Memo to Paul: Because he is a Freepucking Uckpublican

Dear Doctor Krugman

Krugman asks why nothing on health care from Obama. Do we really need to answer this question? Obama's priorities are:

1. Middle class tax cut (check)
2. War in Afghanistan (escalating!)
3. Slash Social Security and Medicare (summit on "entitlement reform" coming soon!)

Obama is what the Village wanted Bush to be, a "compassionate conservative." He's a Republican who doesn't hate gay people any more than is absolutely necessary for political purposes. Thus he can give on things like torture, Gitmo, the global gag rule, that is: money for contraception in other countries, just not in the US. The little things buy liberal love: equal pay, some union gifts. These small things get liberal votes for continuing to dismantle the New Deal.

In fact, Obama has already taken his steps on health care: computerize records, SCHIPS, and preparing to slash Medicare. What does this amount to? First the compassionate part: "cover the kids." The party line is that universalization will happen in steps. We covered the old people, we cover the kids, and it will get to everyone. Now we covered the old people in 1965, we passed SCHIPS this year. At this rate America will have universal health coverage around the same time as Nepal or the Congo.

But the real result of this is to put everyone in the system, so that a mandate will be able to find them. Their kids will be covered, their records will be on file, and they won't be able to get medicaid and medicare without paying in.

That's The Plan Paul: force everyone to pay in, so that any damage to insurance company profits is completely impossible.

Life under Obama is not going to be as nasty as life under Bush, but Obama is not a liberal except in so far as he needs to buy a few votes. However, this is already costing him politically. He started with 80% transition approval numbers. He reached 75% in early January. He came in to office with 70%. He is now at 65%. The trendline is straight down, because it wasn't approval it was preproval. Not surprisingly the very same small things that get him strong support among Democrats, are rapidly eroding his support among Republicans. Republicans now approve of Obama at the rate of 35% or so.

This isn't a problem politically: a 65% President has a broad mandate to pursue policies and get things done. But Obama's support is now entirely from the left, and from about half of the center. That's a very workable coalition, but it won't be workable when the collapse point comes. He's got some Friedman Units as Liberals tell themselves "he has a secret liberal plan! He's black I tell you, that means he is liberal." What his race has to do with his politics is beyond me, I have to leave that to more connected people than I am, because I've known plenty of African-Americans who are in the mold of Alan Keyes, Lynn Swann, Clarence Thomas, and so on.

Should he be doing something about health care? Of course. He just missed a huge chance in the stimulus bill to put in projects that would have made universalization easier and cheaper. What better time to train people than in a recession when jobs are scarce? What better time to build facilities? But it was decided that corporate tax breaks and "a middle class tax cut" were more important.

Paul, I know that you and lots of other people want to have influence with President Obama, and you are being nice. Now you know why people kissed up to Bush at the same time you were looking at his numbers and seeing that it didn't add up. That is where I am now: Obama's numbers only add up if you assume that he is right of center "centrist" willing to give on small liberal issues, but is basically a Reaganite on economics, who is most concerned with protecting America's financial system, and who believes in military power above domestic investment.

My reading of Obama, which others vehemently disagree with, but cannot point to a single counter-example of, is that he learns everything the hard way, he does not change his mind until there has been a catastrophic failure of his hardened ideology, and even then it is a minimal change. Consider the history of his support for stimulus. Or his proposals on health care. Consider his repetition of bi-partisanship, and then he can't even deliver a single Republican vote for a pre-compromised stimulus bill. And yet, there is no sign that he is going to change direction.

Obama is also not a progressive, nor is he really digital. Much is made of his blackberry, but in terms of governing method, Obama is a top downer. That means a few guys make decisions, and then they figure out how to sell them. They want information from the bottom, but they don't change direction based on an interactive sense of the bottom. This top down style is all 20th century. Obama's world has no room for any center of power but Obama. It is about control. He's just willing to use new tools to get that control, and he spends more money on them. Obama is a pyramid President: he sits at the top of that pyramid, and everyone marches to it. The problem with the pyramid is that it is too expensive to run. Obama is going to have to gut the rest of the economy to keep our very expensive financial pyramid in place, and he is sucking virtually every loose quarter in the left to fund his political pyramid. Obama is no different in political organization than George W. Bush, merely more technologically savvy. He is not the web, he is TV 2.0 - the paradigm that the pop era power structure has wanted to get to for some time. Here it is, in color, High Definition, with surround sound.

Obama is a one termer, because the Republican Party will never go along with sensible policies, and Obama is going to erode his own political base. Obama is like the invasion of Iraq: almost no one has the guts to defy him from his own side, and yet privately, many people are angry at how far to the right he has run. This hasn't shown up in polling yet, but it is waiting for his first major stumble. It comes out when he shafts some group on some small thing, like contraception for poor women in the stimulus bill.

The other reality is that while people want Obama to work out, they don't like his actual policies. The support for escalation in Afghanistan, is poor, and almost non-existent among the young. The support for his version of health care, ranks below other ideas. The support for his "middle class tax cut" is also thin and below more spending. Taken individually Obama is a 51% President at best - and that is where his approval number will reach at the cross roads some 3 years from now, because basically, that's what happens to almost every President. At that point, the bad decisions he is making now, with the resurgence of TARP - that is the government taking on toxic assets - will haunt him. I remember you talking about the idiocy of the theory behind buying up toxic waste on the taxpayer dime. Or lack of theory more exactly. Well there it is.

The most important principle of Obama is "no rich people shall come to harm." Sure they have to give up some bonuses and private jets, but everyone who was in charge, will stay in charge. The people, get the responsibility and the sacrifice, and the loose change from the bankers as they stride boldly to their jobs.

You want a liberal President. The problem is that America needed to deal with it's 1960s racial and sexual angst. The contest between Hillary and Obama was reduced to gender versus race. In the end the administration's economic team is packed with Clintonians and Hamilton Project graduates. The reason so many in the blogosphere are trashing Bob Rubin is that he is safely out of the hallowed circle and out of power, but really, they are trashing Clintonomics and the financial play.

The way the campaign was run XX v Melonin was hardly what I would call a particularly strong way of determining who is liberal. Since the Democratic Party chose to nominate it's most conservative major candidate, there was no hope for a liberal in the White House, there is no hope for liberal policies from this White House beyond not being mean and crazy, and people need to just accept that it is going to be another 12 to 16 years before we get another crack at it.

Sorry, your generation screwed up, and there isn't anything to be done about it.

Stirling Newberry January 30, 2009 - 7:19am

Stirling Newberry's diary | printer friendly version |

( categories: Miscellany )

Well, thanks for the cogent analysis.

An odd thing that it took a slow boat like me decades to learn was that idealizing blacks is just another form of stereotyping. When we really take Martin King's call seriously, to judge people by the content of their character, things do make more sense.

What would you say this will mean in daily quality of life terms for those of us who will hit the Social Security and Medicare eligibility window about the time Obama's one and only term ends?

someofparts January 30, 2009 - 11:22am

Depends

What would you say this will mean in daily quality of life terms for those of us who will hit the Social Security and Medicare eligibility window about the time Obama's one and only term ends?

It all depends on how exercised folks get over this. After all, SS and Medicare are the third-rail of US politics, the boomers are getting set to retire, and they just had their retirement heisted. Will they sit by and let Obama and the Dems finish them off? I don't think so.

There is a proverbial shit storm in the making over this. Somehow, I don't think that many people who've put quite a bit into the payroll tax will think it is a good idea to bailout the elite with SS and Medicare.

This is going to be fought at the congressional level, especially the House. Representatives are going to feel the heat, because if they vote the wrong way they face a primary challenge even in strong Dem districts. I don't think that there are many "safe" votes on this hot button issue.

Plus, it will cost Obama politically and could be a major factor in losing in 2012.

tjfxh January 30, 2009 - 12:06pm

Stirling, you're over-generalizing

In the contest for President, we really had 3 choices after March of this year: McCain, Clinton, and Obama. Out of those three (and only those three), which is the best choice? Yup, that's your president. Is he the best possible choice? Obviously not, but would Clinton or McCain have been any better?

People voted for Obama because really they had very little choice. He might have waxed on about hope and peace and yadda-yadda, I haven't much proof outside of the blithering village fools that anyone bought into that malarchy. He could have run on donuts and coffee and likely squirmed out a victory over McCain.

As far as people's hopes and dreams now, well that's just human nature. Many folks are on the verge of financial death row, any thing to believe in is better than nothing. Doesn't matter how many inches of dust is on the governor's phone in the execution room, every condemned prisoner stares at it just as intently as the others and prays.

Like I've said elsewhere, people do have another solution to this problem. It's as old as the pyramids of power you describe above, it's called pitchforks and torches. Americans don't even need to secure any firearms to get it rolling, it's the last thing of value many of them will own. That's a grim outlook but it's true. Americans aren't going to wait another 20 years for a shot at the brass ring, they are giving DC one last shot to get it right before they give up on the village altogether.

There won't be a Bush III, at least not one that actually makes it through his term in office. We can't afford it.

zot23 January 30, 2009 - 12:25pm

I disagree

Since Obama brought Clintonites back and Hillary had a better healthcare plan and she is not black, she would have been a better choice. The left had no problem watching every move Hillary made and excoriating her for moves they did not like. Not so Barack. The left has been very uncritical of him. Is it ok for the left to criticize women but not blacks? I would say the evidence for that is apparent. It is certainly ok to criticize a woman if her surname is Clinton.
The lesson in all of this is we need to hold Obama to the same scrutiny we would Clinton. Glad to see Stirling break the taboo.

peon January 30, 2009 - 2:07pm

Hindsight is always 20/20

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

adrena January 30, 2009 - 2:41pm

Lots of people got this right from the start, including Krugman

Liberals/progressives swooned over Obama's rhetoric without wanting to hear substance. What substance there was, if one bothered looking, revealed that Obama was one of the most conservative Dem primary candidates. In fact, I can't think of anyone in the lineup of the first debates to the right of him. The whole post-partisan, bring the GOP along, should have been the tip off. It didn't fool Krugman, and he took heat from the progressives for dissing Obama.

I think there was a subtle (reverse) racism involved in the case of many liberals/progressives. HRC was obviously a card carrying member of the Village. Most people apparently believed that a black person couldn't be, because they erroneously thought that a black person would not be admitted as a member of this eilte club, where women are scarce, let alone blacks. Well, times have changed. Not only could a black person be elected president of the US but could also be a member of the Village in good standing.

Funny that the GOP tried to make Obama out as an elitist. He apparently didn't fool the rednecks.

tjfxh January 30, 2009 - 3:02pm

Who was fooled?

Most folks on Daily Kos knew that Obama wasn't nearly as progressive as Edwards or even Hillary. They didn't care. He's smart, capable, and inspiring.

I don't think his conservative leaning will come as much of a shock to those who were paying attention during the primaries.

Same about Bill Clinton. His fiscal policies were slightly to the right of Regan... but Clinton was still an OK president overall.

--
http://bexhuff.com
Of COURSE you can trust the US Government! Just ask the Indians.

bex January 30, 2009 - 5:40pm

I know a lot of people who are still fooled

Daily Kos is not a liberal/progressive site, if you hadn't noticed. Probably why I don't post much there anymore.

Bill Clinton was one of the best modern Republican presidents.

tjfxh January 30, 2009 - 7:18pm

It is a democratic site

but the party line on Obama is that he is pragmatic and a closet liberal. One of the tests of this is what the final bill looks like, if it is packed with yet more tax cuts, then that is a good sign he is a round heel, and it will be a long four years of selling out.

Stirling Newberry January 30, 2009 - 10:05pm

A point against Hillary

She ran a lousy, arrogant campaign, and Obama caught her flatfooted. Not an admirable quality in a would-be president. Which is not to say that I disagree with the basic Obama comments listed above; I didn't particularly support either of them, after the guy I liked for the job turned out to be a lying idiot.

Also, someone said Obama's going to be a one-termer. That's certainly possible, -if- the GOP can scrape together enough brains and not push Sarah Palin in America's face again. Patreous is the one to watch out for..

geoduck January 30, 2009 - 3:41pm

It won't be question of the GOP winning But Obama losing

I don't think that the GOP can win outright. It will be a matter of Obama losing and whoever the GOP candidate happens to be winning by default.

That's what I'm concerned about, since Rush is now running the GOP. Think it can't happen? We'll see.

tjfxh January 30, 2009 - 4:06pm

No. Not a lying 'idiot' :)

a lying adulterer who fathered an illegitimate child with a goofy old hippie lady who sat around calling him Gandhi.

Scotjen61 January 30, 2009 - 4:07pm

He was both..

An adulterer -and- an idiot, the latter for evidently thinking he wouldn't get caught being the former.

geoduck January 30, 2009 - 5:43pm

Ummmm...???

I'm way lost here. Who? Ghandi? Goofy Old Hippie Lady? 9/11? Huh?

“The Playboy reader invites a female acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” - Hugh Hefner

Tonsure Wimple January 31, 2009 - 4:38am

John Edwards

{no text}

geoduck January 31, 2009 - 8:31pm

hahahahaha

It's been ten freakin days!! Anyone surprised the ECONOMY is a priority right now??

He is somehow supposed to REFORM HEALTHCARE, an entity that is what something like 20% of the US economy? Give me a break. He has brought in some of the top minds in the healthcare field to work this through much to joy of those who understand the issues.

The plan as they lay it out is, Universal health care that builds on the existing health care system, using existing providers, doctors, and plans. The plan for those with healthcare does not change, except costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

In another seven days folks are going to be: Its been over two weeks and Obama has not SOLVED the Middle East Crisis!!!!

I never cease to be amazed with self righteous whining - a high art form that has truly become the American Way. A nation that borrows against their house to buy stuff they don't make, and then to wait for someone to take care of them. A nation of obese soda swillers who want to pay nothing for their diabetes treatment.

Scotjen61 January 30, 2009 - 4:05pm

In fairness to Krugman

he is sending a message. Progressives need to be sending strong messages to both the Obama administration and Congress, or there will be little change that liberals/progressives can believe in after the dealing is done.

tjfxh January 30, 2009 - 4:09pm

there's a lot of that whamBam going round right now on the web.

Krugman, whose blog is full of sense, seems to do little other than show his visceral dislike of Obama (evident all of last year) in his columns.

I think 'Bam is just a little slow 'cause he's having to do things by hand while his Blackberry's being secured:-)

some of us still like ya, 'Bam geek(picture @the Onion)

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

nymole January 30, 2009 - 5:08pm

It is amazing

How one can substitute the word Bush, for Obama, in the obots comments and get material remarkably like Bush in '01-'05

"he won the election."
"I like him."
"Have a nice cup of shut the fuck up and wait 8 years to see how this all turns out."

We've had government by sitting on your butt and having a beer. How'd that work out for you?

Stirling Newberry January 30, 2009 - 5:20pm

sorry, wrong number

Anyone's welcome to eight more years of Cheney to see if there's no difference.

"How'd that work out for you?"
Patronizing?- wow, way too subtle for me:-) !

eom.

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

nymole January 31, 2009 - 9:01am

More fact free noise from the obots

The nonsense you are spewing has already been dealt with.

Stirling Newberry January 30, 2009 - 5:18pm

The optimist and the pessimist

share the inability to perceive the world as it is.

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Escher Sketch January 30, 2009 - 11:53pm

:) eom

_{"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." -Henry David Thoreau}

Tina January 31, 2009 - 1:29am

Fallacy of objectivism

Cognitive scientists and philosophers (Ludwig Wittgenstein) have showed that "the world as it is" is a fiction of rationalism. Everyone sees from a perspective, and that perspective is determined mostly unconsciously. While it is possible to "correct" mistaken perspectives to some degree — that's what philosophy, scientific methodology and applied math(like statistics) are about — there is a great deal that we know we do not know and potentially a great deal that we do not know that we do not know (e.g., hidden assumption).

Yet, there is also some truth in the notion that the optimist and pessimist live in different worlds, because one's worldview is "colored" by norms (values, preferences, emotional biases, etc.). Cognitive science has further shown that it is not possible to divorce "reason" from "passion" because human being are embodied and think with their brains. The brain inextricably combines these factors in the process of generating the metaphor we use to think. Thinking and feeling are not separate, nor are they entirely separable.

[See What Is Philosophy? (And Why You Should Care) by Thomas James Hickey, Ph.D. (2009). Free PDF download. See also George Lakoff's Thinking Points, also a free PDF download.

tjfxh January 31, 2009 - 12:09pm

Actually, what I just paraphrased is a Zen maxim,

which is about as far divorced from the "fiction of rationalism" as you can get. They also say "the intelligent man proud of his intelligence is the condemned man proud of his spacious cell".

Yet, there is also some truth in the notion that the optimist and pessimist live in different worlds, because one's worldview is "colored" by norms (values, preferences, emotional biases, etc.). Cognitive science has further shown that it is not possible to divorce "reason" from "passion" because human being are embodied and think with their brains. The brain inextricably combines these factors in the process of generating the metaphor we use to think. Thinking and feeling are not separate, nor are they entirely separable.

Intensive meditation is now shown to physically reshape the brain. Until I see Western assertions of what the mind can and cannot do tested by applying the same studies to folks like those monks (the self-modification of their physical brains is only now being discovered by Western science), they have little more value as absolutes than holding up a picture of a lot full of rusted, junked cars and asserting "thus cars can't be fixed" does.

In short, cognitive science is very good at throwing up assertions that are valid viewed through a narrow lens representing its limited sphere of experience.

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Escher Sketch January 31, 2009 - 12:30pm

Spiritual Practices

This is true. I have been meditating for over thirty years and am personally familiar with this. Japanese zen translieterates Chinese ch'an, which transliterates Sakrit dhyana. There are imperfectly rendered into English as "meditation," because "meditation" implies thinking, and they imply the attenuation of mental activity. It would be better to call them transcendental meditation in contrast to ruminative meditation.

Different methods of transcendental meditation are different methods for attenuating mental activity. Transcendental Meditation as taught under the auspices of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is a particular type of transcendental meditation. Even in ch'an/zen, there are different schools There are similar practices in other wisdom traditions. Meditation is now gaining ground around the world as its benefits are being understood scientifically in terms of better physical health, emotional well-being, and enhanced functioning.

What research is showing is that regular long-term practice of various forms of meditation leads to measurable physiological and neurological changes that correlation to subjective reports and observed behaviors. BTW, closed eye meditation is not the only form of effective meditation. There are many spiritual practices that can be done in activity. In fact, the most powerful spiritual practice is love, but, even though it is the simplest, it is far from the easiest.

However, until as significant number of people adopt such practices at an early age, the world is going to continue to be the way it is, that is, populated by unidimensional people, and cognitive science is going to base its principal conclusion on them.

The most advanced type of this unidimensional thinking is scientific materialism. However, materialism is simply a philosophical presupposition and not a very good one at that. Religion is a faint shadow of multi-dimensional being in a unidimensional mind. The controversy between these factors is doomed to failure because it is unidimensional and cannot escape its apparent contradictions, which turn out to be paradox (an intellectual point of Zen, if there can be said to be one).

tjfxh January 31, 2009 - 1:09pm

A famous old Brit "ordinary language" take on this

Wittgenstein: "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over In Silence"

J.L. Austin (apocryphal): "But we can hum it"

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

nymole January 31, 2009 - 1:21pm

Did my dissertation on Witt

Witt was a mystic whose work is sometimes compared with Buddhism.

HisTractatus saying: "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over In Silence" echoes the Tao Te Ching admonition: "Those who know don't say, and those that say, don't know."

Wittgenstein's point in the Tractatus was that descriptive language, whose epitome is science, is a "topological" representation of how thing stand in the world using logical constructs. Therefore, explanation is limited to phenomena. What we can speak about descriptively is therefore limited to the material/empirical/phenomenological "world." The "self" is not 'in the world" in this sense other than as empirical self. Therefore, it cannot be described or explained. It falls into the mystical. Buddhists calls this "not-self."

Austin is right that we can "hum" it. The mystics point toward something that they report as being valuable in their experience, and the masters teach means to replicate this experience, whose nature is ineffable. It can only be expressed negatively (nondual) or through superlation (transcendental self). Neither of these expressions say anything that adds to one's own experience without first pursuing the methodology for acquiring the experience.

tjfxh January 31, 2009 - 1:41pm

I understand

(I think)

I also did three years on Wittgenstein, much good it did me later on in computers:-)

There's a later mostly ad hominem that Wittgenstein may have had what we now tag as a form of Asperger's. I wonder how many mystics over the ages could be put on that list?

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

nymole January 31, 2009 - 2:30pm

Mystics and Madmen

According to Meher Baba, some mystics cannot be distinguished from mad people other than by someone whose awareness is expanded. A book was written about this phenomenon by William Donkin, a British physician who was a close disciple of Meher Baba. It is called The Wayfarers and is available for free PDF download here.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was certainly not a mad person, but he was deeply troubled in some ways, perhaps as a result of his experiences in WWI, or it may have had an organic cause like Asperger's. While I have not read the argument, I rather doubt that such a diagnosis could be established definitively without personal contact. (Autism and Creativity: Is there a Link between Autism in Men and Exceptional Ability? McClure BMJ.2004; 328: 1139)

This psychological affliction under which he labored did not overshadow his brilliance; however, and he was clearly a multi-dimensional person in that he was operating way out of the box.

When I say he was a mystic, I am speaking broadly. There are many levels. I doubt that he was in an advanced state of consciousness as technically defined.

tjfxh January 31, 2009 - 3:34pm

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Memo to Paul: Because he is a Freepucking Uckpublican

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