Where is your promoted-bloggers-will-redeem-the-media-by-Oedipal-overcoming-from-within god now, Internet?
Swift wasn't actually arguing for eating babies.
Ezra didn't go overboard enough. He's not a bad writer (in general, although I haven't read him regularly in years), but he's too serious and matter-of-fact to really go all in with this premise. That article should have been funny, not gloomy.
So, these wankers are what, about 30 now? I guess they're just about on schedule, then.
OT: Oh, Clive James, you disappoint me.
I think I skimmed the article the other day, so not sure how serious or sarcastic it is. And E Klein badly misjudges the Absolute Evil ones (he could look at Cameron) But seriously, if you follow Keynesian theory...
1) Romney and cretinous Congress slash everything all to hell and cut taxes...
2) U-3 goes up to 15-20%+, GDP drops to -5, revenues fall off a cliff, states go Cormac M
3) And R & R just kinda smile in 2014? I mean, what do you think they do next?
4) But it does not come back, even with landslide trifecta of Democrats in 2014-16, assholes like that always want to try something new. So SS and Medi-Obamacare gone, have to be something "innovative", you know.
5) No, this, this time, is not about heightening the contradictions. My point, anyway, is that we revolutionaries rarely need to, reactionaries and the idiot center always manage to heighten the fuckers all by themselves.
I think Ezra lays out the dilemma neatly. Heck, even I occasionally have to remind myself that it's pretty important to keep the regulatory apparatus and the future Supreme Court in Democratic hands.
There's a reason that hostage-takers thrive in lawless environments. The logic of paying ransom is compelling, and we know that the Republicans aren't bluffing when they say that they're prepared to crash the economy if they don't get their way.
The problem, of course, is that the Republicans are inclined to shoot the hostage anyway. But surely Romney could cobble together a bipartisan (!) coalition to inject a few bucks into the economy.
Part of the problem here is that goddamn godawful Christie Romer
People like Ezra and Yggles and Obama have been taught by Krugman and DeLong etc that cutting taxes can generate growth. No not Laffer-level, and not as much as spending, but a little bit, if done for the consumption classes.
It's wrong, and even if partly true, is an absolutely terrible weapon to give the Vampires.
Well, yeah. I have to admit that I can't really see letting the Bush tax cuts expire as a nightmare. It's the wrong time for it, and they should be balanced out with either direct stimulus or more progressive tax cuts, but I'd rather start making plans from a baseline without them than with them.
Letting the Bush cuts expire as part of a "we can be bloody minded assholes with no concern for consequences too" strategy is really appealing to me. Maybe not the most mature or sensible thing, but appealing to my inner poop-flinging primate.
Its a terrible time to let the Bush tax cuts expire, but the alternative appears to never let them expire. So, expire they must.
After that happens, we can fight about what to do with all the additional revenue that's coming in. Surely some of that can be directed to stimulus, yes?
The Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, all of them. Passing a new set of tax cuts has never been a challenge for either party, so I'm completely unsympathetic to the "but not now" argument.
start making plans from a baseline without them
Exactly.
(Dogs are going to kill me, one last)
26-year-old with a six-figure student loan, what happens if you give her a 500 dollar tax cut? Fuck that.
OTOH, raise her taxes 500 dollars, along with everybody else, especially rich fucks...and use the money to pay for a tenure-track position.
It is that simple, it was partially unspoken, but that was the old plan.
I don't think we can go back, and I am not sure of the way forward.
And that's kind of why I think Ezra's pretty worthless these days. The main premise of the piece, that maybe it'd make sense to do what the Republicans want so they don't break the country, is one thing, and you could do it satirically or whatever and it might be a reasonable thing to write. The throwaway assumption that letting the Bush tax cuts expire is breaking the country, on the other hand, seems like a real problem with his thinking.
I have to say, I'm not really on board with the Klein analysis, but I'm not sure that a Republican win would be so bad from my perspective either. My life and the lives of my friends are already pretty fucked. I have absolute zero confidence that the post-war consensus/procedural liberal/moderate welfare state hegemony can be revivified at this point. You'd basically have to have Bernie Sanders as president and congress controlled by the Green Party for that to happen. No future.
If the Repugs win, an anarchist critique is going to be a lot more appealing to a lot more people. And it's going to be a lot easier for local Demoncrats to support progressive initiatives that provide a little more breathing space for the most oppressed, because they'll have nothing to lose at that point. Maybe we can get some major changes going if everyone in Madison moves to Minneapolis, post Walker recall win.
In any case, I don't think this economy is fixable, nor would I want it to be fixed if it could be. We need autarchy, self-sufficiency, transition towns and the like. Don't starve the beast, necessarily, just ignore the fucker. Why shouldn't I be able to sit down to a full meal of food grown within half a mile of my house? Why should I have to bus halfway across town to a fancy clinic just to be told the same things I tell the doctor when I walk in? This society, this economy, is already bad beyond belief. Peeling the bandaid off our knee and placing it on one of the deck chairs on the Titanic is not going to help.
I'm going to the salon to get my contradictions heightened.
I have absolute zero confidence that the post-war consensus/procedural liberal/moderate welfare state hegemony can be revivified at this point.
Not wishing to pick a fight, but if the post-war consensus was so great, why couldn't it defend itself against the frankly risible and contemptible opposition that it has faced since at least the rise of GWB?
The throwaway assumption that letting the Bush tax cuts expire is breaking the country, on the other hand, seems like a real problem with his thinking.
I think the root problem is that he's defining success or catastrophe based on whether growth as measured by GNP changes by 1% up or down. Nearly everybody talking about this type of stuff does that, of course. Even after the whole finance industry goes over the cliff, it seems like nobody considers whether a given type of economic growth is "real" or helps anybody outside a small handful people. Everybody would kill the cat to get a positive change in GDP.
OT: Ostentatious affinity for/sympathy with non-white cultures (e.g., Steven Seagal, Leader of the Paunchy Ponytailed Kimonos) is, in both intent and affect, really, really racist, right?
The throwaway assumption that letting the Bush tax cuts expire is breaking the country...
Since that puts us back at the tax rates we had during the boom years of the 1990s I also have a problem with this assumption. It's as if nobody remembers that we had a surplus and a thriving economy back then, or even any of the periods before the 1990s when we had economic good times with tax rates far higher than under Clinton. This is drives me nuts.
18: Because the average voter is completely uninformed and makes decisions based on slogans and tribal affiliation.
I might kill the cat regardless of whether or not it improves GDP.
If you were nicer to cats, you might have fewer issues with rodents.
Not wishing to pick a fight, but if the post-war consensus was so great
I'm thinking the anarchist probably doesn't think the post-war consensus/procedural liberal/moderate welfare state hegemony was so great -- just better than what seems to be coming next.
22: If cats could vote, we'd be living in the libertarian Jerusalem.
20: So, for example, it was Eric Clapton's ostenatious fascination with blues music performed by black people that was racist, not his insistence that England should be reserved for white people only.
Cats can vote now because of the touch screen machines.
I actually like the cats I'm now living with (and no more rats) but Jesus Christ are they assholes. Oh yes rub my back now it's claw to the face time, bitch.
Not sure how to tie that back in to Romney or Ezra Klein. Maybe at this point if you think that a contrarian argument for electing Republicans is even a little funny you've clearly got toxoplasmosis from eating cat poop?
27: In a parallel universe, Enoch Powell wrote A Dance to the White Music of Time.
13.1 is very right. Should have been a new Obama tax plan passed in 2009 to go into effect when the Bush ones expired on their original schedule. It might not have passed. Tough shit.
The anarchist thinks that the PWCPLMWS was a bit of an outlier, or a harbinger of doom if you want to think about it that way. The main thing it accomplished was efficiently exporting violence and oppression to US colonies at home and abroad. So yeah, if you lived here and were middle-class, things were probably just about as good as they can get under capitalism. I don't think that benefit was worth the cost though. I mean, does anyone even question that a process of Brazilification is not only begun, but well on its way to overwhelming success? Of course not. Folx need to wake up and realize that the boundaries have shifted, and the old allegiances are defunct.
Also, "35 Femtoseconds" would be a great name for a punk band.
why is it that anarchists are always telling us what they will / would do, and never what they are doing?
why wait for the always-just-around-the-corner collapse? why not go enjoy your mad max lifestyle now?
What about the other half of the fiscal cliff.... the spending cuts that will kick in because the super-committee failed. I understand that half the cuts are to military spending (yeah, don't throw ME in that brier patch, bitchez!). What does the other half of the cuts consist of, and how bad is it?
process of Brazilification is not only begun, but well on its way to overwhelming success?
For evidence see http://www1.macys.com/campaign/social?campaign_id=315&channel_id=1
Forgetting the merits of the argument, I think it is not that far from the considerations that will push some of the Repubish sorts who voted Obama in 2008 (I know quite a few... there are in fact "undecided" voters) to Romney. Does not make me happy. And the last couple of "industrialists" I have heard speak have been such batshit whining jerks about not investing until there is "predictability" from Washington or some such crapola that I almost believe that they will actually invest more under a Republican regime.
Read this post and the column, and then immediately got in the car and caught the last sentence of some NPR piece say how most blacks were still supporting Obama even though they have been differentially affected more severely by the economic downturn compared to the overall population. Gosh, why are they so irrational? None of it helping my mood this AM.
Here's what I'm aware of local anarchists doing over the last year:
1. Opened a new meeting/event/info space.
2. Maintained a really nice little bookstore
3. Served free food and distributed free produce
4. Started community gardens
5. Led a major defense committee
6. Defended several foreclosed homes
7. Occupied the city-county government plaza and educated people on various democratic decision-making processes
8. Presented and attended lectures and workshops on a diverse array of topics
9. Held a successful anarchist book fair
10. Memorialized a fallen companero and supported his family, partner and housemates in their time of need
11. Died while alerting housemates to a fire
12. Came together to discuss ways to help a burned-down church and the radical groups who were its tenants
13. Won a major labor law case for workers' rights
14. Organized many marches and demonstrations
15. Produced a great deal of propaganda in various formats
16. Created a gigantic outdoor puppet show seen by thousands
17. Traveled to other parts of the country and the world to support protestors there, including providing food and medical care
18. Maintained community bike shops offering free training in bike repair as well as tools to do the repairs
19. Provided free child care at a wide variety of classes, events and meetings
20. Ran two collective cafes
21. Produced entertainments in the form of concerts, plays, performance art, dance parties, etc.
...and a bunch of other things that I am forgetting right now.
None of it helping my mood this AM.
We need a good ATM. Something about relationships and hurt feelings by someone who wants everybody up in their business.
Led a major defense committee
What does this mean?
(I am starting to feel like this question makes up about 10% of my comments these days.)
I will link to this again
Communization and Its Discontents
Really long, really theoretical and obtuse, but really really fucking good. Along with everything else from tiqqun and TC.
16 last is on the right track, but has the usual problems. Localism is probably immoral (Bangladesh? tough for them) and not-proactive enough. "Ignoring" the fucks will not work, as it didn't work for the other communitarian movements before, fuck, you know, the Civil War and 1st half of the 20th.
You have to also attack and destroy. If you are emulating or re-inventing late 19th early 20th century anarchism you should consider very strongly some of the more umm, interesting factions.
37:Yup.
42: The CeCe McDonald case. Perhaps "led" is not the best verb here, "participated heavily and at length" would be more accurate, although technically I believe the woman who was most present in the role of a "leader" identifies as either an anarchist or something very very close to it.
Continued: I wish I could say "won", but I don't really consider the sentence agreed to in the plea bargain a win. It was probably the best we could hope for under the circumstances though. Next time we will fight that much harder.
I still am unclear what a defense committee is. Did it provide legal counsel? Public relations? Raise money?
http://robertreich.org/post/24472398883
46. If it's like all the other defense committees I've known, all of the above, at need and to the extent it can afford to.
OT: Ostentatious affinity for/sympathy with non-white cultures (e.g., Steven Seagal, Leader of the Paunchy Ponytailed Kimonos) is, in both intent and affect, really, really racist, right?
Lemme guess: first big fight with Lunchy, right?
(e.g., Steven Seagal, Leader of the Paunchy Ponytailed Kimonos)
Steven Seagal is an interesting case.
(That link isn't actually helpful but Ralph Wiley wrote an interesting piece about why the black community has tended to appreciate Seagal.)
I wouldn't pull out that second "really" unless it was pretty egregious, like naming your children in a language you don't speak from a culture you've neither lived in nor descended from.
What does the other half of the cuts consist of, and how bad is it?
Mostly cuts to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements (i.e. what the doctor or hospital gets paid -- by law, the sequestration can't touch benefits).
Sort-of on topic: George Soros convincingly describes the nature of the political and economic bind that Europe is in, then is completely unpersausive in describing why the Euro won't collapse. (Skip the first third or so, and start with "The euro crisis is particularly instructive in this regard.")
But the likelihood is that the euro will survive because a breakup would be devastating not only for the periphery but also for Germany.
That's all he's got. The powers-that-be are going to rise to the occasion because to do otherwise would be insane. I am not comforted.
The journalistic accounts of this speech describe Soros as optimistic. I would describe Soros' outlook as grim. He's predicting that Germany is going to bleed the rest of the Eurozone for a generation. That's apparently the glass-half-full scenario.
The powers-that-be are going to rise to the occasion because to do otherwise would be insane.
Well, it was certainly a valid argument about why there would be no war in 1914.
Soros is really fucking rich. He should be optimistic. It's not really his problem.
That's all he's got.
I'm not saying he's right, but you have to credit Soros with a degree of prescience about the stability of currency pegs.
I mean, does anyone even question that a process of Brazilification is not only begun, but well on its way to overwhelming success?
Brazil the country, Brazil the film, or both?
The journalistic accounts of this speech describe Soros as optimistic. I would describe Soros' outlook as grim. He's predicting that Germany is going to bleed the rest of the Eurozone for a generation. That's apparently the glass-half-full scenario.
Right. Germany has now fooled most other countries in Europe into being in perpetual debt to Germany.
I wouldn't pull out that second "really" unless it was pretty egregious, like naming your children in a language you don't speak from a culture you've neither lived in nor descended from.
Is this really that bad? Do you mean sampling the name "Dmitri" or saying "His name is Russian for peaceful loving kindness"?
Or maybe he's just trying to calm everyone down long enough for his positions that will profit from Euro collapse to fully vest.
54: That is exactly the analogy that came to my mind.
55: I honestly think that's why he's being presented as optimistic. He's presenting a scenario that he'll ride out just fine, but he does actually describe - in an admittedly detached, intellectual way - how the European periphery is going to get screwed.
Steven Seagal is a fascinating and unsavory dude.
53:The Soros was excellent.
Oh, for fun, the conspiratorial radicals think the Western powers (Zbig, Niall) are rationalizing their economies to create an empire that will counter the "Asian threat." Germany imagines it will be an equal partner with America.
Japan, on the other hand, is strengthening its ties with China, keeping its independence as best it can, but essentially become a subject/client state. Japan has a history of kowtowing and paying tribute. They don't mind tatemae.
Japan is smarter. Maybe there can be only one, but if there are two, if a phony competition (with proxy wars) serves, and it served Capital well from 1917-1989, Germany will not be at either end of the table.
60: From what I know of Russian names, every single one has six different forms and a dozen nicknames. Nobody should use Russian names until somebody comes out with a "Who the fuck is Dostoyevsky talking about now" guide.
60: more the latter. I don't have as much of an issue with Europeans picking names from other European countries (setting aside general obnoxious naming issues), and any given name can be whatever. It's the ostentatious selection of a really foreign name combined with a matching set ("I'm Bob, this is Cindy, and here are our kids, Tobiko, Ichiro, and Yoko.") that raises red flags in my mind.
But hell, AB's first name is French, despite having a Francophobe German father and American mother of Anglo descent. It was a popular song title the year she was born.
In general, I'm not a big advocate of the position in 20, but I've been convinced that it covers more cases than not.
naming your children in a language you don't speak from a culture you've neither lived in nor descended from.
Meh. We live in a globalized culture. If an anglo Buddhist decides she really wants to name her kid "Anzan", I don't really see the problem.
I mean, my parents were Yankee Jew-nitarians who had only moved to the south a mere few months before I was born.
Now I'm assuming your real name Lurleen.
On the OP, when I was most bitterly disappointed with Obama*, perhaps 26 or 30 months ago, I wrote here something to the effect that "At least Romney will try to create jobs for his own political benefit."
I no longer believe that's true, because the GOP has convinced me that they are more beholden to their insane, irrational, anti-reality orthodoxies than they are to making things work. When GWB was in power, Congressional Republicans were perfectly happy to institute Keynesian measures to fight the downturn, but most of those guys are gone now, and the tea partiers seem 100% committed to cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
Ezra is probably right that they would permit some good things to happen that they'd oppose under Obama, but it wouldn't be enough to offset the other economic damage they'd do, totally setting aside regulation and SCOTUS.
* probably at the time of his self-proclaimed pivot from jobs to the deficit
But mostly I do agree with 20. I was just teasing JRoth, somewhat.
Two things I find irritatingly racist and weirdly over-common among people I'd think would know better are:
1. Fawning over black baby/toddler boys in the generic, ie in conversation, not with the presence of an actual example.
2. Switching to a black accent to make a joke about being dumb or ghetto. Switching to a Southern accent gets a pass, and a lot of people's versions are very similar, but I don't think I'm mishearing.
The planned overnight dissolution of the Austo-Hungarian currency in 1919 might become more widely interesting in the months to come. Guards at the borders to prevent people carrying wealth out of each new country, sudden ban on bank transfers, and stamps on each new nation's currency. Unstamped currency was worthless, and it was possible to take old banknotes to get stamped on and after conversion day, I think basically no questions asked.
Argentina has capital controls and detailed questioning of outbound travelers now, I don't know about the Greek borders or Greek bank transfers right now.
68: Solidly in "When in Rome" territory.
67: I think religious converts have a pretty strong tradition of showing that in names. If someone's actually Buddhist and chooses a Buddhist name, that's a whole 'nother thing. My impression from 20 is that we're taking as a starting point a fairly shallow investment in the exotic culture in question.
Is anyone here really going to turn a blind eye to the WASP with the rugs and the dreamcatchers and the children named Running Deer and Geronimo?
47: You're not making me feel any better, dude.
56: If the Eurozone goes to hell in a way worse than Soros overtly predicts here, he'll still be able to say "I told you so."
I emphasize the role of misunderstandings and misconceptions in shaping the course of history. And I treat bubbles as largely unpredictable. ...
...
My answer is that there is a bubble involved, after all, but it is not a financial but a political one. It relates to the political evolution of the European Union and it has led me to the conclusion that the euro crisis threatens to destroy the European Union.
...
This has forced all those who consider the status quo unsustainable or intolerable into an anti-European posture. That is the political dynamic that makes the disintegration of the European Union just as self-reinforcing as its creation has been.
...
The Bundesbank has become aware of the potential danger. It is now engaged in a campaign against the indefinite expansion of the money supply and it has started taking measures to limit the losses it would sustain in case of a breakup. This is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
...
The real economy of the eurozone is declining while Germany is still booming. This means that the divergence is getting wider. The political and social dynamics are also working toward disintegration. Public opinion as expressed in recent election results is increasingly opposed to austerity and this trend is likely to grow until the policy is reversed.
And what's he got to counterbalance this? Germany will recognize its own self-interest in (at least minimally) helping out the periphery. He offers no evidence for this.
The media have emphasized Soros' prediction that the Euro will survive, and in a literal sense, he does predict that. But I'm reading his speech more as advocacy: He would prefer that the Euro survive, and he's nudging the Germans to recognize the need to make it so. But he's also very clear that something has to be done promptly:
In my judgment the authorities have a three months' window ...
The headline on this story shouldn't be "Soros says Euro will survive," but rather "Soros says Germany has three months to get its shit together."
The ethnic name issue has a lot of complexities that can mitigate harsh judgments. Was the child adopted from the same country the name comes from? Are all the children given names from different ethnic groups, or do the parents keep going back to the same ethnic group? Are they mixing ethnic groups in a single name? Even if the parents don't speak the relevant language, do they have some serious connection to the culture (e.g. being Buddhists, as in 67.) Is the ethnic group one they are trying to assimilate to (as in 68)?
Really, I think you need to first judge whether the parents have a glib, stereotyping, or racist view of the culture in question, and then judge the child naming.
(Note, I am totally willing to be judgmental here. I'm a judgmental motherfucker.)
Ezra is very very smart, and so is Yggles. Read them between the lines as to who they is sucking up to in advance of regime change. It is likely to happen.
We You may keep Obama, but he will be managed by Republicans.
But, including Ezra among my data, I strongly doubt it now. A grey swan, or sky full of swans, will come this summer/fall, and Obama and the Democratic Party will go full meltdown. 1980 redux.
The usual idiots will blame the usual suspects, and be comforted in their anti-racism, but it will be a very small comfort.
If 64 hadn't included World War II in the period of "phony competition," I'd give more credit to your predictions.
What about Jammies?
Totally worth it for the disappointed middle school basketball coach.
What about someone who is Indonesian-Chinese-American giving their children vaguely Mayan and Hispanic names?
The premise of Klein's satire is wrong. Republicans in the last years of the Bush administration regularly voted down measures to save the economy, like TARP. They'll do the same with Romney, just examine the Paul Ryan plan. Klein is smart enough to know this.
Ezra and Yglesias have lost credibility in that the predicted accelerating recovery never materialized and Obama will most likely lose. Being optimistic didn't conjure up a better economy and I'll view their predictions with more skepticism from now on.
Given that Obama will most likely lose, we'll see how worse things can get and how the McmAnus's of the world react when things get really, really bad. (for a preview look at Greece.) Be careful what you wish for.
80:I am not an expert on how much the US financed, armed, and encouraged the 3rd Reich. Go East, young Nazi! I do know that Hoover and FDR gave a wink and a nod when Chiang-Kai-Shek pointed the American aid South in the Encirclement and against the Long March. They didn't think China was organized enough to resist the Soviets in the farther North.
Switching to a black accent to make a joke about being dumb or ghetto.
Who does this? Nobody does this, because it's way more racist than dream catchers.
I think 20 is wrong -- that is, there's perfectly acceptable interest and there's the kind of Orientalizing screwy interest Flip's talking about, and you can tell them apart. People get interested in stuff, and it's not wrong to be interested in other cultures, even obsessively, if you're not a jerk about it.
Naming your kids other-culture names would generally sound kind of off to me, but there's plenty of space for just liking the way the name sounds.
20 -- What's racist is drawing the line at non-white.
Ezra and Yglesias have lost credibility in that the predicted accelerating recovery never materialized and Obama will most likely lose.
Lost credibility with whom? It was conventional wisdom that we would experience a fairly quick recovery without any fundamental changes being needed, so they have a lot of company in DC.
72.1: Duh, it's because they're adorable until they finish kindergarten, at which point they become terrifying. It's kind of like Gremlins, I think, except I never watched Gremlins. (Though there was a record with an accompanying book in my kindergarten classroom, which did in fact terrify me and which I thought was inappropriate.)
I have been pretty intrigued how often people who are complaining about low-class/whatever names give Mara's name a pass because they know me and assume there must be some story behind it or something, when in fact we would probably have kept anything non-obscene. None of them have figured out the biblical connection and her former foster mom wouldn't even use the whole name because she thought it sounded ghetto. (Mara's eldest sister has a standard non-race-signifying name, the second has a made-up name that definitely read black, and the third has a Neveah-like word name that will probably be less of a class marker than I think it is.)
Have you run into people assuming she is (or you are) Jewish from it? I mean, it's right up there with Jammies as far as ethnically-misleading names go.
89: No, because the spelling's different and the pronunciation is different. Mara's name's spelling/pronunciation is not uncommon (given how uncommon the name itself is) in the black community, so lots of people have met one once before and she was always black. I think it's less common for people to make the connection to the biblical name itself, though I think the great(?)-grandmother she's named for probably had the traditional spelling. Her dad uses the traditional Jewish pronunciation too, and I wonder if that would have suggested to people that she was Jewish. My name can certainly swing that way.
Ah. I guess I've seen varying transliterations on Hebrew names before, so it didn't seem outside the realm of plausibility for someone Orthodox -- it's not a spelling I'm familiar with, but it's not that odd looking. But I didn't know about the different pronunciation.
91: The pronunciation is very different. We do the first syllable the same way, but even that her family does differently ("ah" rather than our "uh") and the rest differs.
Newsweek just hired McMegan. Everyone give Tina Brown a round of applause!
I can't believe no one has responded to 93 yet. Apparently The Atlantic is aiming to hire "smart people who aren't jerks" so maybe... never mind.
Ezra Klein posted a follow-up today, and it's clear that he got quite a bit of criticism for the original post.
He ends up defending himself in a way which would feel disingenuous if you thought it was a complete response but, to my reading, acknowledges that the original post was awkward and tries to explain:
Which is the basic point of my column: If you assume the only really likely outcomes are Obama and a divided Congress and Romney and a Republican Congress, the most Keynesian outcome is probably Romney and a Republican Congress. But that's also the outcome that's worst for the political system's long-term health, as it will mean the Republican Party was rewarded for the incredibly dangerous brinksmanship of the past year, and if their victory is partially because the economy slows on fears of a crisis in 2013, based on their reckless promises of more brinksmanship next year.
The overarching point isn't that I'm telling you who to vote for -- that's not my job, and this doesn't say anything about whose long-term policies for the economy are better, or whose Supreme Court picks would be superior, or who is more likely to go to war with Iran, to name just a few considerations you'll want to make -- but that people need to understand the role strategic gridlock is playing in our economic problems. Right now, however, neither candidate has a persuasive plan for how they'll end gridlock going forward. The only idea with even a possibility of working is if the American people delivered a clear verdict against its practitioners at the polls.
Monday:
Even if you disagree with every one of Mitt Romney's policies, there's a chance he's still the best candidate to lift the economy in 2013.
Tuesday:
A lot of people took Monday's column on the Keynesian possibilities of a Romney presidency as a commentary on who they should vote for rather than as an observation on the policy consequences of gridlock.
He's a real cut-up.
I still think he's somewhere between useless and harmful these days. First, what I raised above, about treating the expiration of the Bush tax cuts as something that's terribly important to avert. Second, at some point tone is substance: for Ezra, it's a neutral fact of life that Republicans will try to destroy the country economically in order to gain power. That shouldn't be neutral -- it's like headlines saying "Legislation fails to get 60 votes needed to pass the Senate" rather than "Republicans in Senate use procedural rules to frustrate passage of bill supported by majority of both houses."
He seems to think he's sneaking liberal conclusions into faux-contrarianism (see "Paul Ryan has a difficult job"), when in fact the liberalism will be completely invisible in a year.
93-94 have me giving up on the day and going back to bed.
Somewhere way back in the archives, Emerson had a good take on this sort of thing -- that journalists think they're honest because a highly educated reader willing to interpolate between the lines can deduce truthful information from what they're writing. And that's bullshit -- if a naive reader with enough background to think they understand your article comes out deceived, it's because you deceived them, even if a better reader would have seen through the surface layer. Pravda is not a news source to emulate.
I agree that this column is harmful, but I think Ezra's somewhat among the beltway journalist type in thinking that it's a fact that Republicans will happily destroy the country and being willing to say that (if in stupid ways).
I thought people don't really read Newsweek anymore. I'm certainly not going to even look to see if that's true. But I do remember a few years ago reading that their strategy was to go for an even richer audience to make up for even smaller circulation.
Oh, I'm sure that he'd feel put upon and misunderstood if he read this thread, because he totally agrees with me about how dangerous and damaging Republican-driven gridlock is, and anyone reading what he writes sensitively enough would get that. I just strongly disapprove of writing political commentary that will mislead the naive, even if it's perfectly comprehensible to insiders.
93 & 95 are more evidence that at best we are still moving right.
Older and stupider says:1980 was a total horror, but not exactly a shock. Don't mean Reagan over Carter, but the Congressional and downticket bloodbaths
I mean comes a point when the Dems and liberals keep trying to scare me with boogeymen and never seem to offer anything to help me/us/them out "Yes, ok, but what good will it do to vote left? How will things get better? How will it get better?"
And lifelong Dems hearing an endless subtext of "No future" may promise to vote for Carter and the Party but come out of the voting booth whistling "Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in the town..."
And you get a landslide and re-alignment.
Kicking Obama's ass hard and publicly so half your party hates your fucking guts forever was essential in 2008-2009. Failure was fucking unacceptable, unbearable. As, apparently, we are about to find out.
Just fuck it all. I miss the 60s, and dream of lefties given to cordless bungee-jumping. Metaphor.
94: "force of intellect" and "spirit of generosity" are apparently the two core principles. In skimming that link I kept misreading "Quartz" as "Qwantz" so that probably disqualifies me.
I dropped an "unusual" there somehow.
Monday: ... Tuesday: ... He's a real cut-up.
As I said, I'm inclined to read an admission of guilt in there. I thought it was clear that he understood that the Monday column didn't work. He doesn't explicitly say that, but he comes awfully close.
I still think he's somewhere between useless and harmful these days.
That could be true, but I'd still note that this interview to which I previous linked is a good example of him doing useful journalism; so he is capable of that.
As I said, I'm inclined to read an admission of guilt in there.
That's more credit than I'm going to give him, seeing as there isn't even a non-apology-apology.
106: I had the exact same problem and kept thinking how much I'd love The Atlantic if T. rex and friends wrote it.
Newsweek just hired McMegan
Oh, that is just so sad.
Lost credibility with whom? It was conventional wisdom that we would experience a fairly quick recovery without any fundamental changes being needed, so they have a lot of company in DC.
Hey, we are experiencing a recovery, right? Everyone's life is still getting worse, but it's a recovery.
Newsweek always reminded me of that Terry Pratchett story about the hideous creature that disguises itself as a shopping mall and entices its prey in by secreting things that look almost but not quite like goods for sale. (Just like those predatory fish that have a dangly thing above their mouths that looks almost but not quite like an edible worm.)
If an alien were to disguise itself as a publishing company in order to pass unobserved on Earth, it'd produce Newsweek - it looks like a news magazine, it has pages and headlines and photos and so on, but when you look closely at a copy you realise that there's no actual journalism going on.
(Then it leaps at you and eats your face and turns you into a regional head of marketing.)
I'm sure I've told this story before, but when I was in the Peace Corps, the only American news we got was a subscription to Newsweek. You don't notice it so much when you have other sources, but Newsweek doesn't actually give you any information about what happened, it just sort of dances around people's reactions to it all. I spent a weekend in the summer of 1994 sitting around a bar in Samoa arguing with other Peace Corps Volunteers about what a 'low speed chase' could possibly refer to.
115: that was pretty sharp planning on the part of whoever arranged that party.
114: wait, LB, you were in the Peace Corps?
I remember Michael Frayn writing a very funny piece about how odd it was that humans not only enjoyed playing sport and watching sport, but also listening to other people watching sport on our behalf, and suggesting that the same approach could be taken to, say, discussion programmes. Since reading that I've noticed how much "news" actually consists of listening to other people watching the news on my behalf...
I had come to loathe Newsweek even before the Tina Brown era, but I will always retain a residual appreciation of it in my heart for carrying a piece about an issue of concern to me, together with one of the better photos of me that has ever been taken.
I spent a weekend in the summer of 1994 sitting around a bar in Samoa arguing with other Peace Corps Volunteers about what a 'low speed chase' could possibly refer to.
What, no IHT? We had also had Time in Morocco. I think I told this story but the day I left the US to spend a few years overseas in MENA everyone in JFK was crowded around the TV sets watching a white Ford Bronco go very slowly down the freeway. I had no idea what the hell was going on till much later. It was surreal. Also a good time to be overseas and miss all that.
Way back in the '60s, I thought Newsweek actually was pretty decent as a general-purpose news magazine. Certainly better than Time (still under the influence of Luce's fervent Republicanism) and the bloody awful US News and World Report.
OT, but Prometheus is Alien with the skinny terrifying black guy replaced with a big white guy.