Alternate or Parallel Universe?

Bill Clinton delivered the greatest convention speech I've ever seen in Charlotte last week.  What a performance.  (that's a link to a terrific column in The New Yorker that details the performance.  example: "He improvises, in the sense that Miles Davis or Beethoven would come up with an enduring work of art on the spot.")

Flip to 3:30 and hear the maestro deliver the 'alternate universe' line.   If you watch for 2 minutes, you'll get to see Chelsea's hot friend!




Perhaps the maestro read Robert Reich's August 28th blog post:

"The third mechanism is by using its own misinformation outlets – led by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his yell-radio imitators, book publisher Regnery, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, along with a right-wing blogosphere – to spread the lies, or at least spread doubt about what’s true.

Together, these three mechanisms are creating a parallel Republican universe of Orwellian dimension – where anything can be asserted, where pollsters and political advisers are free to create whatever concoction of lies will help elect their candidate, and where “fact-checkers” are as irrelevant and intrusive as is the truth."

I think President Obama may need to get Walter on the team.

Reich is Right on Economy

Robert Reich clearly shows how income inequality, especially decreasing wealth in the middle class, will have profound effects for our economy which depends on consumer spending.

"Face it: The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. None of the standard booster rockets are working. Near-zero short-term interest rates from the Fed, almost record-low borrowing costs in the bond market, a giant stimulus package, along with tax credits for small businesses that hire the long-term unemployed have all failed to do enough.

That’s because the real problem has to do with the structure of the economy, not the business cycle. No booster rocket can work unless consumers are able, at some point, to keep the economy moving on their own. But consumers no longer have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services they produce as workers; for some time now, their means haven’t kept up with what the growing economy could and should have been able to provide them."

He goes on to explain in detail how the crisis began, what is making it worse, and what we can do to make things better. And finally, he gets to a succinct point at the crux of the "debate":

"Here’s the point. Policies that generate more widely shared prosperity lead to stronger and more sustainable economic growth -- and that’s good for everyone.

The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that’s barely moving. That’s the Labor Day lesson we learned decades ago; until we remember it again, we’ll be stuck in the Great Recession."

Hillary: Face Reality

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in President Bill's administration, and longtime friend of the Clintons, has this to say about Hillary's continuing campaign:

"This is the first time in my memory that a major candidate in a primary has said that the other party's nominee would be a better president than his or her own primary opponent. We also had the outpouring of negative advertising from her campaign that both candidates had largely managed to avoid up to this point.

... the reality is that she can only win by convincing large numbers of superdelegates to join her and re-engineering the Michigan and Florida primaries to her advantage, and then taking the fight all the way to the convention in August -- which if she gets that far, will be one of the most divisive in forty years.

I suppose I should not be surprised. If Hillary Clinton has experience in anything, it's in fighting when cornered. When Bill Clinton lost his governorship, it was Hillary Clinton who commissioned Dick Morris to advise the Clintons on a no-holds-barred campaign to retake the governor's mansion. At the start of 1995, when Newt Gingrich and company took over Congress and the Clinton administration looked in danger of becoming irrelevant, it was Hillary Clinton who installed Dick Morris in the White House, along with his sidekick Mark Penn, to "triangulate" by distancing Bill Clinton from the Democratic Party and moving the Administration rightward. (When Morris was subsequently discovered to have a penchant for the toes of prostitutes the White House dumped him but kept Penn on.) And now Mark Penn is the "chief strategist" of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The sad news is that whether the Clinton scorched-earth strategy ultimately succeeds or fails, it will have caused great harm."

So, Hillary, please take it from one of your close friends, and get out now before more damage is done.