A round up.
Sadly, some of them inhabit this comments section.
[Update a while later]
The abysmal, pathetic ObamaCare roll out:
After the search for bin Laden, the Obama administration’s biggest manhunt has turned out to be for someone—anyone—who managed to actually sign up for and enroll in an insurance plan offered by the federal exchange. As The Miami Herald declared in a recent headline, “Obamacare enrollees become urban legend.” So far, you’ve got a better chance of turning up a gerbil escapee scurrying down Richard Gere’s leg than finding a couple dozen satisfied customers of healthcare.gov. During a legendarily awful Daily Show appearance, Sebelius lowered expectations yet further by saying that HHS will release enrollment figures on a monthly basis. Right after all the parades for record-setting grain harvests and successful launches of canine cosmonauts.
The first high-profile case of an Obamacare enrollee was paraded around the mainstream media like a captured U2 pilot in the old Soviet Union. But he turned out to be…well, not so much. On October 4, my colleague Peter Suderman broke the story that Obamacare poster boy Chad Henderson had not actually purchased insurance for either himself or his father. Henderson—a paid activist for Organizing for America, an outgrowth of the president’s re-election committee—eventually admitted to The Washington Post, “I have not purchased a specific plan.”
The broken web site didn’t help.
Answer me this, anyone.
If the Republicans were such big losers in this latest dustup, why are Democrats acting like sore winners right now?
For example, Member of Congress and Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was just on CNN giving the American people a good scolding for the putative 24 billion dollar hurt this all put on the national economy, and in the former Speaker’s words, “twenty four billion dollars — and all on account of a temper tantrum.”
Now 24 billion dollars is a lot of spare change, but given that the Federal workers are going to be made whole on their furloughs, I presume this is a economic projection regarding the diminution of GNP rather than an actual levy or expenditure? So we are talking an order of magnitude of 1 part in 1000 with respect to GNP? Does this means that when President Obama jaw-bones the stock market downward, we get to bring this up? No? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
But leaving snark aside, why are the President and the former Speaker on a tear of blame-the-Republicans when “they won” (yeah, yeah, Speaker Boehner corrected me that this is not a game)? Do they know something we don’t, that the economy is headed for a recession? That Obamacare is in “critical condition” right now but this is not widely known but the President will have to fess up? Or is this just Ms. Pelosi being Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama being Mr. Obama — they talk that way because that is what they do, and it doesn’t mean anything?
Obama and Pelosi didn’t win anything in terms of policy — the deal they signed is one they would have gladly signed months ago. But it’s a good idea for voters to know what the shutdown cost, so they can hold the House GOP accountable for putting us through it.
Jim, just because you side with the Democrat position doesn’t mean they don’t share blame for the shutdown.
How can they share blame? The Democrats would have signed this deal months ago. The only difference between then and now — the only reason we had a shutdown — is that until yesterday, Boehner wouldn’t let the House vote on anything close to this deal. The shutdown is 100% on him, and on the Congressmen (egged on by Ted Cruz and Mike Lee) who forced him to choose between averting a shutdown and keeping his job.
Says the clown who votes for My Way Or The Highway Obama. Let’s see, Harry Reid refusing to vote on, what, 14 straight bills from the House? Harry Reid refusing to vote on a budget, period? Sorry, but you’ve got it backwards and you’re so entrenched in your leftist world you’ll never know it.
Let me fix that for you:
he only difference between then and now — the only reason we had a shutdown — is that until yesterday, Harry Reid wouldn’t let the Senate vote on anything the House passed. The shutdown is 100% on Reid and Obama.
That’s better.
Harry Reid refusing to vote on, what, 14 straight bills from the House?
None of which would have reopened the government. He did hold votes on the bills that would have reopened the government, and sent amended versions back to the House, where Boehner ignored them.
Harry Reid refusing to vote on a budget, period?
Huh? The Senate passed a budget in March, and spent 6 months begging the House for a budget conference.
you’re so entrenched in your leftist world you’ll never know it
I don’t know what world you are in, but you are terribly misinformed about this one.
until yesterday, Harry Reid wouldn’t let the Senate vote on anything the House passed
That simply isn’t true. The Senate voted multiple times on House bills to reopen the government, passed amended versions of them, and sent them back to the House. The final deal was very close to the bills that the Senate passed back in September. Look up the legislative history of House Joint Res. 59.
Both bodies passed bills that would re-open the entire government. The Senate voted on the House bills; the House did not vote on the Senate bills, until last night.
None of which would have reopened the government.
Actually, that’s completely false. All the bills opened up some portion of the government. A few would have opened the whole thing including Obamacare minus the horrid tax on medical device research and Congress actually having to live under the same laws imposed by them.
A few would have opened the whole thing including Obamacare minus the horrid tax on medical device research and Congress actually having to live under the same laws imposed by them.
The Senate voted on those, amended them, and sent them back to the House. That’s how representative democracy is supposed to work. On the House side the people’s representatives did not get to vote on any bill like the one that re-opened the entire government, until after two weeks of a pointless shutdown.
LOL Jim, your lies are becoming self-refuting.
“But it’s a good idea for voters to know what the shutdown cost, so they can hold the House GOP accountable for putting us through it.”
So, can we hold Mr. Obama accountable everytime he says something lame and the stock market dips a couple hundred points?
An apples and oranges comparison. Stock prices bounce around every day, but are ultimately based on actual profits, not presidential statements. The $24B estimate from S&P isn’t about stock prices, it’s about a reduction in GDP growth, real products and services that won’t exist because of the shutdown.
You’re not seriously including government expenditures as part of GDP, are you?
[exasperated expletive]
Every goddamn day the US federal government spends 2.7 billion dollars more than it brings in. That 24 billion over 14 days is just about what it needs to balance the books – if all those “non-essential” workers are truly non-essential then fire them all and the budget is damn near balanced.
“but are ultimately based on actual profits, not presidential statements.”
I disagree and Obama does too, which is why he has been out there saying the world economy will collapse unless he gets his way. The fear mongering does have an impact on the stock market. There is a strong emotional component to the stock market.
Also, it’s a bit odd to take Obama to task over the stock market. Has it done as well under any other recent president?
You run a business making software, yes?
Let me run a hypothetical by you. Suppose Obama objected to something related to your business in a speech. Let’s say it was something to do with Spam or phishing other such nefariousness.
Now, I don’t know exactly what your business does, but the assumption is that yours is a truly productive endeavor, unrelated to such things as Spam except for the commonality of both using the internet. The problem lies in the speech and the uncertainty that it brings to the future of your business.
The most likely response of the bureaucracy to a Presidential speech is something which increases the bureaucracy’s power and adds a layer of complexity and expense to running a business – in this case a software business. Your business, and the business of anyone who does any programming at all. You’ll know it’s coming, you know it will be Byzantine and cost you money and time, but you won’t know how much of either and you won’t have enough information to plan your business three months in advance, never mind a year.
It happens every time he opens his mouth, calling for new regulations and new taxes and demonizing some particular group. That group gets hit with new red tape until it can’t plan and eventually can’t function.
Ye gods man, have you no life experience at all? I feel like I’m arguing with a twelve year old.
Why is the stock market doing well? Several reasons: One, Obama is looking out for his donors on Wall Street. Two, Obama is taking a top down “trickle down” approach. Too bad nothing is trickling down to the middle class. Three, QE is creating a bubble. Stop printing money and giving it to Obama’s banking cronies like JP Morgan and see how the stock market deflates. Four, government bonds produce little if any profits. This forces investors into the stock market and away from less risky investments if they want their money to grow.
Since 80 percent of the stock market’s money comes from the top ten percent of the income bracket, then I would say, “Yes, it has done better under any president, probably even Jimmy Carter.”
Ye gods man, have you no life experience at all? I feel like I’m arguing with a twelve year old.
And I feel like I’m arguing with someone who hasn’t noticed how corporate profits have skyrocketed under Obama. Businesses naturally hate regulation and taxes, and they’ll make plenty of noise to complain about it, and tell anyone willing to listen that Obama is crippling them. The facts tell another story altogether. Look at the medical device tax. Obamacare is giving this industry — an industry with sky-high profit margins that is consuming a growing share of the economy — tens of millions of newly insured customers. But to hear its lobbyists tell the story, they’ll be crippled by a 2% tax.
Try to look behind self-serving rhetoric at the bigger picture.
About the only costs I see are expenditures for buying and deploying barricades and related signs used to keep citizens out of national parks and monuments — and the GOP didn’t make the decision to buy or deploy them.
About the only costs I see
There’s a lot you aren’t seeing. S&P expects a 0.6% reduction in GDP due to the shutdown.
You should take anything a ratings agency says with a grain of salt considering they way they get hammered by the Obama administration with lawsuits if they don’t toe the party line.
“We believe that to date, the shutdown has shaved at least 0.6% off of annualized fourth-quarter 2013 GDP growth, or taken $24 billion out of the economy.”
They ignore the opportunity cost of letting the citizens keep that $24b and spend it as they see fit. There is a good argument for there being a greater positive impact on the economy by people buying goods and services than filtering that money through the federal government where it is greatly diminished before paying salaries to government workers.
They also ignore that while the government was shutdown, those workers still get paid, just not during the shutdown. It was essentially a paid vacation. There were no spending cuts or cancelled contracts, everything will proceed as normal. Using your logic, the government shutdown is a net gain for GDP because of the extra expenditures “closing” things down.
The $24b was not removed from the economy, it was merely delayed a few days.
They ignore the opportunity cost of letting the citizens keep that $24b and spend it as they see fit.
The $24B cost is due to less growth across the economy, it isn’t about $24B in government spending.
There were no spending cuts or cancelled contracts, everything will proceed as normal.
That isn’t what S&P, Moody’s, Macroeconomic Advisors, and all the other economic forecasters are saying. They are saying that the shutdown damaged consumer confidence, and interfered with business, resulting in less growth across the economy.
I just can’t believe that you are getting worked up over the pyschological factors of a short delay in government actions but then think Obamacare has no impact on the economy. The same goes for Obama’s burdensome punitary regulations.
Your link cites the unplanned contraction of government spending. The planned government spending will all take place. It is taking place now.
Your link cites the unplanned contraction of government spending.
Only in relation to a default, which fortunately didn’t happen. The $24B estimate is for the shutdown, which did happen.
Here’s the sentence you read incorrectly:
Should a default occur, the resulting sudden, unplanned contraction of current spending could see government spending cut by about 4% of annualized GDP.
Here are the sentences you ignored:
We believe that to date, the shutdown has shaved at least 0.6% off of annualized fourth-quarter 2013 GDP growth, or taken $24 billion out of the economy.
The bottom line is the government shutdown has hurt the U.S. economy. In September, we expected 3% annualized growth in the fourth quarter because we thought politicians would have learned from 2011 and taken steps to avoid things like a government shutdown and the possibility of a sovereign default. Since our forecast didn’t hold, we now have to lower our fourth-quarter growth estimate to closer to 2%.
“We believe that to date”
They were talking about the effects during the shutdown. Post shutdown, all of the spending that was going to happen the prior week still took place. There isn’t a quarterly contraction if everyone’s behavior in terms of what the government spends money on does not change.
They were also talking about predictions not actual data.
Paying some of those federal employees to stay home might be a good use of money. Consider the reported 90+% of the EPA employees who stayed home because they were deemed non-essential. Just like Obama does less damage to the country when he’s playing golf than when he’s playing president (he should play more golf!), those EPA employees did less damage staying home than being at work.
“If the Republicans were such big losers in this latest dustup, why are Democrats acting like sore winners right now?”
Because they couldn’t get rid of the sequester, apparently. (That was Rush’s theory at lunch time, from the few minutes I listened to.)
And there’s Baghdad Jim with this month’s thumb-sucker. Jimbo, the House Republicans passed a couple dozen bills to keep various things going. Your hero, the zero Reid, rejected them all.
He rejected them because, at the pace they were going, parts of the government would have been shut down into next year. All the while there were more than enough votes to reopen everything, as we saw last night — but Boehner wouldn’t allow a vote to be taken until he’d convinced the tea party block that they weren’t going to get to defund or delay Obamacare — something that was completely obvious from the very beginning. Unfortunately the country had to pay for that $24B lesson in the obvious.
“He rejected them because, at the pace they were going, parts of the government would have been shut down into next year. ”
Uh no. Obama rejected them because he wanted to cause the maximum pain on the populace. At least this was your claim last week. Who knows what it will be next week.
“Unfortunately the country had to pay for that $24B lesson in the obvious.”
Unfortunately, the $24b will still be spent. And whatever Obama spent to use the parks service as a political weapon like the IRS and EPA is on him, not Republicans.
“He rejected them because, at the pace they were going, parts of the government would have been shut down into next year.”
Not only is that patently ridiculous, it’s also forecasting the future which you cannot do.
How do you know what the pace might have been had the Senate voted on and passed every House resolution immediately?
You don’t.
What a useful idiot you are…………
The House bills were opening the government 1%, 2% at a time. If the goal is to open the entire government, and not just grandstand, why not vote on a single bill that opens the whole thing? They had a bill sitting in front of them that had passed the Senate, all they had to do was take one vote.
Unfortunately, the $24b will still be spent
The $24B is loss of GDP due to lower growth across the economy, it isn’t just about federal spending.
You didn’t read your link very well and/or don’t understand economics.
You didn’t read your link very well
Take another look; you seem to have misunderstood the linked S&P statement.
No, I understood it just fine.
“Now 24 billion dollars is a lot of spare change, but given that the Federal workers are going to be made whole on their furloughs, I presume this is a economic projection regarding the diminution of GNP rather than an actual levy or expenditure? So we are talking an order of magnitude of 1 part in 1000 with respect to GNP?”
I hate to break it to you, but, contrary to Right Wing conservative line, the Government does all sorts of things that are important to the economy. Due to the shutdown a bunch of road, bridge sewer projects stopped, or didn’t get started, or are delayed awaiting processing, so a lot of blue collar union workers didn’t work and won’t be working for a while as the snags are worked out. Now I know most “Conservatives” make it a point of pride to kick union workers and denounce unions, and that’s their right, but, blue collar workers are part of the economy.
Also, while the furlough was on, a lot of import/export permits were stopped processing. So a lot of importers couldn’t get custom clearance, tax categories, EAR/ITAR permits. I know a lot of conservatives don’t believe that there should be any customs controls, excise taxes or export controls. When you all get your way, I’ll be sure to start selling nuclear technology to iran as it will be legal. As it will be legal i’m sure the airport at Tehran will be full of Randian types also selling missile tech and guidance packages because it will be legal.
Closing the national parks cancelled a lot of off season trips, a lot of european retirees, skipped coming
because the major museums and memorials were closed.
The state of Utah lost a lot of money with the closing of Arches national park.
I’m sure you are convinced the multiplier for government spending is zero, so you don’t care
about this sort of shutdown.
All the projects you mentioned are back on. It was a short delay. Know what? The federal government delays things all the time during normal operations. Those people waiting for permits and such were probably waiting before the shutdown happened too.
The parks being used as political weapon is on Obama, he chose to shut them down. Go be angry at him for that. Both sides are at fault. Are you capable of holding Obama accountable for his own actions?
That you would choose of your own free will to sell nuclear technology to Iran says more about you than the fictional world you live in. Think about how you constructed that argument for a while. You are copy/paste your responses so its scary to think you dwelled on that for a while.
But it’s a good idea for voters to know what the shutdown cost
Shut down the government for 2 weeks -> cost: 24 billion.
By that logic increasing government spending by some amount would, all by itself, eliminate the deficit. Way to go Jim, you’ve just solved all our problems.
The $24B figure is an estimate by S&P:
“The estimate represents a staggering cost to the economy of a completely self-inflicted political catastrophe.”
If you think $24b is a catastrophe, then what about $7t in new debt? That is $7t that will be sucked out of the economy.
That is $7t that will be sucked out of the economy
No, it isn’t. If I borrow $20,000 to buy a new car (as I did last week) is that $20k sucked out of the economy?
You planning on paying back that car loan? Because you don’t make enough money to pay it back.
Your analogy is bad. Think of it as buying a car on a payment plan then stealing money from your neighbor to make the payments.
I am confident that over the next three years I will make enough money to pay Honda back for my car loan. And I am confident that over the next x years the U.S. economy will generate enough tax revenue to service the national debt. In neither case does borrowing money take it out of the economy. It moves money from people who have money to invest (in car loans or t-bills) to people with plans to spend money, and the ability to pay it back over time.
” And I am confident that over the next x years the U.S. economy will generate enough tax revenue to service the national debt.”
Tax revenue takes money out of the pockets of the tax payers. Money they would otherwise spend on school, healthcare, vacations, home renovations, ect. When you look at the money multiplier of government spending you also have to balance that out with the opportunity cost of the multiplier effect when people get to keep and spend their own money.
With the amount of debt run up by Obama, that amounts to generational theft. Well, of we go by Obama’s rhetoric circa 2008.
” It moves money from people who have money to invest ”
It takes money from a lot more people than just investors and justifying taxation by saying you are taxing people you don’t like doesn’t help your case.
I have a new theory.
The “failed” Healthcare.gov Web site is actually the cover for a “black program.”
That would explain the price.
I was opposed to the shutdown, although I very much support getting rid of Obamacare. Why? Because I felt the Republicans would end up caving and getting nothing. In many ways, that’s what happened… but here’s how I now think I may have been wrong; the shutdown firmly implanted the idea in the minds of many voters that the Republicans did everything they could to stop Obamacare. That will help Republicans a lot if Obamacare is the train wreck it is certainly appearing to be.
Why is Obamacare going to be a massive train wreck? Let’s ignore the technical disaster the rollout has been and discuss Obamacare’s effects. Let’s further set aside economic-damage issues such as employers cutting back (or converting workers to part time) and also the perverse incentive to earn less, and focus on what Obamacare directly does to individuals. The biggest selling point was the promise that it would bend the cost curve downwards, and it most clearly has had the opposite effect. Another promise was that if you liked your current insurance, you could keep it.
I’m willing to ascribe the former (the cost curve) to manifest economic ignorance rather than malicious lies, but not the latter (the promise that you could keep your current insurance). It streaches the bounds of credibility to claim that Obama could possibly have been stupid enough to believe that a law that CHANGES existing policies would not change said policies.
I’m self-employed, so I don’t get insurance via an employer. I pay for it myself, and thanks to the changes in the law (this has been confirmed in writing by my insurance company) my premiums went up by over a grand a year, and this is for a hospitalization-only policy with a high deductible. So, I can’t keep my old policy, it’s been changed in several ways, and thanks to that, I’m stuck with a far larger bill. But, that’s not all. According to my insurance agent, they’ll be canceling my policy soon. (They can do this now, thanks to the new law). I’ll then be faced with buying a policy that has even more coverages I don’t want, plus an even higher deductible, for even more money than I’m paying now. So, both of the main premises that Obamacare was sold under are flat out false (and at least the latter was a malicious lie by Obama).
So, take a look at what happens when average low-info Americans find their health care costs soaring due to Obamacare, which they’ll find out once they actually try to use the “exchanges”. It’s the direct opposite of what they were promised, and I think it’s safe to say they’ll be bloody furious. (it’s one thing to see predictions of this, it’s quite another when actually faced with the bill). We’re seeing this already amongst former Obamacare supporters who have managed to get into the exchanges. (I find their shocked outrage and pain most enjoyable… gotta love the irony and karma).
Before, the public may have blamed both sides (rationality has nothing to do with this, we’re talking voter perceptions here). But thinks to the shutdown, I don’t think they will.
“I was opposed to the shutdown, although I very much support getting rid of Obamacare. Why?”
I was opposed to the shutdown over defunding or delaying Obamacare because I think they should force it to be implemented the the letter of the law so people can see how terrible it is. If the argument is that Obamacare is going to be bad, then just let it happen. Don’t try and help the Democrats by delaying it a year.
I lost my insurance due to Obamacare. My new options are roughly equivalent but I am on the bottom end of insurance plans anyway. The good news is that my premiums pay for maternity coverage for my wife and dental for my children. Dental for myself would also be cool but my kids come first. Now all I need is a wife and kids.
Lol, Wodun. My catastrophic plan was cancelled and I will now pay 330 dollars a month for a crappy plan.
Jim, you have never answered me why my catastrophic plan was cancelled. You also have never explained to me why my premiums have gone up 350 percent since 2009.
Crickets chirp.
Jon, I’m curious;
If you don’t mind my asking, have your premium increases mostly been in the last year (as mine have, including a huge one two months ago) or generally even increases since 2009?
BTW, don’;t forget, Obama promised, loudly and often, that if you liked your current policy, you could keep it. Now you, like me and many others, have lost our policies thanks to Obamacare – proof that Obama is a malicious liar.
I’ll stop calling the malevolent bastard in the white house a lying scumbag (I’m keeping my words more civil than what I’d really like to say, in deference to Rand’s dislike for profanity) if and when I get my old policy back, though I think we all know the chances of that are zero.
Arizona CJ,
Like you, they’ve been increasing steadily since 2009.
Oh, I agree regarding “letting it happen”. I’m strongly in favor of getting rid of Obamacare, but I thought the one year delay the R’s offered was madness – why put off some of the train wreck until after the election? My position is either kill it or let it happen, and the R’s don’t have the ability to kill it.
I love the way your worded that last paragraph, and I totally sympathize. I’m a single male, so the absurd “freebies” that up the rates are something I neither need nor want, and sure as hell resent being forced at gunpoint to pay for.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the “forced at gunpoint” is literal, not hyperbole. (and unlike Joe Biden, I know what “literal” means). It’s forced at gunpoint because I have to pay it (via uying insurance or paying the IRS penalty.). If I do neither, then sooner or later, the guys with guns show up to take away either my property, me, or both. (same with taxes… they are literally forced on us at gunpoint).
At this point it’s probably the only option left. The House should now just pass a bill saying everything in Obamacare must happen as written originally. No waivers, no delays, no deviations, no “flexibility”, for anyone or anything.
Fine lefties, you keep saying you won? Fine, here you go, everything should happen exactly as you wrote it back when you rammed it through as a “budget reconciliation”. And this time, you can’t blame the right. This is all yours.
Remember, IT’S THE LAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, this is just too awesome. The left has been howling IT’S THE LAW. Everything Obamacare IS THE LAW. Oh my gosh you guys, IT’S THE LAW IT’S THE LAW IT’S THE LAW!!!!!!
Well, here we come to this: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-website-violates-licensing-agreement-copyrighted-software_763666.html
Thanks Democrats for violating copyright law in implementing the law you keep screaming about that everyone must follow because IT’S THE LAW.
Just remember voter ID laws are racist because they cause a financial burden on poor people. Even if the IDs are free, people still have to catch a ride to the DMV. Totally racist.
But Obamacare requires you have a computer and internet access.
No, you can also apply by phone.
Wow, people have to be rich enough to own a phone? That’s racist by Democrat standards.
You guys are awesome. I am struck by how much Jim’s comments and the shutdown have in common. Every time I wanted to respond to something Jim said, I scroll down and one of you gave a response that made mine redundant. The commonality is simply that the good responses make no dent in Jim’s ideology.
In fundamental psychology, when a person’s beliefs are challenged by contrary evidence the response will either be arrogance or humility. The arrogant person will simply disregard the evidence. The humble person, while they may be distressed in dealing with the evidence, will alter their view to some extent.
Jim, that armor you wear is undentable. It’s virtue is it allows others to sharpen their swords.
I do sometimes read interesting responses, and learn new things, on this site. But that hasn’t been the case in this thread.
Blame for the shutdown isn’t a very tricky thing to figure out. The Democrats wanted A, and the Republicans wanted A + B, and then A + C, and then A + D, with B, C, and D being things that the Democrats didn’t want. So the Senate voted to strip B, C, and D, and each time sent A back to the House, where the Republicans refused to vote on it. So the government shut down. Then, after two weeks of bad publicity and falling poll numbers, the Republicans let the House vote on A, and of course it passed, and the shutdown ended.
There’s no rational way to look at that sequence of events and blame the shutdown on the Democrats.
We have been running government off of CRs since Obama was elected. That is due largely to efforts of the Democrats. They want to lurch from crisis to crisis from CR to CR. It is a deliberate strategy.
It was a mistake for Republicans to push conditions that would lead to a shutdown so soon after Obama got worked over by Syria and for other reasons. It was bad tactics on the part of Republicans but that doesn’t mean that Obama and the Democrats are not also to blame for what got us to this point and they are solely responsible for their own actions during the shutdown. No one forced Obama to use the NPS as a political weapon.
OWS got preferential treatment by Democrats in government positions while people recreating at parks were greeted with armed officers, tickets, and barrycades.
What I’d like to know, has anyone successfully purchased insurance at Healthcare.org . . . on dial-up Internet?
My (first post!) in response to Rand’s provocative thread was “Why are Nancy Pelosi and Barrack Obama such sore winners?” So you heard the “sore winners” meme here first, but it looks like other commentators around the Right Blogosphere have independently come up with the same thing.
The response is, “They are not ‘sore winners’, the point they are making is that the Shutdown caused 24 billion dollars in losses to the economy, 24 billion dollars in real money, and the Republicans have to be called to account on this.”
Well, OK, it is not 24 billion dollars in real money, it is a projection, it is a forecast, that the political people carrying out their Constitutional duties in the Separation of Powers to attempt to resolve matters over which there are deep divisions and disagreements among the American people, the way this was carried out impaired Consumer Confidence and other economic indicators in such a way that we are projected (projected) to lose half a percent of GNP in the growth for one quarter, ego 24 billion dollars.
So I remark, I snark, I confess that I snark, I am Paul, Chief among Snarkers, that half-a-percent jogs in GNP figures can be attributed to a whole bunch of causes. I asked, if we are going to get our shorts knotted over an economic forecast of a putative 24 billion dollar cost of the Shutdown, are we going to get in a lather every time Mr. Obama scolds “the rich” and the stock market jogs downward.
Oh, oh, I can’t breathe! Paul Milenkovic blames Mr. Obama for some minor downtick in his portfolio? What about the huge downdraft that occured under W’s watch? Why won’t Paul mention that?
Were President Obama a Great Man, were he a leader, he would get in front of the press-conference microphones and say something like, “We are a Great Country subject to a Constitution, and we have followed the Constitutional process to resolve the differences we have, not only between our elected leaders but among ourselves as people. We have an agreement, that agreement protects Health Care Reform, and as political leaders and as a people, we move forward.”
But no, starting with the President and passing to the Former Speaker and on down through the land to all of his accolytes throughout the land, he (along with everyone else repeating what he is saying without comment or any thought) have to act small. I guess the damage done to economic indicators and putative economic growth is 24 billion dollars, and we have to get someone to fess up about the 24 billion (along with the frozen strawberries).
You know what bothers me about this. Not that Health Care Reform is “the law of the land”, although if the only thing defenders can say about the law is “it is the law, deal with it”, that they cannot construct a coherent narrative of its benefits that I would want to support keeping that law on the books (the Constitution offers a way to repeal laws). Not that the Republicans were humiliated in the Shutdown and Democrats can gloat.
What bothers me is that the President is just . . . so small. He, and all of the people who believe in everything he says without brooking any, any criticism at all. We are a great country, and this is all so small.
Paul said;
“What bothers me is that the President is just . . . so small. He, and all of the people who believe in everything he says without brooking any, any criticism at all. We are a great country, and this is all so small.”
What both terrifies and disgusts me is people who simply cannot criticize anything about their party or candidate.
One of the great differences between left and right in this country is that most righties will open fire on policies or actions by members of their party or the party in general that they disagree with (regarding policy, tactics, or both). The left, on the other hand, has a far greater percentage of members who are unthinking sycophants; their party or candidate can do no wrong in their eyes, and they defend them no matter what. Instead, these unthinking, uncritical, slavishly devoted types march in lockstep, legs rising high in perfect synchronicity and prattling the approved party line (I find the few Republicans of a similar mindset equally disturbing) .
This is a sickness, a cult of personality rather than reason. It is nothing new… The enablers of Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao had the same unthinking uncritical devotion to their party, cause, and leader.
What both terrifies and disgusts me is people who simply cannot criticize anything about their party or candidate.
In my experience Obama supporters (like myself) have lots of criticisms of the president and other Democrats. You aren’t likely to hear many of them on a forum like this one, where Obama is almost always under fire, and where the alternative under consideration — Republicans and the Tea Party — strike us as being much, much worse. But go to a place where it’s Democrats talking amongst themselves, or cast your mind back to the 2008 primaries (or wait until the 2015-2016 season), and you’ll hear plenty of intra-Democratic Party criticism.
I don’t think it’s a big secret that I think Obama is a great president — the best of my lifetime — but he’s made big mistakes. Off the top of my head, my criticisms would include that he:
* Didn’t do much of anything about the housing foreclosure crisis
* Has been too accommodating to Wall Street banks
* Was slow to appoint Federal Reserve Board members, and push for monetary policy that would address unemployment
* Has been slow to appoint judges
* Has been much too willing to use drone strikes
* Stayed in Afghanistan too long
* Has seemed to buy into austerity economics, and put too much emphasis on the debt and not enough on the unemployed
* Failed to rein in the NSA
* Has been too aggressive about press leaks
* Botched the rollout of the ACA exchanges
* Passed on the opportunity to appoint more women to top positions
* Pulled too many people out of the Senate and Governor’s offices to serve in his cabinet, when they could have done more good in elective office
* And, of course, he has failed to kill the SLS
Interesting, and thank you, Jim.
Also interesting is that I see several items on your list that are among my complaints about Republicans. The NSA, for one, SLS for another. The Republicans, with a few exceptions, have been rather quiet on both issues, and some Republicans pushed SLS as well as NSA and similar police-state snooping. (I was furious and vocal about similar issues, such as the Orwellian “Patriot Act”, when Bush was in office, so this is not new for me).
Speaking of the primaries… I do recall some inter-party criticism, on both sides (R and D) though I see less D inter-party criticism than I do R in non-presidential years. I do have to admit, upon reflection, that I may be a victim of sample bias here, so I’ll try reading some D sites and see.
I’m curious; why not voice criticisms of your side here? So what if Obama is under fire… if he’s wrong on something, he’s wrong on something. Same goes for the other side; I’ve never restrained myself, regardless of setting, from criticizing Republicans. I’ve long been of the opinion that politicians of whatever stripe are in dire need of criticism. 🙂
Meanwhile, the Obamabots celebrate:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51613