Tag: Shrill

On the budget, by contrast, it’s hard to know what the president’s bottom line is, what deals he would regard as reasonable or when he will even join the fray.

The White House is so determined to keep the president antiseptically distant from the untidy wrangling on the budget that it will not even allow its allies in Congress to cite the administration’s own analyses of how harmful some of the Republican cuts would be. They can use the facts but not let on that the administration put them together. What’s up with this?

E.J. Dionne, remaining blissfully unaware of The Third Thing.
Seriously, I’d enjoy living in the dimension inhabited by Our Beltway Punditocracy. Must be really nice in there.
Newsflash, E.J., if Obama came out to the Rose Garden this PM in favor of cutting the non-military discretionary budget to $0, the GOP would immediately balk and say it’s not enough. Just how is he supposed to get involved in a “debate” on those terms? Furthermore, such a step would still not solve the budgetary issues the GOP claims to be so very concerned about. For that, we’d need the thing of which nobody speaks: revenue.
That the GOP systematically and categorically ignores revenue proves that they are not serious about deficits. Never have been. Never will be. You’d think a serious person would start to pick up on this at some point.
But, far be it from me to talk. I’m shrill and out here on drugs with the rest of the pajama wearing naysayers who know nothing of your dimension and its needs.
Source: Washington Post

There Is No Third Thing

Ezra Klein, on the tepid reaction to the President’s energy policy:

This brings up one of the toughest questions in punditry: What is the right thing for the president to do on an issue that’s 1) morally urgent and 2) absolutely dead on arrival in Congress?

He forgets one thing:

3) and which his political opposition will be allowed to argue both sides of?

Libya is only the latest example, but there are many, many others. As soon as the President is for it, the GOP is categorically and irrevocably against it regardless of where they stood in the millisecond before Obama made a decision. This is how Obama went from “dangerously disengaged” or “timid” on Libya and missing his big chance to remake the region to dangerously over-aggressive and missing his big chance for peace in our time in the course of approximately 36 hours.

This is precisely why Obama needs to start inveighing against the perils of windpower, the tyranny of train-based transportation, and making demands that every US citizen above the age of 14 be required to carry at least one gun with its safety off at all times.
I’m only half-joking here. Any rational policy decision will have to be couched in, at best, seeming disinterest on the part of Obama. And this is why many issues are currently hung with the “why isn’t Obama saying anything about…” rubric. Once he takes up a position, even if it is the GOP position, you’re going to face instant and intransigent opposition to whatever Obama says. Even if they were the ones promoting it yesterday. On really sticky issues like Libya, you’ll have the Serious Person dream situation: categorical GOP opposition coupled with strong attacks “from the President’s left.” And just how it’s possible to be “to the left” of a radical socialist community organizer is left as an exercise for the student, as these are questions that the MSM simply will not ask. Shrill.
Progressives angry that their pet issue isn’t receiving enough facetime from Obama should frankly count their lucky stars. Once he weighs in, your issue is over. It is only in the face of Presidential disinterest that even incremental policy progress can actually be made in this environment.

Until such time as the GOP gets significant push-back on this form of rampant and entirely political flip-floppery, it will remain the only game in town. Since such push-back would require research and preparation on the part of the MSM, I wouldn’t hold my breath. That this cycle happens to be a game that is measurably and inexorably killing the country is yet another of those facts that do not matter.

Strikers and their families: Go Die in the Streets

one section buried deep within [H.R. 1135] adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer

No need to talk about this kind of stuff at the national level. Shrill. Just let all those troublemakers and their families starve to death already. Christ, it’s their fault we’re in this mess to begin with. GOP to striking workers and their families: Go die in the streets.

Strikers and their families: Go Die in the Streets

…the underlying problem is that anyone with actual expertise and any kind of public profile — in short, anyone who is actually qualified to hold [a position requiring Senate confirmation] — is bound to have said something, somewhere that can be taken out of context to make him or her sound like Pol Pot. [Donald] Berwick has spoken in favor of evaluating medical effectiveness and has had kind words for the British National Health Service, so he wants to kill grandma and Sovietize America.

So what lies down this road? A world in which key positions can only be filled by complete hacks, preferably interns from the Heritage Foundation with no relevant experience but unquestioned loyalty.

In short, we’re on our way to running America the way the Coalition Provisional Authority ran Iraq.

Paul Krugman
I’d only quibble with: on our way.
Source: The New York Times

Zero

That would be the number of Republicans that voted to end taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil. Companies that are enjoying record profits of ~$100 billion per year, often pay no taxes whatsoever, and receive taxpayer provided subsidies to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per decade.

But, by all means, let’s cut $100 over here that just gets wasted on food for starving children. Furthermore, let’s agree not to discuss any of this. Shrill.

Zero

[The GOP members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are issuing their own report, which will lay the entire financial crisis at the feet of] Fannie and Freddie, which somehow managed to cause housing bubbles in Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, and Spain as well as the United States; and the repo market had nothing to do with it.
And bear in mind that this wasn’t one Republican; it was all of them.
I really do wonder how this country can remain governable, when one party insists on creating its own reality. Next thing you know they’re going to reject the theory of evolution. Oh, wait …

Paul Krugman getting all shrill again while noting the invincible ignorance held in seemingly infinite supply by the GOP and their various political enablers.

Death-spiral Escape Hatch

Paul Starr of the American Prospect provides a way to lose the mandate and but also not destroy the private insurance system:

The law could give people a right to opt out of the mandate if they signed a form agreeing that they could not opt in for the following five years. In other words, instead of paying a fine, they would forgo a potential benefit. For five years they would become ineligible for federal subsidies for health insurance and, if they did buy coverage, no insurer would have to cover a pre-existing condition of theirs.

Fine by me. However, I can state categorically that the GOP will be against this, against the mandate (originally their idea anyway), and thus are implicitly for the destruction of the current insurance-based system and its inevitable replacement with single payer. But let’s not talk about that. Shrill.

Death-spiral Escape Hatch

[President Obama] announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.
So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.
[…]
[He] apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. […] There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

Paul Krugman bringing the shrill. Excellent stuff.
Find me a single MSM story that in any way frames this as a GOP minority temper tantrum and willful, dangerous obstructionism in the face of overwhelming public opinion. This is before you even get to utterly foolish in light of the GOP’s supposed deficit focus. I think you’ll find it being framed systematically and pervasively in quite the opposite direction. Liberal Media.

Right now we have a retirement system that has the great virtue of not being intrusive: Social Security doesn’t demand that you prove you need it, doesn’t ask about your personal life, doesn’t make you feel like a beggar. And now we’re going to replace that with a system in which large numbers of Americans have to plead for special dispensation, on the grounds that they’re too feeble to work for a living. Freedom!

Paul Krugman, shrill as always, and threatening George Carlin…

Mr. Obama still has immense power, if he chooses to use it. At home, he has the veto pen, control of the Senate and the bully pulpit. He still has substantial executive authority to act on things like mortgage relief — there are billions of dollars not yet spent, not to mention the enormous leverage the government has via its ownership of Fannie and Freddie. Abroad, he still leads the world’s greatest economic power — and one area where he surely would get bipartisan support would be taking a tougher stand on China and other international bad actors.
But none of this will matter unless the president can find it within himself to use his power, to actually take a stand. And the signs aren’t good.

Paul Krugman, shrill as always.