Harry's Place

“the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious.”

If setting up and knocking down an absurdly simplistic straw man is “characteristically thoughtful”, then I’m at a loss to imagine what he might be writing in his less thoughtful moments – a screenplay for Moore, perhaps ?

“the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious.”

If setting up and knocking down an absurdly simplistic straw man is “characteristically thoughtful”, then I’m at a loss to imagine what he might be writing in his less thoughtful moments – a screenplay for Moore, perhaps ?

It may or may not be an absurdly simplistic straw man. But then again, it’s essentially what Alan Greenspan said recently.

The US is suffering the consequences of its elite’s belief in a very narrow type of capitalism.

The big three car makers should be allowed to go down the pan, and the welfare state should take the strain while folk retrain, and find jobs elsewhere. However, the welfare state and social infrastructure in the US is so meager that the Democrats feel under an incredible pressure to save companies deemed too big to fail. The same with health care. The US has one of the most inefficient health care systems in the world, and companies often take the strain. There are numerous models of collective or semi-collective provision in other developed countries (not all simply nationalised) that are more efficient.

Instead we may have bailouts of the big three (which would now be illegal in the EU), not based on good business sense, but as a form of corporate welfare to keep a system going that actually needs real reform. Its an odd way to run an economy.

Something pointed out by a CI(F) poster seems relevant here.

He suggested that the Obama victory have split the ‘looney extreme left’ off from the majority ’soft’ left in a way that couldn’t have been foreseen bearing in mind that Obama does not seem to be so left as I and many others thought. In fact his developing administration seems to be Center Left. Not even Left Center.

Having Obama, explaining to the world what is terrorism, will be overwhelmingly acceptable to the Left. The ‘looney extreme left’ who will be horrified by Obama’s developing strategy of pursuing Bin Laden with the sinful intention of killing him.

This is a very encouraging development.

Bilge! DaveW’s right, one big straw-man.

Clap Hammer,

Well that is obvious, although the notion of a ’split’ is erroneous, because there was no unity anyway. It’s more indicative of the wrongheadedness of those that thought Obama was some some sort of far leftist anyway – absurd. In fact most on the left don’t have those delusions; I think this emanates from the right who watch too much Fox News or Sarah Palin.

Those on the left (or indeed anyone else), who want action on certain issues (and there are many issues), will organise to pressure Obama to make moves in the right direction; but that is the normal business of politics.

As for foreign policy. The simplistic notion is to suppose that the left (or anyone else) objects to Obama when he talks about killing Bin Laden, i.e. the criticism is Quaker like. This is not even the half of it. The foreign policy discussions during the presidential debates and campaigning were shallow, and virtually worthless as an indication of what lies ahead.

We can only wait and see how that develops: one thing is for sure though, the neoconservative follies are over. Obama is far too cautious to be a neoconservative in foreign policy, and far too intelligent to assume that folk in foreign countries will welcome American troops and tanks with flowers (and one hopes too that he is more likely to get the sums right too).

However, I am sure there will be follies of a different nature.

George Packer reminds me of the first Editor of “The Nation” magazine who continued to sing the praises of Stalin long after Stalin’s show trials had revealed Communism for what it really was; when in exasperation Trotsky himself said of our deluded editor: “All of us are entitled to our fair share of stupidity in this life, but the good comrade is seriously abusing his privilege.” …..

The automakers were probably the last unionized workers in the US.

Wonderfully consistent that Benji wants to throw away the very last vestige of workers rights. I suppose it’s comforting. It would worry me if he was right about something even once.

Europeans have called me a liar when I told the the conditions I’ve worked under in the US, with insane hours, programmers sleeping under their desks and getting divorces because they were never allowed to go home…

There is something deeply wrong in the US labor market and it is amazing that people here put up with it.

I’d also question Packer’s assertion that “Barack Obama’s decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932″. It’s lazy, thoughtless writing, presumably intended to chime in with the absurd myth that the current crisis is just like 1929 and Obama is just like FDR.
For one thing, if Truman had lost in 1948, the US might have retreated into isolationism instead of launching NATO and the Marshall Plan. For another, if LBJ had lost to Goldwater in 1964, there would have been no Civil Rights Act and no War on Poverty, the war in Vietnam might have been even more disastrous, and the Nixon/Reagan era would have started four years earlier. Truman and LBJ made decisions that still affect the world today: I wonder if Obama will make anything like a similar impact.
Packer, like just about every other US commentator on the 2008 election, is so amazed that Obama actually won, and so eager to be on the right side of history along with all the cool people, that he’s forgetting what has happened before and will probably happen again. In 1976 journalists were writing thoudands of words of variations on “OMG, a peanut farmer from Georgia has become President!” – and look what became of Jimmy Carter. First the illusions, then the disillusionment. Which is not really Obama’s fault at all, it’s the fault of overpaid professional bullshitters like Packer. It’s a good idea not to trust politicians, it’s an even better idea not to trust journalists, above all when they’re all saying the same boring things over and over again.

It brings to a close another conservative era,

It’s preposterous to make this kind of claim before Obama has even taken office.

Many people (apparently including Gene) have a hard time distinguishing reality from what they are hoping for.

Clap Hammer.
What is the difference betweenLeft Centre and Centre Left? Please elucidate, I’m running out of scrap paper.

Barack Obama’s decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932. It brings to a close another conservative era, one that rose amid the ashes of the New Deal coalition in the late sixties, consolidated its power with the election of Ronald Reagan, in 1980, and immolated itself during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression; the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious.

Oh, bilge.

While MSNBC and The New Yorker ponder whether Obama is the Greatest President since Lincoln, or merely FDR, normal Americans look on in amusement as he rapidy reassembles the Clinton administration.

And I think Packer is confusing “Republicans” with the Presidential campaign of Barry’s Secretary of State.

oops. close italics after “The New Yorker”.

There is something deeply wrong in the US labor market and it is amazing that people here put up with it.

Dare I say it.

Even though the rest of the world ‘mistakenly’ thinks that the US is some sort of paradise and the most desirable thing that they can achieve is, against all barriers set up, to get in and enjoy what you obviously don’t enjoy.

Perhaps you should make room and leave.

the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious

Indeed. And instead of that, America gets a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman.
Buying Blair’s snake oil the first time round might be regarded as silly but understandable. Buying it the second time was stupidly careless. The next time was criminally reckless. Buying Obama’s after all this time is just plain insane.
Packer is as insane as Gene is.

Instead we may have bailouts of the big three (which would now be illegal in the EU)

So? The USA is not in the EU, lucky beggars.
PS: France regularly does things in this arena that are ‘illegal’ in the EU.
PPS: This is a misuse of the word ‘illegal’. A voluntary club’s regulations are not ‘law’, even if the megalomaniac charlatans have sold the idea that they are to the ignorant and gullible.

Does anyone still pay any attention to the New Yorker’s silly ‘ponderings’? Obama has not yet had to make one single decision as president. Comparing his ‘greatness’ to anyone’s, let alone great past presidents, is infantile drivel.

He suggested that the Obama victory have split the ‘looney extreme left’ off from the majority ’soft’ left in a way that couldn’t have been foreseen bearing in mind that Obama does not seem to be so left as I and many others thought. In fact his developing administration seems to be Center Left. Not even Left Center.

This is correct; it is a major achievement of Obama’s election.

N.O. has a point, but so do most of the others. Awfully hard to get the point across that the US is just another country.

Packer is a great writer and thinker, but puts out his share of hot air, too. There was no tsunami of Reaganism, just a slight swing away from FDR-ism, and now what looks like a slight swing back. There’s no doubt the election was significant, but since it’s early days yet, it may turn out to be most significant in terms of the disappointment among Obama-as-savior crowd.

If you look at our overall tax rates, or government spending as percent of GNP over the last 30 years, you see a flat line with little wobbles. Nothing to rend garments or sing hosannas about, actually.

Hillary plays hardball

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hillary-plays-hardball-1031238.html

Now that the “O ba ma” crowd have woken up from their trance they realise they just elected the O-Clinton presidency.

The truth is that Obama won’t be giving the tax cuts he promised – because he can’t and with Hillary “Bomb Iran” Clinton as Secretary of State he won’t be having a cosy fireside chat with Dinner Jacket.

Obama has really installed people who would fight terror every bit as Bush tried to do. (Rahm Emanuel, Joe Biden, Hillary – all have neo-con like opinions).

I think an Obam administration will be better than McCain The Same but I don’t think it will be what the Kool Aid voters voted for.

An interesting confrontation over the Car Bailout. In order to save Ford, Chrysler, Chevrolet you have to smash the Union of Car-Workers because it is their negotiated pay and conditions model that is crippling their employers. Their workes cost around $125 an hour versus Toyota who cost $40 and hour.

Bail out is money down the drain for them.

BTW – the GOP itself never questioned whether Obama was a secret Muslim or whether he was born in Kenya. McCain distanced his campaign from it.

His association with Ayers, Rev Wright, Rezko are all facts and I agree with some commentators that his background is sufficiently murky that he would pass the test to get into the same FBI who protect him. These are things that can’t be air-brushed.

However, I still happen to believe (so far) that Obama will be better for the USA than McCain. I just happen to think the policies won’t be much different.

I think Obama will be constrained by events and the reality of being President rather than the visions he created and fantasy he had about what being President is.

I see Obama as a child in a crib and just look at all the parents he surrounded himself with to rock the cradle.

You say Packer is the best. I don’t know. It is a habit of mine to stop reading when I found things like ‘free-market fundamentalism’.
I prefer people who talks about the really existing world.

Maven, please note that rather than smashing the UAW, Obama will more likely sponsor legislation easing the path to unionizing Toyota and Honda (”card check”). THAT sort of “leveling the playing field”. By the way, I think the true labor cost at GM is closer to $75, merely almost double the jap carmakers.

the GOP itself never questioned whether Obama was a secret Muslim or whether he was born in Kenya. McCain distanced his campaign from it.

Shh. Next thing, you’ll be calling the Obama loonies on this blog liars.

And of course, there have never been deranged smears on this blog against Palin.

Unlike Wright etc, which are documented facts.

Senator, I have certainly heard teh $75 figure mentioned. On Friday I listened to the Mark Levin show and he presented figures which included life-time health care and retirement at any age after 30 years service. The sums came out 1t $125, from memory. But even $75 is too much.

The UAW have said “We ain’t gonna change nuffin’. Where ju want dis horse head delivud”

I assume everyone critiquing Packer here has read the entire article. Otherwise, they’d just come across as silly.

You are the silly one, Gene (no surprise there, then), taking seriously someone babbling about ‘free-market fundamentalism’.

“I assume everyone critiquing Packer here has read the entire article. Otherwise, they’d just come across as silly.”

Sorry Gene. I let my suncsripton lapse after the cartoons ceased to be funny. Plus, your excerpt left me curiously uncurious.

However, I may have a peek when Jane Mayer and Jeff Toobin seek to explain why shutting down Gitmo precipitously may be unwise.

Oh, the cartoons are not that bad, or at least 10% of them. It’s the rest of paper that’s fit for one purpose only.

What are the implications for Israel of James Jones as National Security Adviser? Not yet confirmed but everyone seems to be taking it for granted. I’d be grateful for HPers’ views, particularly those in the US.

Roses are red,
So are balloons.
We right the grey stuff
Around the cartoons!

-Garrison Keillor

oops. “write”

Sorry, Mr. Keillor

Even though the rest of the world ‘mistakenly’ thinks that the US is some sort of paradise and the most desirable thing that they can achieve is, against all barriers set up, to get in and enjoy what you obviously don’t enjoy.

Perhaps you should make room and leave.

Clapp Hammer you sophomoric moron, most people I talk to dream of doing exactly that.

I’d also question Packer’s assertion that “Barack Obama’s decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932″. It’s lazy, thoughtless writing, presumably intended to chime in with the absurd myth that the current crisis is just like 1929 and Obama is just like FDR.

If you read the whole article, you’ll find that Packer doesn’t believe that at all.

Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression; the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious.

Gene is wrong as usual. Obama is not the new F.D.R.

The current economic crisis began with a mortgage meltdown triggered by PUBLIC mechanisms put into place during the Clinton years, mechanisms that were designed to increase rates of home ownership among Latinos and blacks, the latter in particular.

Home ownership affirmative action. The soft racism of easy credit.

So mortgage money was lent to people who had the right skin-tone, but who weren’t sufficiently credit worthy to afford all the ‘bling’. In no time at all a couple of ‘em began to default, and as the number of defaults spread the whole process just snowballed.

As a result, we now find ourselves at the beginning of a ‘diversity depression’, one which was triggered by the interventions and financial machinations of white socialist liberals attempting to engineer economic growth, and one which will last several years at least.

a friend of terrorists, an enemy of Israel,

Look who Obama is appointing as head of the CIA! A numbskull who thinks American foreign policies are responsable for Iran’s thuggish behavior. He also wants to increase Hezbollah’s stake in Lebanese politics

Fuck! Was Putin not available, or something?

What a disaster!

http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2008/11/brennan-to-head-cia.html

Quote: “Clapp Hammer you sophomoric moron, most people I talk to dream of doing exactly that.”

Wherre would they go, Josh? The EU countries may do a better job as far as workers’ rights are concerned, but their economies look pretty unenticing at the moment, don’t they?

Similarly, in a speech on the economy at New York’s Cooper Union, last March, Obama said, “I do not believe that government should stand in the way of innovation or turn back the clock to an older era of regulation. But I do believe that government has a role to play in advancing our common prosperity, by providing stable macroeconomic and financial conditions for sustained growth, by demanding transparency, and by insuring fair competition in the marketplace. Our history should give us confidence that we don’t have to choose between an oppressive government-run economy and a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism.

I swear. Barack Obama must be some kind of political-moral-historical savant.

But November 4, 2008, is one of those infrequent dates when one historical age and one generation, with a distinct political and economic and cultural character, gave way to another age, another generation.

Oh please.

I swear. Barack Obama must be some kind of political-moral-historical savant.

Well, unlike Reagan, he doesn’t think government is the problem.

Oh, and thanks for reading the whole article, even if you didn’t agree with it.

For months before the election Republican/Conservative/McCain/Palin supporters here kept up a barrage of Barack “Hussein” Obama calumnies (do we really have to pick through the garbage that was posted here?) and discounted the polls. “Real Americans” – as opposed to the West/East Coast “Liberal Elite” – would stand up to be counted on Nov. 4.

Well, guess what? They did. The polls were right. And “real” Americans took the Republicans/Conservative/McCain/Palin to the woodshed. They were whumped.

But a strange thing happened on the way to the polls. Where, before Nov. 4 we kept getting warned that Obama was a “socialist”, by Nov. 5 the Republican/Conservative talking points had suddenly changed. Depending on who was telling it, Obama wasn’t really “socialist”, didn’t have a “mandate” (Bush’s “mandate” seems to have been based on losing the popular vote in 2000 and winning the Electoral Vote in 2004 by a single state!), and the US was still a “center-right” country.

Well boys, despite all your efforts, the people think otherwise. They never bought the “socialist” nonsense and a 6.9% lead in the popular vote and 365-to-173 in Electoral Votes is a huge mandate by modern standards. Americans voted for a liberal government. Deal with it.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/11/chart_of_the_day_11222008.html

“Americans voted for a liberal government.”

Looks like they’re getting the DLC.

And where’s my goddamn tax cut?

Having nobly and in good faith read Packer’s Raptures, I reread Gene’s post.

“George Packer of The New Yorker, the best American political journalist, has written a characteristically thoughtful piece putting the recent Obama victory is some historical perspective. I don’t think he exaggerates.”

“I don’t think he exaggerates.”

Har!

Having read Packer’s entire article (I can be a masochist), what stands out is not what pakcers says but the tone in which he says it.

Mr Packer should keep a few prozac handy for when the disillusionment kicks in with the realisation that Obama isn’t the messiah.

Obama is still two months from becomming president, and yet pundits ( true believers?) are already bestowing upon him the royal status of the new Roosevelt!

Their hands are clasped to cheek and they doth swoon with praise and admiration for Dear Leader.

If one gleans one’s political info from the pages of Mother Jones, for example, then I suppose such a view can be taken on ‘faith’.

Remember when Carter’s election was constantly referred to as ‘groundbreaking’?

P.J. O’Rourke, who lost his sense of humour in his last piece for The Weekly Standard,

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/791jsebl.asp?pg=1

may be regaining it in time for his next. It’s entitled: “Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn’t President Yet?”

“Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn’t President Yet?”

Of course it is, but apparently it’s not too soon to compare him to FDR, Lincoln, and Jesus Christ.

6.9% is huge? What drivel. You must have failed Intro. to Arithmetic 101. A bit like Clinton’s administration, which caused the present financial meltdown.

Oh please

Come on, let the kiddies have their illusions, now that Santa Claus has been debunked.

Remember when Carter’s election was constantly referred to as ‘groundbreaking’?

Well, it was groundbreaking in its utter disastrousness, no?

Josh Scholar Clapp Hammer you sophomoric moron, most people I talk to dream of doing exactly that.

Well.

Goodbye to them.

O’Bummer

No, you, Mr. Hammer.

Wherre would they go, Josh? The EU countries may do a better job as far as workers’ rights are concerned, but their economies look pretty unenticing at the moment, don’t they?

Usually Americans dream of moving to 3rd world countries where the dollar is worth more. It’s not as if they’re used to much more of a safety net than a 3rd world country.

O’Bummer

Only here one day and already you’re making devastating, irrefutable comments.

Comparing his ‘greatness’ to anyone’s, let alone great past presidents, is infantile drivel.

Comparing him to past presidents is a little premature since George Bush is still president, I would have thought?

“Comparing him to past presidents is a little premature since George Bush is still president, I would have thought?”

Memo to every professional scribbler in New York and Washington D.C……

Actual Washington Post headline:

Obama Sets Expansive Goal for Jobs
Plan Aims to Create or Save 2.5 Million Positions by 2011

or Save?

Over the last few months, I have gotten quite fond of Gene’s dry humor. Is it not obvious that, when he calls George Packer “the best American political journalist”, he is joking?

If you thought he was being serious in this post, do what he suggests, read the article, and then then read the post again. Is not a joke the most reasonable interpretation of the post?

(For the humor impaired, a hint: Packer starts off with FDR and his flailing around during the Great Depression. As everyone knows — well, as every informed person knows — FDR’s policies made the Depression worse and made it last longer. (Some FDR policies did help, but on the whole they made things worse.) But Packer does not know that basic economic fact. Gene could have been nasty and beat up Packer for that mistake, and for many other mistakes, but he chose to be sly and to let readers work it out themselves. Clever writing, and quite funny.)

Is it possible that Packer is joking, too? That would be the kindest way to treat the article, but there is so much nonsense in the article, without a wink to the readers, that we have to assume Packer intended this piece to be taken seriously.

“Is it possible that Packer is joking, too? That would be the kindest way to treat the article, but there is so much nonsense in the article, without a wink to the readers, that we have to assume Packer intended this piece to be taken seriously.”

It’s all dreadfully earnest, I’m afraid.

should be fun to see what the George W Bush Presidential Library contains?

a Dr. Seuss “how to be President guide”, a few old comics and a well thumbed brochure from the local booze shop

“a Dr. Seuss “how to be President guide”, a few old comics and a well thumbed brochure from the local booze shop”

Ha ha ha ha ha!
[Mesquito wipes tears from eyes]

Who elected Barack Obama? People who also voted to re-affirm traditional marriage in California and Florida. People who also voted to end legal discrimination against working-class white men in Colorado. People who also voted not to liberalise the gambling laws in Missouri and Ohio. Almost everyone in the black church. The clear majority of Catholics.

In a word, moral and social conservatives.

So why did they vote for him?

For reasons of economic populism and foreign policy realism. Which are, of course, the right reasons.

No one deserves a free run against nothing more than Sarah Palin. And someone elected by morally and socially conservative economic populists and foreign policy realists, but who pays them back by giving the position of Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton, deserves a very serious challenge indeed in the 2012 primaries. The foundations of that challenge should already be being laid. Are they being? If not, why not?

Still, at least this is an opportunity to fill a vacant Senate seat (not the only one about to become vacant, of course) with a morally and socially conservative economic populist and foreign policy realist. Nothing could better befit the state named after the last Catholic King of England, Scotland and Ireland (indeed, the only ever Catholic King of all three for anything more than a matter of minutes), whose title at the time of its foundation was taken from the birthplace of Christendom.

“In light of the downturn, Mr. Obama is also said to be reconsidering a key campaign pledge: his proposal to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. According to several people familiar with the discussions, he might instead let those tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2011, effectively delaying any tax increase while he gives his stimulus plan a chance to work.” (NYT)

“Vote McCain for more of the same!”

ROTFLMAO

If this Packer is the best political writer in America, the rest must be pretty poor.

david lindsay spam: does anyone read this crap?