…is that The One is doing his homework with the guy who came in second in the Cold War:
U.S. President Barack Obama has held talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, a spokesman for the former Soviet leader said on Monday, in the latest sign of Washington’s efforts to “press the reset button” on ties with Russia.
The Good News: There is none.
The Good-News-That’s-Really Bad News: We have no wall to tear down.
Could you imagine what’d happen if George W. Bush had not only muffed the name of the president of another nation, but of France?
Well, you’d have to imagine it; it was the Obamessiah:
Obama sent a letter to the French president, and called him Jacques Chirac.Maybe Barack Obama was too busy running for the next-higher-office (which is his his one strength) to bother reading a newspaper or a magazine or even a book to discover that they held an election a couple of years ago and elected L’Americain, Nicolas Sarkozy, as president.
But it is Obama, and not Bush, so…:
The American media has ignored this faux pas. But the French have not. One does not need to read French to understand the point of the Le Monde cartoon as shown [in Don Surber’s piece; go check it out].
Not just any nation, mind you, but a big, important one that is almost alone in Europe in upping its commitments to international security. The one that The One was supposed to help us in reaching out to.
UPDATE: Brian Jones tweets “Sarkozy oughtta respond with a letter addressed to “President Carter.”
UPDATE 2: Of course there’s an explanation. And it works.
Of course Obama will take more care with the French than with, say, all of us gun-clinging Jeebus freaks.
60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft responds to President Obama’s curious performance on the long-running, Democrat-leaning news show.
Quoting Kroft:
You’re sitting here. And you’re laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems,” Kroft told the president. “Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money?’ How do you deal with — I mean: explain … Are you punch-drunk?””No, no. There’s gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day,” Obama replied, with a laugh.
If it’d been Bush, the question would have been more like “are drinking agan?”
Of course, the media just is not going to hold The One’s feet in the fire:
The president also acknowledged surprise at how quickly the U.S. economy crumbled between his November election and January inauguration.
“I don’t think that we anticipated how steep the decline would be,” he said in the “60 Minutes” interview on CBS television. “That slope is a lot steeper than anything that we’ve said — we’ve seen before.”
Or since January. Y’know.
But some of us – the “economic reality-based” community – weren’t surprised at all. Tax and spend liberals shred economies.
Our current President’s ongoing tone-deafness is going to cause him some problems.
First it was insulting all of us gun-clinging Jesus freaks in the heartland in front of a bunch of poshes at a San Francisco fund-raiser.
Then, it was throwing hautesy tautesy parties at the White House as he warned the rest of us to expect soup lines in our near future (in its own way, worse than Carter’s “malaise” moment).
But now? He’s cheesing off the military.
Careful, Barry O.
(I should check to see if that “hundred days of poems” are starting to sound depressed).
…without a teleprompter.
That is all.
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name
A month ago I wrote that Obama was having trouble filling his commerce post: I Will Not Go Down With This Ship
It turns out Treasury is having the same issue – there aren’t enough democrats desperate enough to have That Won on their resume.
The fact that Treasury is having trouble staffing its upper 14 appointments below Geithner means that people in the know about Obama’s economic policies are running scared. They don’t want to get involved, even if they have hungered after those plum jobs their whole lives. That tells you what the savviest Democrats are thinking.
Why? Policy.
Even the Europeans are resisting hyper-deficits, because Europe always has that memory of the 1920s and 30s: hyperinflation, unemployment, crushing poverty and despair, followed by Hitler and Stalin. They are refusing to follow Obama down that road. If the dollar crashes, they don’t want the euro to go down with it.
When the socialistic economies of Europe think Obama’s policies are too far left…
Washington Democrats are having panic attacks. They know you can’t turn the country on a dime; either you end up shafting the economy and lose the House in 2010, or you get slapped in the face by Putin or Ahmadinejad and also lose the House in 2010.
The American people still haven’t quite figured this guy out, probably because they can’t believe their eyes and ears.
What – we didn’t warn you about his far-left associations? You didn’t get the Che Guevara memo? You didn’t take an inventory of the few times he voted as Senator?
The saner Left is beginning to worry out loud. Yes, Nancy the Eternally Youthful really believes she is “saving the Planet,” but her House members are seeing their numbers tanking, and they have to start running this year to get re-elected next year. Harry Reid is one of the nastiest characters in DC, but he is a survivor. Somebody is going to hit the brakes, and then an almighty struggle will break out on the Left.
The nations largest economy and sole superpower is now a lady in waiting for her savior – the saner left.
Harry Reid?
This might be a good time to panic.
…or at least sweep out a corner in the basement and start looking for sales on canned goods.
The Worst President Ever visits the White House to brief the National Security Adviser of the future Worst President Ever.
Tomorrow, a Mr. Madoff with be visiting the White House to advise the Treasury Secretary.
Stay tuned!
…but wouldn’t want to be compared to one, and certainly not by a woman (it sort of refers to one’s manhood, and not favorably, if you know what I mean).
Barack Obama even needs a teleprompter to get mad.
…but he always looks good doing it.
As he watches the fury of ordinary Americans bubble up at those who continue to plunder our economy, he should keep in mind one of my dad’s favorite Gaelic sayings: “Never bolt the door with a boiled carrot.”
At the White House on Monday, the president read reporters some tough talk from the teleprompter about the chuckleheads at A.I.G., accusing them of “recklessness and greed.”
But it was his own boiled carrots who acted shocked at bonuses that they should have known were coming, and should have dismantled before handing A.I.G. another $30 billion two weeks ago.
I don’t have a ton of time today to put my usual snark on this…but it’s a pretty good take on the veneer that is our President and his Cabinet, who have apparently been caught by this whole AIG debacle with their pants down (pun intended).
For the first time since last fall’s election, Democrats and the Obama administration are backpedaling furiously on an issue easily understood by financially strapped taxpayers: $165 million in bonuses paid out at bailed-out AIG.
Gone are the days when they could merely bludgeon the Bush administration and promise to seek bipartisan solutions to the nation’s economic problems.
Now, in control of the White House and Congress, they are struggling to come up with an explanation for what no one in either party seems moved to defend.
But is it all Obama’s fault? Of course not.
While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, [Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)] added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” — which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.
And of course no one knew AIG was going to pay out millions in bonuses until they paid out millions in bonuses, right?
For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn’t until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Boiled Carrots. Yum.
…in the way it reported politics, you’d see congressmen like Daniel Inouye…:
“From the standpoint of the Congress, there’s only so much that we can absorb and do at one time,” Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the Appropriations Committee
…or Evan Bayh…:
“Everybody has to bring something to the table,” said Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a leader of a 15-member caucus of conservative and centrist Democrats. “That doesn’t mean that you have to postpone your aspirations forever. But until we’re through this crisis and growth has resumed, there’s going to be some belt-tightening that’s necessary.”
…or Jim “Sgt. Friday” Webb…:
“You are going to see some [slowing of Obama’s agenda] happen naturally,” said Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), explaining that some of Obama’s agenda — such as climate change — may fall by the wayside because there’s not enough support for it, not because it’s too much to tackle.“This isn’t going to be an automatic ‘yes’ vote for a lot of people,” Webb added.
…getting the sort of saturation coverage on the Sunday morning methane-fests that Chuck Hagel (and for that matter, John McCain, before he became a threat) got.
Because, y’know, they’re the responsible Democrats. The ones disregarding the party line to reach across the aisle and get things done, whatever the cost!
Let me know when you see that saturation coverage, k?
If you have health insurance, you know about Coordination of Benefits; if you have a family and have a spouse or partner who might have health insurance, your plan wants to get their plan to chip in for part of the costs. It’s understandable…
…when treating run of the mill illnesses.
The Administration wants to extend this idea to veterans; he wants the Veterans Administration to coordinate benefits with veterans’ civilian healthcare providers to help pay for care of vets’ service-related conditions.
The commander of the American Legion is not amused:
It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. “He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”The Commander, clearly angered as he emerged from the session said, “This reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate ‘ to care for him who shall have borne the battle’ given that the United States government sent members of the armed forces into harm’s way, and not private insurance companies. I say again that The American Legion does not and will not support any plan that seeks to bill a veteran for treatment of a service connected disability at the very agency that was created to treat the unique need of America’s veterans!”
I’m a tax hawk, who is all about finding ways to cut government spending and privatize government functions.
I also believe in restricting government to the places and functions that it’s supposed to be dealing with.
One of those – one of the few, really – is defense.
And so while I’ve mercilessly mocked those stupid “happy to pay for a better Minnesota” signs, and am very penurious about taxes as matter of principle, taxes related to defense, and to taking care of those who volunteer to defend this country (especially their service-related injuries) are among the very few I’ll pay without a whole lot of pushback.
It’s a stupid plan.
And I’m trying to picture what would have happened if a Republican administration would have suggested it. Thousands of addlepated leftybloggers would launch “Why Does The President Hate Veterans” posts; Jon Stewart would snark and smirk; Anderson Cooper would furrow his brow and scowl.
But now that it’s The One?
Writing in a blog at the Strib about the Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston breakup, DJ Leary is aghast at the depravity of his fellow citizens – or at least that segment that leaves comments with Strib stories- saying it dishonors our democracy:
The reaction from anonymous online newspaper readers, including startribune.com and others throughout the country, and in thousands of public comments everywhere on the internet, has been loathsome. These comments demand that I seek a word that will convey “toxic” in stronger terms to communicate my outrage, disappointment, and disillusionment. How about “pernicious,” or perhaps “septic,” or better yet “venomous.”
Yeah, Mr. Leary, people are stupid – and for whatever reason, it seems the Strib’s comment section is worse than most, competing with the comments cesspools at Democrat Underground and Daily Kos; people almost dumb enough to write for Minnesota Progressive Project.
I am truly aghast to see how we have dishonored ourselves as a society when it comes to the public discourse between people of contradictory opinions on politics and public issues.
I’m not one of those people who whinges about how “politics has never been dirtier than it is today”; that’s absurd (and usually brought up to try to squeedge us into parting with more free speech rights).
And yet I don’t recall in my lifetime a time when the rules of common decency were so quickly suspended, not only because people disagreed with someone’s politics, but because someone disagreed with someone’s parents’ politics.
I’ve never cautioned anybody about holding anything back in his or her communication with a person actually engaged in the public arena. After all, when you put yourself out there, you knowingly wear a huge sign labeling yourself as a target for public abuse. It comes with the territory and I’ve always thought of it as one of the strengths of our democracy. If people like me feel our opinions are so god-awfully important that we’re willing to force them on the general public by publishing and circulating them, then we have no right to expect a social barrier that would silence opposing opinion.
Leary’s right about that, of course – for
The debate about who’s public and who is private is a byzantine exercise, of course – but the more accessible debate is over the depravity of our public society. Reading the comment section at the Strib or too many leftyblogs (and the Freep, sure) is like watching Idiocracy (a great movie, until that moment when you almost wonder if it’s a documentary rather than a comedy). It’s funny – until you realize that these peoples’ votes count the same as yours do.
And you start to realize why “democracy” in the founding fathers’ time was a little more selective than it is today. The founding fathers believed that democracy was too fragile and precious a thing to be trusted to the eighteenth-century anscestors of monster-truck rally fans, fight club members and contestants on “Shot At Love With Tila Tequila”.
And while the standards of the day excluded a lot of the wrong people – blacks, non-landowners and, Shakespeare’s Sister notwithstanding, women – for the wrong reasons, when you look at things like the Strib’s comment section, it’s tempting to wonder if some sort of test isn’t in order to be allowed to vote.
What kind of test, though? Race, gender and property are out, and should be. Even “intelligence” is a stupid measure; plenty of people with less-than-spectacular IQ scores are perfectly fine human beings who opinions deserve to be counted.
No, the real questions are a) how do you test for moral depravity, and b) while it’s wrong and illegal to actively exclude people from voting, how does society subtly convince them not to take part in our democracy?
I think instituting a national, three for one happy hour during polling hours on election day would actually serve a patriotic duty to democracy. Let the bars toss in open ultimate fighting, free lap dances, wet t-shirt mud wrestling, and live talk-back to the Ed Schultz show, and you’d have a perfectly capable filter, not to keep the depraved out of the voting process, but to allow them to voluntarily keep themselves out of it.
Whaddya think?
Worries about the Administration’s competence are metastasizing across party lines:
The tag of incompetence is powerful precisely because it is a nondenominational rebuke, even when it yields a partisan result. It became the strongest argument against the GOP hammerlock on Washington and, over two elections, gave Democrats their turn at total control.But already feelings of doubt are rising again. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were never held in high regard, so doubts about their motives and abilities are not surprising.
What matters more is the growing concern about Obama and his team. The longest campaign in presidential history is being followed by a very short honeymoon.
Imagine Hurricane Katrina – only across the entire economy and nation!
Polls show that most people like Obama, but they increasingly don’t like his policies. The vast spending hikes and plans for more are provoking the most concern, with 82% telling a Gallup survey they are worried about the deficit and 69% worried about the rapid growth of government under Obama. Most expect their own taxes will go up as a result, despite the President’s promises to the contrary.
None other than Warren Buffet, an Obama supporter, has called the administration’s message on the economy “muddled.” Even China says it is worried about its investments in American Treasury bonds. Ouch.
Note to Liberals: be less concerned about those who may or may not hope Obama (or his long-term goals, sure) fail. Be more concerned over whether he’s going to be an epic failure.
In the months leading up to inauguration, I said – tongue firmly in cheek – that I thought Obama could be the worst president of my adult lifetime on inauguration day. While I was joking, this past six weeks can’t make his supporters feel all that confident.
St. Paul Police say they’d just as soon Kathleen Soliah stay in California after her upcoming parole.
Cali agrees (I add emphasis):
“The police officers on both ends of this case are united in their opposition to Ms. Soliah’s attempt to once again run away from her crimes,” said LAPPL President Paul Weber. “Governor Schwarzenegger has the power to stop her this time, and we are asking that he exercise that power.”
“Returning Soliah to the same neighborhood that harbored her during her 24-year flight from justice is hardly conducive to strict parole monitoring,” St. Paul Police Federation President Dave Titus wrote in his letter to the governor. “When Soliah has paid her entire debt to California, then and only then, should she be allowed to live where she chooses. Making parole convenient for the perpetrator is a travesty of justice.”
In 1975, Olson, as part of radical group SLA, participated in two failed pipe-bomb attempts on Los Angeles Police squad cars and a bank robbery in which one person was killed.
Let nobody forget – that “one person” was 42 year old Myrna Opsahl. Soliah’s “Symbionese Liberation Army murdered the mother of four in utter cold blood – Opsahl was in the wrong place at the wrong time – on April 21, 1974.
In [Patricia] Hearst’s account, Olson later asks Emily Harris, who had been listening to radio reports, “How’s the woman who was shot?”
“Oh, she’s dead,” replied Emily Harris, airily. “But it really doesn’t matter. She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor. He was at the hospital where they brought her.”
Hearst says that Bill Harris mocked Opsahl’s death, referring to her as “good, old Myrna” and congratulated the robbers for having committed a “gas chamber” offense.
It was two years ago Tara McKelvey profiled Soliah’s family here in the Twin Cities in Marie Claire. They still think Soliah is the victim.
In a way, I hope California lets her come back. Having their revolutionary hero among them would certainly bring out the true colors of an embarassingly-large chunk of the St. Paul DFL.
Just as people who move to New York from elsewhere become the most preening, arrogant New Yorkers, some of us who come to conservatism from liberalism are the most vituperative about our rejection of vast swathes of our former beliefs.
So I don’t give liberals a whole lot of credence on economics.
Still, it can be useful to see what they’re telling themselves.
Jeff Rosenberg shut down “Twin Cities Daily Liberal” to join “MNPublius” last week. Congrats to both Jeff and the MNPublii; one hopes the hire was accompanied by Aaron Landry being perp-walked from the MNPublius office as jeering onlookers pelt him with rocks and garbage.
But I digress.
Jeff’s a good guy, and he’s made the odd good point in his oeuvre – but Emperor’s Clothes-watchers should perk up at this bit from MNPub yesterday, titled “Under Obama, the stock market is stabilizing“.
Of course it’s “stabilizing”. As long as companies still produce things that people need to buy, some companies will retain some value, and that value will be reflected in the equity market for their stocks. Until this nation resorts to being a subsistence-farming economy with a barter currency system, companies will be worth something.
Yes, I know conservatives say the stock market is experiencing a catastrophic collapse under Obama, but they also said the fundamentals of the economy were strong under Bush.
And both are true. If the former were not true, the market would, tautologically, not be off 43% in the past year; if the latter weren’t fact, there’d be no talk of recovery, no matter who to thank. “Strong fundamentals” – a capable workforce, a currency capable of supporting commerce, management that can find and exploit opportunity – are the reason that 70-90% of us are not subsistence farmers, as our anscestors were 100-300 years ago, and why we’re unlikely to revert to that, even now.
You have to take conservative arguments with a grain of salt.
(Although not due to anything you’ll read here – but I digress. Ed.)
The truth is that, in Obama’s first six weeks, the market’s volatility has decreased, and though the declines of the Bush economy haven’t stopped, they haven’t become worse, either.
That’s because, short of complete monetary collapse and reversion to barter and subsistence farming – in short, as long as there’s a market out there – then there is a bottom. Where is that bottom? As a theoretical matter, when the market capitalization of publicly-traded companies is equal to their physical and financial assets; when the combined value of alll the hundreds of millions of shares of 3M stock, for example, is the same as the value of 3M’s buildings, computers, inventory and bank accounts – presuming that any of those things have worth at all (again with the “forestalling monetary collapse and not heading to the woods with your rifle and your bag of oat seeds”). The real bottom, presuming the fundamentals of the economy are strong enough to see us into a recovery, is somewhere north of that, depending on the potential investors see or, paradoxically, less than that for companies that have no future.
The trouble is that conservatives and the media like to use charts like this, which ignore even the recent past [courtesy of Media Matters]:
The trouble is that liberals use charts from Media Matters. Let’s break it down:
But the truth looks more like the chart below. Under Bush, the Dow Jones lost 6,000 points, or about 43 percent of its value, from its peak in 2007. That includes about 3,000 points lost since September 2008. Under Obama, the Dow has continued to slide, but it is only down about 1,000 points since its low during the Bush administration.
Which makes sense, until you get into the “why” of it all.
The first 3,000 was the impact of the collapse of the housing bubble. No question about it: it was a financial catastrophe. And while the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans did try to beat back some of the governmental idiocy that subsidized the inflation of the bubble in the first place (the systematic socialization of risk and privatization of reward – read “distortion of the free market” – that allowed the bubble to grow and put Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac on the hook to clean up when it popped), there’s plenty of blame to go around; the failure of the Bush Administration to expend the political capitol needed to turn the idiocy back; the Dems complete ignorance of the issue going back to 1998, when the Clinton Administration started instituting the policies that led us to disaster, and so on.
That’s 3,000 points over a little over a year; figure about 250 points a month.
Which, by many accounts (and let’s be honest; if you put 100 economists into a room, you’ll get 175 theories) pretty much covered the correction from the housing bubble.
Then, from September – in the waning months of the Bush Administration, when it became pretty clear that Obama and his socialist, interventionist policies were going to hold sway, and when the (frankly) spendthrift Bush Administration did its level best under Henry Paulson to speed the transition to government funding of the whole mess, the market justifiably reacted – through January, the market shed another couple thousand points. That’s around 400 points a month, depending on where you demarcate your starting and finish lines.
And in the past 45 days, the market has reacted to Obama’s his full-throttle power-dive into a socialist command economy, his tax-hiking, and (I think it’s fair to say) indications of his administration’s incompetence, and burned through over 1,000 points, speeding to what may or may not (the coming weeks will tell us) be close to the Dow’s hard bottom.
You do the math; that’s a 401K-shredding 600-point-per-month pace.
So yes, Jeff – while “sloughing off all value to the point where the market is down to not much above asset value” is a form of “stabilization” (in the same sense that a crashing airplane doesn’t get much below ground level, provided the ground below the plane doesn’t open beneath it and swallow the plane up whole), Obama has “stabilized” the market.
By your leave, we’ve had enough of this kind of “stability”; we’d like him to stop before he “stabilizes” healthcare, home values, Americans’ net worth, and our foreign policy.
By your leave.
CORRECTION: TC Daily Liberal, not MN Liberal Report. To be fair, Twin Cities leftyblogs sorta run together after a while. MNBlue, MNSpeak, MN Liberal Report, Daily Liberal, Powerliberal, PowerMonkey, Daily Monkey, MNObserver, MNObsessive, MNCompulsive…who’da thunk “branding” was the one thing Mark Gisleson (“Norwegianity”) would excel at?
Chas Freeman withdraws from the bid for chair at the National Intelligence Council:
“Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed. Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret.”
Ed Driscoll notes:
Freeman has been under fire for quite some time, though the White House has had little to say on the matter.
It’s Limbaugh’s fault, obviously.
Four years ago, I and most thinking Americans had a field day, roundly ridiculing a couple of risible strains of “liberal” whinging:
These were many of the same people, by the way, who tearfully demanded that conservatives “stop questioning their patriotism”, by the way.
But I digress. The vacuous snivelling hamsters got their president finally.
It’s the other side I’m concerned about now.
We got a call on the show last Saturday from a guy who’s question echoed one I’d heard from not a few people on blogs, on Twitter, and around about in recent months – itself a reprise of something I heard a lot back in the seventies and, just a bit, in the early nineties.
“When should we stop talking and start the active resistance?”
I often ask these people – why?
“It’s never been worse than this!”
I’m starting to lose patience with some of them.
Whenever anyone says anything is “the worst ever”, they’re almost always wrong. They almost always really mean “the worst I’ve seen”.
Politics is not the dirtiest and nastiest it’s ever been (that’d be the Jackson/Adams contest in 1828, or any election where the Hearst papers uncorked their smear machine); this is not the worst unemployment since World War II (not even close, not yet)…
…and if you’re a freedom-loving American, the Obama administration is shaping up to be a bad one, perhaps a horrible one. But it’s by no means the worst we’ve seen on any count.
Spending? Roosevelt’s New Deal was worse. So far.
Gun control? While Obama’s record is bad, he hasn’t done anything yet; Democrats from FDR through Clinton all took their swipes at the Second Amendment, from Roosevelt’s prohibitory taxes on automatic weapons (which eliminated gang warfare!) to Clinton’s “1994 Crime Bill”, which did for many less-fashionable liberties what Bigfoot does to junked cars.
Civil Liberties? Three words; J. Edgar Hoover. FDR, Truman, Kennedy and LBJ got away with things that’d make any of the ofay gerbils that were protesting George W. Bush’s “Abuses” gag up their skulls. Nixon invoked executive orders that gathered unprecedented “emergency” powers unto the executive – which has had libertarians chattering amongst themselves for almost forty years. Obama bears watching; the Dems in Congress bear even more of it. But so far, the threats are minimal (while still intolerable).
Repackaging vacuity as “change” and “audacity?” OK, there Obama’s in a league of his own.
Overall demoralization of the parts of this country that matter? The seventies were worse. They had everything we have today and more – instability, out-of-control government, the Middle East going nuts, stagflation, Jimmy Carter – and a nation that was coming off of Vietnam, which, if you don’t remember it (and I only do through the prism of a 12 year old’s memory) was the most demoralizing thing to happen to this nation since the mid-thirties. I don’t know if anyone ever ran the numbers, but Carter’s “Malaise Speech” must have prompted more population-wide suicides than any other single event in American history (shaddap about Oberlin undergrads popping too many Valium after Kerry lost).
And even that wasn’t the worst it’s gotten. In my father’s lifetime – well within my grandparents’ early adult lives – there were those in the mainstream who seriously considered socialism, communism, even pre-war Naziism viable models with much from which we could learn, even much to emulate for our own good. There were those in positions of great power who actively sought to incorporate “the best” of these ideologies into our own.
The point being that, so far, the Obama Administration isn’t the worst thing our constitution, our economy and our society has faced – yet. And while the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and the Founding Fathers well-recognized the possibility that Americans might need to throw off another tyranny someday, this isn’t it.
Not yet.
It’s a big government, and it’s getting bigger. It’s a not-ready-for-prime-time government, run by a lot of very canny people who buffaloed a lot of our nation’s not-too-bright with a lot of breezy platitudes, and which rode to office on an almost-but-not-quite-unprecedented wave of discontent with the status quo. It’s a government full of poltroons and ideological three-card-monte sharks. But it’s not a communist dictatorship.
It was elected, for better or worse. And we have three years and eight months to make the case that it should be thrown out of office and – this is the important part – nobody’s changing that.
If they do? Well, get back to me then; it’ll be then you should think about putting on the camo and grabbing Grampa’s Garand and heading into the north woods.
Until then? It’s still America.
As Douglas Adams said, “Don’t Panic”.
At the MOB last weekend, the Minnesota blogosphere got to meet another of a very small, elite group; Saint Paul Republican bloggers. Fresch Fisch made his public debut.
And oy, does this city need him.
He notes that some Democrats are upset at Mayor Coleman. Not over soaring taxes and eroding services, mind you.
For having allowed Republicans into Saint Paul:
It’s gotta be tough to be Mayor Chris Coleman these days. The political right has never been fond of the man, and now, neither is the hard core left.A new website My Mayor is Cheating on Me is bound to have the folks loyal to Mr. Coleman all up in a fuss!
And it’s gotta be a bad time to be DFL mayor; when there’s no more blood in the turnip, the turnips get upset when you squeeze ’em too hard…
First, being a DFL’er when there is no money to spend, either at the state or local level. Just think of having to run for office and not being able to promise more stuff so everyone will vote for you.
Second, being a DFL mayor and inviting those darn Republicans to town! Just think, Karl Rove was in our town!
Then, accommodating all the leftist “protesters” before the convention and then having the gall to stop them from damaging public and private property! Hey, that’s my city you are damaging!
Mayor Coleman has tough times ahead.
Maybe, although the “My Mayor…” blog isn’t what’s gonna do it. It’s a typical lefty smearblog; anonymous, gutless, scrubbed clean of any traceable information…
…except writing style.
I have a hunch I know who it is. No proof, so I’m not gonna go on about it. But there are a few hints.
At any rate, Mayor Coleman has plenty to worry about. I doubt this blog is it.
So, given that faith is involved with eternity, and organized religion concerns itself with eternal questions of right and wrong for, to the church’s point of view, everyone, I have to ask; when is the Catholic Church going to do something about this?
Nancy Pelosi reminds us that elections matter, in a DCCC fundraising e-mail:
This morning, I had the great honor of joining President Obama as he lifted the executive ban on federal funding for stem cell research.
If that’s not a shot across the bow from someone who describes herself as a “Devout Catholic”, what is?
On the one hand, I feel for the Obamas; they took a lot of flak from our British friends and allies over their choice of gifts for Gordon Brown during his recent state visit.
Now, I’m a guy. I don’t always have impeccable insticts when it comes to gift giving. Of course, I also don’t have a State Department with a full-time protocol staff, but work with me here; I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to hoot and holler over this sort of thing (like the media would have done had it been President Bush, for example).
Still, I’d have rather had him plead “I’m a guy”, or “I’m a naif from flyoverland” with the critics of his performance with PM Brown, than have his handlers gush that, really, this president isn’t ready for prime time.
His excuse is the same one every high school sophomore tries to pull. He’s tired:
Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been “overwhelmed” by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.
But isn’t there a staff to deal with this sort of thing?
British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.
But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama’s inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.
Not every person in the Administration is “dealing with” the “meltdown”!
How “not ready for prime time” is he? (Emphasis added):
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to “even fake an interest in foreign policy”…The American source said: “Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.
So (if the “well-connected figure” is right), Obama can’t multitask? He can’t lead a country in a time of immense international peril and deal with the economy? In other words, he can’t do the job that he convinced 53% of the American people he was perfect for?
Why, it’s almost as if being a one-term Senator and “community organizer” isn’t adequate background for the most powerful, responsible job on earth!
[NOTE to liberal commenters: As an excuse for Obama’s shortcomings, “Oh, yeah? Well, Dubya was stupid!” is rapidly approaching the end of its shelf life. Be advised.]
…but apparently the Democrats included a special stimulus for fake-news shows like Colbert and The Daily Show.
How will they thank us?
…You’re only a Year Awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Barack Obama is tough on earmarks! Just like he campaigned.
White House budget director Peter Orszag says the Obama administration isn’t happy with the billions of dollars aimed at lawmakers’ pet projects – also known as earmarks. Obama had campaigned on changing the way such money is appropriated by Congress.
Gosh darn it. The President’s not happy. So he’s going to use his Veto power, right?
Nope.
Yet Orszag says Obama doesn’t want to revisit the spending bill Congress put together before he was elected and wants to move on. Next year, according to Orszag, when Obama is fully involved in the next budget from the start, earmarks will be handled differently.
Sure they will. It takes more than a year to grow a spine does it?
That’s Change® you’ll just have to wait for.
I hope your effort to institute socialilsm fails, too.
In fact, I hope it fails even more than Rush does!
By the way, all of you – my show is the Northern Alliance Radio Network, Volume II, heard every Saturday from 1-3PM Central on AM1280 in the Twin Cities, or at Town Hall for podcasts.
No, really. Fail fail fail. Not you, Mr. President, personally, but your policies, yes. Definitely.
Feel free to sic your dogs on Ed and I. Really. Please hop to it!
One side effect of the Democratic campaign against Rush Limbaugh has been to increase — dramatically increase — the talk show host’s ratings.
This morning I asked Rush if he had any numbers he could share on just what effect the increased visibility has had on his business. This is his response:
The latest numbers I have are for January, well before this kerfuffle began, and they are through the roof — six shares in NY, for example. There are daily ratings taken now in about the top 15 markets but I have not seen them yet. All I can tell you is that as of January, we booked 80 percent of all our 2008 revenue and we’ll be over 2008 by the end of this month.
Given those numbers, it’s clear that the most decisive economic stimulus produced by the Obama administration so far has been at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Socialism bad!
You’re Nancy Pelosi’s lapdog!
You’re destroying the market!
Who the hell does Michelle’s hair? T
hat should give you and your staff plenty to respond to. Please see to this. Thanks.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Obama Bear Market, named for it’s cause.
“It’s the Obama bear market,” said Dan Veru, who helps oversee $2.8 billion at Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, New Jersey. “We don’t know what the rules are in so many different areas the government is touching.”
In all fairness, the market had been sinking long before Obama won the election, but looked to be turning a corner, maybe even establishing a bear market low, after November 20th. The market gained double digits after that day, then Obama started making his plans known, and Jimmy Carter II took it down another notch.
Traders continue to cite the Obama Administration’s plans as the primary driver of stocks — and while miracles cannot be achieved overnight, investors have been left wanting by what they’re interpreting as inaction or an effort, through additional funds provided to zombie institutions, to kick problems a ways down the road.
The stock market is a collective of our wealth and a predictor of the health of our economy. Barack Obama is making all the wrong moves and we are all paying for it.
Had we seen tax cuts and a simple shoring up of “safety net” programs, like unemployment insurance, social security and medicaid, already in place for times like these, we’d already be on our way to a recovery and the market would be reflecting that.
As it stands, the American people are getting all the things from Barack Obama that so-called extreme conservatives warned us about, and to which the media turned a blind eye and a tingling leg.
A massive and poorly-timed stimulus package that will have absolutely no immediate benefit to the economy, and a tax increase for Americans best positioned to pull us out of this recession.
So is the very real question of whether the $787 billion stimulus plan is sufficiently robust or properly focused. The new spending pathetically “repeats the mistakes that got us here,” says Robert Albertson, a principal at Sandler O’Neill and a former Goldman Sachs banker.
“After 18 years of record spending, much of it on credit, consumers must and will de-lever and save the next $1 trillion to $2 trillion of income. Only private businesses create job multiplication and true future spending power,” says Albertson. “That requires a savings and investment program, not a doomed spending program. The latter tact ate up the resource base for six years during the 1930s Depression, with little or no effect on unemployment.”
But Obama sees our would-be saviors, business owners, investors and risk-takers as the enemy. The market disagrees.
Earlier in the week, Bespoke Investment Group analysts observed that the Dow has never had this poor a beginning of the year in its history.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 20 percent since Inauguration Day, the fastest drop under a new president in at least 90 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
…and that is no coincidence.
“President Obama said Tuesday that he is not intently focused on the ‘day-to-day gyrations of the stock market,’ comparing the downward roller-coaster on Wall Street to the fickle nature of political polls,” the NYT reports.
” ‘You know, it bobs up and down day to day,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.’ “
You’ve already taken care to accomplish that Mr. President. The next falling index, sir, shall be your approval numbers. We don’t need Jim Cramer to tell us that.
…but I wish I could short them right now.
That hope that may now become a reality as the American people come to realize what the WSJ observed today…
The dismaying message here is that President Obama’s policies have become part of the economy’s problem.
Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.
I don’t have time today to elaborate but this picture is worth a thousand syllables…
…and why?
[Jimmy Carter II] has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.
The powers in Congress — unrebuked by Mr. Obama — are ridiculing and punishing the very capitalists who are essential to a sustainable recovery.
That’s Change® you’re going to lose your job over. Hopefully not you – the President.
The press is doing its job, asking the Administration the tough questions.
Like How do Michelle Obama’s arms get so fabulous?
The Obama effect has been that women of all ages have been inspired to take responsibility for their health and their body,” said Duggan. “As the first lady of the United States, at 44 years old, and with two young children, Mrs. Obama has shown the world that you are never too busy to take care of yourself and look good doing it too,” he said.
Ooh. That’ll leave a mark.
And how about that crucial question – what soft drink does the Administration prefer?
Is Pepsi actually the choice of the Obama Administration?
My reporting at the White House suggests the answer is a resounding no. Several senior Administration officials are committed cola drinkers, and without fail they spend their days sipping from a can of Diet Coke, a product of Pepsi’s chief competitor, Coca-Cola.
The American media; “defending freedom” since 2000 until 2008.
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