The Labor Day Blues

[Crewleader]

By James Howard Kunstler
on September 7, 2009 6:55 AM

One national moment-of-nausea this Labor Day weekend struck Sunday morning, when CNN's John King led off his 10 a.m. State of the Union show with a valentine to ABC's Diane Sawyer, on her becoming anchor of that network's evening news. (This was the most important news of the week???) The old legacy networks have taken on the role of dishing out reassurance to an anxious and insecure public as job number one, and the subtext of the Sawyer lede was that a Mommy figure would soon be in place to soothe the multitudes even as the nation free-falls into bankruptcy and disorder. This is supposed to be a counterpoint to the chorus of smug, braying rabble-rousers who inflame the crowds on Fox News and MSNBC, and CNBC -- the Glen Becks and Keith Olbermans and Dennis Kneales -- who work the anger regions of the brain.

The inherent conflicts arise from a nation that simply cannot bring itself to try getting its house in order. Instead of adult leadership, we prefer good parent / bad parent therapy -- a psychodrama of alternating messages of reassurance and punishment that provides distraction from problems and conundrums too horrible to face. One unfortunate result is the evaporating legitimacy of anyone or anything in authority, and that is extremely dangerous at a time like this because it creates the perfect opportunity for the rise of a corn-pone Hitler who will beat a path straight into a national ordeal-by-fire, and make everybody feel better by telling them clearly what to do.

President Obama rolls out his much-awaited message on health care reform to a joint session of congress this week after a summer of chaotic and often mendacious debate. The system now running is so unjust and ruinous that a citizenry unmedicated by psychotropic drugs would have burned down the insurers by now (and perhaps torched their doctors' BMWs). As a tactical matter, the best Mr. Obama can do about the "public option" is to endorse it while kicking the can down the road, since the stark insolvency of the US treasury obviates any real ability to make it happen.

But I believe...http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/09/-one-national-moment-of-nausea.html#more

[truedelphi]

1. Kunstler states:

As a tactical matter, the best Mr. Obama can do about the "public option" is to endorse it while kicking the can down the road, since the stark insolvency of the US treasury obviates any real ability to make it happen.


I am not sure that Obama is worried about the solvency or insolvency of the public option section of the Health Care Reform measures under consideration.

If his concern was ever about insolvency, then would he not have appointed two people other than Bernake and Geithenr - whose jobless unsustainable "recovery" has now cost us eleven trillion dollars and counting? (But at least their measures have remained true to the Ayn Rand idealogy of their Master, ALan Greenspan, in case any of us here at DU worry about Ayn Rand spinning in her grave)

Rather Obama has to answer to the Industry Masters who have spent a mere millions of dollars to buy out Congress on Health Care Reform -- the health insurers themselves. Perhaps the "old" Obama will surface on Wednesday and he will take on that devious and murderious group of tycoons. But my bet, if I were a betting person, would be that all his "Health Care Reform" will manage to do is to MANDATE that everyone buy insurance.

[Crewleader]

2. Kunstler states

Polls are reporting a steep slide in President Obama's approval ratings, especially among white voters. I doubt that this is about the health care debate, which obviously remains unresolved at the time the polls were taken. I think it is about Mr. Obama's shoveling of huge sums into Wall Street, and the unabated obscene money-grubbing by the executives there -- while millions of ordinary people get thrown out of their houses, lose jobs that they'll never get back, and slip-slide permanently out of the middle class. His relations with Wall Street are destroying his legitimacy. His failure to demonstrably clean house at the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators, or to direct the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute misdeeds stemming from the swindles and frauds in securitized debt, make him look like a stooge to the bankers.

Here's the latest:

Job Creation Down 35%, Consumer Spending Down 33% From Year Ago / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010

By: Mike_Shedlock


http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article13284.html

[truedelphi]

3. Both the Kunstler and the Article from Market Oracle were excellent.

Thank you for posting.