via Op-Ed Columnist – Obama’s Trust Problem – NYTimes.com.
Paul Krugman, Obama Political Enemy
NY Times op-ed columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is at it again. At a time when the President is at his most difficult moment since inauguration with the health care debate, Krugman goes on the attack.
He is attacking the President from the left again, not satisfied that we at least have a Democrat in the White House that has achieved much since arriving there a mere eight months ago. Examples? The right-wing Supreme Court ruled in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that it was okay that women get paid less than men and not be able to sue for it, and then Obama fixed that by signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Where was the kudos for Obama from Krugman? Crickets.
There have been many accomplishments in Obama’s eight months in office.
Obama inherited a nation whose economy was in free-fall and he has been able to get the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed with no Republican support in the House and very little in the Senate. He has also passed a budget plan that puts emphasis on eliminating fraud and abuse and overall fiscal responsibility after inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush.
Here are just a few more examples of President Obama’s accomplishments from the Huffington Post:
- $19 billion in the stimulus package to help implement an electronic medical record system
- innovative online messaging by streaming every press conference and hosting question-and-answer sessions with the president, and publishing the first White House blog
- Obama Department of Transportation has approved 2,500 highway projects and they have move $9.3 billion out the door since February in stimulus money
- $2,500 tax credit to help offset the cost of tuition (among other expenses) for those seeking a college education. Nearly five million families are expected to save $9 billion
- $2 billion in stimulus cash for advanced batteries systems for electric and hybrid cars
- CARS, the Car Allowance Rebate System – cash for clunkers
- the DOJ secured $2 billion for Byrne Grants, which funds anti-gang and anti-gun task forces and is expected to have huge impacts in urban gang control
You’d think we’d be hearing from Krugman about some, at least one, of these accomplishments. But hell no. Krugman is once again baselessly attacking a President that has bent over backwards to create a bipartisan atmosphere in Washington. He has reached out to the Republicans time and again only to have that door slammed in his face. Leftist economists like Krugman accuse him of appeasement and then attack him personally as a weakling.
It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.
Krugman is critical of not only the President’s policies, but insultingly talks of his moral failings and his lack of clarity. Notice how he starts this next paragraph with the issue of “health care itself”, then immediately slides into a personal barrage, forgetting health care itself, but using the health care issue to wedge in his personal attack on Obama insinuating that the President has somehow become “uninspiring” and now he is nothing more than a “dry technocrat”:
On the issue of health care itself, the inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat who talks of “bending the curve” but has only recently begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama’s explanations of his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a simple, pithy formula; his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.
If Krugman is so worked up about Obama’s presidency at this point after only eight months, then a year from now Krugman will be a total wreck. He is the epitome of the enemy that should be kept closer. Yes, Krugman is the enemy, it matters not if he is from the far left. He still supplies the right with ammunition against his fellow Democratic president. With supporters like Krugman, who needs the right, right?
Krugman, the high and mighty Nobel Prize winner, sucks.
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A Second Look | Politico Eats Crow
via Democrats plan hundreds of reform rallies – Chris Frates – POLITICO.com.
It isn’t over until it’s over.
That’s what I hate about Politico and other self-appointed super-specialist pundits who think they have all the answers. They were all absolutely sure that the Republicans had won the August debate and the word wars. They denied the reports of the fake grassroots Astroturf town hall protests funded and coordinated by PAC groups working for big Pharma and big insurance.
Well, the progressives are fighting back now, to the surprise of Politico and their self-anointed joy-stick pen jockeys who will bend in any which direction with any wind. And who exactly was “thunderstruck”? Not any of my representatives. And if you don’t believe that these protesters are bought and paid for, let Rachel clue you in on exactly who is behind this charade.
But they, the Politico pundits are stuck, see, they have to report that the Dems are fighting back and they have to back up a little from the gall-darned sureness of the astroturfers and the birthers and deathers winning the day.
I wonder how it felt having bet on the wrong side and having to print that the public option, which they swore was dead and gone by the intensity of the uproar, is back and back strong.