Frank Rich: "Herbert Hoover Lives." Sunday, 2-01-09 NY Times. He does it again.

[Faygo Kid]

HERE’S a bottom line to keep you up at night: The economy is falling faster than Washington can get moving. President Obama says his stimulus plan will save or create four million jobs in two years. In the last four months of 2008 alone, employment fell by 1.9 million. Do the math.

The abyss is widening. Of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones industrial index, 22 have announced job cuts since October. Unemployment is up in all 50 states, with layoffs at both high-tech companies (Microsoft) and low (Caterpillar). The December job loss in retailing is the worst since at least 1939. The new-home sales rate has fallen to its all-time low since record-keeping began in 1963.

What are Americans still buying? Big Macs, Campbell’s soup, Hershey’s chocolate and Spam — the four food groups of the apocalypse.

The crisis is at least as grave as the one that confronted us — and, for a time, united us — after 9/11. Which is why the antics among Republicans on Capitol Hill seem so surreal. These are the same politicians who only yesterday smeared the patriotism of any dissenters from Bush’s “war on terror.” Where is their own patriotism now that economic terror is inflicting far more harm on their constituents than Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent W.M.D.?

The House stimulus bill is an inevitably imperfect hodgepodge-in-progress. Obama’s next move, a new plan to prevent the collapse of America’s banks, may prove more problematic still, especially given the subpar record of the new Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, in warding off calamity while at the New York Fed. No one should expect the Republicans to give the new president carte blanche, fall blindly into lock step or be “post-partisan.” (Though that’s exactly what the G.O.P. demanded of Democrats with Bush: You were either with him or with the terrorists.) . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[bleever]

1. Most highly recommended.

The nightmare is that we have so irrelevant, clownish and childish an opposition party at a moment when America is in an all-hands-on-deck emergency that’s as trying as war.

And so much more.

[Mnemosyne]

2. knr n/t

[Hugin]

3. Only one small nit to pick here...

I'm not sure Caterpillar qualifies as a low-tech enterprise.

Otherwise, I do agree with the sentiment. :thumbsup:

[bleever]

4. Only in the sense that it is traditional manufacturing.

Which is of tremendous value to the fundamental health of America.

[tom_paine]

5. K & R

[fasttense]

6. Republicons are absolutely no use in solving the economic crisis

they created.

"The party’s sole consistent ambition is to play petty politics to gum up the works."

They seem to want to follow Oxycotin Rush when they should be leading, leading whining sessions with worn out ideas of tax cuts for the uber rich when they should be following the Democratic lead, and wont get out of the way when constructive plans are being developed.

They created a mess and are merely standing around pretending it does not exist.