Dick Morris is an idiot

http://thehill.com/dick-morris/the-obama-presidency--here-comes-socialism-2009-01-20.html

The Obama presidency: Here comes socialism

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.

In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished.) When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.)

But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the Depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes.

Obama’s record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative-energy sources to school renovations, infrastructure repairs and technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. But freed of any constraint on the deficit — indeed, empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible — Obama will do them all rather quickly.

Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America.

^ Another delusional conservative that is under the mistaken belief that America is the last bastion of pure capitalism and free-market ideals. Such bull shit. Our economy might by market-dominated, but laissez-faire? Come on. It hasn’t been laissez-faire since Hoover. This guy is insane.

The rest of the article is fear-mongering gold as well.

I don’t really get how Morris ever worked in the Clinton administration. He’s become such an attack dog against Dems in general in recent years. And comes across as quite a sleezeball at the same time.

He’s not insane, he’s on message. There’s a massive resentful minority with a conspiracy based understanding of economics that is waiting for their brand of pseudoscientific Revelations to kick in.

The mandate to raise the deficit as high as possible, though, that sounds exciting.

Also, there are so many screwy books on FDR and the New Deal’s effect on the economy, of which I’m sure Morris’ recommendation is one. I’ve survived one but I was wondering if anyone had any favorites along these lines. It’s sure to come up a lot in the coming days.

Dick Morris has been spouting this ridiculous horse shit for years now, but he has really ratcheted it up in recent months. Remember when McCain “suspended” his campaign to work on the bailout? Yea, in his blog he prominently said it was “about to pay off for McCain. Big time”.

The guy is not just ridiculous, he is wrong about everything, so very wrong, and has no business getting paid by anyone to talk about anything.

I like this bit:

The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population.

The euro is worth more than the dollar right now. That could mean fuck all for all I know, but it seems if it weren’t for our financial magic, much of Europe would be fine and is still better off than us even accounting for our royal fuck up.

Democratic Socialism here I come!

It’s a cultural thing with a certain kind of old white guy. Take Glenn Beck, for example.

I dunno, I’m an old white guy and I’m not a raving lunatic idiot.

Well, not all old white guys. I’ll damned if I can figure out what it is; it’s not really all that southern, for example.

Every time I see Dick Morris, I think of that kid that was kicked out of the cool clique for being a retard and goes around bashing that group even though secretly he wants to be back in the clique.

By the way, I have no idea why any of the neocon, fox watching, conservatives even think his judgement is worthwhile when he was kicked out of the Clinton administration for exercising very poor judgement in leaking sensitive information to a prostitute and owing $300,000 in back taxes to the state of Connecticut.

Probably because theocrat politicians are well familiar with the logistics of hiring callgirls.

Even though it wasn’t a male prostitute they still let him into the club.

Speaking of old white raving lunatic idiots, Keith Olberman (no not him :) was about to do a story on Rush Limbaugh’s (yes that old white raving lunatic) proclamation that Rush hopes that Obama will fail. Unfortunately Keith got waylaid by the Caroline Kennedy story and didn’t say exactly what happened with Rush. Anyone know?

He’s become quite mad lately, although at times he is incredibly insightful and on point with his comments. But his relevancy has diminished significanlty since He left the clinton administration.

I sometimes wonder how much these guys believe this stuff vs. the fact that they have a career based on writing this stuff. Let’s face it, he doesn’t have a cushy career writing columns, etc. if he isn’t throwing stuff like this out.

And it would be easy to write this type of stuff - I’ll bet Brian Rucker or any number of articulate people here could put out columns like this if they wanted to.

jeff: I suspect a lot of them don’t believe their own windbaggery. But others probably do. From what I’ve read of the guy, Morris probably is one of the latter.

This should get you started.

Wait, did Limbaugh actually refer to young black people as “drive-bys”?

Wait, what? Are you comparing me to Olbermann or Morris? It doesn’t matter. I am INSULTED, sirrah! Pistols at dawn.

I don’t get this ‘I don’t want Obama to succeed’ attitude.

I didn’t like Bush at all, but fuck, I wish the guy would’ve succeeded. I wish he would have proven me wrong. I wish he would have proven us all wrong. I wish he would have come out of his term with the highest ratings on record and the dollar doing amazingly and my house worth twice what I paid for it. I wish I wasn’t worried about whether or not a job I’ve only had for five months would still be there tomorrow.

Fuck politics, you assholes. Wish for the best of the country.