you made here looking? http://agonist.org/scotjen61/20100624/democrats_will_count_it_a_win_in_november_heres_why

Name me one Democrat counting last week's election as a victory? You can't do it.

As for your claim that Obama rescued us from a depression, well, he didn't. We are in a depression. Take a look at unemployment for starters. Sure, he ameliorated it. And he saved the banks from having to take their medicine. But the crisis of the developed world banks collapsing? Puleeazze! As Ian said:

Stop saying Obama saved the economy, he did no such thing. The US is in a depression (not a great depression, but a depression). All Obama, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson and Bush did was push the day of reckoning back a bit in order to save the rich, at the cost of trillions of dollars which should have been used to restructure the economy.

Why I have to keep telling people this, as they experience an absolute decline in their goddamn wages, I don’t know.

^{Bad decisions make good stories.}

celebrate $200 million in secret money. It was good up to the week before. All in Ohio and Pennsylvania. All accomplished by a flood of Koch Brothers money and Rove money that played out anti-immigrant and racist screeds through the rust belt. Ohio is the one state Rove knows how to manipulate. The group that can match that kind of spending is the Unions, and they mightily tried and met half that amount. (And by the by if you go out and buy Brawny paper towels, or cheap napkins, you are pretty much generally handing money to the Koch brothers).

But it was a pleasure watching the Blue Dogs be halved, and the progressive caucus lose only 5%, and watching Republicans throw everything they had at the West Coast and New England and come away completely empty (truly amazing). It was also with great relief my home State gets Dayton and not another Pawlenty. My other prediction was that the house and senate democrat caucus will have a more liberal voice in the aftermath - that is true. The crazies have to govern now, and it will be fun to watch them try. Bloomberg nails it when he laments that this freshman class of republicans is a group of folk who don't even know how to read.

As far as the hyperbole of depression. The word gets thrown around too much. You want a Great Depression: It's 25% unemployed, no social security at all, 50% of homes foreclosed, and a stock market that falls 95%. It's like Reids great quote after the election: "I've been in close elections, this one wasn't even close."

It'll be interesting watching the left edge next time around. The stakes just get higher. Just think, without Nader in 2000 we would not have had the $1 trillion Iraq war, the tax cut that created the syndication banking crisis, or a Supreme court with Roberts and Alito voting a secret corporate money/big business largess that can be used to now buy elections.

It all goes back to 2000 doesn't it?

stop blaming Nader for everything. If the dems had spine they would have fought for Gore, instead they caved. Instead of fighting against the Iraq war they signed on to the AUMF. Instead of fighting for decent healthcare they caved before they even started. Instead of going after Wall Street they didn't do a damn thing. Blaming Nader just keeps the status quo of Americans not being represented by either party.

and some causes create enormous effects. Iraq, Roberts and Alito, limitless corporate money to secretly buy elections all have a cause - George Bush Jr. George Bush Jr. has a cause, its an election thrown to the Republicans in Florida by Ralph Nader.

Doubt me, if you ever get the chance, ask the chastened Michael Moore who watched it play out in horror at the end of the election in 2000.

that those that voted for Nader would have voted democrat. It is just as likely that they wouldn't have shown up at all.

Started in 2000, about six month in. On top of the rage coursing through America at the stolen election, Emperor Chimpy doubled down by slashing taxes for the rich and ultra-rich, people making over a million dollars a year.

I remember the job market for tech writers suddenly dried up and companies were talking about a hiring freeze. Nobody wanted to spend money for workers. It eased up in the defense industry after the wars started, but the general unemployment rate kept going up throughout the BushCo years.

The two lines above the red one in Michael's graph are closer to the way unemployment used to be calculated, before they started cooking the books on that stat, excluding the long-term unemployed. What we see today could best be described as victory for the economic royalists, the moneyed aristocracy of this country. I'm talking about the Bushes, the Kochs, the Rockefellers (yeah, they couldn't do it without help from "Democrats"), etc.

It's been said before, and it's truer now than ever: We don't have a Democrat vs. Republican problem, or a liberal vs. conservative problem. America's got a rich vs. everybody else problem.
.
Cows get milked, rubes get bilked,
And fat cats dine on fools and cream.

It is a Bush Depression and to your larger point, exactly on target - it's us versus them, "a rich vs. everybody else problem."

The control of the media and how problems are presented, always in the favor of The Money Party, is, as you said so well, a "victory for the economic royalists, the moneyed aristocracy of this country."

was above 50%, and no unemployment, no social security, no medicare. Half of all homes foreclosed - this time about 7%. Stock market down 95%, where currently markets are down 20%.

Actual numbers - even if SWAGed - can't be allowed to fly in the face of the easy narrative.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

.

...one needs realize that the hyperbole only discredits oneself in the eyes of possible allies.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

is hyperbole?

spelling corrected lol

...pronounced trend. Folks are looking at stuff very narrowly, from a small number of largely ahistorical perspectives. Call me crazy, but I don't think that's a great idea. Integrate with broader, specifically historical contexts to make stronger arguments.

Take the example of security policy - please /rimshot. Okay, more seriously, I wouldn't actually trust many of the self-described DFHs to step up to the levers of security policy right now because of their avowed willingness to do precipitous, simplistic things that amount to throwing the established global security architecture under the bus. That's in spite of the fact that our desired end states are very, very closely congruent. Take the time to demonstrate understanding that American security is part of a much larger whole, show me they know how we got here and present a viable incremental plan for getting out while transitioning and not destabilizing things and I'm a potential ally. Right now, not so much.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

in International Security Studies at Tufts and read all the back issues of Jane's and the CFR reports, you'll let me recieve my monthly $1000 social security check in 25 years?

I actually know someone who recieved their MA from the Fletcher School, who is now an unemployed construction worker. true.

...with a moderate tone. Sound like an extremist because it's cheap therapy and one doesn't find oneself in the company of near so many folks who actually want to and can do something.

“All things in moderation. Even moderation." ~ not-Richard Haass

it sure didn't fit the discussion.

...but the pattern of argumentation does. Whatever is bad right now is put forward as being as bad as it ever has been in the past, whether explicitly true or not.

Isolated datapoints of "bad" make great purity test fodder, but they're not the most productive starting point for policy change. More directly, "bad" in isolation isn't a discussion - it's a litany of complaint. Contextualize it, come up with suggested changes that aren't predominantly about rallying the believers to a cutsey name and one might actually have a chance of producing something productive.

Fail to do the above and in my view the chances of ending up at the end of the day with SFA are a good deal higher. Been here a long time and the predominant thing that I've noted is that the critique has become more explicitly provocative - but no more effective (and I would argue a very good deal less potentially effective) - for that change.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

your comment might have been persuasive.
The people who want something in this instance are in direct opposition to those that can do something. so then what?

Maybe the lobbyists for unions have aligned interests, but with Rahm Emanual's Fuck the UAW" and Organized labor just flushed $10 million down the toilet remarks, I wouldn't say their clout is particularly heavy these days. It's not just hippies that they punch, it's the average working person.

The Obama picked Commission chairmen's report makes it so much more obvious. As Commissiom member Andy Stern's successor of the AFL-CIO, President Richard Trumka said, "The chairmen of the Deficit Commission just told working Americans to 'drop dead.' Especially in these tough economic times," Trumka said, it is, "unconscionable to be proposing cuts to the critical economic lifelines for working people, Social Security and Medicare."

You can call it shrill or immoderate, but you'll eventually find yourself on the wrong side of the argument.

...of an argument.

“And no one's kneecaps will be safe." ~ not-Richard Haass

...you always go to the frags first.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

eom

for the unemployment above 50%.

March 9th, 2009 the DJIA had dropped 54% to 6469.

The foreclosure rate during the Great Depression NEVER EXCEEDED 1.4%

good luck

repeated requests for links from the site's editors have been ignored.
but hey, at least he sounds as moderate and mellifluous as a used car salesman.

Obama may not have crafted the initial emergency measures associated with the collapse of the financial industry (as no one recalls he was not the pregeniter of TARP). But he did oversee and add to an amazing series of emergency measures that brought the US and west back from the brink of catastrophic decline that would have matched the Great Depression.

Oh ffs. I would respect the man if he had the cojones to flip the bird at bank interests, and I'd sacrifice my job on that; just as some people around me are losing their jobs. If Obama saved us from imminent disaster, so did every fellating Republican who agreed with him. Not that you're the Quizak Haderack or anything.

I have the book in front of me but no one can be faulted for spelling on that one. still, awesome Dune reference. Ive been reading through the extended series so I find myself noticing everyone's little homages and jokes across the net.

and tell me how we avoided this Great Depression #2. Because I think at best they pushed it back (and made it worse) by choosing the bankers over the banking system.

If you want an analogy, it's like taking a herion addict and dropping a ton of smack in their lap. In the short term they might seem better, but actually their addiction is getting worse. Once the smack runs out, not only are you back where you started, but it's actually worse as the habit was allowed to grow deeper from the last "cure".

Once the QE2 smack runs out and there is no more, tell me what a great job Obama did of "saving" us.

where SPK is using fact to define Obama as a Republican and the conservatives are using the color of his skin to define him as a socialist/muslim. Should we give both arguments equal weight?

We have a pragmatic centrist. His approach toward problems, identifying them and making tangible progress within the context of the political landscape and doing so without undue ideological baggage is the essence of progressive. Now SPK, what it is not is socialist, which is why you may be disapppointed.

But I can count on one hand the socialists out there I am aware of.