The Nature of Things

“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.”   - Rudy Giuliani speaking at a political fund-raiser this week. Rudy "Noun/Verb 9/11" Giuliani is off his leash again and making the same kind of stupid remarks that we've come to expect from him.  So here he is again making the point of all dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers that Barack Obama is "different" from "us." He wasn't brought up the same way we were. Giuliani later doubled down on these remarks and defended them to The New York Times , saying that they couldn't possibly be racist because, after all, Obama was raised by white people.  His mother was white. His maternal grandparents, who were responsible for much of his raising, were white. They were Kansans from the heart of A...

With President Obama's popularity at its lowest ebb according to all the opinion polls, the Inside-the-Beltway commentariat class loves to pile on, basically assigning him, somewhat prematurely, to the ranks of presidents who are considered inept and failures. Thus, many of these worthies were shocked and rather outraged recently when the latest edition of Rolling Stone featured a cover story by Paul Krugman praising the Obama presidency. I seriously doubt that Krugman has lost any sleep over the shock and outrage expressed over the article. After all, he's used to it. He does not run with the herd and he never hesitates about expressing his opinion, whether or not anyone else agrees with him. Some of the surprise, certainly, was due to the fact that Krugman has been a frequent critic of Obama. When he first ran for president in 2007-08, Krugman considered Hillary Clinton the more experienced candidate who was better prepared to lead. He was not wrong about that. He thought t...

The New York Times last week had a report about how the myth of the American meritocracy is just that - a myth. In fact, of all the countries in the industrialized world, it is harder for a person of low economic status to rise higher in the United States than it is almost anywhere else. If America as the "land of opportunity" ever existed, it has disappeared, and this is primarily due to the policies pursued by the government. The governments of other developed countries make it their goal to protect and help their citizenry and to take care of those who are least able to take care of themselves. In this country, the government only very begrudgingly assists at all, and thus the poorest must fend for themselves and find ways to improve their economic lot if that is to be done and there will roadblocks all along the way to a better life. Roadblocks put in place and defended unto death by the government. This is not a pretty picture and it is certainly not the image that mos...

Anyone who has read very much of this blog will be aware that I am an admirer of Paul Krugman, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist, Princeton University professor, and New York Times op-ed writer.  And inveterate blogger.  I particularly love his blog where his humor has free rein, unlike in his Times column . Krugman has spent years now, at least back to the early 2000s when I started reading him, pointing out the errors of political and economic policy.  For his trouble, he's often excoriated and almost never listened to by those he calls the Very Serious People, the people who hold the reins of power.  The fact that he has been right so often over the years seems to make the VSPs even more frenetic in their attempts to discredit him. One has to wonder what effect this has on him personally, what kind of a toll it takes, and whether it doesn't sometimes just leave him frustrated to the point of incoherence or just wanting to blow something up. Well, he does have...