Someone requested one of these. So, here’s an open thread. Talk about whatever you want. If you need a little juicing, start with this. I guess there is and upside to sitting on your ass all day watching CSI and Law & Order. You can devise really devious crimes.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Frum and Sprung are shrill.
Also, Chait has the same criticism of Obama’s speech as you
And austerity has flat-lined growth in the UK (almost literally)
When it comes to Frum I can only think “concern troll is concerned”.
I don’t doubt that there are honest people who are concerned about Obama’s presidency, mistakes being made, etc. I’m among them.
But I can’t consider Frum an honest judge of this. He’s clearly out to make space for a moderate “reasonable” Republican and right now Obama fills that space. So to make room he has to puncture Obama a bit.
So … “concern troll is concerned”.
That’s how I generally view him as well, but it doesn’t make his criticisms any less relevant.
This is really getting annoying, though:
“That’s not what happened!”
“Yes it was!”
“No, it happened like this!”
“Well let’s just not give our names so we can keep fighting over who wins the PR war.”
“Ok, that’s something we can agree on.”
Congress is getting overwhelmed with calls, emails and faxes since Obama asked people to contact their Congress critters.
For that reason alone, the speech was a success.
He was talking to people who don’t follow politics and he made sense.
The pundits are very unhappy when Obama speaks directly to the country. They get cut out of the process of telling us what he meant.
Too many unknown unknowns.
Now that Obama is leaving the negotiations to Congress, it would be nice if people placed the responsibility on Congress for whatever deal emerges.
But I’m sure it’s not going to happen that way.
Reid/Pelosi are negotiating this thing now. But invariably it will be Obama who will be blamed for “caving.”
Reid/Pelosi are negotiating this thing now.
And if you think the President isn’t updated every 30 minutes(or whatever), you are nuts. Also, they likely know what he’ll sign and won’t.
But you don’t know what the members of their caucus will vote for and what they won’t. And that, not Reid and Pelosi’s wishes or what the President wants is where it will be decided.
Well, I at least mentioned open threads. I guess that could be construed as a request 🙂
I remember a few years ago you had a few other people as front page posters here. Have you given any thought to expanding again? I don’t know what all goes into a decision like that (on either end) but I’d nominate TarheelDem for a FP slot, especially as election season heats up.
good suggestion, I second the nomination of TarheelDem. re: open threads, I’m not a big fan of them. I like the topics. ppl add an OT comment upon occasion.
You guys want to make me work. I will not run, and if drafted, I will not accept.
Working in the basement suits me just fine.
Fair enough. I didn’t know if you’d be interested or not, but thought I’d throw the idea out there. Your commentary is always well thought out and well written, and I think you’d make a good front pager. But if you prefer hanging out in the peanut gallery with us, I certainly can’t blame you for that!
Peanuts make the world work. I enjoy being a peanut.
well, if you enjoy raising our thread level average.
Why do I hear echoes of Strauss-Kahn in that NYT story you linked to?
I will call out the hypocrisy of white liberals whenever, wherever and
however the fuck need be. The MSNBC resident racist and xenophobic arsonist strikes again! http://weeseeyou.com/. Is it too much to ask “principled” white liberals like Katrina Vanden Heuvel to take a momentary break from playing the willing tool of Joe Scarborough in helping him divide and conquer Democrats to confront this bastard sitting right in front of her? I guess so because she couldn’t break one second from this morning’s ‘Obama is weak and unprincipled’ round table chorus that included Herald Ford, an outlandish centrist and serial political failure and finest buck dancer in the NE. I shouldn’t be surprised given that she and other white liberals already turned a blind eye–assuming they disagree but you never know– to Buchanan writing a couple of years ago that Black folks should thank whitey for saving our souls and giving us welfare. They both seem to want Barack Obama out of the White House, and not for different reasons I truly believe.
In the South, appearing to be stupid is one of the ways that white politicians fleece their opponents in negotiations.
So perpetuating the “Obama is weak” meme right now is not a bad thing to happen in terms of Obama’s negotiating. The truth will out soon enough.
And it’s not hypocrisy. You’re being polite. It’s reflexive racism that comes from white privilege and occurs whether they own it or not. The dangerous illusion for a white liberal (and I’ve been there in the 1960s and 1970s) is that you are somehow insulated from the influence of the racist culture that you are trying to change.
There are, in my estimation, two kinds of people in the US. Repentant racists and unrepentant racists. The culture still tends toward racism.
Be patient with us. Barack Obama’s future is not in our hands at all.
When you should start worrying is in 2012. There’s going to be some strange shit come down in the next six months. So take a deep breath and hold on tight. If we make it through that, there will be some opinions changed. If we don’t, we’re screwed anyway.