It's always good to start the week with a laugh. That is particularly true when the week includes a string of disasters that seem sure to materialize like the successes of ISIS in Iraq and the idiotic move by president Obama towards bringing Iran, (IRAN!!) into Iraq to "help" gain control of the situation. That's why I was happy to see that Real Clear Politics had posted yesterday's column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times. Krugman announced in that column that 2014 has turned out to be a very good year for president Obama. Here's how the Krugger puts it:
You should judge leaders by their achievements, not their press, and in terms of policy substance Mr. Obama is having a seriously good year. In fact, there’s a very good chance that 2014 will go down in the record books as one of those years when America took a major turn in the right direction.
Krugman then goes on to point to Obama's three big accomplishments: the success of Obamacare, the fight against climate change, and financial reform.
Now I usually think that Krugman is a political hack who gets credibility because he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics for work pertaining to the effects of international trade. Nevertheless, when I read the column, I started wondering if someone had hacked the Real Clear Politics site and posted a phony Krugman column as a goof. I even checked, but I found that this latest column had actually been written by Krugman in the Times.
My thoughts next went to a different question: Is Krugman on some sort of hallucinogenic drug? I mean the "financial reform" about which Krugman writes is actually a law that was passed over four years ago and whose main effect has been to slow the economy by restricting credit for small business. That is hardly a success, and it has nothing to do with 2014 or even 2013 for that matter. And what of climate change and Obama's fight against it? Sure, the EPA is proposing new regulations that will kill the coal industry and raise utility bills for all Americans, but those regs are unlikely to make past an avalanche of appropriate Congressional opposition. So that leaves "achievement" number 3, the biggest of them all, the "success" of Obamacare. Here Krugman waxes poetic over the achievement that fewer people call themselves uninsured in recent polling. But if we are going to rely on polling to determine success, then why not point to the polls in which folks are asked if they approve of Obamacare. Of course, the results show that by a margin of roughly 15 to 20% Americans disapprove of the law. The only place that people call Obamacare a "success" is in the media that American liberals write for each other so as to reassure themselves that they will keep winning elections.
You should judge leaders by their achievements, not their press, and in terms of policy substance Mr. Obama is having a seriously good year. In fact, there’s a very good chance that 2014 will go down in the record books as one of those years when America took a major turn in the right direction.
Krugman then goes on to point to Obama's three big accomplishments: the success of Obamacare, the fight against climate change, and financial reform.
Now I usually think that Krugman is a political hack who gets credibility because he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics for work pertaining to the effects of international trade. Nevertheless, when I read the column, I started wondering if someone had hacked the Real Clear Politics site and posted a phony Krugman column as a goof. I even checked, but I found that this latest column had actually been written by Krugman in the Times.
My thoughts next went to a different question: Is Krugman on some sort of hallucinogenic drug? I mean the "financial reform" about which Krugman writes is actually a law that was passed over four years ago and whose main effect has been to slow the economy by restricting credit for small business. That is hardly a success, and it has nothing to do with 2014 or even 2013 for that matter. And what of climate change and Obama's fight against it? Sure, the EPA is proposing new regulations that will kill the coal industry and raise utility bills for all Americans, but those regs are unlikely to make past an avalanche of appropriate Congressional opposition. So that leaves "achievement" number 3, the biggest of them all, the "success" of Obamacare. Here Krugman waxes poetic over the achievement that fewer people call themselves uninsured in recent polling. But if we are going to rely on polling to determine success, then why not point to the polls in which folks are asked if they approve of Obamacare. Of course, the results show that by a margin of roughly 15 to 20% Americans disapprove of the law. The only place that people call Obamacare a "success" is in the media that American liberals write for each other so as to reassure themselves that they will keep winning elections.
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