippies got food stamps. It's easier to get food stamps these days. No one will go hungry!
Very true. You've got the basics, but, in this consumer culture, you want the goodies, too. The stores looted in London carried the high-end, Steve Jobs stuff, after all. And, 40 years ago, living and looking like a slob went stiff for most of them sometime between Kent State and when Nixon threw his hat in the ring, so there'll come a time, it would seem, when they'll be hungry for something more.
For young people, whose dreams have been ripped away, why shouldn't they drop out of the commercial world that doesn't what them, that is crushing them? The older people have appropriated the future of the young. Do you expect the young to shun food stamps?
Good snark there, Madame.
Actually, I expect them to vote the Demos out because they don't want to live on food stamps the rest of their lives. Considering the job people like the "guy down the street", William Ayers, have done with education, I'm not entirely hopeful, but it's starting to look like the yout's (the majority, anyway) just may be catching on.
"Don't you see the potential for hordes of people to embrace the simple pleasures of nostalgia? When I drive my car, I turn on the satellite radio and put on the 60s channel, where I'm always young and carefree. It's 2011, but I can push the button for the 60s, musically. There's a political button marked 2008, and I think there's a decent chance there are a whole lot of people who would love to push it."
Yes, of course. Obama will get 90 to 95% of his '08 vote, mostly because American voters are driven as much by optics as they are rational choices (and no, Obama over McCain wasn't a "rational" choice, no matter how much one labors to say it was - Obama's underlying ideology and profound lack of experience expose that lie).
Experience has value only if one is willing to use it; voters who irresponsibly ignored Obama's lack of experience will very likely ignore their own experience with his all-to-obvious failures, and invest in the empty promises of "hope" once more.
They are free to do so, of course, but I wish they'd only consider the effect of cannibalizing America's future as they do so. November '12 isn't just an election, it is an intelligence test.
Too many will fail.
"The cynicism may seem much more justified now, but it also hurts, and people remember when words like this made them feel as good as they've ever felt about politics in their whole lives. “
I like to play this game in which I imagine people make arguments and then I get to point out the pain and cynicism those arguments invoke and how much they really victimize me.
OOPS bad link on the first photo link.
I wanted THIS photo
Not Pancho Villa. LOL
Folks with empty lives and confused minds may look for politicians to give them the canvas on which they can paint their fantasies and solutions. But in the end it is all a lie.
Its got a lot in common with the battered-wife syndrome.
We are already in an acute bout of
Bush nostalgia.
Somehow it worked for FDR.
Roosevelt drove us ever deeper into the Great Depression for nine years ('32 - '41) with despair on every side, then into a war that killed 400,000 young Americans.
And the people loved him for it. So much so they elected and re-elected him four times. They cried like babies when he died, then eventually gave him a four-chambered monument on the National Mall.
Surely our savior/Nobel prize winning Barack Hussein Obama (Hmmmmm, Hmmmmmm, Hmmmmmm!) is worthy of much more, simply by his worthy worthiness.
Althouse, I knew it was bullshit then, and you are smarter than me and more educated. But you bought Obama's lies. You bought Michelle's lies. You thought that the left had good in it.
The Obamas did not intend to help anyone but themselves and their cronies. They care nothing about others except for votes. That is the way leftists are: Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Guevera, all practicing "Screw them! What is in it for me? What power can I take for us who deserve to rule?"
Ahhh yes, 2008, the "good ol' days" of Save Your Savior (For Someone Needs Saving):
Believe it or not, it's you who are the one getting out of whack. It's you who's not thinking straight. That's how cultists take control. Always has been. And if you don't think that's possible - with all these people and reports, out of the blue, discussing cultism and Barack Obama - then you're a perfect candidate for it.
Timely.
"For young people, whose dreams have been ripped away, why shouldn't they drop out of the commercial world that doesn't what them"
Only realistic dreams can be crushed. I never dreamed of dunking a basketball but settled for touching the rim.
Have you taken a good luck at any of these OWS protestors? They are generally clueless.
There will be no 'nostalgia' movement in the next 13 months.
There will be Obama encouraging racial hatred, class hatred, politics of envy, and just anything he can do to keep himself in office as the economy collapses and wars break out. And he will use his 'brown shirts', the unions, to push this.
The only nostalgia movement will be is wish for Reagan or even Bush to come back.
2012 can't come to soon.
Obamania lasted 14 months.
I think the pet rock craze lasted longer-
You know my husband was unemployed for two -- maybe three years at one point in our marriage. (In the 80s.)
We didn't blame any body.
I worked. Three kids. Eventually he found a job.
Unemployment was NOT 99 weeks.
But we also did not have house payments that could not be handled on with one income and lots of macaroni and cheese.
It is very tough for folks who are unemployed these days -- are they nostalgic for Obama2008?
The young whiners ("occupiers")who have never had a real job and went into hock for a gazillion dollars for a stupid bachelor's degree needed to have somebody take them aside a long time ago.
The rule in our house was not to end up owing so much student loan money (if you had to borrow) that you couldn't pay it off quickly. The one kid who didn't follow that advice (graduate school at a private university -- YIKES!) took years -- years -- to financially stabilize. But he paid it.
(There are ways to get an education without throwing the rest of your life away.)
These kids need to be protesting places like the University Wisconsin which has people like "Vice-Provost of Diversity and Climate" who get paid directly or indirectly out of money brought into the University through the student loan programs.
Where were these people in 2008 when they voted for this man?
"Roosevelt drove us ever deeper into the Great Depression for nine years ('32 - '41) with despair on every side, then into a war that killed 400,000 young Americans."
Huh? Unemployment was much lower and GNP much higher in 1940 then 1933.
Barack Obama will require you to work...
Well, she didn't say "work for money."
Or "work for yourself, not the government."
So, what's your fucking beef?
There is a serious suspension of rationality going on around here.
Well lots of people on the Right will be holding their nose for the Republican nominee and lots of people on the left who have soured on Obama will come home when they have to choose between him and Romney (or whoever).
And the media will still be in the tank for him and do lots of shocking exposés on painted rocks and whatnot, so from a distance I suppose it'll look very much like 2008.
The US economy would hardly be in better shape today under McCain, at least not so much that it would feel like real prosperity was around the corner.
I actually do not believe thaty anymore.
The number of crushing regulations Obama and his czars have put on industries critical -- Read that again -- CRITICAL -- for our economic recovery is beyond counting.
I do not think a McCain administration would have killed the opil and nuclear industries. The EPA would not be flying high.
No. McCain was not an economic genius but compared to Barack -Empty Resume-No Real Life Experience-Alinsky Chela - Obama
he had some common, albeit RINO sense.
It might have been difficult, but without a single doubt, this man Obama has dragged the US down deeper than we have been in 75 years.
"There is a serious suspension of rationality going on around here.”
Sane threads are much less entertaining.
edwardroyce said:
"There is a serious suspension of rationality going on around here."
A newbie, huh?
Didn't buy into Obama in 2008 anymore than I bought into the whole "cruel neutrality" rhetoric.
Why bother?
You'll never sway Althouse.
It only serves to force her to confront it-
Which only serves her...to dig in.
You see, she made a decision based on intellect-not emotion.
intellectual decisions are always the correct ones
She, seemingly alone, voted for Obama for the right reasons.
Everyone else voting for him for all the wrong reasons.
Funny how they both ended up making the same decision.
When the Vision dies, it's always a difficult grief process.
Some people never recover. Expect Adjustment Disorders.
But will it be covered under Obamacare?
The Mrs. and I watched Up in the Air again last night, the movie with George Clooney. When I put it on the Netflix queue I remembered that we had seen it when it came out, but I didn't remember how it ended.
About ten minutes into watching it, however, I remembered how it ended and that utterly affected how I watched the movie. The same scenes that gave one emotion during the first time through gave almost entirely opposite feelings and thoughts the second time through. Knowing the end, where it was going, changed the whole experience.
That's why I think while the nostalgia is good, it can't be applied to Obama himself. We know the directions he took, so hope is inherently turned to cynicism. Knowing the end changes the experience of the past, especially when the end turns out so utterly different.
"...without a single doubt, this man Obama has dragged the US down deeper than we have been in 75 years."
Oh, I'd say there's more than a "single" doubt.
Now, if you'd said something to the effect that "There is not a single doubt that Obama has continued the policies of his predecessors that have dragged the US down...etc. etc." you would have a more than halfway valid statement there.
By the way, what are the "crushing regulations" that Obama has implemented and which have brought about the destruction of America's businesses?
rcocean said...
"Roosevelt drove us ever deeper into the Great Depression for nine years ('32 - '41) with despair on every side, then into a war that killed 400,000 young Americans."
Huh? Unemployment was much lower and GNP much higher in 1940 then 1933.
Yeah, unemployment was only 15 - 20% 1939 - 40, as opposed to 25 in '29. It dropped because of the peacetime draft and rearmament.
"It might have been difficult, but without a single doubt, this man Obama has dragged the US down deeper than we have been in 75 years."
Yes, the fact that we lost 2.6 Million jobs in 2008 and the fact that the economy has added jobs in 2011 undoubtedly shows that since January 2009, Obama has killed the economy. And McCain would have been better. Or something.
We may be headed for another enervating "same old same old" election.
I suspect that Obama will have his Statue and perhaps a memorial holiday in his honor in the Communist Party's Hall of Heroes next to Chavez, Castro, and Mao.
He will be called The Great Destroyer of Capitalism.
I remember mass delusion. A button best un-pushed.
I'm Sorry Ann - I really am. But the nostalgia of how some folks felt about Obama was because of the Hope and Change he promised.
And I have NO IDEA of what America would be like had McCain been elected. But I have little doubt that we'd be worse off than we are and I know Israel wouldn't be so isolated in the international community.
And everyone seems to forget -perhaps its the "haze" from the nostalgia - that the entire economy started to come off the rails because of the Community Reinvestment Act, as passed by Jimmy Carter and reinvigorated by Bill Clinton. The CRA CREATED the Sub Prime mortgage, wherein banks were obliged to make loans to folks with no credit or very bad credit. The banks, needless to say, weren't inclined to hold those mortgages so they sold them off in bundles as sub prime Securities and/or sold them off to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Why do you think the "Wall Street Brokers" or "Fat Cats" like Goldman Sachs and numerous others, CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH to Obama's election campaign? He and other Democrats in Congress had enabled them to make TONS of money selling those bundles of sub prime securities.
And now, apparently, close to 50% of the American electorate pays no taxes at all. So by all means lets tax the ass off of those 50% who do pay taxes - too much? OK, then, just tax Millionaires. That'll work.
/
I am nostalgic for the America I grew up in, I worked my butt off to pay for college, served in Vietnam and then worked my butt off, scholar-shipped and student loaned my way through an Ivy League Law School. No one GAVE ME self-esteem. I got self-esteem the only way anyone really can, I EARNED it.
So no, I'm not at all nostalgic for the campaign for the community organizer,nor his charming wife, nor his Reverend of twenty years, nor his buddy Louis Farrakhan.
I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK.
Let me second those who say that voting for Obama over McCain was irrational.
If for no other reason than Supreme Court picks. In the long run, the Supreme Court determines everything.
Did you really think Obama would pick people who INTERPRET law?
No, actually I don' remember the hope. I've been nauseous since November 2008.
Nicely put, realwest.
"I suspect that Obama will have his Statue and perhaps a memorial holiday in his honor in the Communist Party's Hall of Heroes next to Chavez, Castro, and Mao.
"He will be called The Great Destroyer of Capitalism."
Hahahahahahaha!
Capitalism will be the great destroyer of capitalism.
Lenin is alleged to have said:
"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
Of course, there are no communists left to buy the ropes or to hang the capitalists; the capitalists will hang themselves.
Fred4Pres said...
How did you feel in 2008? And how did you lose it Ann?
================
How do you feel that Republicans nominated a candidate widely perceived as worse than Obama? McCain promised a dismal Presidency. Had he got in office, we would have had more bailouts, a truly dismal Presidency (like Obama's) and a new major war fought with Iran. Pelosi and Reid would still have full control and each week, McCain would have betrayed conservatives with yet another "bipartisan compromise" with Pelosi the NY Times Board approved of.
Looking back, Romney would have likely done the best job - but the Southern goobers applied their purity tests and thought it was War Hero (he suffered so!) McCains turn. Even if Romney had been the nominee, the colossal mess the Bushies left would still have made him low odds for being elected then.
As for missing Obama, no. But the same can be said for Bush. The 2010 poster showing Bush with the caption Miss me?? - the general response was "No, not really".
To Robert Cook - you ask what "crushing regulations"? Well leaving aside the unknown burden of Obamacare on folks who didn't get waivers, lets just do the EPA's Cross-Border Air Pollution (or whatever its formal name is) regulation - whereby coal fired electical plants must comply with EXTREMELY difficult and EXTREMELY expensive regulations NOW or be shut down.
There are over 27 coal fired electrical plants in Texas - ironicially enough - that have said they do not have the time within which to comply with those regulations, so they will have to shut down. So be prepared for less heat this winter and less A/C next summer and rolling brownouts or blackouts. Aside from the hardship imposed on people, BUSINESS finds it hard to plan for future operations, much less expansion, without knowing whether or not they will have sufficient energy with which to conduct their business. Of course Solyndra promised to fill that gap, but.........//
It's no longer politically correct for kids to play Cowboys and Indians, but Cops and Hippies remains a perennial favorite. And why not? An entry level job instructs a young person on their utter insignificance in the universe and the vast number of brain numbing tasks that have to be performed to keep the world working. A demonstration, on the other hand, allows them to indulge their vision of being brave idealists, striving to make a better world. There's a frisson of danger present when they act out with the cops. Not the kind of terror an enlisted grunt has to face, but, still, there might be some fascist overresponse if the cop catches him defecating on a patrol car. It's a price a brave man pays for making a better world. And there are secondary gains. There's lots of cute girls around. Signifant people doing significant things under dangerous conditions have much hotter sex than the rest of us....They say that the real motivation of a lot of the suicide bombers was their wish to spend eternity with seventy, sloe eyed vigins. Perhaps a lot of these young people are called to the barricades by a wish to hook up.
realwest:
Are you talking about the regulations described here, or other regs?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/02/obama-halts-epa-regulation-smog-standards_n_946557.html
I made a sober, rational choice.
Without a complete set of data can a choice really be considered rational?
Obama was and still is a cipher, only his record in office is a known quantity and that will be blamed on others who will fall on their swords or be shoved under the bus (I'm looking at you Holder, Chu and Geithner)for the good of the team.
I think you've correctly assessed their initial strategy, but the interesting question is how does he recapture your vote?
Or maybe it's this:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10/05/3423229/epa-may-amend-its-emissions-regulations.html
@Cook
Of course, there are no communists left to buy the ropes or to hang the capitalists;
Pure comedy gold.
mockmook said...
Let me second those who say that voting for Obama over McCain was irrational.
If for no other reason than Supreme Court picks. In the long run, the Supreme Court determines everything.
=================
SCOTUS picks are important - but with McCain locked in the minds of voters as a guaranteed awful President and with his past history of treachery to please his "Dear Friends across the aisle" and his sucking up to the NY Times - McCains picks would have had to clear what Pelosi and Reid would tolerate and have been the Souter-Stevens-O'Connor-Kennedy sorts.
With Obama, there was at least a shot the guy might turn out not to be as awful as McCain was sure to be...less likelihood of new Neocon wars of adventure and nation-building, perhaps better management of the economy. Something McCain said was never something he bothered much learning about in his decades in Congress.
It didn't pan out.
Voters had a choice.
1. Behind door #1 was the McCain shit sandwich.
2. Door #1 was open - so everyone could see the shit sandwich the Republicans decided to proffer, with a sidedish of Palin roadkill.
3. Voters were told they could eat the McCain/Palin cuisine..or choose what was behind door #2..which could be an Obama triple cheeseburger, a bologna sandwich, or possibly a tripledecker shit sandwich worse than the McCain fare they were certain to have to eat.
4. People chose what was behind door #2. They rolled the game show dice. It was a triple-decker shit sandwich!!
5. Drats!!
6. Voters then snivelled that they were not given the option of the almost beyond shelf-life Hillary fish taco or the healthy but hardly Inspiring!! Romney glass of water and plain chicken on white.
At some point, won't people want to take the drug that worked so well that other time. What intense pleasure! What brilliant hallucinations! It calls to you.
You speak with the authority of someone who swallowed the Kool-Aid in 2008. No one should be surprised if you take another swig in 2012.
To Robert Cook: its this one:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10/05/3423229/epa-may-amend-its-emissions-regulations.html
And I only remember it because Obama did say, while campaigning in '08 that he would kill coal.
And of course, that awful tsunami in Japan has put a hold on Nuclear power development here and as for Green energy, well, I just can't figure it out. GM, BTW, just opened a factory-or is going to open a factory in China to produce the GM Volts. I don't think China really cares much about air pollution so I think GM plans to build them there and ship them here. I'm not sure of what it'll cost folks to "charge up" their electric vehicles,nor the trains that take goods, medicines and food from those of us in Fly-over country to the Coastal States and Cities. But we need the energy NOW. I AM a conservationist, BTW, but have a difficult time making Mom and Pop freeze or sweat by cutting back on electrical energy production here. And I'd like to see younger folks than me (which is, apparently, damn near everyone) have a shot at a job from which they can work their way up the ladder, but can't reconcile that with "clean" energy. Seriously, it is my belief that the primary reason business doesn't expand and hire more people is the uncertainty of the regulatory and tax future.
BJM:
Listen, for your own good, listen:
Those millions of frozen zombie Commie troops waiting to be revived and released from the cryogenic vaults deep under the Russian Tundra and unleashed on America exist only in your nightmares! They're not real!
Feel better? Just keep repeating:
"It's only a delusion...it's only a delusion...it's only delusion...."
Give it up for the grifter-in-chief!
realwest:
Well, as you can see, not only those regs but even others are being partly or wholly rescinded by Obama, as a cave-in to the business interests who really call the shots. So those "crushing" regulations won't be crushing anyone, it seems.
Of course, we don't know how "crushing" those regs might have been--if at all. It's pro forma for industries who don't wish to comply with govt. regs to claim they will be damaging to their ability to "affordably" continue doing business...it's what the car manufacturers said when they were mandated by law back in the 60s to begin including seatbelts in all cars.
The actual impact of govt. regs on business can only really be measured after thef act, after they have been implemented and have been in effect for a time. And then the negative impact--if any--must still be measured against the positive impact--if any--to society at large. After all, it costs money for meat producers to insure their meat is sanitary and free of organisms that will make people sick or kill them--to the degree they adhere to those regs--but if we remove all regulations intended to insure food safety, it may be cheaper for the meat producers to offer their product, but at the expense of consumers made sick or killed...and the ancillary medical expenses to them individually and to society at large.
So, who knows what expense to society will result from the lack of enforcement of the EPA regulations?
Ann, Don't forget the line:
Paranoia strikes deep...into your mind it will creep.
The left is ever paranoid. How else can one describe their claiming any sort of budget reduction of the government will KILL PEOPLE!!!!!1!1eleventy!
The one thing that we would not have had with a McCain Presidency would have been the endemic and epidemic corruption that is the Obama Administration and Congress. No funding a Soyndra for a photo op. No Pelosi brother's company getting $3/4 billion in loan guarantees. No Fast and Furious.
Let me suggest that when the Obama Campaign turned off credit card verification, and forewent federal funding, they signaled that they were open for business, and that business was dispensing federal largess and favors for money.
McCain got burned in the savings and loan scandal, by going to bat for Keating, a constituent and acquitance. And, he really didn't ever get over that scandal besmirching his honor.
Let me suggest that if there is much sentimentality in this upcoming election, it will be towards GW Bush (43), who was much maligned by the media, but was also much more honest and hard working than his successor. He never thought that the Presidency was his right, but rather, the greatest honor. He had his failures, but he did try hard to do the right thing - so much different than Obama.
To Robert Cook: I read that the EPA is CONSIDERING modifying those regs -which, had they gone into effect on the date originally proposed would have been the winter and summer of the 2012 campaign.
And of course business almost always bitches and moans about new regulations which would affect their business, but as you said, the only way to KNOW if the business will be adversely affected is to enact it and see what happens. Sorta like Pelosi saying about ObamaCare "we have to pass it to find out what's in it."
Or, of course, you could perhaps concede that business knows more about what will affect their business than does the EPA.
In any event, while we may not know the effects of any genuine postponement of these regs may be, I do know that my ELDERLY parents will not - if the EPA holds off until after the 2012 election cycle- freeze or suffer due to the lack of A/C this year.
Although, since apparently lots of folks in France leave their elderly parents in their un-airconditioned apartments, while they go on a month's long vacation in August and then come back to see if they are still alive, I'm surprised that the EPA is even considering holding off on those regs. After all, Obama clearly prefers the European economic system.
Cook - you are an idiot, when it comes to regulations. The Obama Administration has been issuing them at a rate of thousands of pages a month. And, it is plain silly to have to wait until the history book are written to see if this regulation or that one has hurt the economy.
Sure, any given one may or may not be that bad. But the sheer magnitude of them is a good part of the problem, and the rate that they have increased is very worrisome, at precisely the time when we need to not be worried about whether the federal government will jump on us for this and that. Yet, the 111th Congress passed massive legislation, requiring massive regulations be issued, at precisely the wrong time economically. And, that only counts the financial and medical industry regulations, and not the Obama Administration's attempt to accomplish through regulation what they could not get passed by Congress.
Bruce Hayden - "Let me suggest that if there is much sentimentality in this upcoming election, it will be towards GW Bush (43), who was much maligned by the media, but was also much more honest and hard working than his successor. He never thought that the Presidency was his right, but rather, the greatest honor. He had his failures, but he did try hard to do the right thing."
==============
Sounds like a homage someone could have written about Jimmy Carter in 1983
And a repost since it got one positive response, anyway:
I'm Sorry Ann - I really am. But the nostalgia of how some folks felt about Obama was because of the Hope and Change he promised.
And I have NO IDEA of what America would be like had McCain been elected. But I have little doubt that we'd be worse off than we are and I know Israel wouldn't be so isolated in the international community.
And everyone seems to forget -perhaps its the "haze" from the nostalgia - that the entire economy started to come off the rails because of the Community Reinvestment Act, as passed by Jimmy Carter and reinvigorated by Bill Clinton. The CRA CREATED the Sub Prime mortgage, wherein banks were obliged to make loans to folks with no credit or very bad credit. The banks, needless to say, weren't inclined to hold those mortgages so they sold them off in bundles as sub prime Securities and/or sold them off to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Why do you think the "Wall Street Brokers" or "Fat Cats" like Goldman Sachs and numerous others, CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH to Obama's election campaign? He and other Democrats in Congress had enabled them to make TONS of money selling those bundles of sub prime securities.
And now, apparently, close to 50% of the American electorate pays no taxes at all. So by all means lets tax the ass off of those 50% who do pay taxes - too much? OK, then, just tax Millionaires. That'll work.
/
I am nostalgic for the America I grew up in, I worked my butt off to pay for college, served in Vietnam and then worked my butt off, scholar-shipped and student loaned my way through an Ivy League Law School. No one GAVE ME self-esteem. I got self-esteem the only way anyone really can, I EARNED it.
So no, I'm not at all nostalgic for the campaign for the community organizer,nor his charming wife, nor his Reverend of twenty years, nor his buddy Louis Farrakhan.
I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK.
@RCook--You need to distinguish between impulses and propagation mechanisms. The financial crisis triggered the recession, but the recovery has been slower than any in the last few decades. That's where Obama deserves blame.
Here's a short list from economist (and NYT contributor) Casey Mulligan of recent policy innovations that have contributed significantly to prolonging >9% unemployment by creating major disincentives for firms to create new jobs or for unemployed workers to take new jobs at lower salaries than before (note at the link that this list is over a year old, so it's hardly Monday-morning quarterbacking):
•penalizing employers for providing the type of health insurance they did in the past
•minimum wage hike
•means-tested mortgage modification (presenting millions of workers with implicit tax rates in excess of 100% (sic))
•means-tested new home buyer credit
•mean-tested student loan modification
•unemployment insurance extensions
There is plenty of evidence that the duration of high unemployment is attributable to factors such as these and not deficient aggregate demand. (For one thing, employment of relatively old workers has risen substantially.) Now, you may say that these policies were necessary to soften the blow of the initial crisis, but that doesn't alter the fact that they are major contributors to the duration of the stagnation.
I realize, however, that it feels a lot better to simply rail against the evil bankers, who initiated this mess by lending exactly as loosely as they were encouraged to do by the federal government.
Yes, the fact that we lost 2.6 Million jobs in 2008 and the fact that the economy has added jobs in 2011?
Link please.
According to BLS: "Nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 103,000 in September, and the unemployment rate held at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The
increase in employment partially reflected the return to payrolls of about 45,000
telecommunications workers who had been on strike in August."
Counting employed workers on strike is more than misleading don't you think? The rate was actually 58,000 jobs added.
Another factor is the effect of the birth rate on unemployment projections. Even if there were no more financial blow-ups, no oil price shocks, etc. according to BLS data: "total job openings during the 2008-18 period are projected to be 50.9 million, and 19.6 million of these jobs are expected to be in the short-term on-the-job training
category."
However, at the current rate of job additions, we will never reach full employment because population growth, again according to the CES/BLS birth/dead model, alone requires us to add about 125,000 jobs per month just to stay even.
You may want to read that last paragraph again to make sure you have understood the seriousness of our predicament and how seriously you're being jived.
To SGT Ted: "How else can one describe their claiming any sort of budget reduction of the government...."
Now you're just being silly (although kudos for remembering that line!) cause, you know, the Left doesn't believe in "budgets" -its been what - well over 300 days now since the U.S. Senate proposed anything resembling a budget. And when the House passed a budget, the Senate didn't vote on it, nor offer amendments to it, they simply "tabled it". Its ALWAYS easier to spend other peoples money when you don't have to adhere to a budget of any sort.
That button is actually marked "2008 for the Naive."
I didn't push it then. I don't want to push it now.
I want to be nostalgic about the Era of Obama from a greater temporal distance, sooner.
"The one thing that we would not have had with a McCain Presidency would have been the endemic and epidemic corruption that is the Obama Administration and Congress.
Hahahahahahahaha!
Yep! There ain't a never been taint of corruption in Washington or in Congress or in the White House afore Flim Flammin' Obamy-McGhee slickered his way in. Oh, shore, there might have been, like, li'l bit of under the table slickerin' and bickerin' goin' on, but that's to be expected, like. But this Obamy-McGhee character, he just brought the whole tone o' the place down with his cadre of conmens and womens! Unpresidented!! (That's a joke, son, a pun, doncha get it?)
Sorry, but I never felt the "hope and change" vibe. I used to work in advertising--I know a marketing ploy when I see one.
But I will have some of whatever it is you're ingesting. It might make this flu more tolerable, if nothing else.
Ann Althouse said...
"Why are you saying that I am susceptible to this nostalgia? I'm perceiving it, consciously. I'm on the outside.
I perceived the nonsense of the emotionalism around Obama the first time. What you don't seem to get is that I voted for him in spite of that, not because of it.
To remind you one more time: I was ultimately presented with a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain. I made a sober, rational choice. Before you get all worked about how awful Obama has been, if you want to impress me at all, you need to go through the exercise of imagining what would have happened under McCain.
Unless you do that, you're as full of hot air as the Obama idolators."
Which is ridiculous, no one knows how McCain would have done. Probably much the same, as they are both (and ALL) captured by the Central Banker debt money creators. I guess that you may be captured also, as you are part of the debt bubbled, Banker financed Public ed. system
The real shame is that you fail to acknowledge that BOTH are ineligible. A "law prof"?
"Remember how you felt in '08? Maybe not you, specifically, but remember the hope? The inspiration? Don't you want to feel like that again?"
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=FZluzt3H6tk&feature=player_
detailpage#t=59s
"... This economic tsunami is the end result of....running out of other peoples money to pay for cradle to grave entitlements by relying on a very few to pay for many...
Fixed that for ya.
Sorepaw says, (with regard to my scoffing at the claim of Obama's supposedly having "fostered" the economic disaster engulfing us):
"In other words, Cook wants us to believe that:
(paraphrasing) "A bunch of stuff that had been started by Bush and would have been continued by Bush or any other Republican who would have been in the White House if Obama were not in office."
Obama has certainly carried on with policies that have hurt us, but he did not originate them and anyone else from the two major parties who might have been in place these last three years would have done little or nothing differently...as long as they, too, were under the sway of Wall Street influence.
"Barack Obama will require you to work." I can't tell you how many times a day that phrase goes through my head. It goes through my head when I'm sitting at my laptop completing my progress notes in my government mandated EMR, every Saturday when I get up to come to the office for office hours- something I never had to do before Obama. I'm working harder and longer hours as a direct result of this guys policies. I had forgotten about "Barack Obama will never let you return to your old life." Damn. Now that's going to be going through my head, too. More reason to try to squirrel away enough to move to Australia.
NO FUCKING WAY ANN!
I think your point is a 'stretch too far'. Go visit Arnhem, Neth.
Obama's appeals to the past will blow up in his face. They only remind a voter of Obama's failures and arrogance. Re-running the tired and shop worn phrases of the 208 campaign will graphically remid everyone of how much Obama has mis-lead the American people and failed in pursuing his program.
Obama's best move is to annouce his resignation by January 31,2012. Otherwise the oppositioon will harden into an unstoppable boulder of political destruction.
Democrats could lose the support of millenial generation and Hispanics for 20 years. Obama has to be persauded to go. He should go beofre the financial situation, the unemployment situation and the economic situation explode. Let Biden or Clinton deal with it.
Everytime Cook spouts off his workers of the world unite speech, I can't help but think of Stuart MacKenzie ranting about the Pentaverate.
He seems to think elected officials should not he influenced by rich folks but they are, just like they are influenced by ethnic groups or the AARP, or the NRA or the unions. Maybe that's why leftists like Cook pine for totalitarian governments where such influences don't matter.
He should encourage the sort of dangerously gassy bubbles that his predecessor presided over instead.
No idea where you read this in my comment. Was it the part that said "by lending exactly as loosely as they were encouraged to do by the federal government"? As in, during the Bush administration?
Your assumptions are based on 16 years of a certain kind of economic growth that were not and are not the norm.
If you're saying that 9% unemployment is the new normal, I'm inclined to agree with you. Obama wanted to make us more like Europe, and now we are--in terms of labor-market distortions and unsustainable entitlements.
...the regulatory environment would encourage a phony bubble as easily as it would real economic growth.
The "regulatory environment" that encouraged the housing bubble was a combination of cheap credit by the Federal Reserve and the push for loosened lending standards by banks.
There's a long history showing the typical pattern of economic downturn and recovery. Obama could have just ridden the cycle to full recovery and rosy reelection prospects by now if he hadn't put health-insurance "reform" first.
Professor,
Did you write this while looking in the mirror?
I am so tired of Republicans waiting for the next Reagan.
Grow up and move on.
The housing bubble is a good example of the liberals demand for 'fairness', cause it wasn't fair that some people had homes and others didn't. It wasn't 'fair' that you had to put a downpayment on a home. It wasn't 'fair' that having a lower income or being a shitty credut risk meant you could not get a home loan. It just wasn't fair.
Liberals efforts to make life fair has done nothing but fuck up this country.
Go crawl back in your hole Ritmo. It's pretty rich bring called a liar by you.
Stop lying about Cook and I'll be glad to let you crawl back into your own hole as well. Or did you have something substantive to add?
What lie? Leftists love totalitarianism because it gives them all the control that they desire. Every solution can be solved by the State. When Obama said it was tempting to just bypass Congress and just enact his agenda by Executive Orders, his disciples reacted in an orgasmic applause.
The biggest threat to this nation are leftists.
the sort of labor market that you and the corporate cronies find preferable. You tell me.
I prefer a labor market where the effective marginal tax rate on the middle-class isn't 100% or more. That's the cumulative effect of means-tested refinancings of just about every single instrument of middle-class debt. As I said earlier, any one of these policies was viewed as a helping hand, but together they eliminate any incentive at all to find work or (on the employers' side) to hire people.
Proposing that this downturn is just part of the business cycle is lunacy.
I've already agreed with this. The question is, why is the current situation so much worse? Your answer seems to be that Wall Street spontaneously got greedier than usual. My answer is that it's the predictable result of numerous and easily identifiable new policies.
I urge you to read these notes from a recent lecture by Nobel laureate (and former Obama supporter) Robert Lucas. Anyone who's interested in this topic should definitely read the whole thing, which is a relatively quick and clear read, but here's his concluding observation:
• Is it possible that by imitating European policies on labor markets, welfare, and taxes U.S. has chosen a new, lower GDP trend?
• If so, it may be that the weak recovery we have had so far is all the recovery we will get
Speaking of substantive, Ritmo, are you actually going to construct an argument on its merits or just use your usual strawmen?
You keep on keepin' on with your measured and well-tempered rhetoric there, Hoosier.
I'm interested in seeing how non-dictatorial and tolerant you remain when 60+% of the country protests at how sick and tired they are of being told that bootlicking the rich is a required necessity, lest the republic fall to your imagined theatrical reprise of 1917. Sounds like the effort to constantly hold such a fear in one's mind must make a guy pretty angry.
For what it's worth, I can't think of a more dictatorial place I've been to in the Western hemisphere than Indiana. Everybody telling everybody else how to live and getting in each other's business. The spartan lack of anything man-made to observe. The staunch aversion to any new or different way of looking at anything.
I guess uncontrolled anger will do that to a person.
Don't get me started on the perceived wisdom of maintaining unregulated chemical production and agriculture as a state's two principal industries. Can't be good for the gene pool. Especially if you want to evolve past, say, 1917.
are you actually going to construct an argument on its merits or just use your usual strawmen?
(...)
Leftists love totalitarianism because it gives them all the control that they desire. Every solution can be solved by the State. When Obama said it was tempting to just bypass Congress and just enact his agenda by Executive Orders, his disciples reacted in an orgasmic applause.
The biggest threat to this nation are leftists.
Lol.
And I'm sure you felt the same way when the grinning former preznit and self-styled "Decider" smirked and chuckled and said how much easier things would be just so long as he got to be the dictator.
wv: refunn. I want a refunn on what was supposed to be a funnier laugh out of Hoosie. ;-)
Not spontaneously, Chip. They just corrupted the ability of the watchdog to do any damn thing and have been paying them off for this disservice for the last 20 years.
No regulations, no matter how left-wing or right-wing you prefer them to be, will be undertaken in a political environment this out-of-whack. Read Eric Cantor. Read what his colleagues say. If capital is as gun-shy as you want us to believe, it can't be simultaneously as powerful when kept out of the reach of the government and our infrastructure. If private capital is as gun-shy as you want to believe it can't rely on someone as feckless and craven and morally disinterested as Eric Cantor and his many like-minded congressional colleagues to defend it.
Choose one.
Conservation Ritmo. You must have burned through six bushels of straw in that retort.
If capital is as gun-shy as you want us to believe...
I'm not pushing a full-Norquist agenda; I'd be perfectly willing to tax capital gains as regular income, provided that there were no corporate income tax. No more tax writeoffs for luxury suites at stadiums;, no more whining about corporate jets.
I'm talking about massive new distortions of the labor market. Fixing that market should be Obama's top priority, but instead he's making himself look silly complaining about a tax code he himself signed off on just a few months ago.
"Remember how you felt in '08? Maybe not you, specifically, but remember the hope? The inspiration? Don't you want to feel like that again?"
YES...however, Palin has decided not to run. So the hope and inspiration is pretty much lacking.
I just "hope" we get Obama and the progressives out of power and don't continue to flush our country and our children's future down the toilet.
I hope that Obama doesn't succeed in starting a real race and class war that is more than just stupid and angry words.
I really don't have much hope on either of those things. I hope I can continue to buy the ammo that I need and stock up my Armageddon Pantry.
@Cook
Listen, for your own good, listen:
Those millions of frozen zombie Commie troops waiting to be revived and released from the cryogenic vaults deep under the Russian Tundra and unleashed on America exist only in your nightmares! They're not real!
*eye roll*
M'Lord, I rest my case.
I have met people from Spain who were nostalgic for Franco, and the same for Marcos in the Philippines. Leaders who made people feel good--no matter how bad their policies--inspire nostalgia.
Just shows you who's more willing to work, Hoosier.
Chip, I'm sure we can find other areas of agreement, but Obama knows full well that he's not dealing with a distortion-free opposition. The politics are what matter now (they've been all that mattered since October '08) and it looks like at the grass-roots, he finally brought them.
Which of those places was I supposed to be interested in visiting, Sorepaw? Which of those countries suffered political "interventions" on the part of a United States naively idealistic in its anti-communist foreign adventurism?
Dude, so are you, like, a Randrian Randroid or not? Or what? No regulations imposed on organized groups unless they're South American countries, right?
I'm looking for some coherent clarity in your political objectivism and wish I could find it.
If you really mean to maintain that regulations of economic activity cannot be distinguished from any other laws, either in terms of their subject matter, or in terms of their administration, I need to ask you a couple of questions, Ritmo.
That's what you said, not I. But I'll play along with your misunderstanding.
When you refer to the "regulatory environment," are you including laws against murder, theft, rape, and fraud?
Again, I made no such reference, so it seems you're confusing your own ideas with mine.
But what the hell. At least you believe that such a concept as the "environment" exists - at least when it's slapped onto the inapplicable arena of economic activity.
Are you saying that laws regarding murder have no effect on the hit man and bodyguarding industries?
I'd like to think that a few hungry hit men and bodyguards need to feed their families, too. And if that's what you're saying, they'd disagree.
So what the hell ARE you saying?
And do you think it makes any difference whether a law ends up in the statute book because it was enacted by a legislative body or itenters the Federal Register because it was proclaimed by some agency within the Executive Branch?
What is your point? Today is neither my day for being the straw man in your fight to make murder and pollution purely economic issues, nor your fight against the right of federal agencies to carry out the rule-making responsibilities that they are authorized to do.
If you prefer they just sit around and conduct corruption like the MMS, go with it.
Methinks you're better with philosophy than with real-life.
The Obama Gospel is a denial of the first amendment rights of others who follow other gods.
Yup Sorepaw, I haven't been to the select few South American and Central American supposed dictatorships that you bum around in.
I'm desperately trying to find a point in anything you've written today. Doesn't look like you have one.
If that quotation ever made ANYONE feel good, they should never admit it. Just how much of a masochistic miserable self-loathing person would I have to be to enjoy being told by someone I've never met and who knows nothing about me that I'm cynical, uninvolved, uninformed, and all the rest of it, and that Michele Obama -- Michele Obama, of all people! -- knows more than I do about how I should be living my life? It is beyond my comprehension how anyone who heard her say that in 2008 could possibly have believed that someone who thinks that way about her fellow Americans belonged in the White House.
139 comments and nobody's connected Ann's paragraph about the Obama-drug effect with the word "hopium." I'm disappointed in you people!
I LOVE nostagia. I get a 'warm fuzzy' feeling everytime I take a toke. Where else can you get high knowing you are solving the illegal immigration problem 1 dead Mexican at a time. Then I light up a blunt and dream of hope and change. Celebrating diversity at the UW Law School by honoring the bombing of the Army Math Center. Ya man, like wow!!! Dead people--cool...
The Crack Emcee 10/8/11 11:03 AM said, Timely.
Thanks for the reminder of what lots of us were thinking at the time.
Althouse wrote, At some point, won't people want to take the drug that worked so well that other time.
JAL said, Marijuana?
Beer?
Chablis?
Vodka?
The wet dream of participating in an unprecedented historical event and blow against racism, electing the first black President (who happens to look GREAT without a shirt or with leg perched on an airplane seat arm rest). The cult of Obama Lightworker, the One, the Magic Negro. The orgiastic, gleeful, fury of blaming everything on Bush, attacking "racists", "extremists", Uncle Toms, capitalism, etc., etc., ad taedium extremum.
Or to put it a different way, the link posted by deborah 10/8/11 1:25 PM.
wv: thell. What?
Nobody has ever, ever been nostalgic for Jimmy Carter, who was up until 2009 the worst president of my lifetime. All Obama can do is give thanks for James Buchanan, who sets the baseline for horrifically bad presidencies.
For what it's worth, I can't think of a more dictatorial place I've been to in the Western hemisphere than Indiana.
Oh dear. I daresay Ritmo you probably haven't ventured one mile outside the privledged liberal enclave that most pseudo-intellectuals reside in while pontificating how horrid it is where people shop at JC Penney, and watch NASCAR.
No Ritmo, Indiana is a bastion of freedom where you can eat a donut without some leftist insisting it not be made out of transfat or where parents are considered intelligent enough to determine if their kid can get a happy meal without the STATE interfering.
interested in seeing how non-dictatorial and tolerant you remain when 60+% of the country protests at how sick and tired they are of being told that bootlicking the rich is a required necessity
That was about 2 bushels of straw right there. Bootlicking the rich? Says who? The voice in your head? I suppose so since half of your posts are the ramblings of a madman whose sat through one too many Noam Chomskey lectures. Yes vent out that hate and outrage on the "rich" who don't pay their fair share since they only fund 60%of the federal income tax. Lets make em pay the whole tab and if they don't lets institute the Barr Act and import some guillotines and have them beheaded! Or just contract with Al Quaeda and have them do the beheading since they're the experts.
Ritmo you can lead the revolt and tear down the inequities and unfairness that permeates a society where 50% of the wage earners pay no income tax.
To the barricades!
Do you expect the young to shun food stamps?
Yes, I do. I expect them to work and repay their loans as tens of millions before them did.
What is so awful about expecting young people to become responsible, productive and self-reliant adults?
As you well know, life is about choices, and when you make a poor decision you have to suck it up and fix it, not whine that it's someone elses responsibility.
Ann seems more than a little sensitive about her vote of Obama. “My vote was totally rational while others were fooled by the hype” is sooo much like “some of my best friends are (fill in the blank).” Of course, Ann’s decision is justified, even today, by being able to tell you exactly what policies and personnel McCain would have brought to his administration. It’s time for Professor Althouse to sit down at her laptop and write that alternative history she sees unwinding like a movie in her mind; excellent fiction. Her arguments are BS on stilts.
As you well know, life is about choices, and when you make a poor decision you have to suck it up and fix it, not whine that it's someone elses responsibility.
Well yes, for those of us who live in a reality based world, the concept that decisions have consequences is pretty much a given.
Then again leftists think its not FAIR!!! that someone who does the minimum effort to get an education ends up with a minimum wage job whereas some innovator who say, creates a product that creates jobs and becomes a millionaire needs to pay his or her FAIR SHARE of taxes because the 60% of income tax they fund isn't enough and they steal our money by creating products that we want and have to pay for.
I'm going to become rich my making a t-shirt that says"
I paid $80K for this Womyn Studies degree and all I got was a job as a barrista.
IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!
Circa 2008: "Hallelujah brother, we're saved!"
Circa 2011: "We're screwed and it wasn't even enjoyable!"
Circa 2012: "The recovery is on the way, we're saved!"
Yep, that might be the path we're on!
Lets make em pay the whole tab and if they don't lets institute the Barr Act and import some guillotines and have them beheaded! Or just contract with Al Quaeda and have them do the beheading since they're the experts.
Never knew you thought this way, Joe Huffington Hoosier. Bizarre to hear you rambling on like this, but not unexpected.
In any event, keep waging the good fight on behalf of all the other unhealthy, intellectually lazy, fat fuck Indianans! You keep those obtrusive city governments out of your sacred frying oil selections!
Pretty pathetic that that and bootlicking unused capital is your measure of freedom but I suppose that's what I can expect from someone as lazy and anti-social as you, I guess.
An inability to distinguish between oppression and criticism is somewhat of a specialty of yours, H. I fully expect you to draw even broader and more ridiculously conflated examples of what atrocities get in the way of impressing your freedom to be fat upon others in future posts.
Listening to you is like listening to the right-wing of political correctness. Release the trans-fats, release the trans-fats! They want to be free! Womyn's studies majors and deep fryers unite!!!
Discriminating against trans-fats is just plain wrong! Aside from cancer and heart disease, what have they EVER done to us!!!
Obama, are you listening? Impinging on our God-given right to cancer and heart disease (in restaurants open to the public) is the reason George III denied our independence as a country. He saw how powerful and dangerous that would make us.
Hoosier will lead the Fat n' Cancer Revolution.
Pretty pathetic that that and bootlicking unused capital is your measure of freedom but I suppose that's what I can expect from someone as lazy and anti-social as you, I guess.
Hold on, I need to get a few more hits off the bong and then I think this paragraph will actually make some sense.
Yes Ritmo we need left-wing watchdogs like yourself to make sure everyone eats the proper nutritional foodstuffs lest everyone becomes too obese. Because as you know, people are too stupid to make intelligent rational choices on their own unless the STATE regulates and ensures those choices are the CORRECT ones.
For leftwing totalitarians like you, freedom must be dispensed by the State because the massess simply can't be trusted to make the right choices and its not fair that people should suffer consequences for piss poor life decisions.
Reading your tripe reminds me of the black socks and sandles sociology professor I had who lamented how horrible it was that the Berlin Wall had fallen and those poor East Germans would soon learn how horrible capitalism and the West really is.
Discriminating against trans-fats is just plain wrong! Aside from cancer and heart disease, what have they EVER done to us!!!
Ban alcohol! It destroys livers and irresponsible drinkers are a societal hazard!
Sugar is bad! It makes people fat and kids hyper and I'm tired of seeing Wilford Brimley hawking diabedes commercials! BAN SUGAR!!
Video games are too violent and kids act out on them. BAN THEM ALL!
GRAVY MAKES PEOPLE FAT! BAN GRAVY!
People are too stupid to make the right decisions! Ban....oh wait...
Freedom is a terrible thing isn't it Ritmo.
No, it won't work. It's too early for a genuine replay or real nostalgia. That doesn't mean Barack won't win. That is entirely dependent on the Republican candidate.
I find with the media overload we now have, being constantly able to re-access the emotional content of media-driven memories whenever we want that the burnout period comes much more quickly. Those centers of the brain are just worn down to the rubber.
After a number of years on the ipod/youtube/cable, the same can be said for a lot of my formerly favorite music/shows/films as well. I never thought I'd see the day, but Total Access has made it happen.
It's kind of cool in a way. I'm completely overloaded which means that more and more, I turn things completely off and have to come up with my own stuff again instead of recycling what's been done.
Ann Althouse --
"...you need to go through the exercise of imagining what would have happened under McCain."
That old canard.
Many people imagine the big, bad boogey man outside their window too. Doesn't mean he's there.
Odd thing about reality though.
I was right about him and you were wrong. Nothing you can do to change that.
Althouse --
"The cynicism may seem much more justified now, but it also hurts, and people remember when words like this made them feel as good as they've ever felt about politics in their whole lives. "
I'll say it again, you just don't understand people.
I don't give a fuck what kind of atrocious shit you eat out in your own home, in the middle of nowhere.
Hospitals that take care of people in the middle of somewhere actually provide emergency care to all who enter and therefore vest their cities with an interest in making sure disease-causing toxins aren't the preferred cooking ingredient in their restaurants.
Only someone who's either suicidal or who wants to pay extra medical costs views that as totalitarianism. Free people have better things to fight for, and usually aren't pro-illness. People who value their health are like that.
Has Indianus taken suicide statutes off the books? Are the inbred voters in the state asking to pay increased medical premiums and taxes based on higher utilization of freely available emergency care for treating heart attacks?
If you said "No", then that's because even someone with your own gargantuan level of hidebound stupidity and hypocrisy can only go so far in denying reality.
Go use your freedom to restrict ideas and to kill yourself, King Sobieski (or whatever). No one will miss a perennially vituperative malcontent like you. The "inconsequential" details that comprise the entirety of your life (according to your own Blogger profile) are just as inconsequential to everyone else, and they don't need to take hints on what it means to be free from someone as destructive of both his own life and opportunities and those of others as you are.
Because as you know, people are too stupid to make intelligent rational choices on their own unless the STATE regulates and ensures those choices are the CORRECT ones.
Lol. Apparently in your state they are! (Too stupid to attain quality cardiac health outcomes, that is).
The funny thing is that you think your stupid pride is enough to win anyone over to your crusade on behalf of poor cardiac health, disease, and death.
That would be funny if it wasn't so painfully retarded and morbid.
Who knew that King Sobieski was a proponent of the freedom to die? Does that mean the next Dr. Jack Kevorkian's waiting in the wings at a clinic in downtown Indianoplace?
I guess it's still a great shock to you that there's more to the Western hemisphere than Indiana and Michigan.
I've been to forty or more states, Fuckface, and it may surprise you to know that there are more than five countries in Latin America. I've been to some of those, too.
So, any other ignorant assumptions you'd like to make in your pathetic effort to put me down?
You are a rather ridiculous idiot, and not worth talking to. Besides, the idea that a culture can't be any more authoritarian than whoever leads it politically or however its state is designed is the dumbest assertion anyone's made on this thread. And given your pathetic contributions, that's saying a lot.
Stick to bloviating on whether you're philosophically closer to Ayn Rand and her beloved Randroids or further away. That's the kind of indecision that doesn't require you to fuck-up any real world knowledge.
Reading your tripe reminds me of the black socks and sandles sociology professor I had who lamented how horrible it was that the Berlin Wall had fallen and those poor East Germans would soon learn how horrible capitalism and the West really is.
I guess you had to get your stupidity from somewhere, right?
Hey Ritmo, do the world a favor and fuck off an die and save the rest oxygen for those of us who actually contribute to society.
Seriously, piss the fuck off and scroll past any comments I might make on this blog which may be limited since your stench makes it hard to stick around.
Lol. You're the one who's pro-death and fighting for your right to poison and kill yourself! Not me. Hahahaha!!
I couldn't care less if my contributions to society/family, the economy and the blogosphere aren't appreciated by a backward-looking buffoon too stupid and proud to fight for anything but the right to kill himself and a few million others, along with.
Don't lie about Cook (or anything else) and I can guarantee your scrawlings are too meager for me to notice. But I absolutely reserve the right to defend the truth. So watch what you write, because when you fuck up, I'll be waiting, ready to pounce.
"I was wrong."
Write that out on a chalkboard 400 times or so. It's as close to a true statement as you'll ever come.
Other than that, it doesn't look like Death from Indiana needs you to help extend his spectacle. He's capable of creating more than enough bluster on his own - as is everyone else here, without a hapless sidekick like you hopping up over the Western horizon, slapping him on the rump and shouting "Good Job, Tex! Let's git this har varmint!"
I used to think you feigned ignorance of your opponents' points.
Knowledge does not come from ignorance. I do not and should not expect a proudly ignorant person to teach me much of anything.
Anyone with an honestly argued point to make was given that respect in return. But that is not a form of exchange that you would seem to understand.
You have not stated a single, verifiable, honestly stated fact anywhere on this entire thread that couldn't be recited by a chimp. Your attempts at "arguments" are so inane that they do not merit consideration.
But your dumbed-down, fact-free partisan hackery is a game that is so tired and familiar here that it just fades into the scenery. It's too bad that your Ayn Rand-sized ego can't handle being dismissed as having nothing new to add, but you don't.
Deal with it.
I could say worse about how much space you waste elsewhere on the only thing that seems to interest you: Randroidianism, but that would be gratuitously mean. Suffice it to say, if you got a hobby or even another, avocational interest, the quality of your ramblings on the nature of man might significantly improve. Your own quality of life might even improve, also.
I offer that advice as a pittance. Hopefully your extremely qualified criticisms of Ayn Rand - as tepid as they are - would allow you to understand my demonstration of that tiny bit of altruism.
To refuse someone like you that necessary bit of kindness would just make the world a much uglier and colder place. It's in both our interests that you take it.
Godspeed, Dear Disillusioned Randroid. Enjoy your day of rest. Use it well.
Reviews of Sorepaw's work.
I offer that not to be mean, but just to show that "sorepaw" is not in a position to be judging the quality of what other people think and write.
If he prefers to keep this game up, however, I would have no problem reprinting, in full, the exasperated comments regarding what others seem to find as a rather shamefully awful piece of work.
Your choice, sorepaw.
That’s quite a good illustration of the heckler’s veto.
Hoosier Daddy said...
Go crawl back in your hole Ritmo. It's pretty rich bring called a liar by you.
10/8/11 2:04 PM
Hoosier you gotta understand that the first honest Brazilian has yet to be born.
Rorschach protests for a Rorschach president.
I too "perceived the nonsense of the emotionalism around Obama the first time." I didn't vote for him.
"See? You have the problem of being cynical and isolated. You're too comfortable. You need to do a whole lot better. Barack Obama will require you to work. I know: ridiculous. Now. Lines like that stoke the very cynicism he demanded that we shed!"
Funny THAT. Because Obama has thrown his support behind the OWS protests and their 'cause (whatever the heck it is), and they fit the exact description Ann outlined.
Geez Bob, don't you have a communist dictator to install and NOT remove from office or something? Lol!
How can we be nostalgic for Obama if he won't go away?
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage.... "
... in helping bring forward bright future
blah-blah ... slogan time ... again ....
I shadder at the thought that if I had not left bright future/new horizon/new dawn/somesuch rhetoric behind in Soviet Union (remeber this workers paradise?) 35 years ago, I could buy it too.
"Remember how you felt in '08?"
Yep, that Obama does not get Democratic party nomination.
"Not least because I'm a psychology professor...."
!!!!!
Physician, heal thyself!
"I made a sober, rational choice. "
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
"Cute, Cook, but I'm not a clinician."
To quote Scott Brown: "Thank God!"
You'd be a better judge as to whether otherwise reasonable people will fall for this crapola - again. Keep us posted on how exuberant you're feeling.
I asm not sure that nostaligia for a political campaign in 2008 is going to have much effect on the economic realities of 2011--as always YMMV--guess we will find out in 13 months
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