“We’re the only nation in the world,” Mr. Gramm once said, “where all our poor people are fat.”

<snip>

...

The biggest failing of both parties in this presidential campaign has been the unwillingness to be forthright with the public about the true extent of the crises facing the country. The federal government and ordinary Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt. Much of the financial sector is in deep trouble, with previously blue-chip companies wobbling along on legs as rubbery as a bad check.

Perpetual war in Iraq and oil prices spiking toward the moon are adding to a sense of national paralysis. Where is the money to invest in ventures that will create good new jobs, that will chart new directions in energy self-sufficiency, that will revitalize the public schools, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, put New Orleans back on its feet?

Where are the grand ideas, the ideas worthy of a great nation?

Barack Obama got a lot of play with his clever response to the Phil Gramm madness. “You know, America already has one Dr. Phil,” said Mr. Obama. “When it comes to the economy, we don’t need another.”

Cute. But woefully inadequate. The Democrats, timid as always, should be pounding the populist pavement from one coast to another, explaining how the reckless and deliberately inequitable policies of the past several years have gotten the U.S. into this terrible fix.

We should be getting chapter and verse about how badly the war in Iraq is hurting us here at home. We should be seeing charts and graphs explaining how ordinary Americans, now the hardest-working people on the planet, have been cheated out of their share of the extraordinary productivity improvements they’ve racked up over the years.

There should be a sense of urgency coming from the Democrats in this campaign, a clarion call compelling enough to rally the legions who have been treated unfairly and badly hurt in the nation’s other undeclared war: the class war.

Phil Gramm was a general in that conflict, and there was nothing cute about it.

<snip>

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/opinion/12herbert.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

:mad:

I loathe both of them.

the GOP, regardless of their education, are the most incredibly stupid people on the planet as well.

You can lead a Bush to Yale, but you can't make him think. So it is with other Republicans, who like the conservative worldview, so they go out and learn about everything that supports that view and ignore the rest. Bill Buckley was a great one at selective learning, dismissing anything that might challenge his preapproved notions about how the world works.

Cognitive dissonance, non sequiturs, and great leaps of illogic are the true trademarks of conservative "thinking". How else can one make the statement that "the universe had to have a designer, so therefore, it must be literally the story as laid out in Genesis".

They are stupid people, Ph.D. notwithstanding. I have met many stupid Ph.D.s in my days. What they all had in common was a set of views that they held as absolutely true under all circumstances. To test if someone really has smarts, all you have to do is to question their basic premises and ask them "under what circumstances would your beliefs not hold"? If they pause and think a bit and start to conjecture how things might be different, then they are capable of thinking. If they act like you are a foreigner and just repeat their basic premises a little bit louder, then they are dumb as a post.

I agree 100%

I too have met all too many stupid people with advanced degrees in many fields. In addition to your observations, I think part of the deal is that advanced degrees are specialized- and critical thinking in one area doesn't always translate into others. Indeed, some advanced degrees are, in essence vocational training- physicians, attorneys engineers and the like often don't have much breadth of knowledge- though they retain the arrogance of beliefs that (in some cases) is justified in their own fields.

to know where to start....

I'll have agree with Mr. Gramm on this ONE issue.

Over the past three decades, the childhood obesity rate has
more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years
and adolescents aged 12-19 years, and it has more than
tripled for children aged 6-11 years. At present, approximately
nine million children over 6 years of age are considered
obese.

We are headed for a health crisis of epic proportions. This should
be a top issue in this campaign. You think health care costs are bad now
you aint seen nothing yet. Being overweight and obese is directly related
to increased risk in about every type of cancer not to mention heart disease
and stroke.

I do however agree with the premise of your post!.

Yes, the epidemic of obesity in this country is a public health disaster. However, Gramm was trying to say that fat people are healthy people so what's the complaint. His statement totally misses the point that obesity is related to numerous serious health problems. Obesity is a direct result of our poor eating choices in this country, which are a direct result of well-financed sophisticated marketing of processed food. It's also a result of the growth hormones fed to animals raised for food.

The obesity epidemic is a disaster and Republican policies favoring agribusiness over the health of the public have caused it.

Let his words become the unOfficial Republican Party Platform!! Come On Senator Obama, Use Chicago political street fighting tactics and WIN!!!

What an arrogant SOB.

When all you can afford is rice, beans, pasta, and deep fried foods to satiate your hunger, you can be both.

Plus, even if you can afford to eat better food stuffs, there aren't a whole lot of nutrition classes offered to the poor.

:shrug:

The guy's a dickhead.

Lots of them, it would seem.

But, I'm fat!

That was the sound of me falling to the floor... :rofl:

Surrogates gone wild!

If Phil Gramm pulls up his shirt, I'm gonna hurl!!!

:puke:

:evilgrin:

:kick:

fuckhead this guy is. x(

"Some people say we're headed for another Depression but in the last Depression, people stood in line for bread, now we're standing in line for i-Pods." It's unfortunate that people are willing to discount someone's suffering just because those with a little extra money seem determined to piss it down their leg.