The vision of the right is 20/20 compared to that of lefties! Lefties are the most intolerant, totalitarian people on the planet - today's latest manifestation of this is outrage by the DNC towards the Governor of Virginia for actually allowing people to buy (with their own money) Pro-Life car tags and then allowing them to put them on their own cars - imagine that! In this Dem-controlled country, they'll probably try to stop that!

And did you hear they're going to eliminate the law that allows doctors to decline to perform abortions if it goes against their conscience? In Dem world, physicians will be forced to do what the central government says do!

These are just two small things, I could go on and on, so don't tell me about blinders - take your own off!

The financial elites had better watch out, I think this country is not as far from manning the barricades and breaking out the guillotine's as they might think.

Doesn't matter how rich you are if civilization collapses. Your money is only good if someone will take it.

The reason the rich pay and should pay higher taxes is they have so much more to loose if it all comes crashing down.

Ask those rich Romans how well they fared in the dark ages....

I love that comment. I suspect this economic meltdown is beyond Obama's training and he is relying on minds that are more than a bit blinded to their prejudice for financial sector supremecy in the market. I also suspect the result will be much, much better than any choice the electorate had last year and infinately better than life under Bush. However, this is, as an earlier post put it, "a failure to suck" and not a victory over this meltdown. Thanks, Joan, for your analysis.

Congratulations, Joan, that quote is the first truly honest and insightful observation you've made on this blog in a long, long time.

Also, don't get too worked up about Krugman. He's been wrong before, despite his Nobel Prize. Besides, for every economist who disagrees with Obama's policy, you can find one that doesn't. And I'm not knowledgeable enough in economics to even HAVE an opinion on which one of them is right. All I DO know is we're spending money at a rate the CBO says is "unsustainable" over the next ten years. Translation: we may be headed for bankrupcy if we don't put on the brakes. Meaning this may NOT be the time for education and energy after all, as important as they are.

One other thing -- I sense you're already trying to separate Geithner from Obama in as far as who should be held responsible if this plan to buy up the banks' legacy assets fails. (i.e. "I can't help thinking that Tim Geithner is too close to the industry that took over -- and took down -- the economy to tame it.") Please remember, Joan, that Geithner is, at the end of the day, Obama's hand-picked man for the job. In fact, Obama helped ram him through the confirmation process despite Geithner's personal tax woes with the IRS. Obama has now blessed Geithner's plan. It's a done deal. And as Obama himself has often said, "The buck stops here." Let's hope it works.

“Geithner's plan to use mostly private funds to buy troubled assets”

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Do you not bother to even do the most basic research before writing something so profoundly erroneous?

“Mostly private funds?” The Geithner Plan calls for 10% private funds, 90% Gov’t. funds. And to add insult to injury, the “private funds” only have to put up a small fraction of actual money, and the Gov’t. will lend them the rest. And that’s the good news, cause the bad news is that the Government GUARANTEES the “private funds” against any losses. That’s right, brainiac, your love Gods, the “private funds” get to keep ALL of the profits (if there are any profits) and the Government will GUARANTEE them against any losses.

Did you not know that?

Maybe you’d like to retract your equally uninformed, “ Paul Krugman doesn't understand politics” comment right about now?

Plus, Larry Summers constantly in his less guarded moments...

Just that phrase was enough to make me laugh out loud. Yes.. it is a mystery what one would expect from Summers aside from trouble in, as you put it exactly, his "less guarded moments."

I'm starting to develop a theory of Obama's first 100 days, triggered by reminiscences about the pre-web days over in "Unclaimed Territory," that he's basically creating a gigantic "fail to suck" moment — a period during which everything is reset, everyone gets a do-over and the benefit of the doubt, and is left to either swim with the new administration or sink back whence they came — all in a very ostentatiously public way.

Obama's people can't be blind to the fact that Summers is a babbling fool. They just can't not know that. They must just not care, and are willing to let him prove himself either way (along with the rest of that crowd).

It's creating an awfully messy first term for Obama, but it's starting to seem like one of the outcomes will be that, looking back, it will be easy to present a narrative that Obama came into Washington open minded and ready to deal with anyone, and some were game and some were not but he gave them all a chance.

Who knows for sure, aside from Team Obama's inner circle, but it's at least in keeping with everything we know about Obama that he'd pursue a slow, cautious, inclusion-oriented PR strategy like that — and not this stuff about "eleven dimensional chess" or being a sellout from birth or whatever else one hears.

"@Saman65 and Bryce Anderson

Well, you leftists are in charge now - congratulations!

I'll be watching with interest as those you've elected rule all of us - only time will tell what the outcome will be.

-- MissButterfly"

MissButterfly, sorry but I was pointing out the usual hypocrisy of the right which partisanship blinds them from seeing. You claim you will feeel better if Obama had business experience in the real world. But we have witnessed for 8 years one of the most incompetent presidencies to come around in a long time from those who claimed to have vast business experience in the real world.

Can you therefore takeoff the blinders to see the ridiculousness of your assertion?