The Left criticizes itself to a fault sometimes.

  Did you read that piece by Galbraith? It is pretty enlightening.

   We have an opportunity now (now is our time) to change a fundamentally flawed system, precisely because it is so very broken. Keeping the old system in place will just invite more problems, more speculators and more false pricing or profit gouging.

I admit that I haven't seen those sources. Yet, even those sources don't really convey the full brunt of what I'm talking about.'

Just imagine the partisan vitriol that would be in those quote boxes had it been Bush doing it. That's more my point. I don't see any viciousness or ideological broad brushing about any sinister motives by Obama or Geitner.

The pundits I've been looking at...Ezra Klein, Yglesias, Thoma, DeLong and others...have been quite even keeled about the whole thing and even defending it...however grudgingly.

But none of that is to say there are no critics on Left. I'm simply saying that my reading hasn't given me the sense of outrage and mud slinging we'd be seeing if the Bush Administration was doing this.

Unless I'm mistaken, Krugman isn't really talking about the bonuses.

And Greenwald makes a sensible argument. But again, notice there's no critical talk about (regardless of whether it's warranted):

typical sinsiter corporatism.

free market fundamentalists

capitalist pigs

shilling for corporated overlords

tpyical preference for helping CEOs and spitting on the common man

bla bla bla

And notice as well, in terms of substance, that Greenwald's argument is comparing a willful concession of bonuses from the Big 3 (albeit from the UAW) as part of a plan to ask for money from the government to the AIG case where no such concession was asked for from the government or offered by AIG. Unless it's not clear from Greenwald's article, I don't see the government going in and abolishing contracts held by the Big 3. They did it themselves.

Had AIG done this on their own before the bailout or had the government asked them to cut or restructure their bonuses as a condition of the bailout, it would have clearly been different as subtle as it may seem. Either way, this isn't what happened. And whether AIG should have offered to do this without being asked is actually irrelevant to the public policy discussion and is more a personal opinion of observers like you or me.

Yes, negotiations will need to tak epalce and the withdrawals cannot be sudden, but the drawdown isn't because our troops are in any real danger, but it's because I think we've been overextended for a long time and our recent Adventures in the Middle East have made it worse. I think it is necessary that our economy requires us to make some sacrifices, and the generous offerings of protection around the world will have to have some cutback. Sure, we may need to return later, but I think a pull system (deployment based on just in time/regional demand) is probably more efficient than a push one (deployment based on just in case).

For the sake of discussion let me just admit that, yea, my statement could be viewed as offensive.  Fine.  I will even acknowledge that most people would read it like you did.  So what?

That's fine-- you simply should have conceded this right off the bat, though.  You're the one who chose to defend the statement on its merits rather than just argue that it was not relevant-- not me. 

I have not set myself up as some holier than thou, I care more than you do public figure like Obama clearly has.  It is this difference that justifies the criticism of Obama's comments whereas I as an ordinary schmuck should be given a pass.  I am not claiming to be better than everyone else on issues like this.  I think that Obama tries very hard to give people the impression that he is.

And even if you don't agree with me on his intent to do so, the fact that he is the President of the United States says that he should be, or at the very least should try to be.  That is, of course, if he cares about being the President of all the people (i.e. including the Special Olympians), not just some.

Obama ADMITTED HE ERRED, APOLOGIZED (and didn't have to have an apology dragged out of him after a public shaming either-- he offered it volutarily) and REACHED OUT to the group he was insensitive towards.  The apology was accepted.  You have not acknowledged this EVEN ONCE, continuing to criticize Obama as if he himself was still standing by his statement. 

As far as the holier than thou thing, is Obama really that bad on the scale of politicians? On issues like this?  Does he routinely take people to task for insensitive speech like this?  I need examples here so I can know what you're referring to here.

Does my supposed inconsistency on the issue at hand change any of the pertinent facts regarding what Obama actually said and what it actually implied as observed by people other than myself?

No, but once again, Obama apologized for the statement!  You continue to act as if he is still standing by his statement.  Apologies matter-- especially apologies that occur before they are extracted thru public pressure.

and I reexamine his tenure with a cooler head, I can say that his advisors on matters of war and peace were far worse than he was...Cheney and Rummy being among the worst. They wanted it more than he did and he went along for the most part.

That doesn't excuse Bush but I see him now as more tragic on this matter....but still an imbecile yes...I agree.

My view on his presidency will always be mainly negative. Most of the good he actually did do was not front page news and rather minor compared to his blunders.

And his underlings lied more than he did.

***To our GOP friends, I'll say he picked and worked his "facts" selectively to produce a truthy-sounding argument for the pre-determined desire to invade Iraq for several reasons....some of which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

That all said,

I disagreed with Bush's policies because he lied to get there.

No, you disagreed because you didn't agree with the policy. If Bush had invaded on the grounds of flimsy and weak yet totally honest and accurate evidence like:

We support regime change in Iraq and have always supported regime change in Iraqand wish to have a forward position to defend our interests in the Middle East....(and we have a hunch (but no proof) that he has WMD and may collaborate with Bin Laden to use them against us or our allies)

...

...you still wouldn't have supported it. And that's fine. I wouldn't have either.

My point is that that fact that he deliberately used weak or inaccurate (to put it lightly) evidence for his foreign policy in Iraq post 9/11 doesn't change the fact that the policy was bad and ill advised...regardless of what good he foolishly believed would come of it.

I won't say Obama's economic advisors are "lying" but I can assure you that none of them are being very forthcoming about the shaky and nuanced presumptions they are using that underpin the rationale for the stimulus spending as it is set up...good intentions and all.

They speak with far more sureness and certainty and conviction about the benefits of this spending package as a good stimulus than they will readily demostrate in private.

The multiplier logic behind the stimulus is quite nuanced and theoretical and very complicated in that it only works as the proponents advertise in very controlled and abstract mathematical models.

Since these models are totally unworkable for the puroposes of demostrating anything real for policy debate and advocacy, these economists simply fall back on the most basic, entry level arguments to make their case....a level that is next to useless for making complex and precise policy reccomendations....but they do it anyway because it makes for easy and forceful lingo.

**Notice: The point here is NOT that there isn't any theoretical backing for stimulus spending to combat an economic downturn. Any economist who knows these complex formulas and models will readily admit that they exist and that they can demonstrate something in theory. Personally, I can't make heads or tales of them but I can easily read about them.

The point is that these economic advisors and pundits are relying on the incredibly basic and most rudimentary explanation of this nuanced idea....void of any context or detail...to make a very, very complex, expensive and pro-active policy reccommendation. They are NOT using their complex models to do this because...like I said...the complex models work only with pristine and controlled assumptions...something they cannot make for real-life policy.

So, we get an edification and an appeal to authority for stimulus spending based on complex unworkable, detached-from-reality, tedious and unrealistic math models but the actual methodology and basis for the POLICY itself is based on a very rudimentary formula that, while easier to plug numeric assumptions into, is also inadequate to truly account for reality and thus nowhere near as promising and effective as its proponents lead us to believe. And this doesn't even address the actual spending allocations themselves in the spending bill....most of which has nothing to do with the logic of even this rudimentary formula.

Are they lying? No. Are they being totally honest? No.

Granted, I think the bill of goods put forth by Bush are more egregious because they are, in my mind, much simpler in nature. The hubris of deliberately cherry picking intelligence for the purpose of war is more deplorable, IMHO, than using the non-reality-based results of complex models to justify the use of the overly simplistic counterparts of these models to spend near a trillion dollars to revive the economy...most of whose trillions do not even fit its intended use on the basis of that dumbed-down model. The advertising and the end-product don't really match.

 We've been over this.

but I know I was very concerned deficit spending and hated it beyond belief.

For reasons of spending and foreign policy, I voted for Kerry in 2004...as well as a straight Democratic ticket. I couldn't justify one vote for a single Republican...except maybe at a local level.

In 2006, I began to mix things up a bit but still voted Dem for our House seat. Funny thing is, in 2008, I then voted against that same Democratic Congressman who won in 2006 as a gesture to want to see a more balance in Congress with the arrival of Obama in the WH. And why? Simple:

Spending and deficits.