some scary notions . . .

Hunter over at Daily Kos has some scary notions about Replublican presidential views and choices . . .

There is a hunger for mean, among the conservative base, and a hunger for punishing the nebulous other, whether that means the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the old, union workers, public sector workers, immigrants, disaster victims, Muslims, or anyone else. Rick Perry may suit them in a way that a Bachmann, Santorum, or Cain could not. He is just as fringe as any of those tea party favorites, but he has something each of them lacks: He looks like a Republican president. Specifically, he looks like their most recent Republican president.

It is a Republican Mess

I mostly try to stick to topics like gardening, family, poetry, dogs and cats and ignore the sour winds of politics but the idiocy (long rampant) is getting more and more ridiculous.

Secretary Timothy F. Geithner met with House Democratic and Republican freshmen who have expressed doubt that there is a risk in not raising the debt limit even as Moody's Investor Service was issuing a stern warning of consequences.

According to the New York Times, one of the Republicans evidently told Secretary Geithner, "We didn't create this mess."

The Times story included its own rather mild assessment:

Independent analyses have shown that more than half of the $14.3 trillion debt is from policies enacted during the past decade when Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress, and much of the rest from lost revenues and stimulus spending and tax cuts since Mr. Obama took office at the height of the financial crisis and recession.

Okay, this needs to be hammered! Let's do the simple and stark analysis here: "over half" of the debt is from Repub policies and "much of the rest from lost revenues and stimulus spending and tax cuts since Mr. Obama took office." Those lost revenues and tax cuts are leftover detritus the Bush administration and the stimulus spending (some started under Bush) are virtually all that has kept the economy from a complete tank. This needs to be repeated and repeated these Republicans who are now yelling for cuts, cuts, cuts (but not cuts in war costs) are creators of this mess and their tax cuts for the rich are a big part of it.

End of work week deep thought:
The current Republican response to President Obama, indeed their entire current strategy, can be summed up in a single word.

enternal optimist . . . not a sap

Bob Herbert gets it right:

Listening to President Obama, I was struck by how well he understands that most voters are not driven by ideology and are not searching for politically orthodox leadership. Most want leaders who speak to their needs — especially in this time of economic crisis — and a government that works.

Republicans in Congress — all but completely united in their effort to build a wall of obstruction in the path of President Obama’s economic revitalization effort — seem to be missing this essential point.

In a conversation with a small group of columnists aboard Air Force One on Friday, the president discussed the fight over his stimulus package, which was in the process of gaining final passage as he flew from Washington to Chicago for a brief rest with his family.

...

But he made a point of adding, “Now, I have to say that given that they were running the show for a pretty long time prior to me getting there, and that their theory was tested pretty thoroughly and it’s landed us in the situation where we’ve got over a trillion-dollars’ worth of debt and the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, I think I have a better argument in terms of economic thinking.”

He also made it clear that he won’t let his desire for bipartisanship undermine important initiatives. “I’m an eternal optimist,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’m a sap.”