Sorry, Mr Pethokoukis, but columns like this one are unnecessarily inflammatory and hysterical, playing into the worst fears of small-government types increasingly polluting the GOP base. It is, in short, unhelpful.
Obama, as everyone “sane” knows, is a good man who just happens to be in over his head. In fact, his policies — which mirror in many ways the policy prescriptions of the putative GOP frontrunner — are working: the economy is recovering, as even the Republican’s bestest, most electable candidate admits, albeit it isn’t recovering as quickly as it otherwise might have under a more experienced big government technocrat.
— Luckily, the GOP has just the remedy!
So please. Calm yourself. You reek of Visigothery.
I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR!
Look on the bright side — no more globalization means a lot less competition for those of us in the developed world. I mean, sure, a few billion people will be mired in perpetual poverty, subsistence farming, and rampant disease, but that pales by comparison to the fact that we’ll be able to schedule another handful of 45-minute breaks into our collectively bargained 7-hour day without our factory packing up and moving to Futtbuckistan or wherever.
Priorities, people!
Well, it’s not like the President of the World Bank has to be a real banker, anymore than the President of the United States has to be a real Commander-in-Chief.
Seeing this in terms of creating economic growth and nations escaping poverty is the misstep that leads to the idea that Obama is just out of his league, misinformed or ill served by his staff. He is not any of those things.
There is no disaster here when viewed through the lens of the left’s will to power. This is a win, this is success, triumphant victory! Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph.
Your link had me salivating, sdferr, when I thought it said “freebacon” rather than “freebeacon.” Damn the bad luck!
We visigoths adore bacon.
A World Bank report shows a broad reduction in extreme poverty — and indicates that the global recession, contrary to economists’ expectations, did not increase poverty in the developing world. … Much of the story was about China, which moved nearly 700 million people out of poverty between 1981 and 2008, with the proportion of its population living in extreme poverty falling to 13 percent from 84 percent during that period. The country’s annual pace of economic growth never dipped below 9 percent, even in 2009, when the world’s economy contracted.
Hmmph. That sound you hear is Thomas Friedman rubbing one out while looking at a glossy photo of the Chinese Communist Party politburo.
At any rate, apparently Mr. Pethokoukis doesn’t know his place, to be pointing fingers at such honorable nominees to the World Bank. After all, has there been a howl of outrage at the prestige outlets of “conservative” pundocracy? No, there has not.
The WSJ: Jim Yong Kim’s surprise nomination for World Bank president is bad for both the bank and Dartmouth College. The latter will lose an excellent leader and as for the former, well, Dr. Kim is better than an institution that ought to be wound down really deserves.
Yes, our academics are sacrosanct to pragmatic conservatives. Even when on the Left.
Why won’t you unserious clingers listen?
I tell you, managed decline is a choice!
And we’re all for choice. It’s, like, a market-based solution, or something. Let me check that powerpoint document the GOP sent me.
Taking your economic cues from a linguist is like taking your medical cues from a materials scientist.
Maybe not even his cues from linguistics either.
Taking your economic cues from a linguist is like taking your medical cues from a materials scientist.
No, I’d have to disagree with this. At least the materials scientist knows something about science and might be able to make a decent educated guess in many cases. Even if the linguist is well versed in economics I see little reason to believe his economic prescriptions would have any diagnostic or prescriptive power.
Once you’ve run a law school class, centrally planning an economy isn’t quite as engaging as you might think.
Per se.
Obama Is In Over His Head T-shirts available from Hugh Hewitt.
A more succinct and catchy acronym I’ve never seen.
Dunno, dicentra, that shirt would get you pegged as an idiot here in Ohio. I think you could get away with it if you look like a Japanese tourist, but otherwise…
I don’t like it di. Gross misreading of what we’re up against.
As geoffb said at 3:07 pm, this is not a guy stumbling around without a clue. This is a guy that is driven, setting goals, and succeeding wildly.
From the lefts perspective.
We are threatened by an invading army with a capable general leading, not a clueless professor seeking tenure.
He wants to tear down, burn, and pillage, and build a new monument on the ashes. Even now, he ferments racial strife, fresh from growing a nasty batch of religious animosity. He’s filling entire bureaucracies with Marxist rabble. Completely destabilizing international relations. Spending money on a grotesque scale. Stacking the Supreme Court. Making millions of people dependent on the government.
I see the country being transformed before my eyes, just as Obama said, and yet people pretend he’s just in over his head. I don’t get, and I think it’s a dangerous illusion.
I see the country being transformed before my eyes, just as Obama said, and yet people pretend he’s just in over his head. I don’t get, and I think it’s a dangerous illusion.
But this view (reality) hasn’t been focus-grouped and subject to careful polling. “In over his head”, “He’s a nice guy but” have.
Even though, *if* they work, they leave the electorate woefully unprepared for the daunting task at hand, and guarantee Romney gets the backlash from hell (assuming he is actually of a mind to do anything significant about our worsening situation).
What LBascom said.
Plus: Won’t we need a World Currency to fund that World Bank? I mean, when ours fulfills its destiny by crashing from three cents to none.
Hey, don’t get me wrong: it was a damn fun dollar while it lasted – it kited the average US standard of living along for quite some time after everything started going parabolic and the numbers in red became incomprehensible.
So we stopped trying to comprehend them.
Lastly: In most of our lifetimes Clinton once balanced the budget all by himself because he was a Democrat. Clinton was a champion and that was a good thing, that there. To Democrats, even. Ask them.
[spit]
I was actually making fun of the OIIOHH tee shirts. Back when I had access to the Tribble UStream chat during his radio hours (workplaces always block it), I constantly hectored Hugh and Duane for giving Obama way too much credit.
And I think that OIIOHH is the dumbest acronym ever.
Guess the <sarc> tags didn’t take.
That Hewitt shirt is RAAAAAACIST!
And Kim’s a Chomsky devotee? Somewhere our man Thor is giddy with delight…