seriously, I do NOT want to wait for the obligatory 11/7/12 post mortems on just what went wrong with Team Obama – someone tell me now who in blue blazes is doing the talking in their War Room

the most apolitical folks I know (and there’s a lot of ‘em) know this even without that incredible graph

what in bloody hell . . .

thanks Jon

Obama’s mission is to impoverish the many who are already struggling and to enrich the already rich. He has shown this time and time again. My only question is who sits on his board of handlers.

Obama’s job one is ending the New Deal. Getting re-elected would just be icing on the cake; nice and tasty, but not really necessary if the cake is moist enough.

Obamas strongest support as a % of population is the black community. It would be interesting to see how they view the current economy.

The really distressing thing about all of this is we don’t seem to have an adult in the room anywhere, either among the republicans or the WH. The candidates on the right are just crazy. Bachman wanted to default and she promises to end medicare and SS. Obama wants to improve the patents law. Meanwhile we are around 25 million under or unemployed. Did anyone see the headline in Time mag this week?

Good luck with that, according to Susie Madrak at Crooksandliars.com, the president is poised to announce some more weak, ineffectual policies aimed at unemployment. A White House advisor says to the progressive economists advising to go bigger they don’t believe they can get a large package thru Congress. So its not they’er unaware of the size and scope of the problem, they just too weak and impotent to take on the right to push it through, or at least to try and fail, and show the people who’s stopping his jobs agenda. PATHETIC!

That is one of the more distrubing sights out there: a President scared shitless to say anything for fear the Thugs will say nasty things about him.

It’s ALWAYS the economy, Stupid. Strong analysis as usual, Jon. But will Obama actually use the awesome powers of the Presidency to try to improve people’s lives?

My Magic Eight Ball tells me the outlook is dim.

Nice points, all, but we speak with the assumption that Obama is trying to improve the nation, rather than carve it up for the Cannibals. This only helps O, giving him a few minutes to step away from the corpus and sharpen his long knives.

across the pond

The rioters and looters are merely imitating the corporate aristocracy and political leaders.
But David Harvey says it much better:

“But my guess is that every street rioter knows exactly what I mean. They are only doing what everyone else is doing, though in a different way – more blatently and visibly in the streets. Thatcherism unchained the feral instincts of capitalism (the “animal spirits” of the entreprenuer they coyly named it) and nothing has transpired to curb them since. Slash and burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere.”

So, the working class has a slash and burn program of their own, surprise, surprise, surprise.

I find it so odd that a man who can’t a verbal hit got into politics at all. Makes no sense.

It gives a bad name to the old farming style of slash and burn that could be done sustainably.

Obama and the dims lost the game when they bought into the argument about debt and the deficit, like the world is coming to an end if we don’t cut spending. Hell, O never even threatened to use other extraordinary measures, too much of a fucking gentleman, I guess.

There are things that Obama can do all by himself and conditions certainly warrant that now … but that’s not his style. So, forgetaboutit.

Maybe once his numbers go down to 10% approval?

Saw a crawler on Huffington Post earlier saying all past Presidents with numbers this bad either didn’t run for re-election or lost re-election.

The people just need to be nudged, Cass Sunstein style, into believing that their lives have improved.

We were down in the Ozarks over the weekend and in one of the little towns we passed a business with the following on its marquee: the first side “Yes Obama can ruin this country!” and on the back it said, “Honk if you think Obama is hurting our country.” I leaned over from the passenger seat and honked the car as we went by.

That chart is just freaky.

Confidence! Like Obama was just sayin’ in Missouri this afternoon! Confidence! It’s a greaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat country!

I really want to hear some reporters asking candidates how many people they are hiring to sockpuppet for them online.

Nice piece.
I see what you are saying. And yes of course it has ties.

But the scientist in me must ask for a proper correlation. Ie. statistics comparing the two.

Now I’m not saying that there’s no correlation. Just would like that effort done. Obviously not by you. And obviously not Gallop.

That would be enlightening and probably unlikely. We are getting quite a few here.

I have been wondering about that lately as well. It’s actually creeping me out.

Jon, the red line on the chart suggests that there’s been a DROP over the last couple of weeks in the number of people who think the economy’s getting worse.

Is that right, or am I reading it incorrectly?

Administration officials have increasingly concluded that the best thing Mr. Obama can do for the economy may be winning a second term, with a mandate to advance his ideas on deficit reduction, entitlement changes, housing policy and other issues.

He’s his own worst enemy.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine

The Decline and Fall of Europe.
Might as well just have said free market-ish predatory capitalism instead of Europe.

The only one with worse numbers was Carter, and we all know what happened to him.

We’re one of the only places I know that really tries to screen for that kind of stuff, but we’re seeing a lot more strange activity these days.

The tactical errors that Plouffe and Pfeiffer are making are astounding. For all their faults, Rove and Bush had the strategy down pat. Firstly, elections are decided by motivating bases, pure and simple. For all the blustering about America being a conservative country, the numbers and facts simply do not bear this out. America, if anything, is a moderately liberal country, based on polling and economic demographics. It’s imperative that the liberal party bring out the liberal base, and conversely that the conservative party bring out the conservative base if either party hopes to win. Bush and Rove understood this well, and spent a great deal of time figuring out ways to motivate and reach their bases. For example, they were able to calculate with mathematical precision that if one owned a snowmobile, there was a 90% chance one would be voting Republican if one made it to the polls. It will take this level of statistical rigor and strategic calculation if Obushma hopes to win in 2012.

But he’s already given away the game, shoving Satan sandwiches and fistfuls of feces into the mouth of his base, and then seething with anger when anyone fathoms to question or protest these stunning displays of betrayal, cowardice and idiocy. Obushma deserves to go down the toilet if the greatest advisers he can employ are goons like Pfeiffer and Plouffe, who lack even a basic understanding of electoral politics in America, let alone the fact that he’s been behaving like a spineless coward when dealing with the Baggers and Wall Street elites.

Looks to me like perhaps the last two weeks made some people think the economy was more worse than they had been thinking and the numbers are coming back into closer relationship with Obama’s again as the *extra* fears about the economy dissipate. Could be …

It has gone from 80 to 76 over a few days. That is still a pretty normal range of fluctuation, but the stock market not dropping daily probably is making a few people more comfortable.

can’t find you on twitter – how are you spelling your handle ?

I read something about dKos being infested … or something. That I heard that could mean just about anything and I cannot recall where I heard/read that. It might be an excuse (by whom and for whom I could only guess) for the remaining pro-Obama climate over there though.

Yeah, that’s what I am thinking. People were extra freaked out for a few days. Well, I was, for sure. :-))

What ARE we going to do, though? Is there still to come some more discussion via webinar or threads about strategy for 2012? Primary, third party, write-in….I still don’t know what to support. I know I do not want to give time, money or votes to either of the two parties.

There are so many progressive groups out there and so many thoughtful and passionate people here at the Lake. I wish there was some cohesive message and strategy that could bring us together and focus our energy and ideas.

I am waiting for MarkH to show up to share his ‘talking point’ about how we can’t do anything like the WPA or the CCC or CETA because those ‘wiley weepubwiccans won’t wet us.’

WPA, CCA, executive orders.
Gee I wonder who has that power right now???

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_7034
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

EXECUTIVE FING ORDERS!

Why is Obama never scared when *we* say nasty things about him!?! We can be just as mean as any nasty Republican.

From what I can figure out, it is the same person returning under a different assumed name. If you analyze his (or her) prose style, it is extremely homogeneous. This could be due to two things: he (or she) is reading off talking points (with the help of pre-programmed comments), or it is the same person. In any event, the troll posts are completely predictable. Every now and then you get one who sends a fat pitch on some policy issue. I love those. Reminds me when I was a kid in baseball and made a perfect hit. You feel it right through your body.

“And It’s Too Late, Baby”

Anything Obama does between now and next summer will have the aroma of desperation. Three months ago he could have outlined a dramatic economic package and drawn the line with congressional Goppers. But ever since the debt fiasco – where he was willing to sacrifice everything to get the Teabaggers to love him – he has lost all cred.

The only time I’ve ever seen Obushma angry is when he talks about liberals.

And reports the last couple of days, Obama has basically given up on trying to do anything for the economy and is going to try to bluff his way through the election. Truly amazing how tone deaf the this administration is, making your own reality does not work without Fox News pushing it.

This is certainly what the confidence numbers are picking up. Even though gasoline prices have sagged a bit, it is not going to make much of a difference. Everyone is afraid of being laid off and losing medical insurance. I think a pretty sensitive indicator would be the marriage rate and birth rate, especially the latter. Who would deliberately create a new expense item knowing that one’s job is just one paycheck away from being erased?

Ha! If a sockpuppet is going to come around here spewing talking points, for the love of god, please let them come up with some valid arguments. MarkH doesn’t even try.

Dkos is infested by Democratic operatives. Our infestation is more from the Far Libertarian Right. Probably financed by Koch.

“Obama and the dims lost the game when they bought into the argument about debt and the deficit, like the world is coming to an end if we don’t cut spending”

I think that’s what is really doing it both here as well as abroad with the international austerity drive before the world economy got back on its feet. Within the US it gives contradictory messages given how the stimulus was only a couple years ago and now we have to turn the ship around 180 degrees. Bill Clinton in some sense showed successful austerity as he cut the deficit without people really noticing as there strong employment during that time (5%), but when the economy goes weak that is when you have to spend. Obama trying pull austerity during a time of 9% official unemployment just doesn’t make sense.

That’s cuz he knows we’re right and that drives him batshit crazy. He’s never gonna admit that Uncle Milty’s free market theories are junk.

Maybe the rabid lambs need a little more bite and a little less bleating…

x 2

Christ, you’d think they could hire a few with brains. Been quite a while since we’ve had a high quality troll around here.

Cass Sunstein’s wife – Samantha Power – was one of the ones who brought us Libya.

Tone deaf and realistic. There is nothing that can be done to help the economy between now and next year, even if the Thugs were not blocking every legislative proposal. The window of opportunity closed about a year ago. At this point all Obama has is PR. Now, the PR would be better if he were to announce a WPA or something similar, but the effect on unemployment would still be minimal. If the Republicans have a hung convention, there are several candidates they can bring forward at the last minute, if Obama’s polls are so low that he is a certain loser. The PTB (I hope) do not want a clear loony in charge who might go off the reservation. They will bring somebody in who can at least keep us from getting all blown up.

I strongly prefer the far right libertarian types. At least they have a philosophy and some ideas, however wrong. Obots are just an intellectual black hole sucking the thought out of our conversation.

There will be a Presidential monument built for Obama – it will be the Arch De Full Retreat.

Isn’t that what the economists say? When unemployment is high, you need to spend and run a deficit but when you near full employment, you need to run a surplus to hold back inflation. As you say, Obama’s got the whole thing assbackwards. There are things he can do, but he refused to do them or to start a fight and go for stimulus. another thing he bought into was the idea that government spending “crowds” out private investment. So he’s waiting for the stim fairy to bail him out.

Or perhaps the Arc De Triangulation?

Yup. Their strategy is to tough it out and only do things and talk about things that are noticed and can be framed as wins. Doing something that really matters, that really has an impact will not -they think- work, be allowed by Fox/T-GOP, or be noticed. So doing anything except running the campaign pr is out of the picture. It couldn’t be more disappointing! And stupid. And completely devoid of leadership. Like vacuum levels of leadership.

I was thinking the other day how doing anything meaningful for the country has been on the decline while WH campaign pr operations have been on the rise during the past decades and we have complete paralysis now.

And the idea that he can get elected again on the understanding that THEN he can do what he promised in 2008 is just …. well, crazy.

Cool. I found this poster on the WPA link. Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wpa-done.JPG

You would think that instead of cutbacks and layoffs of teachers and others, that they would hire all of us good people to get all of the work done that needs doing.

And we are supposed to luv him, so he is angry at being scorned. Srsly.

… an intellectual black hole sucking the thought out of our conversation.

What a spectacular turn of phrase! And true. Gulp.

True too.

You would think so.
Don’t count on it.
It will be 5-10 years before things get bad enough that we get another FDR to save capitalism, AGAIN. And then the cycle can continue.
Sorry for the pessimism. But reality is reality.

I don’t think we scare this guy, at least not yet. He has a good support system in the WH who keep him happy. But I do think he is afraid of the thugs because they can take him out (we cannot). The thugs bully him.

And, also, before we go any further …

Show us the [tax cut] jobs!!!

Yep. I said in 04 that it would be around 2016 before the neoliberal addiction to Freidman’s theories would begin to dissipate. Now I’m thinking around 2020. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to live through what Chile and Argentina did but it looks like the stupidity in the Village runs deeper than I thought.

This rabid lamb needs an FDL Store that sells original FDL T-shirts with devastating slogans, LED illuminated full-size, but plastic, pitchforks and liberty torches for night marches and, of course, some scary hooded, dark peasant cowls. However, I can’t find the FDL store. The store where I would buy a load of overpriced stuff so that FDL could fund more ads and I could wear my attitude, with FDL branding, out in the street. Everybody has a store – even the Gardenerd.com, a one girl operation. I’d really like a Pouting Baby poster also.

2020 is “perfect” vision, SD.

Many things will be crystal clear … by then.

At which point, together, we may begin to rebuild civil society and the human race may well have come to understand that the opportunity of life is precious and that our “tenure” on planet Earth is not guaranteed …

The Great Awakening has, finally, begun.

Will there be world enough and time?

It is up to us.

Namaste.

DW

but obama says we need AUSTERITY! Fewer jobs, less income, and MORE poverty is the way to grow the economy.

And the repugs agree, so it must be right, right?

/snark

“Are You In” the 30th percentile?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/obamas-under-40-moment-and-what-it-means/2011/08/15/gIQAi3IOHJ_blog.html?hpid=z2

wanna know what is wrong? just visit kos!

They won’t let you delete accounts (b@stards), but I left mine go defunct today because of the troll rating and hostility to anyone that doesn’t want to whistle past the graveyard.

I understand why the repugs say we need austerity, no health care, no social security, or a real job program; but can’t accept that the other side repeatedly capitulates to the same policies that got us into this economic melt-down.

I did use the word “obamabot” once there – guess a real “no-no”, but folks will regularly call those with questions all kind of derogatory stuff.

Not trying to dump on kos, but I know many are here because they got tired of things there. If you read the threads, yes, more and more are starting to ask questions about turning this (and obama) around.

However, the ol’ guard will stand for none of it.

No, the neoliberals will destroy the economy trying to prove that Friedman’s theories, the core around which neoliberalism is built, are sound and will work if applied with enough vigour.

Ah, the vigourish of it all …

;~DW

The oligarchs are ready to play monopoly,which requires a depressed economy ,trillions on hand for capital attrition,and no anti-trust shackles as we enter the mergers and acquisitions phase from which moribund enterprises of the entrepreneurial class are gobbled up at fire-sale prices.Wee haver entered the cycle of wealth accumulation by collecting assets and abandoned the productive expansion cycle that focused on generating greater income,job creation,national prosperity and other impediments to monopoly concentration with its tools of privatization and deregulation .

Plouffe and Daley are at least somewhat to blame, insisting on sticking with the debt/deficit theme because they think anything else will upset voters. See yesterday’s NYT and the New Yorker expansion on the Times piece. (Wrong-Way Corrigans in the White House).
Wrong-Way Corrigans, indeed. Talk about heading in exactly the wrong direction! It’s like the drunk who looks for his lost item under the lamppost because he can see there, even tho’ the item was lost over on the dark corner.

Obama’s a confidence man, nothing more.

My memory is failing. I seem to remember that Biden, remember Vice President Biden, he said now that the debt ceiling debat is over, we are on to jobs, jobs, jobs. Steve Jobs???? WTF does he have to do with anything. He’s only one CEO.

I used to like Plouffe. I thought him coming in would help. Then again, I had the Miami Heat in 5.

Far out! Far effing out! I was ranting about bringing back the CCC and WPA just a few days ago (or was it weeks?) but I totally forgot they were enabled by Executive Orders. Of course, as even your wiki links show, the wiki-text of Executive Order 7034 shows that the WPA owed its existence to an act of Congress, apparently known as the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1935 (wiki not yet constructed). We can try to dig that up from Thomas(dot)LOC(dot)gov later.

Similarly, the CCC was not instituted solely by an executive order from FDR:

Despite its popular support, the CCC was never a permanent agency. It depended on emergency and temporary Congressional legislation for its existence.

Foregoing quote from your link to wiki on Civilian Conservation Corps.

Recommended reading:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/democratic_party/index.html?story=/news/david_sirota/2011/08/15/powerless_democrats_fable

Thanks. David’s right on, as usual.

He’s got the thing assbackwards because he is a Ronnie Raygun (as we used to say back in the day) “Government is not the solution it’s the problem” wingnut. The idea of government succeeding at anything except killing people gives him and his ilk the hives.

But that would mean government was doing something positive and constructive and we can’t have that.

It is spectacular. And Arc de Triangulation! Brilliant. Yellowsnapdragon, you have a gift.

This Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) thing is gaining increasing attention. (There have been several posts about it here.) Krugman has referred to it several times in his blog – while getting wrong what its ideas are. It is based on Keynesianism and is endorsed by James Galbraith. Warren Mosler, its main founder, proposes all sorts of gov’t activism on the economy, including a substantial FICA tax cut, modest wage government jobs for all who want them to get unemployed back in the workforce to aid them going on to better jobs, a single payer kind of healthcare, and more, all of it 180 degrees opposite to Friedman. Maybe we’re closer than you think.

It is perfectly rational to blame Obama for the current state of the economy because there are things he should be doing that he is not. The stimulus should have been twice as big and lasted twice as long. Instead, the Republican mole decided to help his secret allies reclaim power by joining them in saying that the deficit was the main economic problem. The majority of the American people disagree with Obama’s change of direction, but they count for nothing.

Obama could spend 2013-2016 earning $400,000 a year as president or millions of dollars in speaking fees as an ex-president during that same time. So I suspect he really never cared about re-election nearly as much as doing what the real owners of the country wanted him to do. Those are the people who will be rewarding him later.

You know, he just may be running for re-election long enough to ruin any chance for others to succeed when he drops out. I wouldn’t be surprised for him to get the Catfood II proposals passed in December, then wait until, say, April or May to drop out and leave Dems adrift trying to resurrect a candidate with only a couple of months until the convention. (By then it might even be too late for many to get on upcoming primary ballots.)

If Americans really wanted the Executive to have the power to do things without Congress we would either have Democratic control of Congress or we would have a Right-Wing dictatorship a la Dubya. Aside from times such as those we have split government and no President will be allowed to do much by themselves.

The worst thing about our current situation is that many business leaders have chosen to become political and hold the economy back.

How have banks been lending? Show a graph of lending over the last several decades.

How have businesses been borrowing or utilizing cash in the bank? Show a graph of excess business cash or something like that for the last several decades.

How many times during recessions have the party opposing the president been so consistently opposed to efforts to recover?

Let’s see the extent of the headwind we’re facing.

Well, that would be interesting if it happened, but I doubt it will. If Obama wants to ruin the chances of a Democrat getting elected president in 2012, then he should stay in the race because he’s the one people are going to blame for the state of the economy.

thank you for not saying first off…hate that expression…yuk

katie o grady@bazzuuuu

Ralph Nader was completely correct about Obama- a lot of people owe him an apology.

LOL!!!