There is a story making the rounds of a pool reporter on Air Force One who asked President Obama, "Are you a socialist?" We assume here the reporter was acting in good faith, probably hoping the President would chime in with something newsworthy, or refute a conservative talking point now being broadcast from the exalted head of the Republican Party, AKA, his High Holiness Rush Limbaugh. In recognition of Dday's recommended diary, and in the spirit of that good faith, we offer some context for that reporter, and any others that might be lurking here on a beautiful Sunday evening.
The special 747, designated as Air Force One when the Commander in Chief is onboard, was built to custom order and paid for by US taxpayers. The general design and that specific airplane were enabled by decades of big government spending on aerospace technology. Every nut and bolt in that plane and any other airliner was checked for flight worthiness by government inspectors making it, in GOP parlance these days, a ‘socialist’ aircraft. As with all domestic flights, it is safely guided from take off to landing by a national network of highly trained government paid air traffic controllers – another "socialist" organization -- utterly dependent on an invention using radio detecting and ranging developed under the administration of a socialist President during World War II. Many of the pilots who fly Air Force One and its Marine counterpart were trained to navigate and fly sophisticated aircraft at considerable taxpayer expense in the military – yet another big government "socialist" enterprise tasked with fighting wars and ensuring the survival of American democracy.
That same reporter in all likelihood attended apublicsocialist kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school. They may or may not have gone on to astatesocialist university. Throughout their life they depended on the local ‘socialist’ police force, and may even have had occasion to ...
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... fire department, ... television networks created and regulated by a socialist behemoth known as the Federal Communications Commission, ... odds are close to 100 per cent that sooner or later their life, or the life of a loved one, will be improved, prolonged, or saved, again and again, by drugs and treatments developed by big government socialist programs and over seen for safety and efficacy by a big nasty socialist FDA. Those same programs and others like them will likely add, on average, another precious decade or two of life expectancy for the reporter, his friends, and his family. .... socialized medicine (Medicare) and social security for the elderly, ...internet, ... hard-earned bank deposits are insured by the full faith and credit of the United States Government, ...
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But in closing we should note, in all fairness: the reporter was absolutely well within his or her rights to pose any question, report any answer, or provide any commentary and opinion of their choosing. Because in this country, the press is protected by an enumerated right enshrined in a 'socialist' document written by radical progressives, since defended at enormous cost in the lives and limbs of countless members in the socialist Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, and beginning with a preamble that would stir the collectivist heart of any Marxist: "We the People ..."
Dr. Krugman is providing a valuable service by pushing aggressive policies, but I am less than certain that the policies he advocates are politically possible. Also, given that every single person who weighs in about the "too big banks" says something different, I color myself totally confused about what should or could be done.
Krugman says Obama is Behind the Curve
President Obama’s plan to stimulate the economy was “massive,” “giant,” “enormous.” So the American people were told, especially by TV news, during the run-up to the stimulus vote. Watching the news, you might have thought that the only question was whether the plan was too big, too ambitious.
Yet many economists, myself included, actually argued that the plan was too small and too cautious. The latest data confirm those worries — and suggest that the Obama administration’s economic policies are already falling behind the curve.
To see how bad the numbers are, consider this: The administration’s budget proposals, released less than two weeks ago, assumed an average unemployment rate of 8.1 percent for the whole of this year. In reality, unemployment hit that level in February — and it’s rising fast.
...So here’s the picture that scares me: It’s September 2009, the unemployment rate has passed 9 percent, and despite the early round of stimulus spending it’s still headed up. Mr. Obama finally concedes that a bigger stimulus is needed.
But he can’t get his new plan through Congress because approval for his economic policies has plummeted, partly because his policies are seen to have failed, partly because job-creation policies are conflated in the public mind with deeply unpopular bank bailouts. And as a result, the recession rages on, unchecked.
O.K., that’s a warning, not a prediction. But economic policy is falling behind the curve, and there’s a real, growing danger that it will never catch up.
D-KOS- DemfromCt's Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
...WaPo:
Memo [to accompany stem cell action] to be issued Monday will protect scientific decisions from political influence, officials say.
Reaction from Reuters:
"Hallelujah! This marks the end of a long and repressive chapter in scientific history. It's the stem cell 'emancipation proclamation'," said Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts.
"I really hope this is the end of this political football game," agreed Michael West, who once headed ACT and Geron Inc and is now chief executive officer of a California-based biotech firm called BioTime.
Amen to that.
Paul Krugman: Too small a stimulus. Here's why:
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The news that even Alan Greenspan and Senator Chris Dodd suggest that bank nationalization may be necessary shows how desperate the situation has become. It has been obvious for some time that a government takeover of our banking system--perhaps along the lines of what Norway and Sweden did in the '90s--is the only solution. It should be done, and done quickly, before even more bailout money is wasted.
David Schribman: No, no, he's trying to do too much already!! His critics say he is over-reaching. They, of course, were wrong about everything the last eight years, but still...
These questions defy scientific or precise answers. Whether Mr. Obama can successfully resolve the tension between the two - between reaching and over-reaching - is one of the fundamental challenges of his presidency.
WaPo:
Republicans are on the offensive against the popular chief executive at a point when they lack a chief spokesman and remain divided among figures offering competing visions for the party's future, including radio personality Rush Limbaugh and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele. But the party has unified around the theme of limiting increases in government spending.
Well, that makes it okay, then. Unifying against the stimulus really helped their image.
And with Obama looking to push his budget proposal through Congress over the next few weeks, the Republicans are promising to directly confront the new president on his proposals, even as party members acknowledge the risk of taking on a man whose favorability rating in a recent poll was 42 points higher than that of the Republican Party.
But the deeper problem here isn't that a few conservative pointy-heads are getting their egos bruised by Rush's broadsides; it's that conservative politicians seem to be spending an awful lot of time looking over their shoulders these days, worried about what Limbaugh and company have to say about them. ....
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Matthew Norman: Turn us into the 51st state? Why not? (h/t Sully)
There would be downsides to yielding what passes for our sovereignty, of course. The Sovereign would have to go, and most of us would miss her and the amusement her family selflessly provides. Any residual misplaced sense of superiority would need to be jettisoned as well.
But the upsides would more than dwarf the regrets. At a stroke we would inherit a written constitution – and what a constitution – guaranteeing such essentials for a functioning democracy as fixed-term government, proper checks and balances to executive power, and freedom of speech. We'd be defended from the worst ravages of economic collapse by belonging to what will, with the euro facing mounting pressure from the imminent bankruptcy of member countries, remain the world's premier reserve currency. We would have a political leader to revere, for eight years at least. And in the US tradition of slightly out-of-the-way cities holding the honour, we could make Norwich our state capital, with the Union Jack replaced as flag by a pot of Colman's Mustard.
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