Part two of the Peggy and Kathleen show on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. This time the topic is health care. After some straight talk from Pau
June 30, 2009

Part two of the Peggy and Kathleen show on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. This time the topic is health care. After some straight talk from Paul Krugman about the importance of including a public option to control costs and the fact that there is no real competition in the health care markets now, we get another "Oh my goodness" moment from Peggy Noonan. Noonan seems to think she knows what most "normal humans" think and forget all those mushy details those darned economists like Krugman tend to bring up. Let's just talk about taxes. Doing her best to channel a little bit of Sarah Palin here:

Noonan: Oh my goodness. Well let...you know how I feel from my column this week. I think things have become a little bit scattered. Um...Paul...if you just limit this conversation to taxes alone, you have some sense that people, normal humans in America, might be getting a little bit nervous about health care and energy care and all of this stuff. America has a huge deficit. We've never seen anything like it before.

Spending is very big. A Warren Buffet, who people tend to trust on economic matters says look, this energy thing the House just passed is a big tax. Health care, the Congressional Budget Office says is probably $1.8 trillion over the next ten years...

Krugman: No...it's not...

Noonan: Well, without gettin' into the weeds, you gotta' assume it's going to cost money. We've got California going under. We've got New York with I think a $20 billion deficit. They're going to be raising taxes. Income taxes are going to be going on up. At a certain point, you've got to realize, people are going to say "Whoa...this is no good. You've got to stop this." (crosstalk) Yes.

The only scattered thing here is Peggy's brain. Would anyone else be very happy if this woman stopped explaining her views on the air like she was talking to a bunch of two year olds?

Par for the course, Parker later chimes in with Peggy's "things are moving way too fast" meme, prefacing it with saying she doesn't want to argue with an economist... and then arguing with an economist. I'll stick with Paul Krugman as to whose advice I'd care to listen to, thank you very much Kathleen.

Noonan follows up with one of the more ridiculous statements heard on all of the Sunday shows I managed to catch this week. Obama will be oh so lucky if the Republicans get back control of the Congress in 2010, because we all know how well that worked out for Bill Clinton.

Noonan: He may be overplaying his hand and if he is, it will be unlucky for the Democrats in 2010. Although I happen to think the luckiest thing long term that could happen to Obama is, he gets a Republican Congress, and he'll be saved like Clinton was in 1994. That would be a good thing for Obama, and he's a lucky guy and he may get lucky. But they'd better watch out for overplaying their hand!

Um...Peggy...he doesn't have a Democratic Congress now if you're worried about checks and balances. He's got a bunch of corporate DINO's that are as bad or worse for him than just having the Republicans in charge would be in the Senate. He's got a pile of DINO Blue Dogs in the House who they are constantly giving cover to in order to keep them in their seats.

And if you think having a Republican Congress "saved" Bill Clinton in 1994, I want to know what the hell you're smokin'. Heaven forbid a little thing like impeachment hearings was bad for President Clinton. And having him working with Republicans sure as hell wasn't good for the country. All it brought us was deregulation of the financial industries and media markets, and lousy trade deals. Of course none of that matters in the people like Peggy Noonan's world. As long as she's getting paid the big bucks to write her column, what does she care what happens to the rest of us?

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