Bad! Obama! Bad! Bad! Bad!

Obama Budget to Include Cuts to Programs in Hopes of Deal

Papa Doble

Ittsa bird! Ittsa plane! Ittsa bar review!

Shamelessly Stolen from bart_calendar

Moar Bad! Obama!

So what’s this about? The answer, I fear, is that Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he’s willing to do what they consider Serious — which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he’s reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy.

But it won’t happen. Watch the Washington Post editorial page over the next few days. I hereby predict that it will damn Obama with faint praise, saying that while it’s a small step in the right direction, of course it’s inadequate — and anyway, Obama is to blame for Republican intransigence, because he could make them accept a Grand Bargain that includes major revenue increases if only he would show Leadership (TM).

Oh, and wanna bet that Republicans soon start running ads saying that Obama wants to cut your Social Security? Moar

Judge Orders Morning-After Pill Available for All Ages

By PAM BELLUCK
Published: April 5, 2013

A federal judge has ruled that the government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. Moar

Wimin haz sex at 16? I thought it wuz just men wot did that...

The Urge to Purge

By Paul Krugman

When the Great Depression struck, many influential people argued that the government shouldn’t even try to limit the damage. According to Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon, his Treasury secretary, urged him to “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers. ... It will purge the rottenness out of the system.” Don’t try to hasten recovery, warned the famous economist Joseph Schumpeter, because “artificial stimulus leaves part of the work of depressions undone.”

Like many economists, I used to quote these past luminaries with a certain smugness. After all, modern macroeconomics had shown how wrong they were, and we wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, would we?

How naïve we were. It turns out that the urge to purge — the urge to see depression as a necessary and somehow even desirable punishment for past sins, while inveighing against any attempt to mitigate suffering — is as strong as ever. Indeed, Mellonism is everywhere these days. Turn on CNBC or read an op-ed page, and the odds are that you won’t see someone arguing that the federal government and the Federal Reserve are doing too little to fight mass unemployment. Instead, you’re much more likely to encounter an alleged expert ranting about the evils of budget deficits and money creation, and denouncing Keynesian economics as the root of all evil. Moar

Friday NYT Critics' Picks

Some Dessert, After That Meal With Wally
‘André Gregory: Before and After Dinner,’ by Cindy Kleine
NYT Critics' Pick

A Jilted Lover Unleashed in Paris
‘Simon Killer,’ Directed by Antonio Campos
NYT Critics' Pick

A Visitor Disrupts a Beach Town Full of Secrets
‘Down the Shore,’ With James Gandolfini and Famke Janssen
NYT Critics' Pick

Two Lonely Souls in Temporary Shelter
‘Stranger Things,’ From Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal
NYT Critics' Pick

Oh, and Mad Men back on Sunday!