Below the fold, check out that poor waitress who thought she was getting a Toyota, but ended up with a "toy Yoda." Kind of reminds me of what people HOPE they're getting from a certain candidate, but what they're really going to end up with.  Sadly, there will be "bamboozling" as well as mere lip service to crucial issues.  From "Don't Rerun That '70s Show," NYT op-ed columnist and economist Paul Krugman, February 22, 2008 -- the conclusion:

[E]ven if the next president is a Democrat, any serious stimulus plan would face intense, ideologically motivated opposition in Congress. Will the next president be prepared to fight for an effective plan? Or will we end up with a compromise like the one Congressional Democrats agreed to this year, legislation that assuages conservative objections at the cost of undermining the plan's effectiveness?

Until recently, I thought the biggest political struggle facing the next president was likely to be over health care reform. But right now it looks as if the first thing on the next administration's plate will have to be dealing with a weak economy.

And if effective action isn't forthcoming, the next president will suffer the fate of Jimmy Carter, who began his administration with words of uplift -- "Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust" -- and ended up delivering America into the hands of the hard right.

Could he be thinking about this candidate, whose first economic stimulus plan Krugman called "disreputable" and whose second plan the economist found "tilted to the right"? I know he's not talking about this candidate:

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Here's what Elizabeth Edwards had to say, via CBS News, on the highly misleading radio ad that Barack Obama ran before the January 3rd Iowa caucuses. The radio ad claimed "that Obama's health plan covered more people than either Edwards's or Hillary Clinton's plans":

"It's just complete untruth," [Elizabeth Edwards] said. "I'll speak on behalf of Senator Clinton as well. Both Senator Clinton's and John Edwards's health care plans cover one hundred percent of Americans and Senator Obama's does not."

That's from my story, "Elizabeth Edwards on Health Plans, Obama's Lobbyists, ..." Then there's what NYT columnist and eminent economist Paul Krugman had to say about Obama's health care plan and Obama's misleading, factually untruthful radio ad:

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An ad running in Iowa is yet another example of Barack Obama completely distorting the truth when presenting his proposals.

This time the subject is health care:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail /2007/12/28/incomplete_picture_in_new_ob am_1.html?hpid=topnews

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This is really NOT an endorsement you want to have when you're running in the DEMOCRATIC primary in New Hampshire.

The state's rabidly conservative newspaper Union Leader came out with the following editorial this morning praising Obama' health care plan as a "smaller pill to swallow."

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx? headline=Obama%27s+health+care%3a+A+smal ler+pill+to+swallow&articleId=fd9098 a3-458d-44b2-9bf2-8b33b62f50ef

"Of the leading Democratic candidates for President, only Sen. Barack Obama doesn't pretend that his health-care plan is a panacea. He resists the temptation to promise the impossible -- provide universal coverage and control costs -- and for that he should be commended.

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