(Via Hot Air) Michael Tomasky, now that he is finished swallowing his gum from watching the Lightworker flail about like… someone who went from undistinguished state Senator to President of the United States in four short years, all the while learning not a darn thing… would like to offer the President a counter-narrative. The story, in a nutshell, is this: we inherited a total disaster, | Read More »
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?
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
There are two very simple questions that need to be asked over the next eighteen months. The first is, Are you better off than you were four years ago? If the answer is “Yes,” the second question is even more blunt: Really? How are you managing that? March ’07 March ’11 Unemployment Rate 4.40% 8.80% Gas price (per gallon) $2.56 $3.60 National Debt 8.84 trillion | Read More »
I feel sorry for Greg Mankiw: I really do. Here he is, living a life that allows him to place articles in the New York Times – which is not a bad place to be – and he publicly mucks it up by publishing a piece that crashes and burns on the first word of the title. The title is “How to Break Bread With | Read More »
It looked that way earlier in the day, and it’s now confirmed. The ‘deal’ will be that the White House ‘delays’ raising taxes for two more years in ‘exchange’ for getting a thirteen-month extension on unemployment benefits*. That last is problematical, but given the Democrats’ moral weakness thus far the GOP might still be able to keep pushing a little and get offsets in federal | Read More »
I have two observations on this passage by Walter Russell Mead highlighting the long-term problem that the Democrats are facing right now with regard to fiscal policy: …the only real economic policy today that has any chance of working in the United States today is to promote the emergence of small business. Many of those businesses will fail; some will become thriving though never large | Read More »
The White House is promising solid economic growth by the end of this year: White House Sees 3.5% Growth by Year-End, Exceeding Forecasts May 11 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration projected that the U.S. economy will expand at a 3.5 percent annual rate by year-end, a rebound that would be almost twice as strong as private forecasters expect. [snip] As early as the end of | Read More »
…for the first time since Gallup started asking the question.
Let me summarize Gibbs’ position, here: …we’re in better shape now than we were last year. Which is to say, we are better off than we were on September 15th, 2008, when the national debt was 9.63 trillion (it’s 10.98 trillion now), the unemployment rate was 6.1 (it’s 8.1 now), and the Dow was at 10,918 (it closed today at 7,217). Yes. We are doing | Read More »
I’m jealous of this line from the Sundries Shack (H/T The Other McCain): Today, the administration wheeled out a new option to add to its Repertoire of Incompetence: 5) Act Like John McCain. It’s in response to Christina Romer’s reversal of administration economic rhetoric from the far-off days of last week. Back then, the economy was fundamentally weak; now it’s fundamentally sound. As the AP | Read More »
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