We have to do Something. This is Something. Therefor, we must do this.

Sigh. Just... sigh. "motherfucking lefties", indeed.

Posted at October 3, 2008 6:36 PM in response to McCain Decries Partisanship And Attacks Obama In Same Sentence

Doh. First sentence, "this plan" not "his plan".

Posted at September 29, 2008 3:56 PM in response to Obama Says Gambling On McCain Is A Risk We Can't Afford

Krugman agrees that his plan is likely a waste and an empty gesture. He doesn't support it on the merits. He supports it on the basis of: "It's better than nothing because at least it might be enough of an illusion to stop a complete run on the banks and the stock market." That's the point of contention. Even he doesn't think for a second that this is a *good* idea--see his reaction this afternoon to the vote on the bill in his blog.

On the HRC point: it *was* about economics. That's the whole point. He thought that HRC's health plan, which like most of her plans of the last 8 years was just a government-grant of a for-profit oligopoly to her millionaire private sector friends, was somehow better than just dropping the charade (and dropping the cost to taxpayer's of building a profit margin into a monopoly service) and going single-payer. His support of her was based entirely on inexplicable support of her on all sorts of economic idiocy for which he's based the GOP for years. It was bizarre.

Posted at September 29, 2008 3:52 PM in response to Obama Says Gambling On McCain Is A Risk We Can't Afford

Krugman is smart, but let's not forget that he has his blind spots. Just think back to all his invective in favor of Hillary's GOP-style economic record during the primaries...

Posted at September 29, 2008 3:27 PM in response to Obama Says Gambling On McCain Is A Risk We Can't Afford

Hey, I might be getting my notice by the end of the week. My dad's business already went belly-up. I feel you. All the more reason to get it over with quick and move on with recovering, I guess is my attitude.

Posted at September 29, 2008 3:25 PM in response to Obama Says Gambling On McCain Is A Risk We Can't Afford

Sadly, it probably is. We're in a situation that's strikingly similar to, but much larger than, Japan's that came with the last housing crash. They tried to band-aid it. They zombified their banks and other businesses with government debt. The end result was an enormous bill and over a decade of recession. Over a decade... it really is a band-aid choice. Stuff is going to return to equilibrium, and we can drag it out or not. Better regulation and saner policy could have stopped us from getting so far OFF of 'normal', and we should immediately move in that direction for the future, but in terms of the current mess any intervention short of hitting the 'Reset' button on the national debt, and consumer debt, is likely to just make things worse and drag it out.

There's a lot of talk about this on economics blogs from the liberal Keynesian to the libertarian Austrian school. It's bringing together people in that domain like nothing ever has before. Most of the exceptions seem to be people like Paulson and Bernanke who stand to gain billions while you lose your job and your kids pay the bill.

Posted at September 29, 2008 3:12 PM in response to Obama Says Gambling On McCain Is A Risk We Can't Afford

The House GOP are rejecting this for all the wrong reasons, but at the end of the day they may accidentally save us from ourselves. This $700B is not going to unfreeze the credit markets, and none of that money is ever going to come back. These securities are worth at most .5% of their book value. Make no mistake... this is a temporary band-aid that only delays the inevitable correction and in the process lines a bunch of pockets and hands the next generation a $700B bill with interest.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, has even attempted to make a credible argument as to why they are so sure this will FIX THE PROBLEM. Why? Because they can't. The ones who are grudgingly supporting it now are doing so only because it's a Hail Mary in the confidence game.

Posted at September 29, 2008 2:49 PM in response to Obama Says Gambling On McCain Is A Risk We Can't Afford

What you're missing is that, while plenty of bright people may come from AK, their politicians are *not it*. You can make a mint by getting involved in any aspect of the oil and natural gas business in the private sector. You can have challenging and fulfilling work there, or in the natural resources domain.

The politicians are the ones who are content to live a comfortable lifestyle via graft and administering the oil welfare state that is Alaska. Don Young, for example, had his nest lined quite nicely after running interference for Exxon during the Valdez aftermath--and had his only truly close race in 1990 when the mayor of Valdez ran against him. Alaskans were *almost* angry enough at his corruption to vote a Democrat into federal office, but in the end they stuck with the GOP-OIL welfare trough.

On top of that, the governor has little power compared to the legislature.

Posted at September 28, 2008 7:26 PM in response to Obama Way Ahead In Today's Tracking Polls

1. Where is the evidence that this supposed referendum was representative? By all non-Russian accounts it was a Mugabe-style snow job (just like most Russian elections).

2. Your second story admits straightaway that Georgia was minding its own business when Russian "peacekeepers" crossed into Georgia proper from South Ossetia and began slaughtering civilians by the thousands. What does this tell you?

Seriously, the credulity here is absurd. Putin is the same sort of dipshit as the neocons, and yet you give him and his Kremlin cohort the benefit of the doubt. It is so, so confusing.

Posted at September 11, 2008 7:48 PM in response to Palin: War With Russia "Perhaps" Necessary If Russia Invades NATO-Admitted Georgia

Georgia "began the conflict", but that is a sort of intentionally dishonest truism in this case. To grossly oversimplify:

The Ossetians and Georgians have co-existed mostly peacefully for a long time. Centuries. The Ossetian "independence and then immediately be absorbed by Russia and let them have bases here" movement is a movement of plants and ethnic cleansors, not anything like a predominance of real Ossetians. It's analogous to the Chinese "seeding" of their citizens in Tibet. There is a legitimate Ossetian independence movement, which is small but respectable. The Russian-allied movement, however, is 99.9% Russian plants, and they've been working this for decades. Georgia is trying to drive out a bunch of Russian spies and murderers, basically.

Posted at September 11, 2008 7:40 PM in response to Palin: War With Russia "Perhaps" Necessary If Russia Invades NATO-Admitted Georgia