freshnotbitter's Comments (624)

“Tiger Woods is typical of the man who marries before he is ready.

He'll get married again, eventually, to a person who suits him, probably when he turns forty +, and he'll be happier.

He was obviously an unhappily married man.”

“Good post, phlashba. I was well into a long reply when I realized I really can't improve on yours so I'll just say "amen, brother".”

“Medicare buy in and scrap the rest.

You are right, or at least you are very close to the truth.

Let's face it: Obama could have gathered 60 dem senators in a room and said:

"Our fortunes as a party will rise and fall in direct proportion to the rise and fall of the quality of the health care reform bill."

"Accordingly, we pledge that we will pass a clean bill and anybody who suffers defeat in the next election will be recompensed by the party with a position that exceeds the senate seat they now hold."

End of story. Pay off wall st, gays, military, unions, and polka dot zebras but pass a clean health care reform bill. Put it on a pedestal next to Caesar's wife.

that political strategy would have paid off in spades for the democratic party for generations just as medicare and social security did.

Instead, the dems, under weak leadership, punk'd out.”

“The politics of centrism, or triangulation, or Clinotnism, or whatever you want to call it, should have been postponed one year exactly.

Obama was elected by a coalition that sought progress in particular areas. Obama should have devoted his first year in office to satisfying each member of that coalition: Gays, anti-wars, health care reformers, unions, foodies and assorted greens.

It would not have been difficult to do something substantive for each.

Having done that, Obama could have used the excuse of his second year to run on a program of getting dems re-elected. That would have been the time for "moderation", to say that the activism had been done, to tell the members of the coalition that so and so had been done and accomplished.

Instead, Obama was obsessed with Clintonism from day one. He bought the bureaucracy's dictum that you run left and govern center not understanding that the "center" in this context means the special interests who pay the media. The rationale was that a good economy was all that was required to gaing the big meaty center that re-elects. The fallacy is that most economists do not expect employment to regain normalcy for 5-10 years.

The only thing Obama may have to run on is his first year's accomplishments. Oh, oh.”

“We don't necessarily face Armageddon on Friday.

However: The planet has been evolving the present balance for millions of years. Suddenly, within a period of 200 years we have an industrial revolution that never before existed, for 6 billion humans driving cars, air conditioning, heat, computers, big screen tv's, etc.

Surely you can understand that we ought to stop and consider whether there would be a dangerour imbalance in the atmosphere caused by this sudden change. Every notice how you go a mile - yes, one mile - up in the atmosphere and you start to have problems breathing?

The earth is only 25,000 miles round so the atmosphere just isn't that much space.

The other 8 planets in the solar system are all "dead". Why? Because there is no atmosphere. We can play gold on the moon. We just can't breathe there. Liquids, solids, gases. Gases are fragile.”

“It is a treat to have the Pres of Brazil writing on Huffpo.

We are very thankful for anything you can do to avoid de-forestation and would welcom any efforts to band with other forsted areas, Indonesia for example, and make demands on developed countries in return for your forestation efforts. That would give leaders in USA an excuse to impose standards on our industries so we pull our weight.

I am personally not so much in favor of Copenhagen style regimes - cap and trade - because I favor a more direct approach with tax at the source on oil imports, coal, etc. to spur development of alternative energy and a direct application of rewards to Brazil/Indonesia, etc. for their efforts to keep our "lungs" healthy.

I don't pretend to hold the keys to truth but "pollution" markets rub me the wrong way, even though I studied ecomics and understand the attractive features of such regimes.

Good luck to you. I am invested in Brazil on the basis of your wonderful leadership and have no doubt that Brazil can develop a wonderful standard of living for its people without having to destroy the environment.”

“Arianna:

If you read through Krugman's articles on unemployment you will see that it is unlikely that unemployment will return to normal before Obama's second (?) term.

I could see him early in this administration pinning all his hopes on the economy. He was going to surround himself with Clinton people and do the Clinton thing: Get elected on the economy.

That was a mistake. The strategy should have been to do for each part of the coalition that thing which would keep them within the coalition on grounds that the economy could well be headed for the shoals with rudder inoperative. In such instances, people will still revere a good captain, like FDR. Obama never warmed to the FDR thing for several reasons: First, there is the whole "welfare" aroma. Besides, O is a self-help kind of guy. But the clincher was the belief that the Clinton gang was some kind of political wizardry. The bureaucracy will protect itself so I don't expect any scintillating commentary on where the health care bill went wrong. DId it make any sense to introduce a health care reform bill that said it would finance itself with half a trillion cuts in medicare, the fourth rail of politics after social security?”

“More troubling that anything else is the short sightedness of the Obama White House in handling the whole Nobel Peace Prize issue.

It is obvious that they are concerned that Obama should start thinking about actually brining peace to the planet. That is why there is so much "minimizing" of the event.

I am not suggesting the Prez spend 3 days in Oslo for one medal. On the contrary, I would fly out in the PM EST, arrive morning Oslo, go sightseeing (for crowds and photo ops in the snow, etc. if there is any), have lunch with the King, accept the prize, give a speech and go home.

The whole point is the ceremony. Instead it seems he has some appointments with functionaries - for what? He has a chance to mold opinion with a grand event and instead it seems that all is to be minimized, people are to be offended, he is to humilitate himself with self derogation next to mother Theresa and Mandela, etc.

It's all so stupid one wonders, as Casey Stengel wondered about the amazin' Mets, can anybody around here play this game? (Answer: Yes, but they have other fish to fry).”

“A bow doesn't matter in this case. Nobody cares. Your son will be going abroad to take on people who throw acid in the face of a girl if she wants to go to school. Don't let anybody tell you this fight is not worth it. I may not be happy with the way we are going about it all but them I'm not Prez.


The Peace Prize is perfect in this case because it is given to somebody who is militarily involved but involved for the right reasons: to vindicate basic human values. I think the Nobel Prize simply proves that Afghanistan is everybody's fight, not just Dick Cheney's.

My previous post didn't get in. It basically said Obama is devoting 24 hours to this event which is sufficient. They don't expect him to stay in Oslo 3 days for one medal. However, if I were O I would check the weather and if there is good skiing in the middle of Oslo he could take the girls and let them ski around town, have lunch with the King - insist on seafood, there will be no regrets, I wouldn't miss that meal. Years later the girls can reminisce about their trip to Oslo to see their father receive the Peace Prize Medal which is a prize people really treasure and the O's will cherish it long after they are out of office. Hope this post gets in.”

“Mr.Kuttner,

Is there anything you can do about this idiotic attitude pervading every human mind, both high and low, that health care doesn't count as wealth, product, income.

Guess what the only additions to payroll were besides government in recent months. Yes, health care and business services. IOW, while GM is reducing taxes paid to the state and putting workers on the government dole, health care is adding workers off the rolls and increasing the payments to the treasury in the form of taxes.

Pharma is a big export industry. Soon we will be doing operations all over the world by remote control - IOW, we will be importing jobs instead of exporting.

That is, as long as we can convince Obama and his henchmen in congress to put away their steely knives before they stab the golden goose to death.

People are cuckoo, I swear.”

“Mr. Kuttner, Obama says to you that Tarp was cheaper than they anticipated.

Wall St paid back the treasury funds they borrowed with the sale of their un-sellable toxic waste paper to the Federal Reserve. They robbed Peter Fed to pay Paul Treasury. So Paul Treasury is fat and Obama is happy to brag on this fact. It's always good to get away with half the story when the other half ain't so good.

Naturally, the books at the Fed are un-audited and they perform their operations in secret and are "independent" of the government so there is nothing anybody can do about it, including the politicians, who are off the hook.”

“F.) Obama wants to prove he can play quarterback in this league.”

“Social Security actually provided the money to fight the war on terror, Iraq invasion, afaghan occupation.

Without social security it is doubtful that we would have been able to raise the debt we needed to raise to fight those wars for 8 years. You can go check it out. Do this. Look at the deficit we have now, then subtract the social security surplus and you will see that without social security surplus for the last 8 years our debt would have been so high that people would never had loaned Uncle Sam the money he needed.”

“Voters know that government has the answer to the health care conundrum and they are waiting to see if government has the political courage to do what is right and necessary.

Dems will have no one to blame but themselves if they fail.”

“Note that I compared homophobia to fighting, drinking, smoking..........”

“There is an instinctual resistance to homosexuality which is understandable since it distracts from the instinct to mate and reproduce. However, we are human beings, not lower animals, and we always strive to view our instincts through the prism of a rational mind, if we are educated. Smoking becomes instinctual after indulging the habit and we must exercise our powers of rationality to stop smoking. Ditto drinking, fighting, etc. including, it is hoped, the irrational fear of homosexual marriage.

We must continue educating and arguing and we will win, not through the imposition of arbitrary Supreme Court edicts like Plessy Ferguson or Dredd Scott but through the acceptance, eventually, of gay marriage as a matter of principle among educated people.”

“Arianna,

It is not possible to disagree with you because you have the facts on your side in this case.

The NY Times is the best example of a corporation that has gotten it completely wrong. There is no end to the ways they could raise revenue on line if they were willing to let creative destruction take place.

Why don't they
1) Use their considerable talent in general arts criticism to review every new DVD released with a burtton next to it that orders the DVD and has it delivered through my Netflix account with a royalty going to NY Times Incorporated?
2) Act jointly with their local properties so that reviews of stuff like ballets, orchestras, etc. sit next to a button that orders tickets? (The Times owns newspapers all over the place).

In other words, the Times could leverage nationally on many fronts. they just have incompetent management unable to exploit progress.”

“I wonder how many Christians are left in Kosovo after NATO decided to put the Muslims in charge and make a country out of that Yugoslavian province?

Not many. A few hanging on by their fingernails at the border.

Ironically, the Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army was funded from Switzerland.

It seems that sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.”

“KaneandAbel,

You seem knowlegeable on this subject so I would ask you what happened to the US support of Pakistan during the Cold War which managed to hold the whole area in a balance of power?

What went wrong, do you think?”

“It is difficult to get a balance of power in Afghanistan when there is an imbalance of power on K Street.

The US has become a Victorian Empire and the Lords will dictate policy that suits their particular whim. Need a Balfour doctrine or a Durand line? Here's my bank account number. Foreign policy has never been a democratic issue in the US. Lacking public discussion, the area becomes lunch for the lobbyists and foreign agents for whom the outcomes mean a lot.

You don't really think that Obama woke up one morning and said "Michelle, I feel like having a state dinner" and Michelle replying "I feel like having Indians over, what do you say?"

The problem is the whole set-up of foreign policy decision making in American administrations. The last President to manage a rigorous national foreign policy was Eisenhower, mainly because he had "been there" at the end of WWII.

All empires end. The economics of it don't make sense. We are simply showing that we are not exceptional.”

“Although I was not against a withdrawal from Afghanistan without further, I can see that Obama would be well advised to withdraw from the war in order to keep his coalition together. Afghanistan isn't THAT important. Moreover, I don't think that O has the right people in place to manage an Afghanistan policy that would actually work to leave the country in the kind of political balance that most western democracies would call acceptable. I know what I would do but I know that nobody else agrees with me so on balance I think his speech should say we are sending more troops so we can get out.”

“Yes, and if we were doing something with those disputes we could leverage our position in places like Afghanistan, if that doesn't sound too ingenuous.

The problem is that K St has all these little interests here and there and our foreign policy ends up like a chef salad. O needs to focus like a laser.”

“yes, I agree with you, which is why Obama should not look to the Clinton gang for re election advice. This just isn't the nineties we are living in.”

“Well,he said he was going to end the wars. It doesn't look like we are going in that direction. I have my own ideas on the subject but what matters is that he was elected by people who thought that he, not Hillary, would get us out of the foreign entanglements.”

“He signed hates crime legislation that will protect a lot of gays. I think you need to show a little gratitude instead of acting like a spoiled child.”