On Wednesday, our local monopoly newspaper gave us a front page that could have been designed by the Obama campaign. (And may have been, for all I know.)
There was a giant picture of the smiling Obamas under a headline, quoting Obama: "The best is yet to come." As far as I could tell, whoever put that page together was not being ironic. Misinformed perhaps, but not ironic.
The French cartoonist picked up that line and gave it a little twist. ("Tout reste à faire" can be translated, "All remains to be done.")
It is odd that a French cartoonist can see our election result more clearly than an American newspaper.
Our job market is lousy, and likely to remain so in Obama's second term, as Robert Samuelson glumly noted after the election.
Those most hurt by that lousy job market are disproportionately poor, black, and Hispanic, like the man depicted in that cartoon. Most don't deserve what Obama's policies have — and will — do to their job prospects, even if they voted for Obama.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
Posted by Jim Miller at November 09, 2012 07:51 AM | Email ThisIt would be wrong to blame Obama for all our economic ills, but it is easy to see many areas in which his administration has hurt job creation, the Keystone Pipeline, ObamaCare, the continual hostility to job creators, rising gas prices, et cetera, et cetera.
Garbage in, Garbage out. There is not a factual piece of information that you have presented. You just string together little snippets of this and that that attach well to your pre-existing notions.
You know very well that Republicans have been obstructing every jobs program the Democrats have presented, and then you blame the lack of jobs on a pipeline (or some other tiny thing that wouldn't have made much difference) that would have offered maybe a few thousand temporary jobs -- and at what cost to the environment.
Admit it. The reason that the recovery has been slow is that Republicans went to great lengths to make sure that it would be.
Posted by: red hiney monkey on November 9, 2012 12:04 PMIn 2004, Bush won with a 2.5 percent margin in the popular vote, almost exactly the margin that Obama has right now. (He may improve that slightly as more votes from California and Washington come in.) So, if barely applies to the 2004 victory, it would also apply to this year's.
(I should add that I think this year's race would have been much closer had it not been for the one-sided coverage of the Sandy recovery efforts, where Obama got much credit he did not deserve.)
As to the Seattle Times front page, two comments, one specific and one general. Specifically, I thought the giant picture was way too much, since it crowded out almost all the news.
And then let me make this general observation: I often pick up three newspapers at lunch time, the Seattle Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. If the three have the same lead story on the Obama administration, as they often do, the NYT and the WSJ usually play it straight, at least in the headlines.
And the Seattle Times front page is often far more favorable to Obama than those two national newspapers. I can not recall seeing them do a front page story on Obama where they treated him more negatively than the NYT and the WSJ. Not once.
PS - If you are who I think you are, I hope you are doing well.
Posted by: Jim Miller on November 9, 2012 12:32 PMI've harassed you from time to time on your posts, but I want to congratulate you for this one.
Only a truly dedicated person like you could not only be so repeatedly wrong headed in public, but come forward with this piece of garbage just hours after his crazy ideas, often repudiated by publicly and easily available facts, were repudiated by a landslide of the American electorate.
Good for you! Your crocodile tears for the "poor, black, and Hispanic" is nearly as good as Willard Romney telling us in the 3rd debate that he loves teachers.
Posted by: MikeBoyScout on November 9, 2012 12:34 PMHave these geniuses heard of spell-check? 'Imminently' competent is a far cry from 'eminently' competent. The whole problem with Romney was that he was imminently competent -- maybe.
Posted by: red hiney monkey on November 9, 2012 05:39 PMThe other major political party wins, and wins big at all levels, and now the country is dead?
Are you and your compatriots completely without insight or self-awareness? In that Lemiska piece he goes on and on about how Obama is going to singlehandedly drive a 'schism' down the middle of the country, while the author is the one portraying the country as 'dead' because his side lost. Don't you see the irony here?
I would hope that the massive drubbing that Willard Romeny took on Tuesday, that was echoed to every corner of every ballot all across the country, would serve as a wake up call for your side. His campaign and Republicans as a whole lived in the echo chamber, floated in a bubble utterly untethered to reality, believed their own spin and propaganda, ate up the drivel like that Lemiska piece without question - and were utterly destroyed at the ballot box because of it.
Let's start here...Obama spent most of his first four years being conciliatory to a fault. Before you howl...the whole demon 'Obamacare' was 1.a creature of the Heritage foundation, created in the 1990s as a counter to a more classically liberal approach, and 2. Mitt's signature accomplishment in Massachusetts. Moreover, the stimulus was too small and too loaded with tax cuts to be as effective as it might - whether you believe this or not, it was a huge concession to your side from what could otherwise have been a much more orthodox Keynesian approach - in order to create something that both sides could support (Remember, concessions were made with both the stimulus and healthcare to Republican negotiators who then reneged on their support - see the Maine twins).
I would hope that you and the other right-wing denizens of this blog might reexamne some of their dogma and orthoxy in light of the terrific defeat that you suffered. The reality-based world could use your efforts, but if you insist that the problem is that you guys were not rightward enough, well, you have it coming to you.
Posted by: Dr. Liberal on November 9, 2012 05:39 PM"The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president."
Posted by: Monterey on November 10, 2012 12:54 PMKeep Fracking !
"A good example is the innovation of fracked gas, which has made the price of natural gas drop dramatically -- allowing a switch in electricity production away from coal. This in turn has singlehandedly caused the United States to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by about 500Mt, or about twice as much as the entire global reductions from the last 20 years of international climate negotiations. Moreover, it has not cost the United States anything -- in fact, U.S. consumers are saving about $100 billion per year in cheaper prices."