About the only joy in reading Paul Krugman is to watch him stumble over the truth, pick himself up, and then march on as if nothing actually happened. In this case, he's trying to sell an increasingly uneasy progressive/liberal base that Barack Obama really is one of them:
So here’s how it is: They’re as mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore. Am I talking about the Tea Partiers? No, I’m talking about the corporations.
Uh huh.
Call me jaded, but based on what I've seen to date, I'd say the outrage of Corporate America seems a tad - how shall I say this - muted. In fact, over the past 16 months the most outrage I've seen has come from the pharmaceutical industry. And correct me if I'm wrong here, that outrage wasn't a result of Barack Obama's unceasing attempts to destroy free enterprise and the capitalist system, it was because Barack Obama welshed on a $150 million deal to use the federal government to protect the PhRMA Boys from free enterprise and the capitalist system.
I could go on, but suffice it to say Krugman has noticed the obvious and is manfully attempting to disguise it: Barack Obama is a corporatist. And not just any corporatist, a corporatist's corporatist. Obama's sold the left a bill of goods, and liberals with the conscience (and intellectual dishonesty) of a Paul Krugman are now going into Full Pretend Mode to avoid facing facts. Given that, the irony of this is probably lost on Paul:
So where does that leave the president and his party? Mr. Obama wanted to transcend partisanship. Instead, however, he finds himself very much in the position Franklin Roosevelt described in a famous 1936 speech, struggling with “the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.”
Uh huh.
Just keep movin' those lips, Paul. Everything will work out alright.
Like them corporations when they give me the cashmoney
Posted by: King Obama | May 24, 2010 at 10:30 AM
"Barack Obama is a corporatist."
And the Republicans are...?
Posted by: Mikey | May 24, 2010 at 11:41 AM
Corporatists.
Posted by: Dennis the Peasant | May 24, 2010 at 11:56 AM
Hahaha, Mikey. You shoulda lurked before your de-cloaked there....
Posted by: Copper Quark | May 24, 2010 at 12:57 PM
Funny thing 'bout them monopolies - only ones ever seemed to last were them that was propped up by the gubmint.
Posted by: aelfheld | May 24, 2010 at 04:33 PM
I beg to differ. Obama is not a corporatist, he's whatever he needs to be at that moment in time. He's an opportunist.
He's very much like Gray Davis in that everything was always about Gray Davis. When we went through the energy crisis here in California, he came across more as not how to fix the problem, but how does it make me look?
Posted by: Allen | May 24, 2010 at 04:37 PM
Well all I can say is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAG0XMRty5Y
Posted by: John David Galt | May 25, 2010 at 04:13 PM