Digby

  • Published Trained Seals (Blog entry)
    March 9, 2010 - 4:25pm

    According to Sam Stein members the Treasury Department, including Tim Geithner himself, met with a group of progressive bloggers yesterday to tell them what a good job the administration's done all things considered, but that now they need to get the voters all

  • Published Deficit Fever (Blog entry)
    February 2, 2010 - 3:33pm

    Suddenly, you can't turn around without getting a panicked lectureabout the deficit. But in all the discussions about the horrifying, worse-than-terrorism, scarier-than-nuclear-war threat to everything we hold near and dear, nobody ever seems to discuss the fact that much of the deficit is due to unemployment. (Gosh, it turns out that if everyone were working, they'd be paying more taxes and the government would have more money!) We are supposed to believe that the deficit stems from profligate spending on old people and undeserving little dark children who refuse to get a job. 

    The Pete Peterson crew have been poised for some time to make this move. They are very slick and they are sending out massive amounts of scare literature to everyone in the chattering and ruling classes. And they are working overtime to convince the American people that fixing the deficit is imperative if they want the economy to improve. And it's working. Not the economy --- the propaganda.

  • Published Eating At Each Other (Blog entry)
    January 20, 2010 - 12:20pm

    The only lesson to be learned is to not listen to anything the village media says. Ever. The Republicans learned that a long time ago. The Democrats need to learn it too.

  • Published Except For All The Problems, It's Perfectly Fine (Blog entry)
    January 10, 2010 - 9:42am

    The Washington Post ombudsman finally responded to the complaints about the paper's inappropriate relationship with Pete Peterson and his new "news" operation the Fiscal Times.

  • Published Leadership (Blog entry)
    December 17, 2009 - 1:25pm

    There has been a bit of back and forth about whether or not it's fair to blame Obama for the state of the health care debate , with Yglesias and Klein, among others, saying that criticisms of domestic initiatives should be focused on the congress rather than the president, who has little institutional p

  • Published Colloquy For Crisis (Blog entry)
    December 10, 2009 - 7:08pm

    Today, Senators Gregg and Conrad had a colloquy on the floor of the Senate arguing for the Pete Peterson Foundation's pet project, the Bipartisan Committee To Destroy Social Security and Medicare So Wealthy People Don't Ever Have To Pay Higher Taxes (aka "Our Favorite Idea That's Been Lying Around".) And quite an exchange of scary rhetoric it was.

    The timing of this is being driven by events, to be sure. But the events that drive it aren't the debt projections, which are highly reflective of a moribund economy and will thus change dramatically if the government enacts policies that expand growth and lead to full employment. No, what's driving this initiative is the mass confusion around the bad economy and the financial system catastrophe, which provides the perfect moment to push a little "economic shock therapy" on the American people.

  • Published Covering Your Bases (Blog entry)
    December 1, 2009 - 11:40am

    From the new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll:

    We have added a new feature on our weekly national poll -- a gauge of voter intensity. The question offered to respondents is a simple question about their intentions for 2010:

  • Published Grand Bargain Redux (Blog entry)
    December 1, 2009 - 1:01am

    Normally another Democratic run bipartisan commission on social security reform wouldn't alarm me so much as annoy me. But this time could be different. The scope and complexity of the economic crisis could lead to politicians rushing forward with some bad plans just to appear to be doing something.

  • Published It's Baaaack: The Catfood Commission (Blog entry)
    November 13, 2009 - 9:42am

    Not that it ever went away. The catfood commission is the Zombie that has been clawing at the door since Obama was elected:

  • Published The Most Important Election In The History Of The World (Blog entry)
    November 3, 2009 - 4:08pm

    So all day long I'm hearing the gasbags blather on about how this lame, off year election is a referendum on liberalism and Obama and things are looking grim, grim, grim.

    The Democratic blue dogs have it all figured out:

    "It looks as though the anger that has been boiling up the last couple of months is going to lead to a pretty high turnout from Republicans and from people who are concerned about increased spending," Altmire said Monday evening during an appearance on Fox Business Network.

    "And I do think that if the results show Republicans have a pretty good night, that probably is going to lead some Democrats to think that, going into next year, we need to take a second look at the way that we've done a lot of bills we've addressed up to this point," the Pennsylvania congressman added.

    Oh, Golly let's hope this radical eight month experiment in slightly less corporate conservative governance has run its course and we can get back to tax cutting, deregulating and bloodletting, which is what the government does best.