Tag: economy

#rsrh Shorter Mark Steyn: We don’t have the money.

This NRO post is being linked in a bunch of places, so let me add to the chorus: it’s depressing, but frightening in its possible prescience.  Steyn’s point really does boil down to this: we don’t have the money, we’re not going to get the money any time soon, and our political class is running out of road on which they can kick this particular can.

Steyn does have the luxury of not having to operate inside the American political system, though.  And while I know that it sucks to have to choose between ‘bad’ and ‘worse,’ history since January 2007 should show even the most rigorous partisan purist what happens when you let the American people get conned into choosing ‘worse.’  That we let them get conned is, of course, a personal failure on many people’s part, including mine: clearly those of us fighting in 2006 or 2008 were not influential enough or articulate enough or energetic enough back then to stop the avalanche.

Or perhaps we were just not numerous enough.  One hopes that’s the answer, at least…

Moe Lane

#rsrh QotD, Wow. *Vicious.* edition.

This is a couple of days old, but it is still just a downright rude thing to say about Megan McArdle:

It is nearly a cardinal rule of American politics that if Megan McArdle likes your policy plan, it will go down in the Senate 95-0, and end with a fumbling recantation on Meet the Press.

…even if it was actually said by, well, Megan McArdle.

Read the whole thing, by the way.

The Democrats’ new laser-like focus on jobs… HEY!

Stop LAUGHING!

Hey, guess what? The Democrats plan to focus on jobs! (Via Ace of Spades)  Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… what, you have?

A lot?

Are you sure?

Continue reading The Democrats’ new laser-like focus on jobs… HEY!

Why there is no left-populist movement.

Peter Beinart doesn’t understand why the Tea Party gets to be the populist movement transforming American politics, instead of whatever latest cargo cult on the Left is these days.  In the spirit of bipartisanship – with ‘bipartisanship’ being defined as ‘kicking progressives in the teeth for the amusement of the crowd’ – I shall deign to explain things for him, hardline progressives, and everyone else with cognitive disabilities.

Yes, this is going to be one of those kinds of posts. Continue reading Why there is no left-populist movement.

#rsrh Andrew Klavan: The Birds, the Bees, and the Free Market.

Regretfully, little lessons like this seem to be necessary.

I know, I know: this sort of thing shouldn’t have to be taught by outsiders… but apparently you can’t expect the parents to teach this stuff to their own kids these days, and if we expect them to grow up to be anything like responsible adults, there’s kind of an obligation to make sure of that.  There’s far too much ignorance and just plain bad information out there on the subject already, and it won’t get better on its own…

E.J. Dionne finds an acorn on debt ceiling.

Ignore the rest of his article on the ongoing debt ceiling controversy – Dionne is the kind of person who is comfortable trying to portray House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as being some kind of Machiavellian mastermind running a shadowy conspiracy to control the Republican party behind the scenes, if you know what I mean* – but as Mickey Kaus notes, Dionne’s got a good (if probably unintended) idea here for putting President Obama on the hot seat:

…Cantor takes every domestic spending cut that was discussed as part of the negotiations with Vice President Joe Biden, declares that the administration has blessed them, and packages them together for a vote.

Dionne calls this a worrisome scenario: I call it a good idea that hasn’t really been assessed and discussed yet by us folks over here at the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, which is why I’m highlighting it now.

Thanks, E.J. Dionne!  If this works out, maybe we’ll buy you a fruit basket or something.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*And I think that you do.

#rsrh Shorter Atlantic: Obama not man enough…

…to fix the economy.

I paraphrase: they’re trotting out a variant of  ‘the country’s problems are too much for any one man’ line that Democrats love to use whenever one of their guys is in office and something’s gone wrong.  At some point these folks will realize that all this does is reinforce the meme that “Democratic pundits” = “whiners”…

…right?

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh Shorter Atlantic: Obama not man enough…

The Infamous, Updated, Romer-Bernstein Chart.

Via James Pethokoukis comes an updated version of the graph (originally created by Obama’s economic advisers Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein) that has been succinctly countering (for years) any and all attempts to argue that the misnamed ‘stimulus’ worked:

For those without access to the picture: it’s a modified version of this graph, which was used to sell the idea that with a stimulus, unemployment would not rise above 8%; and that without a stimulus, unemployment might rise all the way to… 9%!!!!!! That last sentence is what usually gets emphasized in these discussions, and for good reason (it was a nitwit prediction).  But I’d [like] to note that according to the original chart we were forecast to be having about 6.5% or so unemployment at this point, with that number dropping rapidly.  For that matter, I’d also like to note that neither Romer nor Bernstein are currently employed by the Obama administration; they were more or less booted as quietly as could be managed, once the magnitude of the stimulus disaster was fully grasped by the White House.

Alas, the damage has been done.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh QotD, Patience, Grasshopper edition.

Fred Barnes, who is perhaps just a bit restive waiting for the 2012 election cycle to really start:

The economy is languishing, joblessness is stuck at an abnormally high rate, the housing market remains in decline, the deficit will exceed $1 trillion for every year of Obama’s term, the national debt is north of $14 trillion, and markets are anxious. There’s a connection between our troubled economy and Barack Obama. If Republicans drive home the link, they’ll oust him and win big in 2012. It’s as simple as that.

And if it was June of 2012 and we hadn’t started this, I’d be concerned – but, contrary to popular belief (and perhaps egged on by the pundit class*), it’s early days yet.  Heck, we don’t even have a nominee. Because the election’s not for another year and a half, and all that.

Moe Lane

*Ahem.