The audacity of hope, the timidity of success, the certainty of absolute fucking failure

Without change. When the change candidate doesn't deliver, what the hell are you supposed to think? Once more into the breach, dear friends? Or, what the fuck?

I have been thinking about the "Fire Geithner!" movement for a while and not commenting because one bureaucratic-white-shoed -dipshit in a suit looks a lot like another. However, there has been a swell of interest in some quarters, reflected in the Huffington Post, to fire the guy and replace him with Robert Reich. Personally, I'd like to replace Obama with Robert Reich, but what the hell...however, Paul Krugman makes a series of excellent points today, and   he's convinced me. He's not a fire Geitner guy, so far as I can tell, but he's certainly taking aim at the administration's lack of testicular fortitude in the face of what Wall Street is telling Obama as opposed to what mainstream economists are telling him. Since Wall Street and the bankers got us into this mess in the first place, going to them for advice on how to get out of it is a bizarre approach. I believe the right term is reinforcing failure.

As far as I can tell, the analysts now warning about soaring interest rates tend to be the same people who insisted, months after the Great Recession began, that the biggest threat facing the economy was inflation. And let’s not forget that Wall Street — which somehow failed to recognize the biggest housing bubble in history — has a less than stellar record at predicting market behavior.

Still, let’s grant that there is some risk that doing more about double-digit unemployment would undermine confidence in the bond markets. This risk must be set against the certainty of mass suffering if we don’t do more — and the possibility, as I said, of a collapse of confidence among ordinary workers and businesses.

Being a defeatist means being disappointed but in a rational way. Right now I'd be more likely to follow Bo into the Rose Garden than Obama to Starbucks. I wasn't enraptured of him -- wasn't all that enraptured with anybody -- but he seemed to have some reasonable chops as a leader, was certainly brighter than hell, and seemed to show class and balls at the same time. Well, fuck me blind. Don't cry for me Argentina...grow some, get a goat transplant, do something that shows actual audacity. I'm pretty sure most of Wall Street didn't vote for him. I'm pretty sure that if this continues, I'll vote a write-in in 2012 for Jesse Ventura. And, so will a lot of people.