RIGHTWING TERRORISM AND INTRANSIGENCE AND KRUGMAN AGAIN

I'm up in the Berkshires for the week while my youngest and his nephew attend a music camp for burgeoning rock musicians. So I haven't been getting my usual dose of news from the networks and cable and NPR etc. Some, but not near as much as usual.

I'm keeping up on the Internet with a lot of the main stories and once again am not surprised that the latest major terrorist attack came from the right, after all the perpetrators of 9/11 were rightwing Muslims. Only the Norway terrorist was of course coming from the European right and, at least from his perspective, the Christian right. Shades of Timothy McVeigh and more proof that the right has done most of the terrorism in recent decades in most places.

The other big story overwhelming those political junkies like me, is the intransigence of the rightwing Republicans in Congress over raising the debt ceiling, something that Reagan did numerous times while at the same time creating the biggest deficit in the history of the USA up to that time.

Reagan was the shining icon of the right at the time and still is, which proves that this current rightwing Republican intransigence has nothing to do with actual rightwing policies and positions but rather with an unprecedented hatred for all things not theirs that they are willing to destroy the country if they don't get their way, their way being whatever their rightwing corporate (ala the Koch brothers et. al., but obviously not all corporate entities as many of them are as baffled by this willingness to bring on an even greater economic crisis as well as destroy the value of US credit and economic stability etc.) masters dictate is best for them.

It's not easy to summarize the situation and positions and Obama has done a reasonable job of it, as in his speech last night that my older son and I watched on the internet this morning. But his delivery and choice of language and examples was more suited to a reasonable classroom seminar or living room discussion with other reasonable people than a successfully persuasive and emotionally powerful anecdotal summation of the problem, ala Reagan or Bill Clinton.

My older son was disappointed as he and many have been with Obama's handling of this situation. Later he showed me Krugman's latest take on the situation, which my son thought nails it for him and those like him, which includes me at times, who have become disappointed in Obama's seeming kneejerk reaction to all rightwing Republican ideological nonsense with amelioration of some kind.

Anyway, here's Krugman's take.