| « | September 2011 | » | ||||
 |
||||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
Just a note to advise that posting may be sporatic over the next couple of days. I'm in the process of closing up shop in the Windy City and moving home to Granger, Indiana. More on this later.
This is actually rather comical:
Barack Obama's rolling cadences pose a challenge to his rivals
It’s the title of an opinion piece in the (UK) Guardian on the President’s address to the Congressional Black Caucus last weekend. The writer, Ana Marie Cox, was mightily impressed by what she took to be Barry’s slam-bang eloquence.
Well, sure, if hot air equalled political clout, Obama would be Emperor of the Galaxy. Unfortunately for his reelection prospects, however, people have noticed that the President’s bloviations don’t produce jobs and prosperity. That counts for a lot more with American voters than the beguiling vibratons of his buttery baritone. Ms. Cox should pay less attention to Obama’s speeches, and more to the polls—which show that just about any plausible GOP candidate could beat him.
Buy a clue, Ana. I realize that you European lefties still love the guy, but we’ve had enough.
It could happen, as this story by Scott Trendle for RealClearPolitics suggests. His analysis is a cautious one, as befits any political analyst with a care for his credibility. But the tide appears to be running strongly against the Democratic Party nationally, and a Republican sweep of the half-dozen or so Senate races rated as tossups is a real possibility. That could result in a 55-45 GOP-controlled Senate. Who could have imagined it, back in January 2009?
President Obama to the Congressional Black Caucus in a speech last Saturday: "Take off your bedroom slippers! Put on your marching shoes! Shake it off! Stop complainin'! Stop grumblin'! Stop cryin'! We are going to press on! We have work to do!"
“Shake it off”? Where was this rally? In the men’s room?
Actor/progressive Morgan Freeman on the Tea Party: “It is a racist thing.”
News item: Herman Cain Upsets Gov. Rick Perry to Win Florida GOP Straw Poll
Cain, a Tea Party favorite, is black.
Over to you, Mr. Freeman.
Well, it’s not a good sign for Barack Obama, anyway:
Obama 2012 campaign’s Operation Vote focuses on ethnic minorities, core liberals
That was the headline of a story that appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post—though perhaps a more appropriate headline would have been:
Obama 2012 campaign follows Carville’s advice, panics
That Obama feels it necessary to shore up his support among “ethnic minorities,” e.g. blacks, and “core liberals” is a telling commentary on the failure of his presidency. At this point, he can only hope that the GOP nominates Donald Trump—and even then, it would be a close election.
It would appear that Barack Obama’s recently announced plans for the US economy—more stimulus spending and higher taxes—have failed to impress either the markets or the American. The Dow is in free fall, unemployment remains high, fears of a double-dip recession stalk the land and public confidence in the Obama Administration has collapsed.
The President’s supporters insist that it isn’t his fault. Obama inherited this mess from the wicked Bush and his sinister neocon cabal, they cry. That was former New York Times editor Bill Keller’s line in his first outing as an op-ed columnist. And it’s true that Obama got saddled with some big problems. Nobody disputes that. But it’s beside the point. Presidents are expected to deal with big problems—it’s right in the job description. People are looking askance at this president because he gives the impression that he just doesn’t know what to do.
In 2009, Obama assured the nation that his gargantuan stimulus plan (price tag: just shy of $1 trillion) would bolster the economy and tame unemployment. He promised millions of non-exportable green jobs. He also claimed that his health care reform plan would help to jump-start the economy. It didn’t happen. Instead we got a jobless recovery—economic growth too slow and weak to make a dent in the 9% unemployment rate. And instead of green jobs we got Solynrda. Thanks a bunch, Barry!
OK, sure, everybody makes mistakes. But that’s beside the point as well. The problem is this: President Obama gives the impression of a man who has thrown up his hands in frustration and cried “Screw it!”
It’s glaringly obvious that the President’s focus has shifted from the problems of the nation to a problem of his own: how to get himself reelected in politically toxic circumstances. Not being a stupid man, he must know that his phony-baloney American Jobs Act is going nowhere in Congress. If a $1 trillion stimulus didn’t work, what should anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi vote for a $500 billion stimulus? If it’s crazy to raise taxes during a recession—as the President himself has opined in the past—why do it now?
Why? Because Obama has abandoned serious policymaking. His latest proposals are designed not stimulate economic growth and reduce unemployment, but to generate campaign issues. His shrill and dishonest attacks on “the rich” are intended to stir up class envy—nothing more. His “jobs bill,” which many congressional Democrats regard without enthusiasm and has no chance of passage, is intended to saddle a “do-nothing Republican Congress” with responsibility for the Obama Administration’s own failure.
It’s a desperate ploy, dependant for its success on the supposed gullibility of the voting public. Because, you know, Barack Obama doesn’t think much of his fellow citizens. His absurdly exaggerated self-regard is matched by an equally ill-founded contempt for the American people. OK, sure everybody makes mistakes. And Barry, you’re one of the biggest mistakes we’ve ever made. But we can fix that.
Just a quick update on PFC Gregg, now back at Fort Drum, NY, with the rest of the 511th Military Police Company. She'd doing fine and looking forward to her month-long leave in October. After a year in the Sandbox, she and her fellow MPs have earned some R&R!
I’ve argued before that progressivism requires intelligent people to pretend that they’re stupid. This may be called the institutional stupidity of the Left, and examples abound. Take progressives’ oft-repeated charge that conservatives “hate government.” The public is asked to believe that the neocons, the Tea Party, the GOP, etc. seek not to limit the power of the federal government but actually to demolish it. That there exists scarcely a speck of evidence in support of that claim bothers progressives not at all. True to form, they trust that if they repeat the charge loudly and often enough, it will stick. This is a crude, unsophisticated lie. In a word, it’s stupid.
As a matter of fact, the people most interested in demolishing the power of the federal government are not conservatives at all. They’re libertarians, and Ron Paul is their herald. Conservatives, on the other hand, want the federal government to possess all the power it needs to carry out its legitimate duties. This is a distinction that makes a considerable difference.
Too, be sure, it’s difficult to generalize about this issue. Even within the ranks of the conservative movement, there’s disagreement about what are and are not the proper functions of the federal government. Unlike progressives, whose opinions are stamped out for them by the same ideological cookie cutter, conservatives are a fractious lot. On social issues, on foreign policy, on economic policy, the conservative movement exhibits many shades of opinion. For some, social issues such as abortion are most important. Others worry more about America’s global standing, while others point with alarm at the nation’s precarious financial position.
But it’s fair to say that most conservatives believe the federal government has become too expensive, too intrusive and too unmindful of the traditional American commitment to individual liberty. Conservatives are arguing, in effect, that government has become too big for its own good. As it strives to do more and more, the federal government progressively squanders its credibility. The abject failure of Barack Obama’s grand experiment in stimulus, with bankrupt Solyndra as its poster child, is only the most recent example of this dismal trend. People have lost faith in the government’s ability to do anything—including the things that everyone agrees it should do.
The chief responsibility for the collapse of public confidence in government lies with progressives like Barack Obama. Though it would be wrong to hold the Republican Party blameless (George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” comes to mind in this connection), the doctrine of big, activist government is specifically the doctrine of the Left. And the Left’s stupid lie about conservatives’ desire to “destroy government” is really nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention from that terrible mess that progressives in their hubris have created.
Well, this is an interesting analysis (from Dan K. Thomasson in the Detroit News):
The one indispensible ingredient for a successful presidency, particularly when the holder of the job is more than a little inexperienced, is a good staff.
More and more it looks like President Barack Obama has been missing that from the start. There have been increasing reports of presidential aides divided over what to do and increasingly frustrated by the president's efforts to court Republicans on the one hand and to abandon some of his more liberal principles on the other.
Oh, so now he tells us that Captain Hope & Change is “more than a little inexperienced.” Somehow I doubt that Mr. Thomasson was pushing that storyline in 2008!
Fairness, however, compels me to concede that Thomasson is not off base with his criticism of Obama’s staff picks. The Chicago cabal that Barry brought with him to the White House certainly hasn’t served him well. But Thomasson’s critique would have been improved if he’d also mentioned the toxic influence of the President’s overweening self-regard, e.g.: “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.”
Sure, his staff deserves a share of the blame. But the Messiah’s zeppelin-sized ego—a thin skin enclosing a large volume of explosive gas—makes Obama his own worst enemy.
