More Obama Bashing From Frank Rich

After a brief interlude, Frank Rich joins the columnists completing the professional transition from "Bush Sucks" to "Obama Sucks".  However, in a bit of a plot twist he does not attempt to bond with his readers by including the weekly Palin-basher.

This sort of stuff would be over the top coming from a righty:

All the President’s Captors

By FRANK RICH

THOSE desperate to decipher the baffling Obama presidency could do worse than consult an article titled “Understanding Stockholm Syndrome” in the online archive of The F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin. It explains that hostage takers are most successful at winning a victim’s loyalty if they temper their brutality with a bogus show of kindness. Soon enough, the hostage will start concentrating on his captors’ “good side” and develop psychological characteristics to please them — “dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think.”

This dynamic was acted out — yet again — in President Obama’s latest and perhaps most humiliating attempt to placate his Republican captors in Washington.

Ouch. 

The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.

Obama is a blur?  Gee, who could have seen that coming?  I mean, he almost got the asbestos out of Altgeld Gardens - how could the White House have been to much for him?

Rich keeps hope alive with this point:

A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.

One might have thought that after two years on the job we would be beyond projecting our imaginations onto Obama and instead be seeing him for what he is.  Of course, like Rich my fear is that we are.

Rich then segues in a new direction - instead of the expected Palin-bashing, we get some "Don't We All Need A Real Man" Christie-boosting:

I don’t agree with almost anything Chris Christie, the new Republican governor of New Jersey, has to say. But the popularity of his leadership right now is instructive. New Jersey has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, with Obama carrying the state by a landslide margin of almost 15 percentage points. Yet Christie now has a higher approval number (51 percent) in the latest Quinnipiac state poll than either Obama or New Jersey’s two senators, both Democrats.

Christie’s popularity among national right-wing activists and bloggers has been stoked by a viral YouTube video where he dresses down a constituent in a manner that recalls Ralph Kramden sending Alice “to the moon.” But the core of Christie’s appeal at home is that he explains passionately held views in concrete, plain-spoken detail. Voters know what he stands for and sometimes respect him for his forthrightness even when they reject the stands themselves. This extends to his signature issue — his fiscal and rhetorical blows against public education. He’s New Jersey’s most popular statewide politician despite the fact that a 59 percent majority in the state thinks public schools deserve more taxpayer money, not less.

G.O.P. propagandists notwithstanding, Christie’s appeal does not prove that New Jersey (and therefore the country) has “turned to the right.” It does prove that people want a leader with a strong voice, even if only to argue with it.

Praise for Christie in the NY Times?  Strange times.  But it gets stranger, as Rich handicaps Obama's outlook in 2012 given a grim unemployment outlook:'

As the economics commentator Jeff Madrick wrote in The Huffington Post, the unemployment rate has been above 7 percent only four times in a presidential election year since World War II — and in three of the four the incumbent lost (Ford, Carter, the first Bush). Reagan did win in 1984 with an unemployment rate of 7.2 percent, but the rate was falling rapidly (from a high of 10.8 two years earlier), and Reagan was as clear-cut in his leadership as Christie (only nicer).

Praise for Reagan and Christie?   Wow.

Comments

[Mark Folkestad]

Janet, I saw that global warming flowchart on WUWT, but I didn't spend any time on it. I'm surprised that Charlie Martin is on Facebook. He's insulted me enough to not be considered for my friends list.

Jane, Liz Cheney is indeed magnificent, and I can see her making a strong run for the presidency. No one could remotely challenge her intellect.

Clarice, nice Pieces. I remember the bitter fight in '76, when Ford broke his pledge not to run, and the establishment types used every dirty trick possible to deny Reagan the nomination. I was at the Minnesota state convention in St. Paul, and we Reaganites had 48% of the voting strength, but could only get one of our guys elected to the national convention, out of a dozen-and-a-half slots, and him only because he was a state party officer. Ford's people took different stands on rules issues, depending on what gave them the advantage in the particular situation.

[RichatUF]

Ha, would those small donors be Doodad Pro and Mr. Mickey Mouse.

Contributions to Political Committees

MOUSE, MICKEY
ORLANDO, FL 34621
WALT DISNEY/ENTERTAINER

OBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR AMERICA
10/16/2008 2000.00 29932955275

[Is there anyone with eyes here, who can see?]

Investment markets in everything
Tyler Cowen

"While this business is in its infancy, Balance Point is part of a bigger trend — the growing industry that invests in other people’s lawsuits, arming plaintiffs with money to help them win more money from defendants. Banks, hedge funds and boutique firms like Balance Point now have a total of $1 billion invested in lawsuits at any given time, industry participants estimate.

Lawsuit lenders initially focused on personal injury cases, but over time they have sought new frontiers, including securities fraud cases brought by disgruntled investors, whistleblower claims against corporations and property development disputes.

Stacey Napp, a lawyer by training who has spent her career in finance, founded Balance Point last year with money from her own divorce. Since then, she has provided more than $2 million to 10 women seeking divorces. She says she is helping to ensure both sides can defend their interests."

The Wild Beast continues it's feast upon itself. Is there any deeply held principle bean-counters and bankers will not shitcan in their lust for more, and more, and more?

[Gmax]

The behavior of the troll is making a prima fascia case that the nervous breakdown analysis is spot on...

[President Palin]

A nice piece at hot Air re; the continuing dustup between Rove and Tea-Party. This time Rove wants palin to go easier on the Bushes.

Here is a garden variety comment;

"

Dire Straits on December 3, 2010 at 7:32 PM

I have 84 year old parents, and yes they say innocent things, yet my mother WAS NOT the First Lady of the US, nor was my father a Former President. Barbara Bushes comment was not random babbling, it was insulting and direct.

Dire Straits on December 3, 2010 at 7:35 PM

Yep, Sarah say’s nothing and Rove starts collecting $$$ from Candidate X and uses the statement of Barbara Bush against Palin, count on it.

Rove is scum! That comes from someone who valiantly defended him to Liberal friends/co-workers on the Phlame thing. Since his Delaware outburst, I have apologized to each and every one of them.

Moral of the story: Don’t give a snake the benefit of the doubt.

Regards,

the Dragon on December 3, 2010 at 7:45 PM

[Substitute for Hard Work]

"the nervous breakdown analysis is spot on..."

add to 'percocet, vodka, controlled substance'

cntrl/alt f5 to use default on narcisolator to avoid thinking burden and creative imbalances.

[Threadkiller]

Glad you like Tyler's stuff. Here is more.

Stimulus Spending Won’t Help U.S. Industry Restructure Itself
By Tyler Cowen | Apr 7, 2009

"It is a standard result in macroeconomics that fiscal stimulus works best when the fundamental economic problem is a shortfall of consumer spending. Fiscal stimulus works much less well when the business cycle is caused by the sectoral shifts of the economy-namely the reallocation of workers from an old set of jobs to a new set of jobs. The key is not more spending but rather finding out where the new jobs will come. I don’t think government is especially good at entrepreneurship and thus I am a relative skeptic when it comes to President Obama’s plan for fiscal stimulus."

[Are you Insane?]

"Stimulus Spending Won’t Help U.S. Industry Restructure Itself"

Yeah. I like him. Didn't he say the Iraq war would pay for itself, and that we will grow the economy out of the deficit. He's marvelously consistent in his compliance with the unfunded wars and Bush Tax cuts.

[RichatUF]

And that lawfare story is old-Forbes had a story a few years back. Patent law was a favorite. And of course an identity liberal can't recognize his own political allies-lawfare is the decay of the trial bar and regulatory state-they have been so successful with environmentalism and product liability why not branch out to ruin other areas of the economy and civil society.

[Threadkiller]

If you quit adding the word "scat" to your searches you would find a Tyler you would hump.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

To: President George W. Bush

Subject: The Hidden Costs of Iraq

You may recall that you got rid of your loyal White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey back in 2002 after, among other sins, he claimed that a war in Iraq might cost as much as $200 billion. At the time, White House staffers sneered that Lindsey was being alarmist. Hardly. One commonly cited estimate of Iraq's cost, based on an August analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, is $1 trillion, and that's probably on the low side. A report released last week by the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee put the war's 2002-08 tab at $1.3 trillion.

Keep your trench coat closed. Nobody wants to see your source.

[maryrose]

Clarice:
Once again an outstanding job on "Pieces". I find it incredible that someone like Schrum can keep getting hired after losing about 8 campaigns. He's as partisan as they come but it's not getting him anywhere.
Janet:
I think that picture could have been when he was in Ohio trying to convince us he was a hunter. Thank God the people in Southern Ohio were on to his fake ploy.

[narciso]

There really is no imagination, in McConnell's
view, cheering over the status quo, is not a victory, it's a holding action, like Thermopylae. I know it's the 'lame duck' session, right now, but it needs more oomph
for lack of a better term

[Are you Insane?]

"Sunday, November 18, 2007'

He was a little late to dinner, wasn't he?

Any other tidbits from your source?

[RogerCfromSD]

Frank Rich should stick to critiquing theatre, and modeling feather boas.

[Rick Ballard]

"That 1.8 million population growth is wrong. We have population growth of around 3 million per annum."

AoD,

Those high lighted portions of my post are what are known as "hot links". They lead the curious to what is known as "actual data" from which the predicate of the argument might be derived (were one to look). "It's wrong" requires a bit more than the assertion (and the Census estimate) in order to prevail against the rather common formulation that "population growth = (births - deaths) + (immigration - emigration)". I cited sources for those factors (you'll have to dig in the immigration site to get the emigration estimate). An argument can be made concerning the number of "new" Green Cards (LPRs) but the net decrease in the number of LPRs indicates that a good number of them are returning home (aside from those becoming citizens).

[Threadkiller]

Just pointing out your desire to quote switch hitters. I guess that happens when you play for the other team.

[narciso]

The only proper response to Nicolle Wallace, from this week, even if it came from the Tonight show, in the LUN

[Neo]

The one commodity missing from all the WikiLeaks documents .. anything resembling "Smart Diplomacy"

[Chubby]

((-- Because BarryO is an Effin' MUPPET (see UK slang). A joke, a knave and an incompetent fool. Most Lefties are keeping their mouths shut because he's their knave and fool, but the pixel pushing morons at the NY Times have to say something, so the grumbling begins))

The fundamental problem is the callow left's racism which manifests in their making a much bigger fuss over some people than they deserve, due to the color of their skin. It's a sad, sad story. Another road paved with good intentions and littered with roadkill.

[Chubby]

Just a general observation -- being as we were right on the mark about Obama, and it became evident quicker than any of us dreamed possible, and being as we were right about McCain (and the beltway Republicans were wrong), isn't it excellent odds that we are right about Palin being made of the stuff to be president?

[Palin is to die for]

"we are right about Palin being made of the stuff to be president?"

Any dittos to Chubby's bold declaration?

[Clarice]

Did somebody cll for pistolas?
*bang! Pop! ***

[narciso]

I agree, PL,but then I'm biased, on a similar wavelength though, in the LUN

[macphisto]

not necessarily...not to open old wounds, but i was lurking back in the Plame days, and IIRC the preponderant view back then was that Libby would walk.

[Ken Hahn]

Frank Rich thinks leon Trotsky was a centrist.

[narciso]

At this point, even Randolph Bourne, much less Croly is rendering a facepalm, in the LUN

[Army of Davids]

rick,

clicked your link the first time on population growth. no link.

[Army of Davids]

rick,

hit the second link. worked fine. but it's dated. 2009 and 2010 were rebounds close to 1% of 310 million.

immigration matters.

[Rick Ballard]

AoD,

My apology for the first link.

I would suggest that 2010 data is probably incomplete at this point. We will have the actual Census count by the end of the month but the births and deaths for 2009 are correct. The natural increase of native US citizens was no more than 1.8 million.

[Jay]

Of those RICH people, I wonder which ones
are unselfishly patriotic enough to vote AGAINST THEIR OWN ECONOMIC INTERESTS?

Um, when you earn your income from dividends and trusts, a vote on income tax rates have no bearings on your interests.

But you're so ignorant, you wouldn't know that.

[Jay]

To: President George W. Bush

Subject: The Hidden Costs of Iraq

Um, the Democrats have controlled Congress since Jan 2007 and have continued to fund Iraq.

Your meltdown is fun to watch, however.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Clarice: Your Pieces was spot on. Back in '88 during the Victory '88 campaign for Bush-Quayle, my Congresswoman boss wore two hats as Congresscritter and Chairman of the Maryland Victory '88 Committee. Some of us, including me, were reassigned to work for Victory '88 and we tried like hell to talk the Washington-based Bush Election HQ to send us money and surrogates for campaign stops. Their answer was that there was no use throwing money into Maryland as there wasn't a snow ball's chance that Maryland would vote Republican.

Hard as we tried, we could not convince the powers within the campaign that Maryland was viable. You see, Marylanders were up in arms over Dukakis since Willie Horton's victims lived in Maryland. The whole state was livid, yet noone at HQ could stop reading past previous election results to stop and listen. History shows that even without their help, a good campaign that took advantage of this anger won out in the end and Maryland went Republican. All we got were snippy phone calls and memos telling us we were spending too much money on yard signs, phone banks, and fair booths as well as taking up too much time and money from volunteers and money that could go to a state where Bush had a chance to win. The more they fought us, the more determined we became to prove all the so-called experts wrong. And we did.

[Clarice]

Goo for you,Sara.

I think they are really afraid of volunteers because they have less control over their actions . Im amy event they underestimate their importance.

In the bad old days, volunteers were often women and no matter how capable and hard working they regularly were given less respect that money contributors. I once was interviewed on NPR and said women were stupid to work for no money and be treated so badly--that until circumstances shifted they should just send in a check and refuse to work for nothing==that so often men who relied on free labor like that felt it should continue once they won, and gave all the paying staff positions to men.(I used Ted Kennedy as a prime example--he had not a single woman in a key paid slot.)

I think things have changed now.

[Clarice]

*GooD for you*

"IN any event.."

[Rick Ballard]

AoD,

If the original source material isn't convincing, here's the official BLS 10 year projection. 12.6 million over 120 months is just over 100K per month.

I have reservations concerning the projections due to BLS estimates concerning the behavior of those 65+. I don't believe that there will be an increase of the size they envision among those electing to remain employed.

[Jim Ryan]

At this hour Pelosi and Obama are deciding whether to screw the country with tax increases and get caught doing it or to cave in on one of their most important dogmas (soak the rich) and not increase any taxes at all. This must be excruciating for them.

Yet another example of the dogma colliding with reality. There is no pretending now. The collision is underway, like one of those massively slowed-down films of a crash test where the car is slowly crumpling against the steel wall.

[Jim Miller]

From 1 April 2000 to 1 July 2009 -- just a little more than 9 years -- the census bureau estimates that the US population grew 9.1 percent, or roughly 3 million per year.

Immigration, legal and illegal has slowed in the last few years, according to news reports, but, IMHO, would pick up again if the economy improves. (Assuming, of course, that we continue our current policies on immigration, which seems likely as long as Obama is president.)