I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
It isn't just that he's bullish, it's that he's utterly divorced from reality (although always in a way advantageous for himself).
First, he steals the Democrat's clothes on the child tax credit.
Then, he appeals for fiscal discipline!
Chutzpah!
When you're at the bottom, there is no way to go but up!
Unfortunately, I have abundant faith in George Bush's ability to not only hit the bottom, but to borrow downward from there. If it were just him going I'd say good riddance, but he's intent on taking us all with him.
The money is the root of the problem. Get the money out of politics and the GOP wouldn't stand a chance. The only way they CAN win is by outspending the hell out of us, they always have.
*happy days are here again!* [patriotic music]
Is there some point where we decide there's no longer any point in trying to work within the system? I'm no fan of revolution -- too often the government that appears after them is worse than the one they bring down -- but if things keep going this way, I'm not sure what choice we'll have.
Well, if the GOP is successful at getting electronic voting machines with no paper trail and owned by rightwingers, it could come to that, because at that point you don't really have elections at all, not even big buck elections with light voter turnout. It would be far easier to keep it from coming to that.
Beth - "A little revolution now and then is a good thing."
And the revolution will be blogovised. Or blog...blog...blogosomething. Eh.
He's not divorced from reality. He's just trying to maintain the consensual reality among his following of neocon fanatics. Consider it like a fatwah against the unbelievers: there is no recession, its all good, and only the infidels like Krugman can read economic data.
Onward imperial America! Let the Jihad begin! Burn all unfaithful progressive treasonous witches at the stake!
Public financing is the holy grail of reform, even ahead of universal health coverage.
I don't think the time is ripe for pub finance, but maybe someday.
I suspect that if under the current system the REpub advantage erodes, (which could only happen if the Dems dominate internet direct appeals and get to the point where they can nearly match the Repubs....that's a ways off) then they'll want to play ball on reform. Not until then.
There was a great editorial in the LA times proposing that instead of full public financing (which is almost certainly unconstitutional) each American be given $50 to spend on the primary and/or general candidate of their choice. This amount of $ would swamp corporate and big private donations and render a more equitable election process. It would also force candidates to the mainstream. The cost, about $5 billion, seems to me a small price to pay for promoting democracy.
Actually W Most Deceitful's advisors told him the economy was headed south, and he figured, "Wow! South?! Like in towards Texas?! That's the right direction".
Well, Bush has been singing this tune for a while.
Really, what is a president supposed to say about the economy?
"Wow, this economy's in the shitter isn't it? Well, it's got out heads spinning to . . . If anyone has any suggestions, please send them to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue . . ."
It's okay for the president to sound optimistic for the public, but I really think he's sitting in the WH and saying, "Hey, what's the problem? All my friends have money."
He'll keep this up as long as he's in office, though. Let's hope there's enough smart people who understand that he has no business running a country.
of course I meant "our" and "too" . . . damn Newcastle . .
I'm only surprised his radio didn't begin, "I promise that I will not rest until Kobe Bryant is behind bars."
Notice this little slight of hand,
"The 2001 recession was slightly shorter than the average of the nine other U.S. downturns since World War II..."
In other words if you take the nine other recessions you will probably get different lengths of time that each lasted, so let's say for the sake of example:
3 lasted 2 years, 3 lasted 1 1/2 years and 3 lasted 1 year and average them out (the nine would average out to 1 1/2 years) then say that the current recession has lasted 1 year and 5 months then you can say, if you're being a little dishonest, that the current recession so far has lasted less time then the average of the nine previous, even though three of those were shorter in length than the current one which may soon tie (it's only "slightly shorter") the next three in duration. Which leaves only three recessions which have been longer since WWII.
Nice Spin huh?
"A little revolution now and then is a good thing."
You may be right.
I heard a guy today reading poetry. He was saying we all have to forget our differences, put aside our ideologies, and work together toward revolution. And at first I thought, "Yes!" Then I thought about white and red Russians and about the anarchists and communists in Spain, and I shivered.
I don't know if I'm growing old and cynical or if I'm growing old and wise, but I know that any energy I give to revolution will be about changing people's hearts, not their government, and if revolution comes, I'll greet it with both joy and terror.
And to top it all off, though I'm not an economist, I certainly don't see signs that the recession is going to end anytime soon.
Get the money out of politics
is like win the war on drugs, or terrorism, crime, inflation. Politics has always been about money: tribute, taxes, donations, trusts, dowries, war chests. For us, the huge wealth gap between top and bottom -- increasingly, top and middle -- makes it impossible for the concerns of American polis to get a hearing. The amounts of money that the big players bring to the table just eclipses anything that a grassroots community can offer.
Public financing of elections could help level the field, but imho, we mainly need to address the income gap. In the meantime, we need to build a national, unified coalition of moderate and progressive voters who will volunteer their time to organize others, run for local office and support local progressive campaigns, vote nationally as a coalition against Republican candidates, and on a strategic, coordinated basis, contribute money as we can to the campaigns of qualified Democratic and Green candidates.
Oh and one last thing, there is the fact that it's Bush making this claim. There is that... 
"If it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics, men without ambition, jellyfish!"
- The Great McGinty
"If it wasn't for graft..."
Speaking of the subjunctive, McGinty...
Okay, never mind.
There are education gaps that these guys exploit. Don't even get me started on the physics of "enriching" uranium and building a uranium bomb. Or a plutonium one, for that matter. These guys are making it seem easy for Saddam to have gotten up the juice. But they also just looooove the difference between "average" and "median."
Playing to the base.
if the recession ended in 01', what in the hell is the country in now?!? a bull market?
The 2001 recession can only be said to have ended because the economsists cooked the books to include GDP.
Now we are in a period of jobless growth.
Now we are in a period of jobless growth.
Which is a roundabout way of saying "rich get richer."
Since that's really all that's happening.
As I understand it, the way economists date the beg. and end pt of a recession is purely by whether there is any plus growth. So even an anemic recovery like this one, where the growth rate has been low, it's still not a recession. Which also means if there is a quarter without growth that would be considered another recession, the famour douple dip.
Bush is banking on being able to sell the electorate that three or so quarters of increasing growth, even if it remains fairly low, means the we're in the midst of a recovery, and the country is headed in the right direction. Lucky for us, he made those committments upon the passing of each set of tax cuts that they would create jobs; start printing up the t-shirts and the posters to remind him of that promise.
Beth, I think that what we're looking for is a restoration, away from oligarchy, back to democracy. And it's going to take a lot of organized effort to make that happen. Some of that effort is going to have to be in the service of calling public attention to what much of our government and much of the media doesn't want us to notice. Perhaps because I'm old enough to remember the overuse of the word revolution in the late sixties and the seventies, not to mention the commercial degradation of the word, as in "a revolution in men's underwear," I remain skeptical of that word.
Things can't be as bad as we sometimes feel they are when we have a comments thread where someone mentions The Great McGinty. For those of you who have never seen, run to your local video store and pick it up, and any other Preston Sturges films you've never seen, especially, The Palm Beach Story, which is slyly subversive in a way I can't imagine any Hollywood film maker being able to be today.
if there is a quarter without growth that would be considered another recession
I thought a classic "recession" was 2 consecutive quarters of no growth? Regardless, your point's well-taken.
I remember the last recession. I was just out of college and had moved to Vermont, which has one of the worst economies in the country. For a couple days I worked at the Burlington Free Press cold-calling to sell subscriptions. One person I reached said they couldn't afford it because of the "depression". At first I thought "you idiot, it's a recession". But then I realized that the technical definition didn't matter--for these people who couldn't afford 35 cents a day ("the coupon section will save you 4 dollars a day!"), it was a depression.
So yeah, maybe the economy is growing at 2%, but that don't feed the bulldogs--it's not growing enough for businesses to feel confident hiring. Inflation might be low, but when you're getting no raise at all, or receiving pay cuts, or getting laid off, any price increase hurts. And with interest rates at historic lows, people who depend on interest income get hurt more.
So yeah, it ain't a recession. It's worse because we don't really know what it all means and what to do about it. And our two Bushes have brought about the only two bizarro economies of their kind. A hearty "well done" to them.
Leah,
Thanks. I hope you're right, but with the controlling party having virtually unlimited campaign funds as well as an incestuous relationship with both big media and the makers of uniquely corruptable voting machines, I'm not sure it will be enough. (Which is not to disparage the excellent and important work that you and other members of blogsphere and independent journalism are doing. I suspect that's our best -- if not only -- chance oust the current oligarchy.)
I also second your Preston Sturges recommendation. "Hail the Conquering Hero" seems particularly relevant these days. A fake war hero running for office, where have I heard that one before?
OT, but obscurely related to the poetry reading I mentioned earlier, I can't reccomend Ishmael Reed's 'KONCH' highly enough as a source for unique perspectives on the current situation.
If anything, the current situation is worse than a classic recession, because it precisely echoes the Japanese situation, and nobody's figured out how to extricate them from their situation.
Don't think the U.S. will necessarily go down the same road, but it's one step along it.
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