Tim Kaine has a tricky task balancing his jobs as head of the DNC and Governor of Virginia. The DNC isn’t too demanding these days, with the Democrats sailing smoothly along, but the governorship is a handful. His dual role is already causing a stir in Virginia and may complicate the state races for the Commonwealth’s Democrats this year.
The Washington Post ever so gently opposes the President’s stimulus plan in its current form: “Congress and the administration would be well advised to trim the stimulus bill’s more dubious spending, or reallocate it and focus on a definitive financial sector cleanup. Fiscal stimulus can be a part of the solution, but only if it is ‘targeted, timely and temporary.’ The efforts so far don’t quite match that description.” What, are they taking direction from Rush Limbaugh too?
Minority Leader John Boehner said to “put me down in the ‘no’ category.” On Meet the Press, Boehner pointed to millions to be spent on National Mall renovations and contraceptives as examples of the non-stimulative spending, and tweaked his Democratic opponents with their own language: “At the end of the day, it has to be targeted. . . . It’s about preserving jobs and creating new jobs.”
Robert J. Samuelson explains: “Parts of the House package look like a giant political slush fund, with money sprinkled to dozens of programs. There’s $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund and $15.6 billion for increased Pell Grants to college students. Some of these proposals, whatever their other merits, won’t produce many new jobs. Another problem: Construction spending — for schools, clinics, roads — may start so slowly that there will be little immediate economic boost. The Congressional Budget Office examined $356 billion in spending proposals and concluded that only 7 percent would be spent in 2009 and 31 percent in 2010.”
Nor is Fred Barnes optimistic that the President can get the 80 votes in the Senate he wanted: “But you can’t do that if you stuff Republicans, if you dis them, if you ignore them, if you vote down any proposals that they want to add to the bills.”
Jacob Weisberg’s vision of the proper role of government differs substantially from that of most conservatives. But he shares their puzzlement and frustration about what President Obama is up to: “Obama must decide what government’s goals are before considering the subordinate questions of what works and how much we can afford. Obama’s vagueness about the federal role comes at a moment when clarity is especially needed. Our government is about to become bigger, more powerful and more expensive in order to deal with a sprawling economic crisis. Washington will take on responsibilities it hasn’t shouldered in 75 years, such as directly alleviating unemployment and perhaps nationalizing banks. . . A president facing this situation needs to know what’s temporary and what’s permanent, if only because of the tendency for the one to become the other.” It is hard to quibble with his conclusion: “[A]s he navigates the crisis, Obama would do well to figure out what he thinks about the fundamental question of government’s responsibilities.”
Howard Kurtz says MSNBC is in the tank for Obama. Next week Kurtz will confirm that the earth is round.
Mickey Kaus is right: it is fine if the UAW doesn’t want to make anymore concessions. But then the taxpayers don’t have to give their employer any more money, right? We should be so lucky.
But it gets worse. The Obama administration is going to reverse the Bush administration policy and allow California and thirteen other states to impose stricter fuel emissions and air quality standards on car manufacturers. What does this mean for the nearly bankrupt auto companies? “Once they act, automobile manufacturers will quickly have to retool to begin producing and selling cars and trucks that get higher mileage than the national standard, and on a faster phase-in schedule. The auto companies have lobbied hard against the regulations and challenged them in court.” That in turn will increase the demand for still more bailouts, because the auto companies can’t make cars profitably under the existing CAFE standards.
I finally found something on which I agree with Russ Feingold: we should require special elections to fill empty senate seats.
John McCain chides the President on his pick for Deputy Defense Secretary: “I think it’s a bit disingenuous to announce strict rules and then nominate someone with a waiver from the rules that you just announced in one of the most important jobs in Washington.” But then why don’t McCain and his colleague Lindsay Graham actually try to block the confirmation? Seems sort of disingenuous for them to shrug their shoulders and move the nomination along.
Chris Wallace: “You know, there was a famous — I guess it was a movie called ‘Garbo Speaks,’ and the idea that this famously silent person actually talks and people are underwhelmed is the lesson here for Caroline Kennedy. Better to be America’s silent princess?” Ouch.
Bill Kristol pens his last column for the New York Times. (In appropriately ego-centric style, the Gray Lady says it is “his last column.” Period. No, Pinch, just for you.) The Times will now be relieved of the obligation to account for facts revealed only in his columns.
Walt is rockstar. this blog is a ghetto. and you’re giving HIM adice? laughable
sorry for the repost but didn’t get an answer here
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lester Says:
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:24 PM
so does commentary think ALL jews are liars and cowards or just the iranian ones?
“
Lester, what are you doing here?
participating
commentary has a point regarding irans jews
http://www.ordoesitexplode.com/me/2006/12/iran_jews_holoc.html
“so does commentary think ALL jews are liars and cowards or just the iranian ones?”
I don’t know why you are here, Lester, but after they get your medication dosage right you should consider remedial reading lessons. The ENTIRE POINT of the criticism of the NYT piece is that the actual conditions under which Jews in Iran live might be worse Cohen implies, AND to question whether Jews living under the warm and cuddly blanket of Sharia law can speak openly and truthfully about their plight. Nowhere have Cohen’s critics called Iranian Jews “liars.”
And Cohen’s piece WAS idiotic. The idea that calling the Mullah’s “mad” (which they are) somehow defames the entire nation is silly. This is like those “journalists” who believed that Reagan’s labeling of the USSR as an Evil Empire was unfair because there were so many decent folk living there; the one has very little to do with the other.
And hanging around a blog which has views you find horrific and offensive is just plain demented. I wouldn’t spend all day snarling at the Huffington Post. Get a life.
One word for Lester, Chas Freeman, Roger Cohen, Stephen Walt, et al.
FEH!
The internet is a wonderful technology. It allows people to communicate. Put it also provides a forum for misfits that no one would ever pay attention to. Walt is case in point. Cohen is one of the most tiresome columnists you will ever read. He has nothing original to say and hasn’t for years. Even his Iran piece was a rehash of a similar column by another writer that appeared in the LA Times a fews years ago, although asking random Jews how they are treated in a totalitarian society was a remarkably obtuse. Did Cohen really need it explained to him? As to Walt’s opinion of Cohen, its just stupidity squared.
Quick Edit:
The internet is a wonderful technology. It allows people to communicate. But it also provides a forum for misfits that no one would ever pay attention to. Walt is case in point. Cohen is one of the most tiresome columnists you will ever read. He has nothing original to say and hasn’t for years. Even his Iran piece was a rehash of a similar column by another writer that appeared in the LA Times a fews years ago, although asking random Jews how they are treated in a totalitarian society was a remarkably obtuse. Did Cohen really need it explained to him? As to Walt’s opinion of Cohen, its just stupidity squared.
don kenner- in fact the article I posted agreed with your assesment of the ability to speak freely in iran. that is, it is not like it is here and is impaired in many respects. at the same time, the guy in the article DID criticize ahmadenajad and the jewish MP in iranian parliament whose name escapes me right now did as well quite publicly.
bottom line: iran is not a jeffersonian democracy but it’s not north korea either. and the fact is, dismissing what they say simply because it puts a fly in your ointment in painting ahmednejad as the new hitler is wrong.
Well, yeah. Iran isn’t Nazi Germany. Germany wasn’t Nazi Germany — until it was. Roger Cohen should explain what the big roadblocks are to Iran’s treatment of Jews getting worse. Or what it is that will stop Iran from trying to surround Israel with military power from without, and keep trying to undermine Israel, with support for terrorism and insurgency, from within.
Everyone who said Hitler would never do what he did, whether to the Jews or in terms of invading and occupying Europe, was wrong. Everyone. Their analyses, their lines of thinking, their arguments and excuses — all are the most discredited in history. The people who were called Chicken Littles, Cassandras, and fools in the 1920s and 1930s were the ones who were right.
so every chicken little is a genius
I don’t know any iranian jews but I have a friend who i wold describe as a pretty staunchly pro hezbollah type religious shia. she went to iran and was very proud of having met the jewish parlimentarian guy. I think the younger people have a different way of seeing these issues in a lot of cases. for religiously inclined people there are alot of areas of agreement or at least discussion between christian, muslim and jew or as i call them, the three stooges of humanity.
so politics is one thing and religion is another believe it or not. in some cases
Cohen is where it is at. He is a pretty interesting guy, emblematic of what has been around for a long time, not just in the NYTimes before and during WWII, but in Europe in the darkest places. He speaks for a much larger phenomenon, and is an important guy for that reason. In him we have the prop that gives anti-Semites their anti-Zionist cover. To understand him and explain and expose him would go a long way to robbing the Jew haters of their shield.
There is in Roger Cohen the attempt to find safety for himself, and for all Jews, by distancing himself from Jewish fears and attitudes, by showing himself sharing attitudes, anti-Zionist views and resentments not dissimilar to those of anti-Semites, hence erasing the Jew/nonJew divide.
I noticed that this is not the first time at all that you mention the topic. Why have you decided to touch it again?