It's the Economy, Stupid

Tonight I'm not going to wait for the Times trolls to reject or bury my comments. (See update below.*) Here's a two-fer:

Paul Krugman hopes that President Obama, who is scheduled to propose new economic measures next week, will come up with bold initiatives.

The Constant Weader hopes so, too, but is a realist. BTW, this is an unexpurgated version of my comment. The original was more circumspect in describing Rahm Emanuel's remark:

... politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.
-- Paul Krugman

               ... My nomination for your Bartlett's entry.

As for President Obama's doing anything bold next week, it's unlikely. Pundits love comparing Presidents: Obama is like/not enough like FDR; he's like Carter; or the theme du jour, he's like Hoover. I'd say he's more like the husband of his primary opponent. If you recall, President Clinton started out bold: for example, eliminate discrimination against gays in the military, balance the out-of-control budget. This was followed by never mind & school uniforms. I'm afraid with Mr. Obama, we're in school uniform territory.

Here's some evidence:

The President's Deficit Commission, larded with old geezers like Alan Simpson, who likens Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million tits!" (exclamation Simpson's) President Obama knew what he was getting when he chose the members of the commission; I am not alone in thinking the Deficit Commission is an excuse for cutting Social Security benefits.

Meanwhile, McClatchy ran a story today that says Republicans, ConservaDems & other Democrats in tight races are poised to ensure that tax cuts for the rich will be extended. Somebody has to pay for those new yachts the super-rich will be buying with their tax savings -- might as well be old folks who are no longer economically productive.

As for the Administration's interest in jobs, jobs, jobs, car czar Steve Rattner's new book provides a window into how much the Obama Administration cared about labor. Rahm Emanuel's comment about the United Auto Workers: "Fuck the UAW." And Robert Gibbs let us know what the White House thought about progressive proposals: those of us who espouse them should be drug-tested. Michael Scherer writes a long article in Time about how profoundly disappointed the jobless are in Obama -- he has not kept his campaign promises and folks are still out of work. Tim Geithner and other Administration leaders are pretty sanguine about this.

Christina Romer, who is giving up her job as head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, supposedly to help her son with his homework, gave a "valedictory" speech at the National Press Club this week in which she pretty much admitted she had no idea how to improve the economy. (Good luck with your homework, Master Romer.) "To this day," she claimed, "economists don't fully understand why firms cut production as much as they did or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would." She argued that "almost all analysts were surprised." 

As for measures to stem foreclosures & otherwise save the housing market, the Administration is completely clueless. Secretary Donovan says he's "concerned," but that doesn't stop him from boasting about the few foreclosures the Administration has averted.

The editors of the New York Times wrote last week that if President Obama had some good ideas to salvage the economy, this would be the time to announce them. But the truth is that Republicans & ConservaDems would block any bold initiatives, so all President Obama can do, and sadly all he is inclined to do, is propose a few conservative business incentives -- you know, something as innovative & effective as school uniforms. In other words, he will be following Romer's bromide even as she exits:

What we would all love to find -- the inexpensive magic bullet to our economic troubles -- the truth is it almost surely doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, across the op-ed page, David Brooks has completely lost touch with reality. (Okay, Brooks' mental breakdown may have happened some while back, & his recent vacation didn't help matters.) He invents a preposterous scenario, or what he calls an "alternate history," in which the President & the Congress take Brooks' advice. They forget about the stimulus & healthcare reform & pass some kind of Republicanny energy bill instead. Oh, and everything works out for the best & the nation hums happily along.

The Constant Weader comments:

Add this to your alternate history, please, for a touch of verisimilitude:

U.S. unemployment at 16 percent, same as Ireland's. Real wages plummet for Americans who do have jobs.

Small businesses go under at record rates. Start-ups, practically nil.

Healthcare costs skyrocket; emergency rooms crammed; uninsured, unemployed Americans dying in droves.

No Glenn Beck tent revival because the Washington Mall is already filled with a tent city & a stench is rising from the Potomac.

Republican Senators block the energy bill.

I ought to have added:

Teachers, other public workers are laid off in droves.

Local property taxes rise sharply; delinquencies double; sheriffs conduct record number of home auctions.

California is the first state to declare bankruptcy, thirteen other states are expected to follow soon.

Bridge over the (Pick-a) River collapses, dozens feared dead; engineers say bridge was in terrible disrepair. Chunks of concrete from I-4 off-ramp fall on car, occupants killed. Et-cetera.

Finally,

The super-rich build higher fences around their homes & spend more time on their bigger & better yachts -- hey, they can afford it.

* Update: they cut only my comment on Krugman, which was the substantive one.

À bientôt

As so often happens, I went to bed late last night (Sunday, August 29) but got up early to make up for it.

I checked the papers. There wasn't any news. I checked the sites of a couple of my favorite bloggers. They were on vacation. The President is back at work, but in his interview with Brian Williams, he promised he was going to get back to business as usual & he wasn't going to let us gnats bother him. No news there, either.

Still, I felt I had to do something -- something, as T. S. Eliot said, "to make it new."

The "it," for me, is Reality Chex.

And I'm sick of it. It didn't seem like much fun this morning. It seemed like -- work.

I have a book sitting at home that needs revising & pedaling. That's been on hold for a while. My husband has compiled a list of chores for me that only gets longer. My gardens are turning into jungles. And they have snakes!

I've been plugging away at Reality Chex for two years. Maybe that's the limit of my attention span. In any event, I'm turning my attention -- someplace else.

Stay tuned, though. I've got the franchise on RealityChex.com, & I'll be doing something with it, beginning sometime soon. I just don't know what. As always, I'm open to suggestions.

So many thanks to all of you readers, for keeping up with the site, for offering constructive criticism, & for sending me all those nice letters of support. It's been fun. Till now.

                                                                     -- The Constant Weader

Update: I've had some really fine letters & a few good suggestions this morning, & I deeply appreciate them all. No doubt in an effort to shame me into getting back to work, Lisa sent me this terrific video. It's not working yet, but of course I'm keeping it in mind:

Zapped Again

Gail Collins notes that in a recent tweet, Sarah Palin suggested she was familiar with the writings of George Orwell. While Collins is skeptical of Palin's reading list, she does writes that Palin is having an amazing run of good fortune.

The Constant Weader is not.

For the fifth time this week, the New York Times moderators have zapped my comment to an op-ed column. I've finally got pissed-off enough to write to the publisher & complain. My comments always meet Times standards. It has become obvious that a few of us frequent commenters are getting "special attention" from the Gray Lady. Enough is enough. Here's my innocuous comment on Collins' column, & posted below it, a comment the moderators did approve, one that does violate the paper's standards in that it amounts to little more than unsubstantiated name-calling. Unequal treatment? You betcha.

My Comment:

Gail, you have really revealed yourself as a member of the "lamestream media" with this essay. You may soon find yourself in Ex-Half-Gov. Palin's crosshairs. (Here, of course, I am not speaking entirely metaphorically; Palin used her handy Facebook page to post crosshairs over the districts of Congressional Democrats who voted for healthcare reform.)

Her latest foray into media analysis took aim at NBC's Brian Williams who Palin noted had failed in his interview of President Obama to follow up on the President's apparently controversial remark that

a mechanism, a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly.... I can’t spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead.

Palin took umbrage:

I was pretty appalled at that notion that Brian Williams was just letting him get away with that kind of false accusation that there is some kind of suggested right-wing conspiracy again. Especially knowing that the media still, the mainstream, lame-stream media, they’re in his back pocket.

False accusation? Ironically, Palin made this charge while appearing on the Sean Hannity show, one of the very shows on the very Hannity-Palin-Murdoch network that has repeatedly given birthers airtime to make their spiels, unchallenged.

Of course, now that we know Palin has become a champion of tough reporting, maybe we can look forward to her dropping Facebook as her primary message center & start going toe-to-toe with some of you lamestream media elites. Keeping within the Mama Grizzly theme, I'd suggest she sit for interviews with you and Maureen Dowd, and of course have another go-round with Katie Couric. This time when Couric asks Palin what she's been reading, the ex-half-governor will be ready with an answer: "Well, I just dusted off my George Orwell."

Published Comment* by Writer #15:

Palin from Alaska; total moron.
Obama from Hawaii; total incompetent (though "very bright").

* CW Note: as the writer has not given me permission to publish his comment, I have included only an excerpt. However, there's little more to the comment than the excerpt.

Constant Weader: You be the judge.

Operation Turn the Page

Reality Chex Exclusive! My friend Lulu Moretti (possibly a nom de plume) got her hands on a copy of the first draft of President Obama's Oval Office speech. She has been kind enough to share it with us:

Good evening My Fellow Americans. Tonight marks 90 months since this country started bombing the sovereign nation of Iraq and that anniversary deserves some kind of acknowledgment. This is it.

Now I know a lot of you folks are kind of sensitive about this war, having lost sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and such, so let me assure you that if you don't have any relatives amongst the 50,000 sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and such stationed there now, you are home free. Scrape the Support the Troops sticker off the back of your minivan and go to the mall! If you do have some connection to those 50,000, then I want you to know I sincerely share your pain and irritation regarding any errors of judgment that may or may not have occurred prior to January 20, 2009. Let's turn the page.

By now we've all read about how there never were Weapons of Mass Destruction and how it was all made up as an excuse to invade Iraq, and I want you to understand me when I tell you that is perfectly true. You were duped and I was duped. Well, Hillary was duped, but, in truth, I was not duped. I was in the Illinois Senate and was a sentient being and knew the whole story was a crock. Remember my speech? The one that was so good? The one that got me here? Well, I was right then and I'm right now. We can't dwell on the past and get all Old Testament. It's time to forgive and forget and move on. Let's turn the page.

It was in that spirit that I called your former President, George W. Bush. We had a nice little talk. Now I know that some of you folks out there have kind of long memories and are saying things like Vengeance is Mine, and you might feel all Aggrieved, but like I told you, it's time to turn the page and let bygones be bygones. The President reached out to me and confided that he didn't think there were Weapons of Mass Destruction either, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do, and he had to take a stand, make a strong statement, and invade Iraq. I think we can all understand that and know he shares any pain or irritation any or many of us may or may not feel. And it's time to turn the page.

Now I want you to know that I know some Iraqis don't feel like Iraqis. They feel like Kurds or Sunnis or Shia and I can understand that. It's good to feel who you are, but I'm sure that with our 50,000 folks over there it will give everyone a good chance to eventually feel like they're Iraqis so they can join hands and move forward together. They can gather and, with our help, rebuild their country until it is a rock solid democracy like it is now and we can all support them in their endeavors. Tonight we celebrate our new hope for a new beginning and a new resolve that we can all work together and turn the page.

So, my fellow Americans, here we are. And now we have to ask ourselves, where are we? Well, to those who say this is like our exit from Vietnam 35 years ago I would say that is not correct. That is not correct. No one has left from the roof of the American Embassy and we are in complete control ... umm ... the Iraqis are in complete control of their country. No one is rushing out of anywhere -- we are all totally cool and except for those 50,000 folks who are still there, we are out! Coming home! In fact, this afternoon while I was shaving, little Sasha asked, "Daddy, will the troops still in Iraq face any insurgents or terrorists or anyone of that ilk?" I just chuckled and said, "Well, honey, stuff happens. But we are turning the page."

Final Draft of Speech, as delivered:*

* New York Times "Style" contributor Maureen Dowd notes that the most important feature of the President's Oval Office address is the new decor:

The Oval Office, the classiest, most powerful place on earth, is now suffused with browns and beiges and leather and resembles an upscale hotel conference room or a ’70s conversation pit with a boxy coffee table that even some Obama aides find ugly.

More about War

"We Owe the Troops an Exit." Bob Herbert calls out President Obama for looking at the War in Afghanistan as "something to be managed," but Herbert reminds him, "The goal when fighting any war should be peace, not a permanent simmer of nonstop maiming and killing."

The Constant Weader sees another reason for our ceaseless wars: 

There is one thing nobody wants to say about many of the soldiers fighting this war, but I'm a blunt realist, so I'll say it.

Pacifists seldom go to war.

Many of the soldiers hold the same political views as those who favor never-ending war & unlimited defense budgets. It is true that because the military does it primary recruiting in impoverished areas, some of the military comes from a different socio-political group. But, especially since the recession, which has allowed the military to be a little more selective, the bulk of the nation's soldiers come from "Real America," an America that believes in the War on Terror.

We saw some of that phenomenon over the weekend in the Beck-a-thon, which Beck billed as a rally dedicated to "returning honor" to the nation & supporting our soldiers. In the view of many of the attendees, these two causes are one and the same. Military service is "evidence" of honor. Sarah Palin declared that no matter what people said about her, they couldn't take away the fact that she was the mother of a soldier. This, by inference, made her "honorable" & immune to criticism.

A huge segment of our society, represented largely by Republicans, agrees with Palin. These people think the best way to keep the nation safe is via the use of force. Many of our soldiers, like Palin's son, come from this group. So the ugly truth is that, in perhaps a majority of instances, the soldiers are their own worse enemies. Whatever their beliefs after having served, they signed up believing in war.

When a large segment of society believes in fighting optional wars & is willing to sacrifice their sons & daughters to those wars, we will remain a warrior nation.

Meanwhile, on that other war of choice, David Brooks cites data on progress in Iraq's economic & physical infrastructure that moves him to declare "Nation-Building Works."

The Constant Weader comments:

Gosh, I feel so much better knowing that Iraq now is almost as good as it was back when a ruthless dictator was running things. Who cares about those thousands of Americans who died there in the desert sands? Who cares about the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed in our little nation-building effort? And those billions of dollars that bloat our dreaded budget deficit? Money well spent! The grandkids won't mind, after all.

Hey, things are looking up!

P.S. Isn't it interesting that most of the improvements you cite took place while we had a Democratic president? Once again, Republicans left a tragic mess & a Democratic Administration mopped it up.

Phil Ochs, "I Ain't Marching Anymore," a song for every American war:

High-Minded, Low Expectations

Paul Krugman: it's witch-hunting season & neither Republican leaders not President Obama will stand up to ugly conservative witch-hunters.

Constant Weader: my comment to Krugman's column got truncated today (mostly my fault), so I'm publishing the full comment here:

As I predicted, not particularly presciently, because anyone paying attention to the news could have figured it out, the President is nowhere on this. When NBC News' Brian Williams asked President Obama Sunday about the 20% of folks who thought he was a foreign-born Muslim, the President swatted off the question as old news:

The facts are the facts. We went through some of this during the campaign. There is a mechanism, a network of misinformation, that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly. We dealt with this when I was first running for the U.S. Senate. WE dealt with it when we were first running for the presidency. There were those who said I couldn't win as U.S. Senator because I had a funny name & people would be too unfamiliar with it, and yet we ended up winning that Senate seat in Illinois because I trusted in the American people's capacity to get beyond all this nonsense & focus on, 'Is this somebody who cares about me & cares about my family & has a vision for the future?' So I will always put my money on the American people, & I'm not going to be worrying too much about whatever rumors are floating out there. If I started spending all my time chasing after that, then I wouldn't get much done....

I have argued elsewhere that the Administration should sic the Vice President on Rush, Glenn & Co. & their big-bucks backers. The President’s insistence upon ignoring the problem is awfully high-minded, but it loses elections.

The President did say one important thing. He said the American people should ask themselves this: “Is this somebody who cares about me & cares about my family & has a vision for the future?” What he doesn’t realize is that the answer to that question today, for millions & millions of voters is “No.” I not only voted for Barack Obama, I worked on his campaign. I know he was born in the U.S.A. I know he is a Christian (& I don’t care). But I do not think he cares about my family & me, & I think his plan is as visionary as "same ol', same ol'." You can count me among the “no” votes. That is a problem. And that is his fault.

The Summer of 1963

This post is a reproduction, slightly revised, of part of a letter from me to friends. We were discussing a review of the television series "Mad Men," & I'm beginning this post mid-letter:

... The characters' indifference to public events is pretty realistic. The only public event that really catches their attention is the assassination of President Kennedy. Some of the characters are overcome by JFK's murder, but the assassination appears in the plotline mostly because it puts a damper on the expensive wedding of the daughter of one of the major characters. Today, when I ran videos of Dr. King's speech & the March on Washington on my Website, so that Glenn Beck didn't hijack my site, I realized that I was learning some things about the march that I never knew, or at best have forgotten. Here was I, witness to history, and -- like the "Mad Men" characters -- a bad one at that.

In the summer of '63, I had just finished my freshman year at Wisconsin. I got a summer job working as a secretary for real estate developers in Orlando. They built tract homes. The company had about ten regular employees, plus all the men who did the actual work of building the houses. The owners were two New Yorkers, transplants like so many Floridians. One of them was sick that summer, so he didn't come around much. I didn't drive or have access to a car, so my mother drove me to & from work every day. Occasionally she spoke for a few minutes with my boss, & she liked him.

A black man -- a high school principal with a perfect family -- put an offer on one of the homes. My boss turned him down, just as any developer of the day would have. My boss and his partner were Jewish, so they knew what it was to be members of an ethnic minority whom mainstream Americans treated badly. But they were businessmen, and to allow a black family to move into their subdivision would have doomed the project.

The high school principal brought suit to be allowed to buy into the subdivision. The court set a hearing -- not a trial -- I don't know exactly what kind of legal proceeding it was. I asked my boss if I could go to the hearing. He said I could.

The judge held the hearing perhaps a week or two before the March on Washington. The hearing room was a small conference room -- not exactly "chambers"; it was a sterile, crowded room with white walls & a big conference table. The only people at the hearing were the judge & his reporter, the principal & his wife & two young sons, my boss, attorneys for both sides, a reporter from the Orlando Sentinel -- and me.

The principal was very well-spoken, pleasant & earnest. He was probably the smartest person in the room. He told the judge he wasn't trying to make a "test case"; he just wanted to move his family into a nice neighborhood. I'm sure this was true. Of course I was on the black family's side, & oddly enough, my boss seemed to be, too. But he put his business interests before any principles he might have had. During the breaks in the hearing, everybody was very nice, & the parties on both sides chatted with each other. The reporter interviewed everybody, and the story was in the newspaper the next day, with a picture of the family.

The judge didn't decide the case till I went back to school, so I don't know how he ruled. It was 1963, & it was the South, so I suppose my boss won.

The subdivision the black family wanted to buy into was on the Coast, near Melbourne, I think. My boss would fly himself out there about twice a week in a small plane he kept at the Orlando municipal airport, which was near downtown. He was a handsome man -- married, as I remember, and about 35 years old. He had a crewcut, & his name was Norman.*

About a week after the hearing, in the late morning, I was sitting at my desk when Norm breezed by & said he was going to fly out to the Coast. He said, "Come on, you're going with me." Okay, says I, & I picked up my steno pad & pen. The airport was about three miles from the office, & the route from office to airport was pretty much a beeline on the major downtown street.

On the drive to the airport I asked Norm what we would be doing on the Coast & why he needed me. He said, "Oh, I thought we'd go for a swim." It wasn't till then I understood what was up. I said, "Gee, Norm, I didn't bring my suit." He said, "Oh, you won't need one." By this time, we were at the airport. We had a little discussion, which was amicable, but I told him I wasn't getting in that plane. He said okay, but he had to take care of some business on the Coast so he wasn't changing his flight plans.

He handed me the keys to his car & told me to drive it back to the office.

I had taken drivers' ed in school a few years before so I knew how to steer & I knew where the gas & brake pedals were. But I had never driven on an actual street in traffic, & I was smart enough to know there was more to it than steering. I didn't know how to look for stop lights or watch out for others cars, or do any of the normal stuff of real driving. Fortunately, Norm's car was a Cadillac, as befit a real estate mogul, so it had an automatic transmission. I figured if I told Norm I didn't know how to drive, he'd make me go to the Coast with him. So when he gave me the keys, I took 'em & said, fine. I slid into the driver's seat & off I went. I was scared stiff, but I would rather have been in the situation I was in than in the one Norm proposed.

Shortly after I inched my way out onto that busy street, I got behind a woman with a car full of kids, & she was a slow, careful driver. I just followed her all the way to the turnoff to my office.

The next day Norm said something about my getting the car back okay, & I said, yes, it was a good thing because I didn't know how to drive. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. Because getting stuck in that nightmare scenario was better than what would have happened to me if I'd gone with you, I said. He laughed & didn't fire me. He was, I suppose, my Don Draper.

I never told my parents. They would have been shocked. And I was ashamed at having been, however briefly, an objet de mogul.

So that's what I was doing while A. Philip Randolph, MLK, et al., were assembling the March on Washington. And that's why, I guess, I learned more about the march today than I knew about it then. Like the characters in "Mad Men," I was busy with my own life. The March on Washington was something that happened in black & white, far away, on the 6 o'clock news.

I suppose I have hideous bloviating hypocrite Glenn Beck to thank for reminding me of my own history.

* I found Norm's obituary in the Orlando Sentinel. He died in 1997.