Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktStocks are higher this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up.
Slow news day
Initial Jobless Claims fell to 271k last week.
The Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose in October to 0.6% from an upward-revised -0.1% in September.
The Philly Fed Business Outlook rose to 1.9 from -4.5 in October.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index slipped to 41.2 from 41.6 last week.
France has shot and killed the mastermind of the Paris terrorist attacks. Now the debate turns to Syrian refugees, which has predictably lined up as a partisan issue.
The FOMC minutes were a nonevent as there was no new information and bonds barely moved. They sound like they are going to move in December, especially since some of the economic data has improved since then.
Atlanta Fed Chairman Dennis Lockhart endorsed raising rates yesterday, provided there is no deterioration in the economy.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
This largely sums up my sense of Obama and his presidency. Not the cliche of a headline, although it is probably true, but rather the assessment of Obama’s approach to the nation, the constitution, and his job.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/19/barack-obama-worst-president-ever/
The pro-Obama blogger linked to inside the article probably said it best…he just doesn’t give a fuck anymore.
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obama is very disappointed in us. we don’t appreciate how completely awesome his awesomeness is.
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Sen. Chris Murphy is on the floor right now with his refugee porn. you CT types should call the office and say “don’t care.”
(202) 224-4041
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nova:
(202) 224-4041
Thanks…will do.
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After all of obama’s arm waving about accepting refugees and not being afraid, he is going to look like a total chump if we have another attack on US soil.
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And BTW, UnitedHealth and all the other insurers that are sucking wind on the obamacare exchanges should have known what would happen when you make a deal with the devil.
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Impressive:
“$3 billion over 41 years: How the Clintons methodically cultivated donors”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/clinton-money/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-low_clintondonor_blurb8am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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“Brent Nyitray, on November 19, 2015 at 10:15 am said:
obama is very disappointed in us. we don’t appreciate how completely awesome his awesomeness is”
Daily show had a great bit early on about how Obama’s approval rating of the American people had fallen to a new low.
It was obvious even then, and clear from his own words:
“We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that’s what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we’ve got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-in-command-br-the-rolling-stone-interview-20100928?page=7
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I wasn’t serious in the first place.
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McWing:
I wasn’t serious in the first place.
??
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More on UnitedHealth:
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/260758-unitedhealthcare-may-exit-obamacare-exchanges
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Obama’s fundamental problem is that he believes that Americans should learn to tolerate and live with a certain level of terrorism and they disagree with that.
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linked through from the federalist piece to read sadbeard:
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/18/9751340/paris-attack-dont-do-stupid-shit
what JNC said — plus that we had it coming.
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From that Yglesias piece:
The implication of this is that the calculus of what is or is not “productive” is entirely independent of events on the ground. The policies that the administration has already chosen to adopt are, necessarily, the best possible policies regardless of future events, and so a change in strategy never need be contemplated.
While I have no doubt that this is indeed how Obama and his admin approach issues (and not just this one), it is hardly a positive reflection on Obama. It is in fact the embodiment of a central element of leftist criticism of GWB, the absence of critical thinking. Certainly it puts the lie to the notion that Obama is a practical, non-ideologue making evidence-based decisions.
BTW, Yglesias’ belief that the mantra “Don’t do stupid shit” is in any way whatsoever a profound national security doctrine goes some way towards demonstrating quite how seriously his ruminations should be taken.
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You can’t caricature progressives. You really can’t.
“The problem with putting a French flag up on your Facebook
For many, flying the tricolore is an endorsement of the far right’s anti-immigrant positions.
By Lucie Kroening
November 18
Lucie Kroening is a Paris-based journalist and producer.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/18/the-problem-with-putting-a-french-flag-up-on-your-facebook/
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You can’t caricature progressives. You really can’t.
Hey!
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Scott,
Forgot to link this quote from the comment above mine.
“now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”
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Juicer is very Voltarian.
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@Scottc1: “If there were any ideas for countering it that the White House thought made sense, the administration would be executing them already.”
Put a more accurate way, if there was any way for the administration to see with 100% accuracy all future events and their cause, the administration would be making better decisions.” Lots of things “make sense”, but not all of them have desirable outcomes. “Make sense” presumes we know with 100% accuracy what ISIS and other actors will do in response to any policy or strategy, and we do not.
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@Michgoose: “You can’t caricature progressives. You really can’t. — Hey!”
Ultimately, any side with more than a few people who feel the label fits them with have extremes, thus one might argue you can’t caricature that side, due to the outlandish buffoonery of the extreme. Human beings will provide their own caricatures of any given common belief system. Simultaneously, we tend to feel the extremes representations of our belief system or outliers, non-representative, or irrelevant, so we do not take them as seriously as the extremes of the other side.
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@scottc1: “Not the cliche of a headline, although it is probably true”
I can pretty much guarantee you we have worse presidents ahead of us, so “ever” would not be a technically correct choice of terminology.
That being said, I always mistrust “worst ever” when it’s applied to someone in the present. The current person we don’t like actively doing things we disagree with may emotionally feel like “the worst ever” (and we have innate mechanisms in our brains to write a narrative that justify this emotional response; to retconn it into being an intellectually arrived at assessment, not an emotional response, when we self-relfect). Thus, Reagan was the worst president ever, Clinton was the worst president ever, Dubya was the worst president ever, and now Obama is the worst president ever. Given that scale, we can only assume that the next president will also be “the worst president ever” to many if not most of the opposition party/ideology.
Worst is also a question of: what do you judge it by? GDP? Tax rates? Increase in regulatory burden? Military adventurism? Policy precedents? Ability to accomplish party goals? Election results? Unemployment? By different metrics, different presidents would be the “worst one ever”, and by most of them FDR would Trump Obama, as would LBJ, most likely.
But the most important metric is what the Simpson’s has to say on the matter, and it has already pronounced Jimmy Carter to be history’s greatest monster. So I think the case is settled.
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KW:
That being said, I always mistrust “worst ever” when it’s applied to someone in the present.
The whole reason I explicitly clarified that it was not the headline I was calling attention to was to avoid the unanswerable question of exactly how to measure the degrees of badness of a president, and focus on the substance of the critique of Obama.
(Being under the impression that use of the word “ever” in such a context was universally understood to exclude future, unknown events, I stupidly did not anticipate that posing any semantic confusion. I fear my reputation as ATiM’s resident pedant is in serious jeopardy!)
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@jnc4p: ““The problem with putting a French flag up on your Facebook
For many, flying the tricolore is an endorsement of the far right’s anti-immigrant positions.”
The problem with doing anything is someone might be offended or it might unintentionally endorse the offensive positions of someone offensive, so do nothing. Ever. Except when others finding your doing nothing to be offensive.
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@jnc4p: “Obama’s fundamental problem is that he believes that Americans should learn to tolerate and live with a certain level of terrorism and they disagree with that.”
I think it has more to do with how America (and, of course, his administration) is perceived on the world stage. Sending drones in to bomb the heck out of ISIS, to the degree they are doing it, would be fine. Assassinating alleged terrorists masterminds in the ME would be fine. Rejecting refugees when France and Germany and so on are taking them in? That was cause a loss of face.
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Quasi-related to the discussion: Sweden is the rape capital of Europe!
And I keep hearing how awesome Scandinavia compared to America, but they’re all racists over there! And rapists.
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^^ That’s where we’re headed. Not a “it could happen here” but “it will”.
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JNC — re: the Friedman .. this is too good not to share:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/360157.php
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@Scottc1: “(Being under the impression that use of the word “ever” in such a context was universally understood to exclude future, unknown events, I stupidly did not anticipate that posing any semantic confusion. I fear my reputation as ATiM’s resident pedant is in serious jeopardy!)”
Indeed. The correct wording would have been “the worst American president of all American presidents thus far.” These things seem so obvious to me! 🙂
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I do like Matt Taibbi’s recommendation, and the analogy:
“God knows what to do about them, but can we at least stop trying to match stupid with stupid? No more can-do capitalist evangelism, no more harebrained ideas for bringing progress to the region. Let’s just get the Manson family surrounded and leave our big ideas at home, for once.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/thomas-friedman-takes-on-isis-20151119?page=2
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jnc:
I’m all for making fun of the Friedman style, but not sure it makes sense to hammer him for his “I don’t know” columns in an essay that itself ends with “God knows what to do about them”.
Also, I suspect that Taibbi’s style is just about as susceptible to the op-ed generator treatment as is Friedman’s (as you yourself once intimated).
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This season of South Park is excellent, BTW.
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“God knows what to do about them, but can we at least stop trying to match stupid with stupid? No more can-do capitalist evangelism, no more harebrained ideas for bringing progress to the region. Let’s just get the Manson family surrounded and leave our big ideas at home, for once.”
Iraq had a no-fly zone and a sanctions regime that was collapsing. Ditto Iran on sanctions. All are impossible to maintain effectively for very long.
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Curious how hard the (alleged) pederast Reid is whipping on this. Did it get so many Democrats to vote for it because they knew it would die in the Senate? Because their constituents want it?
Forty-seven Democrats defied President Obama’s veto threat and backed the bill — enough to override a presidential veto given the six Democrats and two Republicans who missed the vote.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/260782-house-defies-obama-approves-bill-halting-syrian-refugees
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For Scott, older Randy Barnett/WAPO piece on W Wilson, our worst President (or perhaps second or third worst, Buchanan and Jackson are tough to beat).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/25/expunging-woodrow-wilson-from-official-places-of-honor/
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Good take on that John Oliver clip that Mark linked to the other day.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427374/john-oliver-jokes-isis-paris-attacks
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Good take? Seems like no senso humero to me.
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Mark:
Good take? Seems like no senso humero to me.
I suspect that, much like Jon Stewart, Oliver’s reliably leftist slant tends to spoil the humor for some of us. Liberal smugness wears thin after a while, even if it happens to be aimed at a deserving target for a change.
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John Podesta explains Hillary’s plan to defeat ISIS.
Hillary’s strategy to defeat Isis:
✓Defeat Isis in Syria & Iraq
✓Disrupt & dismantle terrorist infrastructure
✓Harden our defenses
https://mobile.twitter.com/johnpodesta/status/667375199780806657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Quite a team of advisors Hillary has put to together. Pure genius.
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More evidence that jnc is correct…you just can’t parody progressives.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/11/11/vox-media-bans-staff-from-mansplaining/
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Talk about bad ideas…Planned Parenthood did a twitter PR campaign asking people to provide one word descriptions of PP. It didn’t go as I presume they expected.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/19/planned-parenthood-asks-what-word-describes-us-responses-show-widespread-disgust/
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McWing:
older Randy Barnett/WAPO piece on W Wilson
I guess now I do know…he was definitely a racist. But he was a progressive, so his racism is forgivable, I suppose.
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““Regardless of intent, microaggressions can have a significant negative impact on victims and have no place on our team.””
Because of course your team is composed entirely of victims.
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