Jonathan Chait, effing moron, fellates Dear Leader

The likes of Jonathan Chait is why I stopped reading The New Republic more than a decade ago. Now, in defense of Dear Leader against critics from his left like Glenn Greenwald and me, he's taken his asshattery to the pages of the New York Times.

First, defending Obama's $800B stimulus by the claim that Nancy Pelosi offered a smaller $500B one earlier? If that's rigorous reasoning, it's no wonder he's still stuck at TNR as a neocon shill for Marty Peretz. First, Pelosi's not THAT liberal herself. Second, that was only her initial offer. Third, the linkage between her position and Obama's was small.

Second, Chait ignores that Rahm Emanuel, hired by Dear Leader, wanted the stimulus to come in under $1 trillion. As part of this Chait claims "everybody who matters" told Obama to scale this back; he has that quote in quote marks in his column without any attribution, meaning it's just a scare quote.

Third, Chait ignores that Obama sold out national healthcare to insurance companies et al.

Fourth, Chait ignores that Obama continues to sell himself out to banksters on mortgage fraud, Friday's lawsuit notwithstanding.

Fifth, he claims that Bush got much of what got done in his first term by using the budget reconciliation process, ignoring that Obama could have used that on some of his initiatives ... including the health care bill that he eventually passed.

Sixth, he ignores that Obama was both naive enough and dumb enough to not include a debt ceiling deal with Republicans last December as part of extending the Bush Obama tax cuts, or was even worse than naive and dumb.

Seventh, he ignores Obama's recent backtracking on environmental issues, compounded by the fact that many of us who aren't "Gang Green" enviros knew that Kenny Boy Salazar was weak tea as his choice for Interior Secretary from the day Obama nominated him.

But, that's all small potatoes compared to what Chait really overlooks.

And that is that, way back in 2003, we had clear evidence Obama wasn't a liberal, followed by additional evidence back in 2006. And that he's this way because much of the Democratic Party (Pelosi included) is this way.

Beyond being a shill for Marty Peretz, Chait is a D.C. Villager who illustrates the moral bankruptcy of more and more of our duopoly.

On the stuff linked immediately above, he knows most of it; certainly the second and third links because Ken Silverstein lived in the Village, though he certainly wasn't of it. So Chait doesn't even have the excuse of plausible deniability.