Many a Cunning Plan?

Far too many of the remaining Obama Faithful continue to believe (some confidently, some desperately) that what appears on the surface to be waffling, backsliding, lack of message discipline, lack of Party solidarity, and gutless course-changing at the first sign of pushback actually represents the playing-out of many a cunning plan, fiendishly clever machinations, "Art of War" political jujitsu of breathtaking subtlety, and "all part of his brilliant master plan." Maybe -- just maybe -- what we're seeing is exactly what it appears to be on the surface. Maybe -- just maybe -- he's out of his depth and out of ideas. Mind you, I say that as someone who politicked for the guy and voted for him -- and would do both again, knowing what I know now. But with every new retreat and every new compromise, I get more and more of the slightly queasy feeling that maybe -- just maybe -- the man is not equal to the times. And if that's true, then as Jello Biafra once put it, "we have a bigger problem."

This is NOT a "crisis"

I think a lot of the wrongheaded thinking on both sides of the discussion about the "economic crisis" is that people keep calling it a "crisis". This is a word that's abused almost as much as the word "tragedy". A crisis is a short, sharp event or series of events. And when it's done, things get back to normal. If -- as I strongly suspect -- the capitalist system is collapsing into a much smaller economic ball (a collapsing star, if you will), then the unemployment numbers and the nosediving housing situation and the freezing of formerly free-flowing credit are nothing more (or less) than the new normal. Perhaps, going forward, 10% + unemployment is going to be normal (it already is in the EU). Perhaps, going forward, those houses that popped in "value" from $500K to 1.5 mil in a few years will stay at their real value (say, $200K)and never regain their former puffed-up "value". Perhaps, going forward, credit of all kinds will not be freely available to one and all, and the engine of American consumerism -- which has always, at its base, been built on the mad flow of credit -- will slow down permanently to the more sedate levels we saw when people put things on layaway instead of whipping out their Platinum Card.

Perhaps this is the new normal. Perhaps this is how we live from now on. Perhaps.