let em eat cake with their tea

As the idiocy goes on - the people behind the NY Times lead online page seem to have completely lost their wits, with ideology-tinged blitherings leading the site for two consecutive days this week (one about Obama's "overreach" when dealing with corporations, the other stupidly wondering just how big is the Gulf oil disaster...smaller than it seems, they would have it)...with all this idiocy, there's always Frank Rich. He came up with this gem today: While the greatest environmental disaster in our history is a trying juncture for Obama, it also provides him with a nearly unparalleled opening to make his and government’s case. The spill’s sole positive benefit has been to unambiguously expose the hard right, for all its populist pandering to the Tea Partiers, as a stalking horse for its most rapacious corporate patrons. If this president can speak lucidly of race to America, he can certainly explain how the antigovernment crusaders are often the paid toadies of bad actors like BP. Such big corporations are only too glad to replace big government with governance of their own, by their own, and for their own profit — while the “small people” are left to eat cake at their tea parties.

Damn straight.

Once again, more neo-liberal foolishness from the NY Times. Today's lead "news analysis" is entitled "Obama's Twist of BP's Arm stirs debate on Frequent Tactic" - that frequent tactic being the exercise of public power over corporate incompetence and malfeasance. The writer - David Sanger, cites several examples of this "frequent tactic" - firing the CEO of General Motors after it was saved from bankruptcy by public funds, forcing Chrysler into a merger (again, after public wealth, or at least the chimera of public wealth saved it), curbing executive pay at banks that were bailed out (the overreach!...the overreach!)...all of this, in fact, being put forth in that irritating way the NYT has of displaying clear ideology in the guise of "objective reporting".

Finally Obama makes some moves - timid given the situation - to stop corporate power from pushing the USA off the edge towards total decline. And this raises the question of government overreach. This after weeks of articles analyzing the perception of Obama as weak and unable to tackle the barrage of problems facing the nation.

It is almost psychedelic that so many blithering idiots on the right accuse the NYT of having a "liberal bias"...meaning, of course, a left-leaning bias. Putting "neo" in front might save these people from their ignorance...if indeed they knew what neo-liberal means.