Lazy Sunday opinions... and more.
Frank Rich:
And so the odds that Obama’s party will survive the midterms seem less than Indiana Jones’s in the Temple of Doom — as we are reminded hourly by the Beltway herd flogging the latest polls. The Democrats are facing a "historic" rout, an earthquake, a tidal wave — well, you know the drill. End of story.
Unless it’s not. On Labor Day, the fighting Obama abruptly re-emerged, a far cry from the man whose Oval Office address on Iraq days earlier was about as persuasive as a hostage video. Speaking to workers in Milwaukee, the president finally started giving voice to the anger of America’s battered middle class. And he even let loose with a little anger of his own. The unspecified "powerful interests" aligned against him, he said, "talk about me like a dog."
Get the vote out, and we make it closer. See also the conversation in bobswern's recommended diary.
Dana Milbank:
What's with the hate for Maynard?
Perhaps these Republicans don't realize that some of their tax-cut proposals are as "Keynesian" as Obama's program. There's a fierce dispute about how best to respond to the economic crisis -- Tax cuts? Deficit spending? Monetary intervention? -- but the argument is largely premised on the Keynesian view that government should somehow boost demand in a recession.
Get with the program, Dana. Republicans will hate anyone that gets them elected. Gays, immigrants, dead economists... hey, someone find Mitch McConnell a dead gay immigrant economist.
George Packer:
Nine years later, the main fact of our lives is the overwhelming force of unreason. Evidence, knowledge, argument, proportionality, nuance, complexity, and the other indispensable tools of the liberal mind don’t stand a chance these days against the actual image of a mob burning an effigy, or the imagined image of a man burning a mound of books. Reason tries in its patient, level-headed way to explain, to question, to weigh competing claims, but it can hardly make itself heard and soon gives up. A Florida preacher with a congregation barely twice the number of the September 11th hijackers can rivet the world—will he do it, or won’t he? Where will the first post-Koran-burning terror attack happen, and how many people will die? The media senses a big story and makes him an international figure, with the tautological self-defense that he had become a big story. Halfway around the globe, in Jalalabad, Afghans riot, someone is killed, and Obama is burned in effigy—Obama, whom twenty per cent of Americans believe to be a Muslim, who has used whatever moral authority he has to stop the Florida nut from doing it. One man in Gainesville who represents next to nobody triggers thousands of men around the globe who know next to nothing about it to turn violent, which triggers more violence, which Fox and Al Jazeera air relentlessly, which makes people in front of TVs around the world go crazy.
Maureen Dowd channels her Republican sister Peggy:
Peggy thinks the president has done fine managing W.’s messes in Iraq and Afghanistan. And she lights up at the mention of his vice president, Joe Biden. But she thinks Obama has to get "a backbone" if he wants to lure her back to the fold. "He promised us everything, saying he would turn the country around, and he did nothing the first year," Peggy says. "He piddled around when he had 60 votes. He could have pushed through the health care bill but spent months haggling on it because he wanted to bring some Republicans on board. He was trying too hard to compromise when he didn’t need the Republicans and they were never going to like him. Any idiot could see that.
"He could have gotten it through while Teddy Kennedy was still alive — he owed the Kennedys something — and then the bill was watered down.
"He hasn’t saved the economy, and now he’s admitting he’s made very little progress. You can’t for four years blame the person who used to be president. Obama tries to compromise too much, and he doesn’t look like a strong leader. I don’t watch him anymore. I’m turned off by him. I think he’s an elitist. He went down to the gulf, telling everyone to take a vacation down there, and then he goes to Martha’s Vineyard. He does what he wants but then he tells us to do other things.
"I want him in that White House acting like a president, not out on the campaign trail. Not when the country is going down the toilet."
Independent-leaning Republicans are a different breed altogether. But this is about 2012. Will they vote in 2010?
Thomas Geoghegan:
Yes, the country is in a foul mood, with 15 million unemployed. The Democrats may get clobbered in 2010. And even if we survive, how do we hang on for the long term? If our great founder, FDR, could come back to us, he might remind us of the three simple rules that once, long ago, Democrats used to follow:
- Do something for your base.
- Do something for your base.
- Do something for your base.
Elizabeth Warren?
NY Times editorial:
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that an astonishing half or more of the increased spending for health care in recent decades is due to technological, surgical and clinical advances.
For the most part, such advances are a cause for celebration. But an expensive new drug is not always better than an older, cheaper drug, and sometimes a new technology or treatment that is highly effective for some patients is unnecessary or even dangerous for others.
The system almost seems designed to keep driving up costs.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
