Robert Kuttner: Given what is happening to the real economy in the real world, the prospect of a double-dip recession and the prospect of a lost decade of high unemployment, the idea that the bigger menace is Social Security is just whacko. Let's recall that Social Security is in surplus until 2037! Yet the idea that the road to recovery leads through cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and other social outlays that are keeping the depression from worsening, if anything, is gaining traction among opinion elites. Exhibit A is a doubly dishonest column by the New York Times' new whiz-kid pundit, Matt Bai, who used a liberal congressman, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, as a prop to make his misleading case. Click here to read more.
The President has left New Orleans now, once again, as last October, finding it inconvenient to spend more than a few hours here. Probably a good idea. He'll get a better night's sleep back on his home planet.
While the Obama economic strategy offers us continued stagnation and chronic budget deficits, the Republican strategy offers us a complete collapse of the federal government, and of course even more explosive deficits.
If Ben Bernanke and company make it even cheaper to borrow, they'll be unleashing a third corporate strategy for creating more profits but fewer jobs -- mergers and acquisitions.
Beck and Palin are like an all purpose high school gang: the quirky, sagacious Honor Society geek and the homecoming queen who claims the ROTC kids as backup. Interestingly, the ROTC kids are never present to deny the alliance.
Lots of surprises this year, and as Emmy shows go, I thought this was a pretty good one. It was a nice balance between new blood and Betty White.
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