Brad DeLong has two posts, one from Ezra “I’m a liberal who is safe for the Washington Post” Klein and one from Mike “I actually looked at the data” Konczal. Brad deals with Ezra’s folly: I think a B+ is too high a grade–largely because one big task of 2009 was to set up the […]

By Daniel Becker In the comments to my post “A reminder from Obama’s February 2009 speech”, there is the following: “I guess it relates to the fake Obama they had made up in their heads,…”  This sums up the early comments to the post suggesting that those who trusted Obama have only themselves to blame. […]

By: Daniel Becker In answer to the generic question regarding President Obama’s actions regarding the debt ceiling, I am re-posting this from 2/25/09.  In comments of the original I stated that cutting the deficit by 1/2 seemed to “optimistic” for me.*************************** Ok, here are my basic issues with the substance of President Obama’s speech. First, […]

by: Daniel Becker Ok some more information to bolster my position that my flower shop being down this year another 4.5% compared to last year (at least the decline is leveling off) is not the results of government debt or too much taxation or banks not lending or unions… nope, my shop is off because […]

By: Daniel J. Becker With the state of the Union coming up and the current national attention having been drawn toward the question of the nation’s personality via reality mimicking Hollywood (God, that slap in the face hurt bad, assuming you felt it) I want to try to get us ready for the presentation by […]

By: Daniel Becker (DOLB) On Countdown (12/9/10), Keith had on Thomas Buffenbarger, president of the International Machinist Union. It was a chance for an “I told you so moment”in that Mr. Buffenbarger noted while campaigning for Secretary Clinton that President Obama would not be a fighter. Go watch the episode. I made my position on […]

By Daniel Becker I just want to lay out the debate going on in our economy right now. There are 4 debaters. President Obama/Geithner et al, President Obama 2008, the rich (or capitalist, those who make their money from money) and the rest of us. From President Obama’s 60 Minute interview: PRESIDENT OBAMA:…And it turns […]

Via David Wessel’s Twitter feed, the WSJ publishes a letter: Ben Bernanke is a good person, a fine academic and a well-respected professor. But those traits have no bearing on whether he should be reconfirmed as Federal Reserve chairman…. Applying accountability principles, there’s no way Chairman Bernanke should be reconfirmed by the Senate, let alone […]

by Tom Bozzo Update: See Brad DeLong. The exercise may even have been carefully conceived to do little harm, or perhaps little good if you’re an anti-deficit crazy. But even if this is not as bad on the substance as it could be, the engagement of the administration in the production of Potemkin policy initiatives […]

by divorced one like BushUPDATED: Jim Watt  Remember him? If you did not see it, go watch this weeks Bill Moyers Journal.  Part 2 is here. From the second part we get all we need to know about where we’re going regarding government for, of and by the people and how little regard there is […]