Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Republicans don’t trust women.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The willow is too close to the house.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Black Jimmy Carter / Deep thought

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    Bulworth

    No. No conservatives ever said anything about the Dow and Obama. Never happened. That’s a straw-man. Nothing to see here. Please move along.

  2. 2.

    John PM

    Well, that was back when he was an American. Now that the Republican Party has raised important questions about his parentage and place of birth, the stock market is going up in relief that this issue is being discussed.

  3. 3.

    amorphous

    Atrios does it better. And you could at least modify the title to be more DougJ, like perhaps “Deep thought(s)”. See? Completely different.

  4. 4.

    Kid G

    Unfortunately, I believe that what we are about to see is not a lasting increase in the Dow, but a steady, repetitive inflation and popping of the bubble until new regulations on trading are put into place. The only difference between the current sequence of events and the real estate bubble is that Goldman is an even bigger player than it was before. Not to go all conspiracy theory on you guys, but I am scared to death of the stock market now that GS effectively has it cornered.

  5. 5.

    Robert Pierce

    Obama is responsible for all bad things. Anything good is a result of Republican tax cuts.

  6. 6.

    SpotWeld

    When summer ends there will be an uptick in unemployment.
    There will be a lot of people shuffling money and debt around to cover back-to-school costs.
    And even later on there will be issues with people trying to affford home heating (plus tons of cities scambling to cover snow removal costs.)

    And the market will take a downtick (for those reasons, or others even more esoteric). Then it’ll go up.

    This recover will have to be slow… like tidally slow. You just won’t notice it very mich admit all the back and forth flow in the normal day to day noise.

    Feh I say.

  11. 11.

    Comrade Jake

    I always enjoy Josh’s deep thoughts over at TPM. From yesterday, during the rise of the Gates nonsense:

    Is Barack Obama America’s first black president?

  12. 12.

    Alan

    All that blame against Obama destroying wealth–Jim Cramer on CNBC, etc.– was to force Obama to play ball. Once Obama succumbed, the investment banks were able to start building their house of cards again.

  14. 14.

    Zifnab

    @John Cole: Better than that. If it goes up 1000 points and down 200 points, we get to hear how in a Palin Economy, the market would have gone up 10,000 points and never ever come down ever and there would be full employment and puppies and candy and the Second Coming of Jesus but you ruined it you damn commie hippies when do I get my Ronald Reagen again?

    Things were never this bad under Bush.

    /wingnut

  16. 16.

    SpotWeld

    @BrianJ

    End of summer jobs, whatever home building is going on will end, most large state/city construction jobs don’t run over winter (in the Nothern Sates) less travel related jobs, etc…

    It’s a rule of thumb indicator that could certainly prove to be wrong, but as far as a general trend.

  17. 17.

    cleek

    all’s i know is that mah 401k is in positive territory for the last 12 months. it makes teh kitties happy to know their retirement money has stopped evaporatin (even if it hasn’t fully rebounded).

    so thank you Sarah Palin, for making the market behave again. you’re a nashnul treshah

  19. 19.

    Brian J

    Here’s another Deep Thought, courtesy of something I heard on Fox News as I was flipping by last night: we can supposedly cover the insured in this country for no more than $50 billion a year, as opposed to the $1 trillion or so Obama is proposing. But why haven’t we done it?

    You see, Sean Hannity had on Betsey McCaughey, one of the main firebomb throwers against the Clinton health care plan, who claims she read through the thousands of pages of legislation when nobody else did.

    As far as I can tell–I only watched for a few minutes, for fear of permanently lowering my IQ–she is comparing the supposed cost of one year of her claim based of the cost of Obama’s plans over ten years. If that’s the case, she deserves to be mocked, because nobody with any influence should make a mistake like that. But more than that, if she really believes what she’s saying, why isn’t she asking herself why nobody in the Bush administration ever tried to insure the population for such a small cost? If it was possible, it would have completely stolen the Democrats’ thunder for many election cycles to come. Something tells me, she’s either incredibly stupid or a big fat liar, but I guess it’s possible to be both.

  21. 21.

    parksideq

    @Morbo: IT’S OVER 9000!!!!!!

    @DougJ: Can I assume that the “Black Jimmy Carter” tag is the new “The Failed Obama Administration (it only took 2 weeks)”?

  22. 22.

    Tom Betz

    @Matt — I wrote him, asking “When may we expect to see you writing about the “Obama Bull Market”?” and he replied with a pointer to this article:

    Obama Beats Buffett With Stock Market Advice: Chart of the Day

    By Eric Martin

    May 12 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama is proving to be a better judge of the stock market than Warren Buffett, the world’s second-richest person.

    The CHART OF THE DAY shows the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index began its biggest rally since the 1930s after Obama said on March 3 that equities offered bargains for investors with a “long-term perspective.” While the measure fell 3.5 percent over the next week, reaching a 12-year low on March 9, it went on to surge as much as 37 percent.

    Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., wrote a column titled “Buy American. I Am.” for the New York Times in October, saying he may put all of his personal investments into U.S. stocks. The S&P 500 then plunged 29 percent through March 9 and is still down 3.9 percent. Berkshire, based in Omaha, Nebraska, posted its largest loss in at least two decades on May 8, in part because of Buffett’s “major mistake” of buying ConocoPhillips shares before oil retreated from a record.

    “It’s been impossible to time the bottom,” said William Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc.’s wealth management unit, which oversees $96 billion in Philadelphia. Obama “deserves some credit for his administration putting some of the policies in place that helped us snap that lack of confidence.”

    Stocks rebounded as Obama outlined a $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts to stimulate growth, the Treasury unveiled plans to finance as much as $1 trillion in purchases of banks’ distressed assets and the Federal Reserve pledged to buy more than $1 trillion of Treasuries and bonds backed by mortgages to drive down interest rates.

    Obama also had better timing than Laszlo Birinyi and Barton Biggs. Birinyi, a pioneer of money-flow analysis, said on Dec. 8 that the U.S. stock market bottomed in November, before the S&P 500 lost another 26 percent. Biggs, the former Morgan Stanley strategist who runs the hedge fund Traxis Partners LLC, told Bloomberg Television on Nov. 6 that stocks hit their lows in October. His call preceded a 29 percent drop in the index.

    To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Martin in New York at [email protected].
    Last Updated: May 12, 2009 00:01 EDT

    Not exactly an answer to my question…

  23. 23.

    SpotWeld

    @BrianJ

    Depends which set of unemployment number you’re using I suppose. If you’re out to prove that the stimulus isn’t working you can look at the set of number that would show the end of seasonal jobs as people becoming unemployed. It all goes to the intial point that DoungJ was trying to make (I think) that the DOW and other numbers are somewhat subjective and can be used to argue for or against the status of the economy

  24. 24.

    WereBear

    Once upon a time, long long ago, the point of the stock market was actually investing in companies. One helped them them capitalize for a cut of the profits.

    Now, it’s basically indistinguishable from the stuff DeNiro and Pesci did in Casino. Except for the baseball bats.

    And that’s how the Wall Street types loosen their ties at the end of the day and go off to have some single malts without killing themselves. They play with their computer, and numbers move around, and some of them wind up in their bank account.

    They don’t see, never think about, the havoc they are wreaking on innocent lives by playing these Games with Money.

  26. 26.

    Zifnab

    @Brian J:

    But more than that, if she really believes what she’s saying, why isn’t she asking herself why nobody in the Bush administration ever tried to insure the population for such a small cost?

    Alternately, we might ask why the entire insurance industry – private business being the perfect model of efficiency – isn’t running on slightly more than a $50 billion budget. You’ve got businesses bringing down hundreds of billions a year and policies outstanding for tens of trillions. Could it be that there is something fundamentally wrong with the insurance market if the whole shibang can be run for $50 billion a year?

    This sounds eeriely familiar to the Paul Wolfowitz claim that we can be in and out of Iraq for $10 billion. It’s almost as though these people are just making shit up and lying out their asses.

  28. 28.

    someguy

    Obama causes police brutality too by making the police angry about police brutality. Now here, wouldn’t you like to have some nice Just Shut Up?

  30. 30.

    someguy

    It’s a typo.

    Brooks meant to say the threat was from RINOs.

    The column reads better if you substitute RINO for rhino, changing it from poorly written tragedy to epic comedy.

    Seriously, does the NY Times keep printing his swill just to discredit the remnants of conservatism?

  31. 31.

    media browski

    Prediction of Wingnut Spin: Markets are reacting to Sarah Palin’s imminent release from political bondage.

  32. 32.

    bayville

    Remember when Obama was responsible for how the Dow was doing?

    That is soooo pre-3/9/09 thinking.

    Obama is to blame for the rising unemployment rate.
    The Teabaggers and Birthers are responsible for the market reaching 9K.

  33. 33.

    Punchy

    @SpotWeld: I’m stealing your typo. the next time Teh Doug writes sumpin I dont like, (which, by the way, isn’t very often), he’s DungJ.

    Yes, I often operate on a 5th grade level. Hey John, kan I haz mah html buttunz bak?

  34. 34.

    Bokonon

    WHAT summer jobs, spotweld? There haven’t been a whole lot in this economy.

    And do you really think that things like low wage, temporary summer lifeguard and camp counselor jobs have a significant effect on the economy as a whole? Compared with … I dunno … thousands of manufacturing or construction jobs?

    Anyway … I can’t wait for the usual jackasses to start calling this the “Bush Recovery” following the “Obama Recession.” Because temporal reality must bend to politics when it comes to the economy.

  35. 35.

    DougJ

    Can I assume that the “Black Jimmy Carter” tag is the new “The Failed Obama Administration (it only took 2 weeks)”?

    You are correct.

  36. 36.

    slag

    The DOW ain’t nuthin. I’m still waiting for an Arctic Sea Ice Thickness (ASIT) measurement to be instituted as one of the real barometers of Obama’s success as a president. That, and WHO ratings, and teen pregnancy rates, and water and air quality measurements, etc, etc. If we had tickers running at the bottom of the teevee screen for all of those things, maybe more of us would care about them along with the economy.

  38. 38.

    4jkb4ia

    The NYT stock market guy has made clear in his explanations that the Dow goes up because the traders want desperately to see any sign of green shoots.

  39. 39.

    Brian J

    @Zinfab:

    I’m almost convinced that I simply misheard what this woman said. (As I stated before, I watched only briefly.) Unless she was basing her comments on some sort of plan to give small subsidies to people to use something like an MSA/HSA, I don’t see how she can credibly claim that we can cover the insured for such a small amount of money. If we could cover tens of millions of people with $50 billion a year or less, it would have been done a long, long time ago. Nobody–except for perhaps hardcore Libertarians–would be protesting spending that money. Perhaps her real objection to spending, no matter what the amount, is based on the nutty, Glenn Beck-style belief that we are going to be forced into certain medical decisions.

    On a somewhat related note, I’m curious about what you think of the claim that Medicare should spend more on administrative costs since it would probably be better to deny some claims, as the treatments probably aren’t very effective. It’s a claim that was being thrown around a lot a few weeks ago. In theory, this makes some sense, but I don’t see how it makes up for the entire difference between the private insurance industry and Medicare.

  40. 40.

    parksideq

    While I don’t expect the wingers to say that Obama caused the stock market to go up, I lay 10-1 odds that they blame him if police brutality in Massachusetts goes up. It makes as much sense as blaming him for any drops in the Dow, and he’s black so he MUST have something to do with it.

  41. 41.

    b-psycho

    Yeah, the Dow numbers are going up, meanwhile the situation for most people is either standing pat or still getting worse.

    Why do people treat the stock exchange as if it’s the alpha&omega of the economy?

  42. 42.

    El Cid

    Why do people treat the stock exchange as if it’s the alpha&omega of the economy?

    Because only the super-rich perspective counts, and anyone looking at things from the other direction is a luddite fringe extremist lefty America-hating class war type.

  43. 43.

    gnomedad

    @General Winfield Stuck:

    Stuck’s HummerCam is up and running for anyone who cares.

    Sweet. Can’t quite make out the audio; sounds like cable news. Hope you are aware what the mike is hearing — remember the “live mike in the men’s room” scene in Naked Gun.

  44. 44.

    spavis

    @el citd:

    Why do people treat the stock exchange as if it’s the alpha&omega of the economy?   Because only the super-rich perspective counts, and anyone looking at things from the other direction is a luddite fringe extremist lefty America-hating class war type.

    as judge whitey in futurama said “My caddy chauffeur informs me that a bank is a place where people put money that isn’t properly invested. Therefore, robbing a bank is tantamount to that most heinous of crimes: Theft of money.” STOCK MARKET RULZ ALL

  45. 45.

    Zifnab

    @El Cid: I was going to go with “getting a full picture of the national economy is hard, screaming DOW OVER 9,000! is easy and reporters are lazy ‘tards” but yours probably has a greater deal of merit.

  46. 46.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @gnomedad:

    Thanks for the vol. tip. Turned it way down. Hadn’t realized I was also broadcasting sound, yikes! The pic quality isn’t very good, likely due to cheap webcam.

  47. 47.

    El Cid

    @Zifnab: Critiques of the media which focus on non-political factors such as short attention span or laziness etc. have to also explain why the ‘errors’ fall so overwhelmingly on the side of conservative, hawkish, and business / upper-class interests, and also why it would be that concentrated institutions of wealth and power like news corporations would somehow accidentally fail to reflect the interests of their owners and executives.

  49. 49.

    Joshua Norton

    Kewl. At this rate I can probably starting opening my 401k statements again sometime in 2012. Right now I refuse do so without a crash cart standing by.

    Thanks Chimpy.

  50. 50.

    freelancer

    OT
    Ackerman has a great post on his serious royal Douchiness, Eli Lake, entering the blogosphere.

    He’s also among the most opinionated and argumentative people you will ever encounter. This creates — how to put this — a certain tension. He’s viewed the blogosphere with alternating contempt and admiration, like the Scots lunatic in Rushmore who tortures Max but really just wants to star in one of his plays. And yet he’s resisted the entreaties, with the exception of concern-trolling certain blogs under pseudonyms. I will be concern-trolling the shit out of this place, and occasionally demanding that he use his new blogospheric voice to denounce the depravity of his fellow conservatives or display his cowardice and complicity through silence. (Target one: Rich Lowry’s retarded column on Skip Gates. If Eli doesn’t denounce it, it means he’s a capital-R racist. I LOVE THE BLOGOSPHERE.)

    Here’s Starbursts from the above referenced column, in all his Jim Carrey-esque snark:

    In a tragicomic touch, the cuffed Gates needed his cane to get to the police car.

    Rich Lowry is an ASSHOLE.

    PS-[I, too, must be a racist. I inadvertantly typed “blackquote” in the html tags]

  51. 51.

    Zach

    You know Kudlow will say it again once the next bit of bad employment or GDP news comes out and people take profits from the last few months.

  52. 52.

    ksmiami

    Kid G – please stop talking about inflation… not going to happen, if anything we will look like Japan and have a deflationary, slow growth era. The inflation canard is what Republicans use to “sound smart.”

  53. 53.

    Bruce Webb

    The real point is not only was the right blaming Obama for Dow6500 they were confidently guaranteeing it was on course for Dow4000 and below. Just as a commenter on Angry Bear was guaranteeing that unemployment under Obama would be at least double Bush’s highest level, which translates to 15.9%. While no one seriously doubts we will hit double digits nationally (in my area we are already there) I don’t think even Dr. Doom is holding out for 16% plus (this article pegs it at 11% http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/257274/mounting_job_losses_will_hurt_consumption_housing_banks_balance_sheets_public_finances_and_lead_to_protectionist_pressures)

    Back in March the argument was not that stimulus would work too slow but that it would actually backfire by crowding out ‘efficient’ private investment in favor of ‘wasteful’ government spending that would not create ‘real’ jobs but only expand governmental job rolls.

    Dow 9000 may be a transient event but it does show that these guys were talking out their collective asses in February and March.

  55. 55.

    Bokonon

    The thing is … these analysts are free to talk out of their asses, because nobody ever holds them accountable (or revokes their passes to appear on cable news, in favor of someone different).

    If there is no accountability, and political hackery posing as economic/market analysis is accepted as legitimate, then there is no incentive for these people to do otherwise.

    Besides, their corporate paymasters like the message they are delivering (like … ahem … Jim Cramer). It has nothing to do with — you know — troublesome things like accuracy.

    – Bokonon

  56. 56.

    Zifnab

    @Bokonon:

    If there is no accountability, and political hackery posing as economic/market analysis is accepted as legitimate, then there is no incentive for these people to do otherwise.

    And isn’t Jim Cramer just the poster child for all of this? I swear, if there was a “Jim Cramer” fund to invest in, I’d short the hell out of it and live like a Goldman Sachs executive.

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