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Home » Is Obama his own worst enemy?

Is Obama his own worst enemy?

The New Neo Posted on by

It is interesting that two analyses of Obama’s newly-announced Afghan policy conclude with essentially the same thought. In the WSJ, Eliot A. Cohen ends his essay with these words:

As a wartime leader [Obama] will tend many wounds, but the most grievous thus far are those he has inflicted on himself.

And in yesterday’s Spiegel article, Gabor Steingart closed with:

The American president doesn’t need any opponents at the moment. He’s already got himself.

So, is Obama his own worst enemy (despite the fact that he hates using that word to describe our actual enemies)? I think so. Even if Obama is the Leftist ideologue he appears to be, he could have pursued a slightly more moderate course and kept that fact hidden. He might have thrown a few more bones to the Right and to the cause of bi-partisanship, and not seemed to be so radical nor such a hypocrite.

This would have alienated—and alerted—far fewer people. And certainly, there seems to be no reason why he couldn’t have come up with the content of his recent Afghan speech many months earlier, and avoided worrying much of the American public (and avoided giving Dick Cheney a perfect rhetorical opportunity) when he appeared to be dithering while soldiers died.

Many observers of Obama’s West Point speech (I was not one of them; I read it rather than watched it) found Obama’s delivery stilted, cold, and lackluster. Perhaps there are limits to Obama’s acting ability; even he can’t seem to feign support for this particular policy, with its split personality.

But perhaps there’s even more going on to cause Obama to lose some of his positive energy. My guess is that, for the first time in his life, he feels the heat because he can’t get out of the kitchen, nor talk his way into making it any cooler. The press is still treating him with kid gloves compared to almost any other president, but compared to the media treatment Obama has been used to getting (fawning idolatry), they’re being tough on him, and he must not like it at all. And the unaccustomed scrutiny means that more and more people are connecting the dots and finding the Obama picture less than pretty. This may be a first for him.

Even an egotist like Obama may now be beginning to recognize things are not going well. When the very liberal New York Magazine runs an article that states, “You’d have to be stone deaf not to hear the air hissing out of the Obama balloon,” you know something’s up—or down. The article also features the following description of the Obama White House:

After 300-plus days in office, the president remains, for many of his supporters, a worryingly indistinct figure. One whose pragmatic sensibility is crystal clear but bedrock convictions are still blurry. And whose White House has proved less than fully adept at the marriage of politics and policy, preferring all too often to fall back on their boss’s charm and dazzle to advance the ball upfield.

“I have no idea what they believe,” a leading House Democrat and Obama ally told me recently when I asked if he could define the administration’s governing philosophy. “I know that their governing strategy seems to be, ”˜Don’t worry, the big guy will make it all right in the end.’ They have the sublime sense that they don’t have to do all that much to plan events, or to come up with the message for what they’re doing, or to line up support, because whenever they need to, they can just put Mike Tyson in the ring. And I think (a) it’s wrong, and (b) it’s a bad way to run a White House.”

It’s odd that Obama’s supporters seem to still find him ideologically vague whereas his opponents—present company included—find him much less so. But both sides are more and more in agreement that this is a White House and a president filled with an unusually high level of hubris and arrogance, even in a profession not known for humility.

Did I say hubris? It seems that Obama may be entering nemesis time.

Comments

Is Obama his own worst enemy? — 86 Comments

  2. It’s really an alternate universe to come here and see you guys on the right railing against Obama as a “leftist ideologue” when it’s totally clear that he’s what I’ve always claimed he was: a centrist pragmatist. I really have no idea on what sober, rational basis you’re making this assessment. Of course I see all the shrieking in the media about birth certificates and how the health care plan is tantamount to communism (or fascism, take your pick), etc., but I was under the impression that you were a more sober thinker than that, Neo. Unfortunately I only visit your blog once in a while so I must have missed your posts where you lay out your arguments but nevertheless I am surprised to see your assessment here in this post.

    On nearly every major policy initiative so far I’ve seen Obama take a very considered, moderate course, much to the consternation of most of my friends on the left (where I hang out, typically). He’s definitely seen to be either too moderate or (with this Afghanistan decision) even totally betraying the left. I can’t tell if you think he’s a “leftist ideologue” because: 1) you don’t really know what leftists actually want, and don’t realize Obama isn’t doing what they want, 2) you are misinterpreting Obama’s policies, or 3) you think anyone who isn’t a full-blown rightist is a “leftist ideologue”. I suppose since many of you think I’m a leftist ideologue I can’t be too surprised if the answer is 3).

  4. I thought Obama was a Progressive Frontman back when he first started having success in the primaries. That’s the only way he could have gotten very far.

    I still think so, but “it’s worse than I thought”. He has no ability to make practical decisions which relate to anything other than the Progressive Fantasyland with its fetishes and phobias, and pleasing some crass cronies and low class fellow mobsters. And neither do his advisers. Even apart from everything else, his Administration is totally incompetent.

  5. This essay and its core question reminded me of a New Yorker cartoon from years ago.

    A man is standing all by himself in a book shop and has picked up a book and is reading the title:

    “Hummm…. How to Be Your Own Best Friend. I hardly think we need this one, do we?”

  7. Like I said, on what basis do you actually come up with this claim that Obama is a leftist ideologue? I can list policy after policy in which he’s steered a clearly moderate course, which happens to cause people to be upset on both the right and the left. Perhaps to be politically successful in this country you need to be more ideological, in fact; Americans seem to only understand leaders when they are either clearly liberal or clearly conservative.

  8. Mitsu: For starters, as an answer to your question you might want to read the enormous number of Obama articles I’ve written so far—almost 400, to be exact. To help you out, though, I suggest you concentrate on this and this, which are summaries. But there’s plenty more.

    Obama has come out with a few moderate policies. Very few. The rest have been far Left to a degree that we’ve never before seen in a president. If you haven’t noticed that, you haven’t been looking.

  9. Like I said, on what basis do you actually come up with this claim that Obama is a leftist ideologue?

    Because all of his friends and associates are? Because any patriotic American would be in a quandary as to which one of his friends and associates to strangle first? Because HUAC could have a field day on his friends, associates, and shady past? Because he talks about “redistributing the wealth?” Because he apologizes for America and grovels to foreigners wherever he goes? Because Chavez and Castro see him as a kindred spirit? Because he worked for and is supported by hard-left organizations such as ACORN and SEIU?

    Nope, can’t imagine why anyone would suspect him of leftist sympathies. It’s a mystery.

  11. Mitsu states Obama is “what I’ve always claimed he was: a centrist pragmatist. ”

    That’s what I call “the illusion of central position.” To wit, a person well on the left looking at Obama might say, “See, he’s to the right of me just a tad, ergo he’s a centrist.”

    Well, to the left of me…. far far over on the horizon…. if you look you can see the Republican party. That doesn’t me I think of them as centrist even though, if one were to cite poll after poll the Republicans are much closer to dead center in the country right now than the President.

    I’ll give Mitsu “pragmatist” however since the president shows, with every passing day, how sensitive he is to electability and retaining his strained Democrat coalition while at the same time moving as quickly as his vast army of administrative apparatchiks will allow to institute policy refinements that have no source other than his own limited knowledge of history, economics, and science.

  12. An unintentionally hilarious column by the Ripon Society’s Lou Zicker today, echoing Mitsu to a good degree: Per Zicker, Obama is a perfect centrist — but he has been betrayed by left-ideologues who have hijacked his initiatives and turned the public against his policies! The traitors? People with names like Pelosi, Reid and Waxman. Oh, if only Stalin — I mean, ‘Obama’ — knew!

  13. One could also look at the New York Magazine article as an early attempt to rewrite history to eulogize Obama. You know, the leftist revision of the causes of the depression of the ’30’s into how FDR saved capitalism.

  15. Mitsu,

    In one way I agree with you. If you define ideologue as someone totally committed to an ideology like liberation theology, then Obama is no ideologue. He has shown that when the going gets tough for him personally, he will toss anything under the bus. However, his life experience, his friends have limited the framework from which he views life. In other words, his received wisdom has been leftist, and he has done little to test that worldview.

    That is why he can’t be a true pragmatist. In the words of William James, we get closer to truth when we continue to roll up our experiences and think. I don’t think Obama allows himself many new experiences. He never really experienced life in the rust belt, yet he had a preformed idea about clinging to guns and religion that he chose to impose on working class white America. He can stand above and analyze and pretend to empathize, but he doesn’t let much touch him. He can’t give the experiences of others real respect. He puts a wall of intellect around himself so he never has to ask what he really believes. A pragmatist may adjust his beliefs when confronted by new experiences. It’s a bit like reading a book at 18 and rereading it 20 years later; the experience of marriage, having children, losing a parent, all enable you to see things in the book that you were oblivious to at 18. But when this happens, you can say how and why your experience has changed or expanded your view.

    Obama doesn’t seem to do this. How often has he said “As I said before, ” when in fact what he said before was quite different from what he was currently saying? He seems unable to admit to himself that he erred or was naive. When he changes positions and calls that pragmatic, he really seems to be saying that he wasn’t wrong but that he couldn’t get away with more. He doesn’t defend his previous position, nor does he explain his new one.

    It is perfectly possible to make a honorable compromise while retaining your original belief, but somehow Obama’s changes and compromises have an air of evasiveness about them.

  16. Mitsu, you’re either deliberately lying or you are unusually stupid. Obama’s not a pragmatist — a pragmatist wouldn’t try to burden the country with crushingly expensive new entitlements in the middle of a recession. A pragmatist wouldn’t insult our allies in the middle of a war. A pragmatist wouldn’t try to silence his opponents.

    Obama has an ideology, you just can’t bring yourself to name it: he hates America. We have a President actively working for our destruction. Hence his incessant apologies to our enemies, his attacks on everything that makes this country great. His venom for “ordinary Americans” (has he ever met one?).

  17. I sit in a sailboat on a calm day. Hmm, maybe if I blow into the sails, I can make the boat go. It would be quite silly not to give it a try, right? That would be so harsh and extreme. So I blow into the sails. The boat won’t go.

    I sit in a sailboat on another calm day. Maybe this time it’ll work. I blow into the sails. The boat won’t go.

    I sit in a sailboat on another calm day. I blow into the sails. The boat won’t go.

    I sit in a sailboat on another calm day. I blow into the sails. The boat won’t go.

    I sit in a sailboat on another calm day. I blow into the sails. The boat won’t go.

    This goes on for awhile.

    At some point…moderation and extremism have to change places. The laws of physics are solidly against this absurd plan having any positive effect whatsoever, and it’s been repeatedly tried. Theory has spoken. Practice has spoken. They agree. To take sides against both of them is not centrist. It may not even be sane.

    Gerard has it right on target. Mitsu says he hangs out with leftists and admits (!) this is why Obama’s policies seem to be middle-of-the-road.

    I think Obama’s doing to you and your pals, Mit, exactly what the mainstream press is doing to Obama. There was a huge hot sweaty orgy going on; now the bodies are all clean and the clothes are back on. It’s been a few weeks since anyone’s smiled or winked or exchanged come-hither looks. The chastity has taken on the appearance, to the more sensitive types, of hostility. I’m sure it feels like it after you’ve become accustomed to the everlasting orgasms.

    It isn’t hostility, you’re just becoming painfully aware of a larger, more three-dimensional world. Presidents occasionally make decisions that are out of harmony with what their base would like. And the press occasionally asks probing questions, which is what they were supposed to have been doing all along.

    My own opinion? In a recession in which businesses aren’t hiring because they’re afraid of next year’s crushing ObamaCare commitments, it would be “centrist” to back off, maybe even repeal some regulation, to see if there’s any lift that can overcome any drag. If you’re right about Obama being a centrist, I hope for the sake of the country that’s the decision that comes next. But I’m not betting much on it. Need to keep what I’ve got, like everyone else…

  18. OT note:
    I see, in past couple of weeks, massive criticism of a black man, and no one shouting racism. This is a very, very good thing – for all of us, maybe especially for persons with black skin.

    When a white person can criticize a black person: massively, vehemently, w/o holding anything back, w/o even a thought of holding anything back, with no hesitation whatsoever … this is racial healing. This is what black people in America have needed, even if many black persons did not know it. This is respect flowing from white persons to black persons. This is a very, very good thing, and I am so happy to see it.

    I knew, when Barack was elected, that this day would come. As much as I detested his election, I just as much looked forward to this day. Even a few weeks ago, some major news outlets were speculating about whether or not criticism of Barack was racially motivated. The President had to tamp down such sentiment during an appearance on Letterman. But, now, in the last two weeks, I see criticism which is not accompanied by charges of racism. Bravo, America.

  19. Obama announced to the Taliban and associated low-lifes that they just have to hang on for a year and a half and they win.
    Obama just gifted our enemies with a victory.
    The only way that can be pragmatic is if Obama intended to provide the Taliban with a victory.
    What is possibly pragmatic is his temporary increase in the number of troops so his supporters can say–lying the while–that Obama tried, he really tried, but the military let him down.

  20. Occam, you’re not talking about policies.

    Okay, Neo, I read your posts; correct me if I am wrong but in those two posts you haven’t spoken about any actual policies he’s enacted or supported since he got into office. The closest thing to a policy you’re referring to is his comments on cap and trade — we could debate that particular policy, its merits and so on, but that so far hasn’t actually gotten passed or signed into law. I can certainly see how you feel cap and trade is not to your liking. But do you have other examples, or any in terms of what the Administration has done so far?

    In terms of actual policies, I am thinking of his handling of the financial crisis, health care, and his military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the financial crisis I believe he did the right thing — both bailing out the large banks (doing otherwise would have caused a Great Depression) and providing an economic stimulus (which most economists now say, even on the right, has helped to end the recession as of last quarter), and they’re now pursuing financial regulatory reform (in a way which is far less ambitious than the left wants). In terms of health care the program they’re proposing is far less sweeping than programs already in place in every other advanced industrialized nation, regardless of hyperbole from the right. It won’t even cover everyone and the “public option” which has everyone up in arms won’t even be available to most people, it’s restricted to the point of being nearly pointless (which is why I think they might as well just drop it from the final bill). The reforms involved, including banning the use of preexisting conditions as a reason to deny health insurance, allowing insurance portability, the Wyden Amendment that ensures that even people using employee health care can comparison shop with other companies in the exchange, the incentives for modernization of health care IT, and so forth… all are profoundly needed and very moderate. Finally, on military strategy he’s promoted Petraeus, and promoted McChrystal, both of whom are excellent officers, and he kept Gates, also a prudent choice, and again he’s been taking a moderate course.

    This is what he’s actually done. I believe most of the fulminating about him is based on exaggerated paranoia about what he “might” do based on nefarious supposed “associations”… I’d love to hear about real policies he’s enacted or is about to enact which actually betray the supposed far left orientation of the guy. All I know is the people on the left I know are pretty angry at him so far.

  21. Shorter Morgan Freeberg (who made an excellent point): pragmatists by definition guide their actions by what observably works. If one action doesn’t work, they will try another until they find one that does, unconstrained by theory or other notion of what should have worked.

    Now does that sound like Obama to you? Seriously.

  22. >entitlement

    Trimegistus, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: we currently spend roughly twice the percentage of GDP compared to what every other nation does on health care per capita, and we don’t even cover everyone. The rate of increases in health care spending are going up at twice the rate of inflation. We are ALREADY, all of us, paying the cost for this (because our employers have to pay more and more for health insurance — premiums have doubled in the last 10 years!) It’s a national disaster in slow motion and something has to be done about it.

    The CBO projects the current health care bills will be deficit neutral. And they do not factor in the effect of any of the cost control incentives. There is a vast amount of money to be saved just in improving outdated health care IT. Haven’t you noticed how you have to fill out the same forms over and over again, on paper, whenever you visit another office, often even when it’s in the same hospital? There’s so much waste it’s unbelievable.

  23. …we currently spend roughly twice the percentage of GDP compared to what every other nation does on health care per capita

    Because a) we pay all of the R&D costs in medical technology for the rest of the world (they pay on a cost-plus basis after development), b) we have ambulance-chasing lawyers (no prizes for where they put their campaign donations), and c) we don’t write people off (e.g., preemies, the terminally ill) as other countries do.

  24. In any case, health care is beside the point. It’s an issue that can keep, and has kept for generations already. Winning the war on terrorism is much more important, and pressing as well. Obama needs to get his priorities straight: terrorism first, everything else…later.

    It’s the reason I supported Bush. He did some things I didn’t care for, but he focused his attention on the big one, and IMO got it right. (Not without hiccups – no war is – but overall, he got it right.)

  25. We don’t even know if we “pay” twice as much as some other country.
    In Medicare, the government workers’ compensation comes from the general budget and not the Medicare budget. Employers in Canada don’t “pay” anything for health care, since it’s folded into their general taxes.
    How much we pay and anybody else pays is an open question until the accounting is matched, something that most advocates on any issue find distasteful and inconvenient.
    Irrespective of Mitsu’s fingers-crossed praise of Petraeus and McChrystal, the fact is that the end date means we lose. Guaranteed. Whether that’s obama’s goal, or a consequence of some other goal, whether it’s a feature or a bug of pursuing some other goal, are all irrelevant.
    He did something no corporal ever to wear two stripes would think of as smart.
    As has been said, victory is declared by the loser, when he decides to quit fighting. Obama declared we’re going to quit after enough time to make the whole thing look bad. The Taliban have said they’ll keep fighting. They win.
    It would be interesting but, at this point, useless to speculate about Obama’s motivation. That the result will be humiliation and defeat is simply not contestable.
    All we can say at this point is that American humiliation and defeat have invariably been pursued and celebrated by Obama’s colleagues and mentors. Maybe, as with Rev. Wright’s sermons, obama wasn’t listening. Don’t know that’s the way to bet, though.

  26. Mitsu? He is both: He is a liar and he is unbelievably stupid.

    He is also so far to the Left, and so chuck-full of Leftist cant and MSM agitprop, not to mention the usual “useful iditot” arrogance amd self-importance, that he actually cannot understand what anyone is talking about. He is just the sort of numb-minded buffoon that elected this communist traitor in the first place.

    You are wasting your breath interacting with him. If people like this are not completely marginalized there is no hope for this nation.

  27. Even if Obama is the Leftist ideologue he appears to be, he could have pursued a slightly more moderate course and kept that fact hidden. He might have thrown a few more bones to the Right and to the cause of bi-partisanship, and not seemed to be so radical nor such a hypocrite.

    your missing a fundemental differnce between collectivism and individual rulership. they are not the same. obama is following the missives of a collective, pretending to be an individual leading, and only really doing so when he breaks from them.

    this is why things seem so out of place and dont make sense. he has many others working from many angles, and so his move is not please those many angles, and most of what we argue about is just for our consumption and keep us busy.

    there are fundemental differences, and to apply the system your familiar with to a system you know little about, is it any wonder that he doesnt make sense?

    however if you understand the other system and how things work then it makes a lot of sense.

    in such a system obama is a cell, and a cell is expendible, the cause is greater than him. the cause of communism was always greater than stalin, mao, hitler, etc. which is why they can all die off and yet the mission continues. or why the whole thing can reform itself in appearance and moves (it does not need to ask), and can abandon and eat its own if thats pragmatic.

    i can tell that the stuff i put up to read is not read, because if it was, certain questions would no longer be asked, certain angles would not be nonsensicle, and so on.

    its the difference between watching a group play cards and not knowing the rules…

    and watching a group playing cards and knowing the rules.

    the first group makes no sense, does it?

  28. i will ask that people read george kennan again… (if they ever did). and read the section on governance. he points out that the left/communists/socialists have always been about power, never about good governance.

    they are a classic example of the mean dog that chases after the car. they are so busy chasing and working up ethings to get power, that when they get it, they dont know waht to do with it other than keep increasing it.

  29. It’s odd that Obama’s supporters seem to still find him ideologically vague whereas his opponents–present company included–find him much less so.

    is it really so odd when they are ignorant of what they are following?

    they all have personal versions in their heads which are not correctes so that they can belong and be used.

    his actions now are to complete the game, and so the tale and the real will diverge.

    the people eventually find out what they got when they cant do much about it.

  30. Mitsu

    you keep forgettign that a majority of us were on both sides…

    so we know both sides, unlike you who only been on one.

  31. There are a lot of accusations and name calling happening above, but still, I await actual policies you guys think is so “leftist”.

    Regarding the 18 month date, as I said above, and I agree with Neo: it is mostly political. First of all it’s just a target date, it’s not a withdrawal date. It’s a target for when we *begin* to draw down forces. And if things aren’t going well obviously they’ll reconsider it.

    In fact, Gates today confirmed this in his testimony:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04policy.html?hp

    “… the pace, the size of the drawdown, is going to be determined in a responsible manner based on the conditions that exist at the time.”

  32. >both sides

    That may well be, but I haven’t been on “one” side, either. I am a liberal but I often disagree with my liberal friends (well I disagree regularly with my leftist friends, and sometimes with my liberal friends, there is a big difference as I often point out.) Most of the people I know who went from left to right were fairly far left; doctrinaire. I have never been doctrinaire and if there’s anything I am vehemently against it is decisions based on dogma.

  33. There are a lot of accusations and name calling happening above, but still, I await actual policies you guys think is so “leftist”.

    Universal Healthcare, nationalization of banks and automakers, a government of the unions by the unions and for the unions, Cap and Tax, the war on “profit”.

    Accepting a high-level of risk by under-resourcing national security in order to fund of universal healthcare, nationalization of banks and automakers, a government of the unions by the unions and for the unions, Cap and Tax, and the war on “profit”.

  34. Mitsu: I haven’t got time to rewrite the last two years of my blog for you. Go back and read many of the almost four hundred posts I’ve written on Obama, not just those two I linked for you. But in summary, nearly his entire handling of the financial crisis, from start to finish, is Left. He does not support business, but demonizes it. His entire handling of foreign affairs, almost from start to finish, is Left. Sending troops to Afghanistan would be one of the very few exceptions, if he didn’t undo it at the same time by saying exactly when he’s pulling them out again.

  35. Funny thing, Mitsu—Obama said he won’t reconsider the date:

    It was a point of contention at the White House briefing today — I asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs if senators were incorrect calling the date a “target.”

    After the briefing, Gibbs went to the president for clarification. Gibbs then called me to his office to relate what the president said. The president told him it IS locked in — there is no flexibility. Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It’s etched in stone. Gibbs said he even had the chisel.

    But yes, the pace is up for grabs. Very lawyerly of Obama. So the date might just be blather, after all. You can’t count on anything Obama says, anyway.

    The point—which you seem determined to ignore—is (a) the message of lack of resolve that the announcement of such a date sends to the enemy; (b) the message of lack of resolve that the announcement of such a date sends to the troops; and (c) the message of lack of resolve that the announcement of such a date sends to our allies.

  36. What would it take to qualify as a leftist policy in your book? Marching counter-revolutionaries to re-education camps, singing the Internationale, supporting “national liberation movements,” setting up labor camps above the Arctic Circle, forcing farmers onto collective farms, seeking government takoever of the remaining factors of production, reviewing troops from Lenin’s tomb? Any of those give off a slight whiff of leftism to you? Just a tad, around the edges? Or just more pragmatism in action?

  37. As I half-watched the speech the adjective that came to my mind was angry. Did anyone else get that impression? I know he tried to be serious but couldn’t quite pull it off. I can’t remember any politician with his demeaner. I don’t think it’s because he didn’t want to give this speech. He’s just an extremely angry individual, that is when he doesn’t have his phony smile on.

  38. Mitsu wrote, “The rate of increases in health care spending are going up at twice the rate of inflation. ”

    Look at the reasons why and address them.

    Neither the Senate or House bill or Obama’s proposals do that.

    Period.

    If you want to put your head in the sand and act like NONE of us have put forth proposals…. that is a failure on YOUR part not ours because WE have done so.

    The Negligence you are wearing is pretty.

    Pretty bad.

  39. Neo,

    What I’m basically saying here is that there’s not much to be gained from labels, i.e., shouting about leftist or rightist or whatever; I believe we ought to be talking about details of policy.

    From my point of view, the “far left” way to have handled the financial crisis would have been (and this is what many of my leftist or liberal friends were loudly recommending):

    1) Nationalize all the larger banks and break them up. Fire all the top management of the weaker banks. Wipe out shareholders and convert bondholders into shareholders. Then sell the broken up banks back to the market, re-privatizing them.

    2) Direct jobs programs a la the WPA.

    3) Massive infusion of money to distressed homeowners to stave off foreclosures.

    4) Massive stimulus, at least twice the size that was passed.

    5) Heavily re-regulate the banks. Reinstate Glass-Steagall. Implement more regulations.

    6) Impose heavy mandatory executive compensation rules which would apply to all financial institutions and perhaps most large companies as well.

    You may think this is absurd policy but it’s the policy that I heard quite frequently from many liberal economists as well as liberal friends of mine.

    What Obama actually did, as we all know, was MUCH less dramatic. Partial nationalization of some banks. Retain management of most of them. Recapitalize banks in exchange for stock purchase warrants. Provide massive short-term liquidity by directly propping up short term commercial paper (short term loans). Aid a few mergers to save some of the weaker large banks. Prevent the failure of nearly all banks. Short-term executive pay limits which expire once the banks repay their loans.

    In general this is a far more private-sector approach than what the left wanted. Even the banks which we now own largely retained their previous private leadership. The government intervention was very much on the small end of the spectrum. It’s not clear to me that it was the best strategy but it was rather market friendly compared to what happened under FDR and far more market friendly than most liberals wanted.

    That’s just one example.

  40. I meant to say, prevent the failure of nearly all large banks. They of course did allow the failure of many smaller banks, via the normal FDIC process.

  41. Mitsu: the fact that there are actions even further to the Left than Obama’s does not mean that what he has done is not far to the Left. It is, especially considering what the middle is in America. He is way to the Left of that, period. And he is that way across the board, domestically and in foreign affairs. The fact that his associates and most of his appointees are also of the Left is just corroborating evidence. His actions speak the loudest, and they tell us that he is a man of the Left.

  42. Mitsu says “In terms of actual policies, I am thinking of his handling of the financial crisis, health care, and his military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

    Put aside for now the “handling” of the financial crisis as well as Obama’s “strategy” in Iraq and Afghanistan….

    Instead let’s focus…. focus like a laser beam on the “Obama Policy on Health Care.”

    Please, please tell me EXACTLY what the “Obama” policy is in at least some detail.

    We have, as far as I know, bills in the thousands of pages in the House and Senate. These at least, regardless of their collective insanity, pages of words and passages of specific policy that one can point to and discuss, disagree with, or admire.

    Where is (aside from bromides and slogans that slop by in speeches) the Obama White House White Paper (at the very least) that specifies in at least a bit of detail exactly what the “Obama” policy is?

    Kindly provide a link to this document. I would very much like to read it.

  43. After that we can return to the Obama “financial crisis” policy for a crisis that is far, far from over and the “Obama” Iraq and Afghanistan “strategy” —

    1) Iraq: Let the George Bush strategy run and play out.
    2) Afghanistan: Put in place the George Bush surge strategy with the “Obama” addition of telling the enemy when it will be over.

    Brilliant stuff both of these items. What a man our president is!

  44. Mitsu . . . You keep telling us how pragmatic you are, but you never concede any points regarding the foolishness of Obama’s actions.

    1. He has many of marxist czars.
    2. He pushed a monstrous debt that has hampered and will continue to hamper the economic recovery.
    3. He supports cap and trade to make energy more expensive for Americans in general.
    4. He wants to raise taxes on successful Americans (calling them “the wealthy”).
    5. He pushes a monstrous bureaucratic health care program that will force Americans to get worse care.
    6. He doesn’t care about winning the Afghanistan war–just trying to keep his critics happy.

    There are lots of other reasons why Neo-neocons commenters think Obama is an anti-American, hate-whitey, socialist, but you don’t want to know what they think because you call yourself “pragmatic.” But you aren’t–you are an ideologue.

  45. >actions even further to the Left

    Even the Bush Administration was following policies that aren’t that different from what Obama eventually ended up implementing. The banks absolutely needed massive recapitalization. The only other real alternative would have been to simply let them crash and burn, which would have led to a Great Depression as well. Interestingly my friends on the left though that’s what should happen, basically, but they also thought lots of stimulus and homeowner assistance was in order. From my perspective what Obama did was close to the least they could do without triggering a massive depression.

    Basically Obama’s team split the difference: some aid at the top (to the big banks) and some at the bottom. Both were needed and I think this multi-pronged policy was a pretty good compromise.

    On health care, Obama’s team explicitly didn’t specify anything but the broad outlines. I mean Obama had his proposal out there, and has had it out there since the campaign. Basically it is less ambitious and more market-driven than Hillary Clinton’s proposal, which involved more government intervention.

    The essence of the plan being considered in Congress is along the same broad lines as Obama laid out during the campaign:

    1) The goal is not universal coverage, but much closer to universal than we have now

    2) Rely primarily on existing employer health insurance and private health insurance companies

    3) Penalties for those who don’t get health insurance, subsidies for the poor (penalties are not high enough in the Senate version I believe)

    4) Prevent denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions

    5) Set up exchange to allow even competition between plans. Wyden Amendment allows people even who are covered by an employer plan to shop around on the exchange (a VERY good improvement to the Senate plan)

    The “public option” I think is a sidetrack. It only applies to people who are self-employed or unemployed. I think it’s not needed. Switzerland has an all-private system which works just fine, regulated as noted above. People had this same debate there and it barely passed, but now everyone is very happy with it. There isn’t really a strong need for a public health insurer, though I do think there might be a reason to ensure competition by helping to set up a nonprofit cooperative as some Republicans suggested.

  46. do you have other examples, or any in terms of what the Administration has done so far?

    Nationalizing industries is pretty socialist…

    i think marx called it seizing the means of production…

    give me what middle centrist position would include nationalizing things… (the germans who did it were called nazi… it was a slang term for nationalizers… it was NOT short for national socialists).

  47. Okay, now we’re at least discussing policy! Again, I only have a little time in my “visit Neo’s blog and chat” interlude here, but I’ll respond a little more.

    >Marxist czars

    First of all, I hope you realize the absurdity of the phrase “Marxist czars”. You do realize it was the Marxists who overthrew the czar? And it was one czar, not multiple czars. Finally, the first person who used the term “czar” to refer to one of his appointments? Ronald Reagan. Give me a break, this is just a whimsical term.

    >He pushed a monstrous debt that has hampered and will continue to hamper the economic recovery.

    This is a legitimate policy difference. I believe it is obvious that what you do in cases like this is stimulus spending. That will temporarily increase the deficit but it’s better than languishing in a longer recession.

    >He supports cap and trade to make energy more expensive for Americans in general.

    Cap and trade is not, in my view, a “far left” position. Again, this is a legitimate policy disagreement however.

    >He wants to raise taxes on successful Americans (calling them “the wealthy”).

    He’s talking about extremely small increases. The top marginal rate under Reagan was 70 percent. It is 35 today. The tax increases he’s referring to are miniscule. Our taxes remain among the lowest, overall, in the world.

    >He pushes a monstrous bureaucratic health care program that will force Americans to get worse care.

    The plan we’re currently considering is FAR less sweeping, as I said above, than EVERY other advanced industrialized nation in the world. That means even if it passes we’re still to the right of every other industrialized nation. If that’s “far left” I think the term has lost all meaning.

    >He doesn’t care about winning the Afghanistan war—just trying to keep his critics happy.

    That’s just your paranoia in my view. He has always said the Afghan war was the crucial one and this is just following through on a long-held policy position. That’s why I’m surprised at how vehement the reaction has been on the left: this is not a surprise, folks. He’s always said this was critical. And he’s always been right.

  48. If Obama’s policies are not as far left as they could be, it is only because they are as far left as he can possibly get away with. Despite Congress’ erosion of power in favor of the executive, the President is not (yet) omnipotent. Obama has clearly stated that his goals included complete withdrawal from Iraq, closing Guantanamo, redistribution of wealth and socialized medicine. Some of these goals have been stated for years. Unlike most Presidents, he hasn’t proposed much concrete, but rather has left the details to the hapless Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but they are all of the same mind: to drive this country as far left as quickly as they can. They’ve done a good job, and the only thing that is keeping them from doing it faster and harder is a literal revolt of the electorate. Unfortunately, they have awakened a lot of anger and unrest and I suspect 2010 will be a replay of 1994, except I believe that Obama won’t take the same route that Clinton took, changing his approach to work with the other party to accomplish some real good. Obama has does nothing but disparage and antagonize, and often downright insult, the Republicans. If he weren’t so obsessively driven towards the Left he would have moderated his approach in such a way as to not risk electoral disaster in the mid terms. But he didn’t, and he will get, as he deserves, little or no respect from the Republicans who will almost definitely win many seats next fall. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I could see Obama achieving lame duck status halfway through his term, if he hasn’t effectively achieved it already, which could be argued. Aside from the reckless and profligate spending (bailouts, and pork posing as stimulus), he’s accomplished very little, even with a large majority in Congress. If he can’t do anything now, he will be even less effective when the houses of Congress are split or both in Republican control. And he has no one to blame but himself.

    Obama is the most left President we’ve ever had, and possibly the most left major politician in the history of this Republic.

  49. both bailing out the large banks (doing otherwise would have caused a Great Depression) and providing an economic stimulus (which most economists now say, even on the right, has helped to end the recession as of last quarter)

    notice that he wants us to disprove his points and waste our time on his crap.

    what austrian economist would say that the stimulus worked? give us names mitsu… c’mon…

    and the GREAT DEPRESSION was greatly extended by FDR…

    however it DID give ford the chance to make a bunch of giant banks and then create the federal reserve… move us off the gold standard, and pocketed interest in tax collections..

    NAMES mitsu…
    otherwise your playing the leftist BS burden shifting game…

    meanwhile… your a relativist… you cant tell where you are in a spectrum, you have no absolute!

    your idea of centrist is between stalin and nitler..
    may i ask where minimal self government comes in that spectrum? only a moron would think that freedom exists between two totalitarian systems that both claim to be socialist!!!!

  50. “It’s odd that Obama’s supporters seem to still find him ideologically vague whereas his opponents”

    To be a progressive, it is a required trait to be unable to see people on your side are even more far left (like ‘communist’ left)…

  51. What *I* have called “far left” above is WAY to the right of the social democrats of Europe. Pretty much the entire American poilitical spectrum is far right by European standards. The Soviet version of left isn’t even on the map.

    If you want to call Obama’s policies “far left” that’s up to you, but they are to the right of nearly all people who actually call themselves “left” in this country, which is already to the right of most of the world.

  52. You do realize it was the Marxists who overthrew the czar? And it was one czar, not multiple czars. Finally, the first person who used the term “czar” to refer to one of his appointments? Ronald Reagan. Give me a break, this is just a whimsical term.

    Trivial argument. Call them “commissars,” then. It’s more appropriate in any case. The point, for those who missed it, is that appointment of so many commissars circumvents the “advise and consent” function of the legislative branch in executive branch appointments.

  53. Trimegistus, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: we currently spend roughly twice the percentage of GDP compared to what every other nation does on health care per capita, and we don’t even cover everyone.

    VERY ingenous of you…

    WE are not a collective..
    so WE dont spend that way..
    and the money we lose if your sick, doesnt belong to the collective. does it?

    and covering everyone is VERY different than delivering service to everyone. just as full employment is VERY different than FULL productivity..

    the ONLY countries that look at their people this way are communist countries in which the people are the cattle and they estimate how much productivityh each cattle should give, then subtract the loss caused by the cattle acting bad.

    however mitsu… lets first balance your point.

    did you juggle how they define the things going into the statistics?

    for instance… did you compare spending more and having treatment today vs spending less and waiting 6 months to a year?

    if you had cancer, would you think that spending less and waiting 6 months was a better expense?

    of course not

    however if you were a politician who collects paymnent for treatments BEFORE giving them, and can pocket the difference when care is witheld, and force the state to pay liabilities… then this is GREAT… especially since the rulers are not putting themselves on the same system! (and the wealthy can travel elswhere).

    did you know that if you were having a baby in the US… they would go to heroic lengths to save it if it was premature? but if you were in those other countries, you have to let it die.

    by the way, i just lost a family member in one of those other places. why? pre-eclampsia… the baby died (second one) cause they dont do anything like what we do. they let them die.

    and voila… the statistics are much better.

    after all, we let mitsu baby die, we save money, and our cost of care goes down…

    but is it better?

    you have confused the issues.
    the issue is not coverage… its care
    the issue is not cost in absolute, its in cost vs what you get for it.

    This is mitsu’s idea of better!
    Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

    Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy – almost four months early.
    They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.

    Miss Capewell, 23, said doctors refused to even see her son Jayden, who lived for almost two hours without any medical support.
    She said he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat and was even moving his arms and legs, but medics refused to admit him to a special care baby unit.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211950/Premature-baby-left-die-doctors-mother-gives-birth-just-days-22-week-care-limit.html

    guess what mitsu… they spend less on care.
    and since the baby dies, they get better stats too.

    this is better soviet style…
    where the stats and reports are real, and reality isnt.

    its just another version of

    they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.

    and look here
    Man pulls out 13 of his own teeth with pliers ‘because he couldn’t find an NHS dentist’

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1135582/Man-pulls-13-teeth-pliers-NHS-dentist.html

    I bet their cost of care is lower cause of that too.
    not like the US.. who wastes money on people when they could do it themselves with pliers.

    and look how much they save here!!!!!!!

    Starved by the NHS: 242 patients die from malnutrition in a single year
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1168377/Starved-NHS-242-patients-die-malnutrition-single-year.html

    dead patients, refusal to treat… etc

    is why those systems are cheaper.

    in fact if they stoppped treating everyone
    they would have the cheapest medical system in the world

    and mitsu would not be smart enough to get it

  54. >advise and consent

    Like I said, it’s just a whimsical phrase to refer to bureaucratic appointees, which Reagan first used.

    >get away with

    The Administration had broad powers to deal with the financial crisis in a lot of ways; had they recommended breaking up the big banks I suspect they’d have been able to do it — the atmosphere back then was pretty intense. They went for a less extreme policy and it appears to be working. Even my liberal friends who were screaming for more activist intervention have begun to grudgingly admit that perhaps Obama and Geithner didn’t totally fuck it up.

  55. The CBO projects the current health care bills will be deficit neutral.

    LIAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Is Health Care Reform Really Deficit Neutral?

    CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 3961 [the “doc fix”], by itself, would cost $210 billion over the 2010—2019 period. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation have separately estimated that enacting H.R. 3962 [the health care bill] would reduce federal budget deficits by $109 billion over that same period.

    CBO estimates that enacting both bills would add $89 billion to budget deficits over the 2010—2019 period, somewhat less than the sum of the effects of enacting the bills separately because of interactions between their provisions. The agency estimates that the two bills together would increase the budget deficit in 2019 by $23 billion relative to current law, an increment that would grow in subsequent years.

    ok… time for you to weedle.

  56. Artfldgr,

    I have to run soon, but yes, much has been debated about this — but we’re not talking about letting babies die or having long waiting times. Yes, in some countries with socialized medicine there are waiting times, but compare with, say, Switzerland or France or Japan, which have comparatively short waiting times, choice of which doctor you want to go to, and very good health care outcomes (i.e., similar cancer survival rates, etc.)… and one can see that having universal health care doesn’t mean having long waits or letting people die. France and Japan do spend a little more, something like 60% what we spend; surely at the massive amounts we spend we can at least match their levels of service, which are pretty good.

  57. A good analysis of how bad our healthcare system is, even though it is by far the most expensive:

    http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/08/how_effective_is_american_heal.html

    It’s true that for certain things, like cancer, we are at the top — but again France and Canada have similar success rates, despite spending MUCH less. There’s literally no area in which we do significantly better than countries with universal health care, and many in which we do much worse.

  59. Oh dear, I can’t resist telling a great story about two of the leading politicians of the 1945 Labour government: Nye Bevan, the architect of the National Health Service and Ernie Bevin, the Foreign Secretary (and a darn good one, too). Somebody said to Bevin: “Nye is his own worst enemy.” To which Ernie B replied: “Not while I’m around he isn’t.”

  60. Ah.. now i understand why mitsu doesnt think obama is leftist.

    From my point of view, the “far left” way to have handled the financial crisis would have been (and this is what many of my leftist or liberal friends were loudly recommending):

    well first of all, he and they are working in a bottle and they are confirming that they are like minded in their personal versions.

    that he thinks the answers are in DEGREE in a SHORT TIME PREFERENCE of action, not in WHAT action they do… so he has NO ruler except how far away from the prior moves he is.

    1) Nationalize all the larger banks and break them up. Fire all the top management of the weaker banks. Wipe out shareholders and convert bondholders into shareholders. Then sell the broken up banks back to the market, re-privatizing them.

    he doesnt realize that state seizing of private enterprise and state holding up such is FASCISM… to him fascism is centrist, because its not TOTALLY LEFT… He sees the companies in China as free market (not realizing that the fulcrum is control, not possession).

    he has the EXACT mindset that Stalin created pre WWII when he and hitler were duking it out trying to get the people to take their side (thats when he declared hitler and everything not socialist to the right… which is nonsensical, but thats its source and thats what mitsu sees it as)

    if you look at the other points he shows he is the frog in the frying pan… measuring the current temperature as extreme only if it diverges from what he is used to.

    Direct jobs programs a la the WPA.

    Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post reported today that “as desperate Democratic lawmakers cast about for ways to create jobs from Capitol Hill, a 1970s-era jobs program is getting a fresh look”
    The version of CETA being discussed by Democrats would be some type of public-private partnership through which the government would pay part of an employee’s salary, while he or she would train under and work for a private firm.

    they called it direct jobs.. note that i also said there was a time preference here… if they do it slowly, he will not feel it and it will not be perceived as being on his list.

    Massive infusion of money to distressed homeowners to stave off foreclosures.

    the validity is whether mitsu thinks the amount ‘massive’ enough to be massive to him.
    its also a relative point in which he will pluck another number, forget the people, compare the numbers and say thats not so much.

    President Obama unveiled a foreclosure-prevention package Wednesday that would pour more than $75 billion into arresting one of the root causes of the nation’s economic spiral by helping as many as 9 million homeowners obtain more affordable mortgage terms. WAPO

    obama blowing the scales with trillions, means that this number isnt big enough… but when bush had a total of 800 billion, making that number 10% of the whole bush budget… he would have felt it.

    Massive stimulus, at least twice the size that was passed.

    he doesnt see that the state has no right stealing from the people they are claiming to be stimulating (while pocketing a whole bunch as the money passes by… CBO estimates 10% on average disappears!!!)

    how does 2X an arbitary amount make it far left?
    how does bailing money from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end of the pool, while claiming over 10% make it limited government by the people?

    mitsu… if its 3X its far left…
    if its 5X can it roll over like a pin ball machine and be on the right?

    i WILL point out something that may not be picked up here.

    mitsu internally knows the political spectrum..
    he has set the scales on it to show that the more extreme the behavior and acts on the population the more leftist it is. by just these two assertions, he PROVES that far RIGHT, even internally to him, is to not do anything!!!!

    if more is more left, then less is more right. no?

    how though does that jive with the spectrum his talking points are from? how does doing nothing and not taking money from people to give to others… end up with totalitarian fascism?

    Heavily re-regulate the banks. Reinstate Glass-Steagall. Implement more regulations.

    another arbitrary point… one of degree that brings us to the same question above…

    and kind of makes our point, that freedom, is minimal government and the ability to fail cause you made bad mistakes. that fascism IS to the right of socialism/communism… its still WAY left of the actual right… that is, it was never on the right, it was always two points to the left.

    in fact communism and fascism are not distinquisable except by only one thing.

    the degree of action they take

    Impose heavy mandatory executive compensation rules which would apply to all financial institutions and perhaps most large companies as well.

    interesting… but its ALL his coffee clatsches personal versions being expressed as the voice of the political spectrum… other than that, these points have no validity in making his point.

    one does not say a lion isnt a lion cause it never ate meat..

    I can point out that his points and limits would require obama to be like snidely whiplash and pull off his cape and completely expose everything in one jolt. riots and problems would ensue..

    he cant see that he did as much as he could do given the limitations of not having consolodated and having the power to be extreme and not be tarred and feathered or be able to act.

    in essence he is saying they are not far left because he has a cartoon image of what despots do to build things over time. as i said most people do. they dont see it as a card house that while its being built, can get knocked and be more difficult. they see it as a finish line in a race and the grabbing of the brass ring, with no understanding of how A changes to Z and the steps between.

    the laws that made the banks fail are still there. and so they are getting primed for another failure, and ALSO the other failure coming is from credit companies as more than 17% unemployment is hitting home.

    so he doesnt have to do it all at once.. to the extreme and alert mitsu’s who would then say HEY!!! he can do it 10 feet at a time with in between circumtances making each move seem the reasonable thing to do that was limited.

    like it makes a difference if you sprint over the line, walk over the line, crawl over the line…

    in the case of power and goals, its not the journey, its the end that counts… quite opposite the mantra that we hear all the time…

    im out…

  61. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that money spent by a government on social welfare is basically money wasted.

    Contrast the use of Marshal Plan funds by the UK and Germany. The latter, still under occupation, had its Marshall Plan funds invested by the occupying powers (i.e., us) in rebuilding industry, thereby laying the foundation for the Wirtschaftswunder.

    Britain, on the other hand, under Clement Attlee, pissed away its Marshall Plan funds on establishing the NHS and building public housing (“tower blocks,” the Brit equivalent of the projects here), thereby laying the foundation for Britain’s becoming the “sick man of Europe” until Thatcher halted the rot.

    Yet here we are, following Clement Attlee’s policies…

  63. Maybe mitsu and obama might understand things if they just saw stuff like this..

    Schoolhouse Rock – The Great American Melting Pot
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWJ4udW41Ns&feature=related

    [note they became americans first, their old country second (liberalism), not like multiculturalism today (neo liberalism)]

    this one would be forbidden today by neo liberals…
    Schoolhouse Rock – Three is a Magic Number
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxmKRyLdBho&feature=related

    another thing to notice is the difference in how we loved what and why millions came here to live by choice.

    and notice the views… 1,250,739
    Schoolhouse Rock – The Preamble
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_TXJRZ4CFc

    Schoolhouse Rock – The Shot Heard ‘Round the World
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VQA5NDNkUM&feature=related

    Schoolhouse Rock – No More Kings
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofYmhlclqr4&feature=related

    he will never understand what this was all about and what the big deal was if he doesnt go back to when history was history, not social studies..

  64. forgot two..
    [there are a whole lot more… while most are good, some are sneaky statist… like tax max]

    School house Rock – Elbow Room
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twFs9Vk6F0A&feature=related

    maybe obama should see this one..
    (notice no czars/ceasars)
    Schoolhouse Rock – Three-Ring Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5I2KFENjS8&feature=related

    bonus reel
    can we have this one shown at the job summit?

    Schoolhouse Rock – Mother Necessity
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V18e0o1NpA4&feature=related

  65. I think that Mitsu misses the big idea, namely that on one hand is small government and great freedom. On the other hand is big government and little liberty. Mitsu also doesn’t have a firm grasp of the idea that the reason that the U.S. has been so successful is that we’ve enjoyed great freedom. We haven’t depended on big government to solve all our problems.

    The U.S. has been the leader in most areas. We should not feel bad because “most other countries” do things differently. Sure, we can learn from them, but we don’t need to imitate them.

  66. Slightly OT, but not really–

    I just happened to have another tab open on my computer which has this url:

    http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/the_berlin_wall_20_years_gone.html

    Too bad our inadequate President couldn’t be bothered to attend the celebration because he wasn’t the star of the show.

    About 10 years ago I went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum and was moved to tears by what people went through to reach freedom. And so many ignorant Americans, like Mitsu, are willing to throw away our wonderful free enterprise system because they think the federal government will be giving out candy.

  67. Considering the scope of this thread, some of these points might be considered minor if not trivial, but still:

    Afghanistan: The points made above about our naming a date for withdrawal (or for considering withdrawal, or for beginning withdrawal, or for beginning to think about talking about considering withdrawal–and notice that the only thing common to all the fudged positions is “withdrawal”) fail to mention one of the more salient points, considering that Obama et al. insist, as some sort of a bottom line, that the Afghans shall pick up the slack we throw their way. It is this: The Afghans know perfectly damned well that if we are going to leave, we are going to leave them to the tender mercies of their Taliban tormentors. What possible incentive have they to fight the Taliban in the meantime? The Taliban are nothing if not vengeful, and they take notes.

    Artfldgr: I think actually that a good many of us here read your stuff. Anyway, some of what you say above regarding collectivism reminds me of the Star Trek Borg. Ugh.

    Granny Jan: I’m with you on the smile. It’s as though there’s a little man living inside Obama’s mouth with his finger on an “on” switch. It’s not there, it’s there in full brilliance, it’s not there again. . . . Biden does the same thing, toothiness included, and I sometimes think it’s a big part of the reason Biden was tapped for the VP slot. On, off, on, off. . . .

    Mitsu likes to point out our deficiencies with respect to the rest of the industrial world (read: Europe) in terms of health care expenditures. But I can think of no reason why we should model our system on what they do over there. Collective health care plans would profit us nothing. As Theodore Dalrymple pointed out in recent months, it’s not that the health care is uniformly bad–it isn’t. It’s that you’re put in the position of being a pauper, and are dependent upon what you are given, and that, when it is bad, you have nowhere else to go. And Obama lies brazenly about the whole thing. He wants us all encompassed by the same, single system. If he didn’t want that, he would not be happy to embrace and sign whatever the party’s Congressional Left will send him. It allows him to say he doesn’t prefer a collective system and at the same time to get one. Nice trick, that.

    I also am not persuaded that one of the major problems with our system as it stands is that it spends too much. There are perfectly valid arguments to the effect that we would all be better off if we, in fact, spent more. Improved care and outcomes will cost us, but it is not a zero-sum game. Any growth industry produces, as well as consumes, more.

    One of the things I like most about this blog is the active participation of Neo. On many other sites, the owner posts and then leaves. Neo interacts fully with us. It enhances the whole thing for me. Wretchard does this as well, but most bloggers don’t. I learn a lot by attending here, it’s all quite high-level.

  68. Promethea,

    Nice points. One of the things we should notice about population movements between this country and other countries the world over: The traffic is pretty much all moving in one direction (I am not the first person to make this observation, but I forget where I’ve seen it before).

    Well, at least this has been true up until now.

  70. He’s a disaster on so many levels. Mostly because he has never done anything except to say, “I’m Barak and I have a lot of potential. Everyone says so.” He acts like a graduate student on a Fulbright, “Neat. I get to be President!….And then I’ll write a paper about it. No, I’ll get someone else to.” This whole thing is unbelievable to watch. He doesn’t know who he is, and he’s never done anything, and He Doesn’t Know He Doesn’t Know who he is and He Doesn’t Know That He Has Never Done Anything. The whole thing is excrutiating to watch. And oddly fascinating. Although I can’t even look anymore. Has it only been a year?

  71. Artfldgr, I’m not sure why you went through your point by point attack on the policy I listed out, because I was not saying I agreed with the policy, I was just reporting what many liberal economists and a lot of my acquaintances and friends were arguing for. It’s similar to what, say, Sweden did during their financial crisis. I didn’t agree with their plan for a large number of reasons, primarily because I felt it would take too long and was needlessly aggressive. Note: the idea of firing the managers was only for the insolvent banks (as opposed to propping them up which we did).

    Betsybounds: If it were the case that we actually got better health care outcomes than every other nation for the vast sums of money we spend on health care, that would be one thing. But in fact, we don’t. As I mentioned before: yes, NHS seems to have some problems with waiting times, etc., but even they end up for the most part statistically speaking doing relatively okay, but countries like France, etc., don’t have those problems — and it should be pointed out that Americans also suffer from wait times for many procedures, especially those in HMOs (which most of us are in). France also has total choice of doctors, etc. Are you saying we can’t do even as well as France? We’re not capable of it?

    Switzerland has a different approach: private insurers, but they’re regulated, similar to the plan now being discussed in Congress. They also have short wait times, spend much less than we do, and have good health care outcomes.

  72. Mitsu with head in the sand wrote, “But in fact, we don’t.”

    You have to TRY not to see pieces of work by people who have studied and found that you get better care in America.

    So negligent. I’d have you prosecuted for your negligence if I could.

  73. I have linked here those studies. So have others.

    Mitsu,

    Stop being negligent. Your sources of information keep your head pushed down harder into the sand.

  74. I see Obama as the ultimate job-hopping, resume-building, career opportunist. We all know the type. Moving from job to job, staying long enough to establish credibility for the next career move – never quite long enough for co-workers and management to confirm their incompetence. Always with an eye to the next step. Steeped in the craft of BS. It is someting of an art form – and Obama seems to have been it’s master.

    Only what happens when you get to the end of the line and there is nowhere else to go to hide from the truth you’ve always known deep inside? That you are a fraud. These people typically fall very hard when that time comes. One can imagine that it must be a very uncomfortable place to be. They are trapped. At last stationary where they were always on the move. A motionless target for a life-time accumulation of chickens to roost upon.

  75. Sorry, Baklava, I haven’t seen those links as I don’t read Neo’s blog as often as I’d like, as I have only a certain amount of time to spend chatting with you folks, much as I enjoy it (and I actually do enjoy it). If you’d care to repost them here I’d be happy to take a look.

    There are many studies showing the US doesn’t achieve better outcomes on the whole; and on many measures we’re actually worse than the rest of the world. Consider the big bugaboo, waiting times; for getting appointments with doctors, waiting times in the US are worse than most other countries:

    http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070621_716260.htm

    Or consider this comparison of waiting times. Note that in some countries with universal care, there are significant waiting times for elective procedures, but not others; the difference seems to be primarily in whether or not the program is a public-private hybrid or national health care system (France has a single payer system but private hospitals and doctors and has virtually no waiting times, Germany and Switzerland have a public-private hybrid with also little waiting time):

    http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2005/04/waiting-for-health-care.html

    The United States also fares really badly on measures of infant mortality and life expectancy:

    http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html

    Of course, that is due to a large extent on our poor health choices and obesity.

    One bright spot for us is cancer survival rates, but even there, we only lead for some cancers (requires free registration):

    http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/577720

    “The survey results show that the United States had the highest survival rates for breast and prostate cancers, Japan had the highest survival rates for colon and rectal cancers in men, and France had the highest survival rates for colon and rectal cancer in women.”

    So yes, for some things our massive health care spending yields benefits, as one would hope; higher cancer survival rates, and we have short waiting times for elective surgery. But we still have long waiting times for doctor appointments, and wait times for elective surgery are short in countries with public-private hybrid systems, which is the sort of system being considered in Congress now.

    Looking at the available evidence it does appear that a “government takeover” of health care a la the NHS in Britain would not be ideal. There are reasons why a public-private hybrid would be better, as we see in countries like Germany, France (single payer but fee for service), Switzerland, etc. But that’s exactly the sort of system currently being considered for passage in Congress now.

  76. The infant mortality issue is a matter of reporting. In the US, any child born alive is considered a live birth, no matter how challenged. If the kid dies after heroic efforts, it’s a stat for infant mortality.
    In other nations, preemies before a certain age, even if born alive, those below a certain weight, are considered still born, even if alive, and are allowed to die. Thus not stats on infant mortality.
    Mitsu seems to think this is just dandy. Mitsu knows this, but hopes we, or somebody, doesn’t.
    Hope springs, doesn’t it, Mitsu. You might actually run into somebody you could fool. Someplace else.

  77. Perhaps off topic, perhaps relevant, indeed.

    While the Bush administration tried to apply the mind-numbing Blitzkreig of “Shock & Awe” against Iraq, the organization that is really most successfully applying “Shock and Awe”–and against the United States–is the the Obama administration, which is trying to quickly and simultaneously ram through every pernicious far Left initiative they can think of, hoping that enough will pass or be enshrined in legislation, policy and regulation that their goal of “fundamentally” and permanently changing America will have been achieved before the baleful effects of their policies are manifest, and they are thrown out of office; they just want to do as much damage to freedom and democracy, to traditional America, and to the capitalist system as they can, as quickly as they can, they are a commando raid hoping to become a permanent occupying force.

    Case in point–with a myriad of illustrative and sickening examples–the reading list for K-12 students being promoted by the organization, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), founded by Obama’s ardently homosexual “Safe Schools Czar,” Kevin Jennings (I’m sure the guys and girls at Obama & Co. laugh like hell every time they repeat his title)–CONTENT WARNING, but see (http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/).

    Do you want your kids, hell, do you want any adults forced to be exposed to this kind of thing? Do you think that Jennings isn’t using all the influence he can bring to bear to push for the inclusion of some of these GLSEN “recommended books” in the curriculums and reading lists of elementary and secondary schools nationwide?

  78. Walla Dalbo . . .

    Your “shock and awe” term is a great way of describing Obama’s political activities. Like many others, I believe that Obama is deliberately trying to destroy the United States.

    We all need to do what we can to stop this destruction. Thank goodness the climate fraud has been exposed in time to stop the cap and trade theft.

  79. >premature

    First of all, the US has twice the rate of premature births of other countries, which has a lot to do with infant mortality — though we do a better job with premature births we still have far more of them (probably due to lack of prenatal care for poor women). Secondly, I don’t know where you get the idea that premature babies are not counted among infant mortality statistics in other countries — they are. But they also have many fewer of them due to better prenatal care. Finally, even if you exclude premature births, our infant mortality rate is still twice that of Sweden, and much higher than most European countries.

    http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20091103/preemies-raise-us-infant-mortality-rate

  80. “It’s odd that Obama’s supporters seem to still find him ideologically vague whereas his opponents”

    It’s vague because he is not acting the way they thought he would so they only see what they want to so they can’t see how he is. A mind is a difficult thing to change.

  81. First of all, the US has twice the rate of premature births of other countries, which has a lot to do with infant mortality – though we do a better job with premature births we still have far more of them (probably due to lack of prenatal care for poor women).

    No. Good God, you’re an idiot. No wonder you’re a liberal. It’s because of fertility treatments for well-to-do fish who waited until they were 40 before deciding they needed bicycles after all. We can the feminists – also liberals – for effectively generating this problem.

  83. Mitsu is not stupid.
    The only lacuna in his thinking is that we don’t know better than his pitch.
    Otherwise, he knows as much as we do, not that he could let on, of course.

  84. betsybounds, each of the ‘races’ in star trek are characachured human cultures… and in case you didnt notice, the people on the ship, lives idyllic lives a la marx and engels utopian ideas. the klingons were the vikings, others seem to be more mishmoshes, so i wont bother to list what i think they are, or else there will be a big discussion. even vikings for klingons will be argued, and thats not the point… (the point is that the argument would never be that they are like the teletubbies, so if they are arguing, its over detail not substance of my point).

    the TNG was later in our history too, and so different things were reinvented and ideas expanded. this is why you had more nuance in the old series, and less associated nuance in the later.

    Borg is collectivisms end state… if you combine technology with the ideal and figure that the state would us A to impose B.. then once imposed how could any break the cycle and leave.

    its actually a more thoughtful view of it than huxleys brave new world or orwells foot on a face forever. the reason being is that they had to make the characters live for a few seasons and so unlike orwell or huxley they had to explore the ideas.
    (but by this time, the communism of the enterprise had been normalized so in a way it was them fighting themselves in the future).

    they also had a clearer idea of a future that at the time of the others was quite unimaginable… and this built on really far reaching and complicated imaginations in film spanning 60 years..

    each of the things in that series were experiments and where different branches go.. borg is where you may go if you use technology to create the hive, but you have to pillage others (like communists do today) to gain new inventions and ideas and have progress. there is also perfect equality as borg fulfill feminisms dreams of equal work and equal pay, not having to have a family, and so forth… so thats what gives it a different take than say the romulans which even in symbols were like soviets.. paranoid, manipulating as a rule, pragmatic, etc.. but emotional with passions and no ideals of feminism. anyway, thats solved by the borg by long long lifetimes, and like the shakers, bringing in new people by adopting.

    borg were so scary because borg represented the list of left liberal ideals taken to their end result.

    they are different than others because other mixes dont include certain things or those are not taken so extreemly, or solved a different way.

    while the first show seemed to sell socialism.. it never was silly pap enough to show that doing so made the universe love you, and showed its impractibility since it was the model of employees of the state, not people of the state..

    farengi were to be what would capitalism be left unbridled or taken to extreme. but they act more like marx caracatures than actual capitalists.. (otherwise they would be like us)

    it was an incredbile vehicle for exploring social issues and things, but since it was all in archtypes, and wrapped up, not many got it. they could only see it on one level… not many.. which is why most couldnt understand why it lasted so long and made money… it resonated (like what i wrote about rocky horror).

    so the borg are a genderless equal socialist society where the common are all equal and all serve with no personal needs, wants or desires. and the elite of the groups are allowed to have gender, autonomy, a higher wealth, and personal wants goals and needs.

    sound scarier yet?

  85. Hey Nitsu, you really have to get your head out of the MSM propganda machine. It is roting your brain.

    You have not tie faintest idea how you are being manipulated.

    Almost all the references you give, and al the sitations are pure bunk.

    Good grief, citing Business Week! You ight as well cite Pravda.

    You see that is your problem. You have never really done anything, You just believe what your liberal bubble tells you.
    You are iving in a fantasy world.

    You should try living and working in the EU. try advancing and raising a family.

    You have not the faintest idea what you are talking about.

    You self importance and your condescension are comic.

    Wait until you hit middle age and figure out where your ife is really headed.

  86. Aubrey. No he is stupid as a rock.

    Do not confuse glib regurgitation of leftist agitprop with mindfulness.

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