The NYT reports that President Obama is racing against time to save the world.
WASHINGTON — Declaring that “we don’t have a moment to spare,” President Obama on Wednesday pushed hard for passage of his economic stimulus plan, promising that it would be not just enormous in scope but run with a transparency and accountability not always associated with huge Washington projects.
While nobody actually seems to know what amounts will be placed at Obama’s disposal, the sums will be vast.
The numbers in the president’s program, while astronomical, seemed to defy precision. Accountants at the Congressional Budget Office recalculated the cost, putting it at $816 billion rather than the $825 billion often used. But in a voice vote on Wednesday, House Democrats added $3 billion for mass transit.
The White House meeting was part of an aggressive promotional campaign by the president and his top aides. Congressional leaders of both parties were invited to cocktails at the White House Wednesday evening. On Monday, Mr. Obama took the unusual step of going to the Capitol to try to win support for his program.
The Times Online (UK) says that the stimulus package will probably be approved along party lines in the face of unexpected opposition by Republicans.
President Obama’s $825 billion (£575 billion) plan to revive America’s economy is tonight expected to pass the House of Representatives – but in the face of unexpectedly fierce Republican opposition and partisan rancour. … Despite his popularity and a rare presidential visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet House and Senate Republicans, Mr Obama is struggling to drum up significant cross-party support. It is confounding his hopes of winning broad approval for the package and for his campaign pledge to end Washington’s inter-party squabbling. “Old habits die hard,” Mr Obama said as he acknowledged that the new age of bipartisanship had yet to reach Capitol Hill.
Update: The NYT reports that the House approved President Obama’s stimulus package by a vote of 244-188.
Although the president’s legislative victory was no surprise, given the Democrats’ 255-to-178 advantage in the House, the lack of any Republican support was a disappointment for Mr. Obama. The vote came hours after Mr. Obama declared that “we don’t have a moment to spare” just after conferring with business leaders at the White House. Before voting on President Obama’s plan, the House rejected a stimulus measure offered by Republican members that focused more on tax cuts. The vote against that measure was 266 to 170, almost entirely on party lines.
Obama always had the numbers to pass his stimulus package. The nearly solid opposition by Republicans to its passage means that for better or worse, this package is his. This roll call on this vote will be referred to as events unfold, either to condemn or to vindicate. Now we’ll see which.
Haste makes waste.
And just what might be in those White House cocktails? Chloral hydrate (aka a Mickey Finn)? Rohypnol (the date rape drug)?
If the damn republicans had stood up to democrat fiscal shenanigans over the past 8 years (fannie/freddie, for example) we might not be in this mess, with this disaster of a president.
As long as ACORN gets at least FOUR BILLION, I’ll be satisfied.
Jefe:
Just for you -
The Fearsome GOP of the New Millenium
Our Fiscal Warrior
““Old habits die hard,” Mr Obama said the former Chicago politician“
I believe there is some urgency in trying to reprime the economy. It is my understanding that almost all of America’s banks are technically insolvent. I’ve seen numbers (no doubt cooked) indicating that the American economic system was bankrupted by the mortgage fiasco (supposably many trillions of dollars). I’ve also read that another tidal wave of foreclosures will hit within a few days or weeks.
Is any of this true?
People in high places seem very panicy for this to simply be another MSM fantasy.
I’m ignorant about finance but wasn’t this crisis created by having too much liquidity (abuse of credit) inflating a real estate bubble? Now they’re trying to fix it by creating more money out of thin air and throwing it at the economy.
I understand that the process is complex and very nonlinear. I’m glad that I’m not responsible for trying to fix it. However I suspect that Obama (because of his socialist ideology) is even less clued up.
Does anyone else think it darkly humorous that Obama campaigned on “No more earmarks” and the first action he takes is to pass a $1 Trillion “Nothing by Earmarks” bill that probably surpasses total earmark spending during Bush’s entire Presidency? ‘Cause I’m laughing so hard I could fall off my couch. Or cry at the thought of the debt paymen burden this will create. Definitely one of those.
Eggplant, your intuition is largely correct. As bona fides, I do have a background in economics, and did work in the New York hedge fund market until this last December. And most of the big banks are in a whole lot of trouble. They just refuse to admit it (because that would bankrupt them) as long as they aren’t forced to. Citibank is quasi-admitting it by splitting in two: Healthy Citibank and “We’re going to file for Chapter 11 within six months” Citi Holdings. They’re putting all their bad eggs in one basket.
I fear your intuition may also be correct about Obama. But Obama has surprised me recently (post election) with his centrist and reasonable appointments and statements in many instances. We may be all right. Hope!
Mr. Fernandez,
A year ago or so, during your early examination of the President, you posed a couple questions:
1. Who sent you? (Referring to the President)
2. Who are the rubes?
Have you reached any conclusions on these two, or is it still too early to begin to answer?
Best regards,
MG
Don’t you love that bipartisan means My Way?
The Repubs finally got together to arrange the deck chairs before the ship of state disappears beneath the waves. Dear Leader and Nancy own the economy now. Nobody else to blame means having responsibility whether you want it or not.
2010 looks more hopeful than it did two weeks ago.
Brock
Obama said only a few weeks ago that his stimulus package would not have any pork. New Way. Change. And all that.
Dear Leader is a liar when it suits him.
Peter Boston said:
“The Repubs finally got together to arrange the deck chairs before the ship of state disappears beneath the waves. Dear Leader and Nancy own the economy now…. 2010 looks more hopeful than it did two weeks ago.”
So I interpret this to mean that who ever wins in 2010 (assuming there is an election) will have the priviledge of being captain to a sunken Titanic embedded in the ocean floor versus a sinking Titanic where people are still getting out on lifeboats.
Somehow I suspect Dear Leader and Nancy got the better end of the deal.
1. Who sent you? (Referring to the President)
2. Who are the rubes?
These are questions history will answer. But I think that as time passes the answers will become obvious to all, including me.
Yes, Doug, little more than caged beasts.
They can stomp around and make plenty of noise, but would they know what to do if the cage door was suddenly thrown open?
And would they have the will to do it, or is all of that good ol’ cage livin’ just too good to walk away from?
A little appreciation for the gang of 11 D who voted against the stimulie.
nullification? said:
“A little appreciation for the gang of 11 D who voted against the stimulie.”
Eleven guys neglected to drink the Koolaid. Nancy will punish them for that.
stimulie
I rather like that.
And we should honor those 11 Democrats (though I thought it was 10).
Jamie Irons
#8 Eggplant #10 Brock
I am not an economist, beyond two semesters of Macro and Micro, and I do not play one on TV. I admit though that my BS detectors have been going off continuously on this subject for quite a while.
When we had a previous banking crisis, we developed a temporary agency, the Resolution Trust Corp., that took over bad debts and banks and sorted them out.
It strikes me that instead of repeatedly throwing unlimited sums of money at financial institutions with no accountability, and not changing the rules that got them into trouble; we could do something similar.
The government is responsible for the mortgages it insured. First, change the rules so that future loans are issued on a sound basis, and balance sheets make sense. Second, if the homeowner defaults, the house belongs to the government. Some leeway to enable to homeowner a chance to get caught up or refinance on a sound basis may be allowed, but if it does not work, the house belongs to the government who will sell it at the best price it can get. Third, of course, the bank gets paid according to the Federal insurance. This has got to be cheaper in the long run. Yes, as the insurer, the Feds will take it in the shorts, which means we will take it in the shorts; but we will be taking a lot less in the shorts this way.
Within a few years, just as with the RTC, the government will be out of the direct real estate business, and housing prices will reflect a supply and demand market.
This, of course, would work; but it would mean that the government would have to live up to its responsibilities, and some homeowners who should not have bought houses are going to lose them. For that reason, the Democrats will not allow it.
If the mortgages are being paid off, I would assume that the sub-prime derivatives that dragged down the financial houses would regain some value, and in conjunction with the payments on the mortgages being made; some stability will return to the financial markets.
As far as the Auto companies are concerned; the equity value of GM is less than Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It would be cheaper to buy the whole company and re-sell it after reorganization similar to bankruptcy. That, of course, means that UAW workers would not be as overpaid as they are now, and would have to have work rules that made some sense. Since the bailouts are campaign payoffs, it won’t happen, but it strikes me that it makes sense. In a world where unemployment is becoming the norm, it is better to have a job at $30 an hour than be laid off at $78 an hour.
Now I am sure that I have spouted something in here that makes no sense in the world of high finance; and if so I would welcome an explanation of where I went wrong. But it strikes me that first, the main obstacle to fixing our economy, at least back to the point where Senator Schumer started runs on banks, is political. Certain “special” groups are being benefited at the expense of the commons, and it is an opportunity for Washington in general and Hussein Pasha in particular to expand their intrusion and control over our lives. Second, even if my outline is wrong, so is the “print and spend” program to recreate and maintain the bubble that got us into this.
Note please the reset point I noted for the fix. We had other problems before that in addition to what we have now, that were being ignored too. What we are doing now just makes them worse too.
Subotai Bahadur
COLA for mortgages=COMA
Eggplant, I can only give you my personal situation, our family business of near 25 years is teetering as never before….it’s bleak and if going out of business comes to pass, I will without a doubt, be walking away from my home.
I like many Americans are tapped, the business has been a living but nothing to get rich on and has provided for 4 families as well as 12 other employee’s…..6 who are long term.
Quite frankly, as ironic as it sounds, now that the Socialist’s own this pork barrel, rippoff of a so called stimulus plan, they and their cohorts in the news have no choice but to turn off the crisis garbage and start shitting skittles and produce Unicorns and rainbows in massive quantities….hopefully, that will be enough to get people into the spending mood again.
Of course, they may go in for another supertanker load of cash for another manufactured crisis before we get the Eutopia treatment….lets hope not.
#22 Drider
I can only commiserate. Here in my county, I personally know of 3 small businesses who looked at what happened November 4, and decided they would liquidate and shut down their businesses while they can get some value out of them; rather than let increased taxes, costs, and mandates drive them into bankruptcy leaving nothing. Those three businesses making the only rational, considered decision possible after the election cost about 40 people their jobs. There are others probably here I don’t know about. We suddenly have one of the highest county unemployment rates in the state. In November the US had the highest number of job losses of any month in 16 years, and I’m pretty sure that small businesses either voluntarily doing the same thing or being forced to the same decision made up a goodly chunk of that. I have an acquaintance who is HR director for a contract staffing firm back east, and she reports that they are swamped with demand because firms are laying off employees and turning to contract workers, because every direct employee that you have is a liability that the Federal government can invoke at any time.
We have not yet even conceived how bad it might get.
Subotai Bahadur
If we don’t immediately reseed the National Mall area, start that expanded research on STD’s, and build that water slide in Miami, then all is lost!
The job creation aspects of this bill amount to something like $275K per job.
And if that is the state we are in, all should be lost. We can start over easier than fix this mess.
Drider: What business are you in? If it is real estate or construction then I see no hope.
BHO seems to equate his previous universe to the Capitol.
“My children’s school was canceled today because of what? Some ice.”
Obama said his daughters — Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 — pointed out that school in Chicago is never canceled.
“In fact, my 7-year-old pointed out that you’d go out for recess. You wouldn’t even stay indoors,” Obama says.
“We’re going to have to try some flinty, Chicago toughness to this town.”
I live near the beltway and I have a very healthy respect for the ice. (see the mixing bowl in an ice storm.)I don’t know why all the inexperienced newcomers confuse snow and ice.
Such it is with beltway politics. The wounded are left on the road. The wrecks slide to the guard rails. Yesterday’s fools are tomorrow’s naive survivors if they are lucky. The rules never change. Just drive in circles as fast as you can and yell at the idiot in front of you.
I’d like to see “flinty toughness” up against the centrifugal “road rage”. He will have to learn that insanity is not a defense but rather a weapon.
If I am not mistaken Barney Frank is drafting behind BHO. Make sure they take the roll call. The republicans must insist on the roll call.
Attrib to # 25
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1585670
I’ll be watching for the explanation of why the Republicans representatives solidly rejected the bailout package. In the ordinary course of voting there would have been a few crossovers. And I am fairly certain that BHO wanted Republican cover for his package and probably offered inducements to get it. Yet here, at the very height of his power, he couldn’t get it. What the Republicans thinking? Or put another way, what did they see that scared them off, so that even wild horses couldn’t get some of them to cross the aisle?
However that may be, my guess is that we have just witnessed an extraordinary political event whose meaning is not clear to me. It appears to be the first “No” to the One since his election and it had a particular vehemence. It is doubtful whether this “No” will by itself, rally other forces to its side. It will be interesting to see how other sectors respond to this “stimulus” package, the markets in particular; and after they’ve gotten over the shell-shock, the rest of the “opinion leaders”.
Drider,
I’m sorry your business is in trouble.
My wife works for a small firm and they’re hanging on by a thread. Her coworker’s husband got laid-off a couple months ago (a mid-level manager working for Palm Pilot) and can’t find work. Like so many others, they were seduced by the property flipping greed and bought a second home at the market peak. Now both their original home and their second home are under-water (property value less than the outstanding mortgage principle). After my wife’s coworker gets laid-off, she and her husband will both be unemployed and their total net worth probably negative due to their real estate investments (they’ll be completely screwed). The company that I work for is on the government tit so I’m not in immediate danger from a lay-off (however I’ll probably only be doing “busy work” from here on). If I stop paying into the 401-K and for my kid’s daycare then my family can just survive on my salary alone if my wife gets laid off. I got lucky, saw this crisis coming and had all my 401-K money in a money market fund before the excrement hit the fan. I did recently lose about $17,000 from my 401-K on a stupid bet that there would be an “Obama Bounce” (didn’t happen). However I’m now completely out of the market and will stay out until after the economy has clearly bottomed. The value of my home is still greater (on paper) than what I’ve put into it and the outstanding mortgage (we bought our home before things went crazy). We had just completed remodeling our home before the recession hit. We did it cheaply (I did the electrical and plumbing) but we need to throw another $15,000 at the house before it would be completely finished (that project is on hold). My wife and I are definitely NOT going to be financially stimulated by anything our Dear Leader does. We’ve stopped all discretionary spending and are trying to retain as much money as possible. I’d like to pull all my money out of the bank and convert it into silver dollars. However my wife vetoed that (she believes that doing so would contribute to the bad economy).
Jimmy Carter used his presidential power with a lot of confidence and very little self knowledge (of his own limitations), and ended up with an ayatollah.
Barak Obama also has a lot of confidence. The Republicans seem to be saying that he has limitations that he isn’t aware of.
Eggplant, I hope the best for ya bud, I really do.
What gets my goat is that I honestly believe this entire deal is being made worse by 10 fold in the way the government is handling it.
I don’t wish ill on anyone but these damn banks made piss poor decisions for “whatever” reasons and instead of letting things take their natural course the entire deal turned into a wholesale giveaway.
Overnight it seems our leaders abandoned the capitalist system and went into prop up mode, started with banks and moved to insurance companies, car manufactures etc…etc.
I’m no economist but for God sake, it doesn’t take Einstein to see what this entire charade has turned into, which is nothing less than a trillon dollars worth of political security funding, and they don’t even hide the fact that this money is mostly going to uneeded social programs and political allies (Acorn..we are suppose to be too stupid to see it) and this after so many folks have lost everything or a good portion of everything.
It’s blatant insanity.
1. Who sent you? (Referring to the President)
2. Who are the rubes?
Early guess:
1. Soros
2. Joe and Jane Public.
Wretchtard, the Republicans bailed out of this “stimulus plan” because, well, did you see what it had in it or do you simply not care?
I don’t think there has been a bill passed in our Nations history that was packed with as much wasteful spending that had “zero” to do with stimulating anything, Hell, even the Rhinos couldn’t take the stench and vote for it.
It will stimulate nothing, as for the market, we are well beyond the market being a true indicator of anything other than a volitile roller coaster that rises and falls 500 points from week to week, meanwhile your neighbors lost his job but don’t know how to build a road or run a wire, so those temporary infastructure jobs don’t mean beans to him/her.
If this bill is even remotely what a non politician “hoped” for then that is proof positive that he/she has lost all sense of any tidbit of logic or reason.
Wretchard: What’s interesting is that the Associated Press is spinning the vote as a “swift victory” for the Lightworker:
“By LIZ SIDOTI
WASHINGTON (AP) – In a swift victory for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House approved a historically huge $819 billion stimulus bill Wednesday night, filled with new spending and tax cuts at the core of the young adminstration’s revival plan for the desperately ailing economy. The vote was 244-188.”
I guess she’s never heard of Pyrrhus.
But Obama has surprised me recently (post election) with his centrist and reasonable appointments and statements in many instances.
Hahaha. That’s really funny.
“Centrist”
Hilarious.
Wretchard, There is no mystery. I am surprised that you think that there is something mysterious at work here. It is pure looting – there is “only” about 50 Billion in it that could be called a stimulus in any sense of the word (even this will not stimulate anything). The rest, $750 Billion, is just a pure patronage slush fund. It is the biggest single ripoff in our history, and they will not be able to hide this for long.
Not only will it be obvious that it is just theft, it will be obvious that it will actually set any recovery back years, In fact, with this (and other nonsense coming down the pike) we can forget about the sort of economic growth that we have been accustom to the last 30 some years. We may never see these rates again. The recipients will just p!ss this money away. Meanwhile, people are going to go broke, lose their business, lose their homes and lose their future. We are talking about destroying much of the middle class. The anger will likely take to the streets.
It will not amount to anything positve, but it will just load us with debt.
This thing will go down in the history books. It is just beyond belief. Of course they voted against it. They are all up for election soon.
It would be pure suicide for the GOP to vote for this. Let us hope that the GOP Senate can grow spines too. Now that would be Hope and Change.
Wretchard –
Simple explanation for the failure of ANY Republican despite the Obama Charm Offensive to vote for the stimulus bill:
They don’t think it will work or the economy will recover by 2010.
Simple as that. Republicans bet it all on the expectation that the bill will contain spending that is unpopular, filled with stuff that voters will hate, and do nothing to fix the economy but rather make it worse.
That’s why Republicans voted as they did.
Now, Obama’s one experience in the Private sector, is a few months writing (not very well) for an investment newsletter. Supposedly most of the other workers did his job. He wrote in his first book that he felt like a spy behind enemy lines. Couple with his message to Al-Aribiya (“Trust me. I’m really a Muslim.”) and his people admitting “No Whites Allowed” in the bailout, the One looks pretty lame.
The worst thing that could have happened to Democrats was winning, uncontested National rule. Now they OWN the horrible economy, while spending 300 million on contraception and “No Whites Allowed.” Obama’s love letter to Khameni will not go over well either.
Eggplant:
“my wife vetoed that (she believes that doing so would contribute to the bad economy).”
I used to be on you wife’s side. I made my investmenst in the sincere belief that I wnated to help the country. After I lost $100K plus in the market after the dot com bomb and still owed the Fed Govt $34K in “income” that year from those investments I decided that I could not afford to invest any more in the market. 9/11/01 stopped me from quitting my monthly investment contributions – once again I wanted to help the county.
But no more. After this last election I decided I need to look out for me and mine for a change. I paid taxes last year on money that no longer exists by a factor of at least 4 and will owe another $30K or so on that “income” this year. I have a stack of U.S. Savings Bonds and I am going to cash them in. I am going to go to the people who sold me the mutual funds and tell them I want a plan for getting out. Cut and run.
As Gordan Sinclair said “let someone else buy the bonds.” As for me, I’m free.
<b<Heh.
Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican, sent out a press release earlier today about his innovative new bill:
“Rangel Rule”
All U.S. taxpayers would enjoy the same immunity from IRS penalties and interest as House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Obama Administration Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, if a bill introduced today by Congressman John Carter (R-TX) becomes law.
Carter, a former longtime Texas judge, today introduced the Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735, which would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from charging penalties and interest on back taxes against U.S. citizens. Under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote “Rangel Rule” on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.
Wretchard, the Republicans didn’t vote for it because they are desperately trying to shore up what is left of their base. 48 million people did NOT vote for Obama. They are really pissed at the Republicans as it is. The Stupid party finally figured out it’s not a good idea to stir up a hornets nest.
Brock #10- I don’t doubt your sincerity but don’t be fooled by these “centrist” appointees- they’re just window dressing and will be thrown under the bus soon.
Rush Limbaugh had a great observation today, after listening to some Obama’s recent ‘conservative” speeches and comparing them to his regular leftist message. Rush said in so many words that Obama is wrapping his socialist takeover in Reaganesque speech when necessary to appear bipartisan. The devil is in the details and those details of Barack’s reek of marxism.
Obama is a very crafty, dangerous con artist, and this takeover is for real. At least the Republicans in Congress finally got the messsage today and showed some guts.
Wretchard, There is no mystery. I am surprised that you think that there is something mysterious at work here.
I didn’t really. I hesitated to seize on the solid Republican rejection because that would be too encouraging; and I don’t want to be encouraged just yet; it would suggest that Obama has managed to create an actual unified opposition to him through his own greed. The obvious interpretation, as you’ve pointed out is that this “stimulus” was simply too much and too obvious a bad thing for even professional politicians to swallow. Now as I said in the post above, I’m not sure whether this, by itself, can create the nucleus of a coalition against the suicidal policies which are going to cascade on the public. Because what I’m watching for is the formation of a coalition. Today was a beginning; but it has still to take shape. The ‘who’ are the leaders; and the ‘what’ are the principles.
My guess is that the principles of the opposition will initially be negatives: as in ‘government out of my wallet’. Eventually these will become positives. And maybe one or two figures will emerge who can really provide strategic direction. They will have to be people who’ve realized that the cozy game has changed, almost in the same way that the generals of 1940 had to re-educate themselves into understanding that it wasn’t World War One any more, but in a political sort of way.
America having a binge on low interest rate for years, max out credit cards, 8 years of stupid president and generation of arrogant. This next-gen recession will teach a lot of people a lesson in life and hopefully the lesson learned will last couple generations.
Wretchard: Well my guess is that it is not a sea change, but if the GOP has decided that they want to stand up to this communist coup (which is what it is) and build an opposition then, at least on the domestic front, the next sign would be some investigation of who and what really caused this mess. Some accountability. Here I think that there are three groups that need to be brought at the very least before the court of pubic opinion:
1) The Culprits in Government: This includes people like Franks, Dodd, etc. on the Hill, but also present and former officials such as Goerlich, et al. And not only investigated for decisions but broader corruption. If there are Republicans involved then they can just fall on their swords. (Note: it is not encouraging how the GOP is rubber stamping Obama’s treasury appointments.)
2) The “Immediate” Institutional Culprits in the Financial Industry. These would be the decision makers/instrument and process designers,etc. that colluded with government (and each other) to set up the structure of this fiasco.
3) The “Dynamic” Culprits in the Financial Community: These are the folks that were actually trading and moving money around before and during this whole mess. These are the dynamic participants in the unfolding of this fiasco. This includes vipers like Soros, Sovereign funds, odd cases like China or the Russian Government/mob confab, but also regular players like pension fund, IBanks and the hedgies. Particularly, legal and illegal shorts should be looked at , and all of this should have a broad focus: other instruments, Government securities, energy and FX trading etc.
Note that individual and institutional actors might be in more than one group.
The interconnecting relationships would be mapped to who profited from what.
Find out is this was an actual attack on the financial system.
If the GOP was serious they would get to the bottom of this. I do not know the form, or whether it would be a private research effort (might have to be), but if they were serious they would get about this, and put a high profile Republican in charge.)
In addition, if they were seriously forming a real opposition, the would do at least 4 things about the stimulus package:
1) Show just who benefits from this, and who does not. Show foreign players here and map it against geopolitics and the WOT, etc. This, of course includes the financing of this whopper. they need to show the pernicious structural changes the Dems want to make to the nation, and what this all means over time.
2) Develop some sort of metric or analysis that shows if it is actually working, and clearly delineate what would have happened if it was not package delivered at all.
3) Establish just how severe this thing actually is. Does it justify all this panic por is it fear mongering.
4) Propose alternatives, and for the short, mid and long terms. (in fact, it would be nice to know in real terms what the goals actually were. Can we get some numbers? What do we mean by “recovery”.)
I do not see this happening. If they were serious, they would have proposed an alternative before this vote. Of course, it could be that they did not really grasp what was up until it was too late to do that, but why should that be? Do they not know that they are dealing with Marxist-Leninist jackals? They have been fighting them for decades. What did they expect?
This in the end is the mark of their seriousness. Are they will to come out and call out the democrats for staging a communist coup? And I mean seriously doing it.
Give it real alarm and keep it up. I doubt this, but they should just start this right now.
Humble: Bush stupid? hardly. Really, thanks, but no thanks, please go peddle your idiocy somewhere else. You are in over your head here.
sorry about the italics
Agree with W about an “extraordinary political event whose meaning is not clear.”
Apart from Wretchard and the guys on Fox News, there is no opposition to this bill. The press is behind it, our Congressmen are screaming about the desperate need for it, and the public is mostly in favor of it. I don’t get why or how so many Repubs went against this, when the entire Congress has been doling out billions with nary a second thought for months.
Something more is going on – what that may be, I leave to better minds to divine.
Mongoose,
Re your 43. We need matching pairs. A set of victims to correspond to the villains. Rush Limbaugh quoted Alinsky who said, “you’ve got to personalize things”. Abstract evils are hard for people to hate; abstract victims are hard for people to sympathize with. If someone fiddled with the money then the rebel alliance has to pursue them on behalf of the victimized. If we do that we’ve got a set of people around which to base the coalition and a set of specific targets we can isolate.
The hard part is finding a vehicle to do this. You’ll need a legal proceeding, around which you can tack journalistic and political support. The legal investigation will be the hook on which to hang the ancilliary stuff and the ancilliary stuff will keep the legal investigation from being stonewalled.
Now for the hardest part: finding leaders, people of stature, accountable to a constituency who will take it to the max. Leaders without a constituency will be co-opted. A constituency without leaders will have no personal voice. You need a Robin Hood, a William Tell, a specific set of people who will serve as spokesmen and symbols of the effort.
Like I said, the Republican rejection of the stimulus package is a good start. Now, what do we do for an encore?
Most people I’ve talked to during the past year did not believe me when I told them about Obama’s pedigree as a Red Diaper Baby, and then his own development of that pedigree through his own careful choices throughout his career. He had a voting record. He had a carefully selected coterie of associates and allies whom he was comfortable with – and only threw under the bus when it was politically expedient. There was enough of a paper trail on this guy that could support the case that he intends to govern from the Left.
The media covered all of this up. What this election laid bare for all of us who have moved over to the alternate media for our information and opinion, is that most Americans are still informed and molded by the MSM. If that was not true, the election probably would have gone the other way. Also, the case could be made, and I think it has merit, that the country has been moving Leftward since the late eighties, despite the victory of GHWB. And then Clinton dispatched him and then handily did away with a really good man in Bob Dole (war hero and all). Then there were two narrow victories by GWB.
Obama, being a man of the Left, thinks he has a mandate to govern by going to the Left. He is encouraged to do so by Pelosi’s “leadership” in the House. Much of the political and government establishment is Left of center Democrat. The media is all in for him.
What we are going to see is more of what we would call over reaching. Now he won’t see it that way, but we think of it as over reaching because it’s shockingly bold. He thinks the American people want this. Some truth in that, by the way, but I think the majority of the Middle Muddle will have that muddle clarified during these four years. It’s not going to be pretty.
His boast that by next year he will have “created” (as if government can do this!)four million jobs is pathetically deranged. But we’ll see if he’s held to account for it. I hope he will be, but the way things are going in this country I could be in for a bad surprise. I pray that does not happen and that people still have some semblance of common sense and rationality.
Remember that Republican Congressman Gingrey who told Rush Limbaugh to shut up?
“Gingrey not only called in to Limbaugh to apologize, he put out a press release.”
“As long as I am in the Congress, I will continue to fight for and defend our sacred values. I have actively opposed every bailout, every rebate check, every so called “stimulus.” And on so many of these things, I see eye-to-eye with Rush Limbaugh. Regardless of what yesterday’s headline may have read, I never told Rush to back off. I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives—that was not my intent. I am also sorry to see that my comments in defense of our Republican Leadership read much harsher than they actually were intended, but I recognize it is my responsibility to clarify my own comments.”
What’s going on? Is Rush the new head of the Republican party? Strange deeds afoot.
Remember, Speaker Pelosi just changed the rules so the minority party has significantly less power in the House. Perhaps the Republicans were responding to that. The Senate filibuster rules are more hard-coded but will there be enough votes to actively sustain one and will there be enough Senators with the fortitude to actually implement one?
i hope Rush has a couple bodyguards. i’ve never listened to him but boy do i intend to start –ground zero radio.
Good to see folks such as mongoose and wretchard trying to visualize what a start of a restoration or counteroffensive would look like. That election –the events around it –blew me away so badly all i did for weeks was listen to Beethoven’s 6th symphony, the springtime nature rebirth zipadeedoodah mr. bluebird on my shoulder piece, loud, thru earphones, world shut out. i’m still not fully reconnected –this whole mess is just too dreamlike.
Buddy,
My reaction has been the same. I’ve been avoiding a lot of t.v. just because the mug of that long legged mack daddy is often on the tube. I’ve been trying to just plug into music and good books, because the reality I see developing is not pretty at all.
I’m still trying to figure out how I am going to be a constructive member of the opposition. Trying to also figure out how one is supposed to live during the time of the decline of Western Civilization. I’ve begun reading St. Augustine’s “City of God” for clues. He was a man who knew what it was like to live during times when the barbarians were already inside the gates.
st Augustine advised “tend thy own garden” is all i know –i take it to mean, one can do little good unless one’s own self is squared away.
this just up, an Eddie Haskell-ish contrivance from George Soros. “Judge, y’see, there i was, merely aiming the pistol and pulling the trigger, when all of a sudden, Shots Began to Ring Out.”
“Not a Moment to Spare” = “Any Moment, Folks May Begin to Catch On”
53 Buddy Larsen
Are you sure you’re not thinking of Voltaire’s Candide?
Don’t just stand there, do something!
It’s for the children.
Buddy, I’m still not fully reconnected either. The best I can manage is a cursory once-over of the newspaper and checking in here (without posting much cause Mongoose says everything I’m thinking). For me, shutting it out with Bach’s violin concertos or Enya-like stuff (but not Enya, I don’t have any Enya) because it’s haunting and mournful and suits me these days. And yes, do give Rush a listen, especially now that he’s on the endangered list. Years ago I would never listen to him until one day decided to find out if everything the Left wants you to believe about him is really true. And then there’s the daily read of the Bible. Last night came across that wonderful phrase again, …each man under his own vine and fig tree. Where’s our Solomon?
I have been listening to a lot of late Brahms. I am trying to find the locus were it all went wrong for the West. It is great music too. I recommend it.
(and no, it is not “Autumnal”, that is just more prog cant. Try the string quintets — the first mvt. of the op. 111. — great things here). I think it was Borges who said of him that he was a mixture of “fire and crystal”. Apt. snyway…
Wretchard: Point well taken. In addition we need some strategic goals, and not just reactive ones.
I challenge you to match you Three Conjectures with some solid strategic goals for the reform, reinvigoration and renaissance of the West (redemption too?), with the USA as the locus. I’d bet, however, that there are more than three. Please do not make them to abstract or general. You can add tactical goals as well.
Here is a start: One such goal would be doing something about the media (maybe this is a tactic too).
Here I would like to link this with the notions of “leadership and constituency” that you have just mentioned, and suggest a tactical approach:
1) Go local. Do not try to speak through the MSM national spigot. Limbaugh gets this. The stand against them can be brought to a national level as time goes on.
2) Do not have one “leader”. Let Rudy be Rudy and Palin be Palin. Let them deal in their own way with their own audiences, but have coordination and consistency in the message. Find local personalities too. With this approach, the leadership will shape itself in time. (oh, and find people that can talk to Hispanics and Asians.)
3) Call them out as tyrants, oligarchs and commies. Include Media and the Academy in this group. Put some people that have lived in Soviet, Latin American and Asian socialist hellholes up there. Show what is happening in the EU, China and Latin America. Invoke the Cold war, and make the reality of that war clear (yung people today has been persuaded that it was some sort of hoax design by the “military industrial complex” or some other Leftist fable.) Show how the interlink organizations work (this is challenging, but people have experienced cliques in their own lives.)
4) Let no one, no thing, or no event intimate. Just keep at it. Period. In particular, Ignore the MSM, that is when we are not calling them out.
5) Experiment. do not have an overarching media plan. Just have an overarching rhetorics, principles and solutions.
I await your goals, Wretchard, Our Dear Leader.
I think it is time to call them what they are: the politicians, almost the whole of Congress, Obama Pasha and his whole damned administration of crooks, liers, tax cheats, socialist whores at the govt. trough, the “Captains of Industry” who sold out those whose trust they held for millions in unearned bonuses while they sucked their companies dry–they are purely and simply the 21st Century Robber Barons–all of them. And sadly they are now in total control. God help us.
Re # 49 Buckets: I would speculate that the abject quivering apology from Gingrey was the result of a tsunami of outrage from his constituents. As for Rush, I listen to him when I can, but the radios in my pickup and tractors are so poor that they generally won’t pull him in. If one is going listen Rush for the first time I suggest tuning in at 7 after the hour and listening until the first break. That is usually when he is the best.
Tio: The “Robber Baron” meme aimed the 19th century industrialists is just Marxist hooey. These were good men and true visionaries who built the foundations of modern America. They have nothing to do with the crooks that you so clearly describe. Let us not slander good men by associating them with bad ones.
the robber barons’ overarching story –before it is marx-hammered in detail into pigeonhole anecdotes from the personally and perhaps even righteously offended –is of creating personal and community and national wealth (aka “profiteering”) by efficiently supplying what was in demand (“opportunism”), by risking initially borrowed capital (“gambling with the people’s savings”) to attract & employ individuals who wanted, if not necessarily enjoyed, the work (“exploiting the working class”).
Mongoose and Buddy, you are too too right about the “robber barons.” They were giants who are portrayed as nasty pygmies.
How many Americans have any notion of what these men really did compared to how many know the Marxist stereotype they are fed in school? Americans learn little real history outside of civil rights hagiography (every month is Black History Month in the public schools) and demonization of capitalists. (Quick test: ask any 12 year old to tell you anything about John Adams or Thomas Jefferson (other than he had sex with his slave). Then ask them to tell you about Rosa Parks.)
That’s what worries me most of all in terms of the public reaction to Obama and the big money grab. Too many people just don’t get it. They’ll think Obama is really doing something good and amazing and brave. “Just like FDR.” You know, FDR the great hero. Not FDR who dragged out and deepened the Depression. Obama will be understood the same way.
I’m sure history — I mean “social studies” — teachers across the country are already in full myth-making mode about the beloved Saint O. And we know the media won’t cop to the truth.
FDR kept getting re-elected even while he made the problem worse. Why should we expect any different with Obama and the Dems? Their failures will be painted as trying to solve the problems Bush and the Republicans created over those eight horrible years of tyranny. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Democrats gain seats in 2010.
I guess we now must define “pork” or “pork barrel” or perhaps re-define the term. FWIW, this package represents a Pork Super tanker adrift on a vast Sea of Pork. Classical music is not cutting it for me. A fine bourbon works alas but temporarily……
Speaking of FDR, it occurs to me that what Obama still lacks is a name for his grand enterprise: the New Deal, Square Deal, Three-Card Monte Deal, whatever.
He won’t be a true demagogue until he plasters a name on his turd. Or maybe I missed it. Has anyone seen such a thing from the O yet?
buddy says:
attract & employ individuals who wanted, if not necessarily enjoyed, the work (”exploiting the working class”).
programmer ponders:
I know what you are saying, however this whole exploitation thingee has always bothered me. I have worked in sweat shops, perhaps not as dangerous as some or as noxious as others, but still I certainly felt like an exploitee. However, to a certain extent, I was exploiting my employer. He/She offered a certain wage for work that I could perform to their satisfaction. It was mind numbing labor, but when I went home at night, my job stayed in the factory. Every two weeks, I received my pay in cash. I had health benefits. I went to school nights and on weekends to complete my degree. I did not care about my employer. I did not want to mingle with the management during happy hour. I wanted a simple exchange, their money for my labor. What a deal. As soon as I graduated from University, I left for my first job as a programmer (where I learned what sweat shop really meant – there is no job as demanding as one you really like and care about). So was I exploited? They paid little and made a profit on my labor. But I got what I wanted. It is a trite phrase that if you don’t like your job, find another, and many will argue that it is not easy or safe to leave one job for another. Hell, life isn’t meant to be easy or safe. That’s why the Robber Barons make the big bucks. They take the big risks. Hmmmm…, Sorry ’bout the rant. I need more tea.
peterike @ 66; reminded me of the definition of PC –the practice of grabbing a turd by the clean end.
RE: robber barons
I don’t have time to compose a witty reply (that’s a day or a week at the sweat shop for me) but two points: (1) many of the industries in which the RB’s turned their personal fortunes were government subsidized (there’s a book on this subject but I would have to look it up) and (2) programmer’s point about working conditions pertains. I just got an email of old photographs of coal miners from the 1920′s and 30′s. Going back to that labor standard is about as ludicrous as requiring that corporate management fly on the baby-screeching, line-shuffling, strip-searching cattle run airlines with the rest of us poor schmucks. (Another example of quality of service brought to you by your local competitive flyer.)
Programmer @ 67 –i believe the entire marxist theory would collapse –i know its lite version, the one Dems parrot when on the topic, would collapse if it had to identify 2nd derivatives rather than static snapshots. You were poor at the factory? How old were you, how long did you work there, why did you work there, what did it do for you, and what happened to you next, never enters the argument –only that job itself is looked at, in effect implying that you the personal individual are still there doing that same thing and will until gabriel blows his horn. Upward mobility, a huge capitalist fact, in fact almost by itself the justification of the model, is buried down deep at the bottom of the marxist memory hole.
“Some call it pork. I call it steak.” – Emil Jones, Jr, Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader.
Someone defending the House yesterday said the public wanted this plan. I wondered about that and heard today that polling puts the public at 40% in favor, which is apparently down from some level. Rush, Kudlow, and Hannity having an impact I guess.
peterike: the name for his agenda: “Hope and Change” or maybe just “Obama”
(I am sure something is coming, Democrats can never resist this.)
If Americans are collectively as politically idiotic as the New Dealers, then there is not much worth saving.
There are some differences, the chief among them being the Reagan boom (including its cascade down through Clinton). Their program will not bring prosperity, and expectations are set much higher. National Security as well is in a much more dangerous landscape.
The Democrats seem to think that they can reset the clock to 1930. I wonder if they can. They will certainly have to use opressive methods to get there.
They seem more clever than intellegient, so it could be more of a dog fight than it was years ago. Let us hope for arrogance and overreach and less cunning and intelligence.
But the enforced idiocy of the population is an issue, that is for sure, and it is larger than the Democrats assault on the Republic. How are we to compete with such dimwits as workers in this gloabal market place? You know, I find that the worse are in the middle classes and from the coasts. Talk to a working class guy in flyover country, and you will hear much of what you hear here. Its expression not be as eloquent, but the content is basically the same. Joe the Plumber was not an anomaly. Those folks are all over the place. There are a lot of Palins too.
But certainly, we are in the worse struggle for the nation since the Civil War, and maybe it is worse than that one.
slade @ 69 –i was trying to include that in my 63 –’perhaps even righteously offended’ –look up “Battle of Blair Mountain” –but the point is the RBs were in business, in the thin capital pools of the times, and creating the jobs that so sucked, which you will note were filled by folks who must have not wanted to quit the job. that’s the fuller context than the oft-taught monopoly card guy running a gulag.
buddy – point taken. Examples of history dwarfed by the subterranean context of The Big Ideas are legion. It’s the Idea stupid, not the dishes that have to be washed or the grass or the kids’ noses that have to be wiped. It’s all The Idea.
The Progressive movement advances best behind a smoke-screen. This explains, I think, the huge size and complexity of Obama/Pelosi’s “stimulus.”
Take any issue that exhibits more than three degrees of complexity, like global climactic trends, market economics, international relations or epidemiology, and you’ll find a governmentalist hiding behind it, generating misleading smoke and erecting distorting mirrors, all in a bid to alchemically spin more government out of the knotted threads.
Settled, irreducible issues, like society’s taboos on rape and murder, don’t offer the Prog’s the camouflage they need to conduct their deceits unnoticed.
This points up the failure of our government-mediated education system, especially in the K-12 years, for, instead of generating graduates with a plurality of world-views complimented by decisive critical-thinking skills (which would immunize upcoming generations against the Prog’s tactic), this system today seems more interested in “combing” the student body so it all lays in one direction – resembling the hairs on the back of a cat.
Once so manicured, the cat will resent being petted the wrong way, and so, the graduates become solicitous beggars, anxious to rub needfully at the ankles of anybody who’ll pet them the “right” way. Hence the sustained popularity of the Left’s manicuring media organizations like CNN, MSNBC and post-modern academe.
I offer this to erase the distinction between academe (including the lower primary and secondary schools) and what we usually call media. The two are simply different brands of media, and, if we intend to permanently disable the Left’s juggernaut in this country, we’ll need to disable mind-tricking shell-games like this one.
Mongoose@72:
I have to question your concept of middle class, the premise being it’s outdated. We’re not all beer-drinking, inarticulate plumbers and welders. Some of us prefer marinating the ice cubes over a fine Kentucky straight, or in my case an imported rum (when it’s available), and never bowled a day in our lives, but like the occasional dinner and a play option (when it’s available) and push numbers up down and sideways as a job (when it’s available.) Just saying.
[note to all plumbers and welders - I already know your drinking habits and speech patterns range far from homogeneous. Please don't hit me.]
Buddy Larson and Mongoose: I’m no marxist and I’m not going to quibble about whether the industrial giants of the 19th and early 20th centuries were slandered by the term (except for maybe a couple of occasions of machine-gunning strikers). I’m referring to our current crop of government, NGO, financial and corporate elites who got us into this mess, and the name fits.
Slade: You are falling into the leftist anecdotal, cherry picking and sensationalist rhetorical trap, and it is nonsense. The so called RB’s were fine and good men, and did much more good than evil, and in fact did much evil at all.
They were great creative visionaries and are falsely maligned.
Labor standards were even worse before that, as I recall there was slavery (and there was still working serfs in Europe during this period, I might add). Certainly over a long historical view there was much progress in the gilded age in labor conditions. It is specious to compare the standards of today with the standards of the time, especially when one understands that the conditions that obtained were inherited by industrial capitalism of the age. Placing all of history’s and society’s ills on the backs of people that are actively doing something practically to change it is absurd (and it does not matter if this was their primary intent). It is also absurd to claim that they did not progress at the rate that one might feel appropriate without taking into account all factors.
Btw, most of the “Dickensian” nonsense about child labor and general foul working conditions for laborers somehow being created by the industrial revolution is a mixture of sentimentality and hogwash. It was always pretty rough.
So this argument of specious on the face of it. I do not know what the relevance of photos from the 20′s or the 30′s have to do with this, since we are out of the RB period by then. Another red herring. Moreover, this is just more anecdotal nonsense. Go look at a picture of the city of Hersey, PA or Carnegie Hall. This is again cherry picking and sensationalist rhetoric.
Also, no one is seeking to return to the conditions of the time. This argument is a red herring argument and thus is not compelling as well. It has nothing to do with anything.
I do not not accept the subsidies argument on the face of it, you will have to provide real proof, and not in the form of some revisionist history and agitprop put out by some lefty. Also the claim that “many were” is subsidized is so ill defined as to be meaningless.
In any event late 19th century “subsidies” were a completely different beast than modern subsidies in structure, nature and intent. This is really confounding terminology with actualities. Moreover, the notion that they availed themselves of what was before them hardly diminishes their accomplishment. They did not drag the nation into socialism as did some of the “entrepreneurs” of New Deal era. The so called Robber Barons produced real wealth, created markets, created whole new industries and technologies, raises living standards and wages, and immensely raised American power, culture and educational standards. Would that we could have them back today for our current elites today are doing quite the opposite. A lot of what we are bemoaning as passing from our would was either created or buttressed and protected by these folks. They create much of Americas greatness.
The Democrats have been slandering them and looting their fortunes and their legacies for close to 80 years now. It seems to me that we should avoid joining them in this.
Clarification registered, Tio –thanks –
steveaz, that is a beautifully illuminated post –jeez –three cheers man –
slade @ 74 –exactly –picture Lazarus, framed in the run up to Jesus’s raising him from the dead: So where’s this Jesus? Why does he dawdle? Why didn’t he use his power years ago and save Lazarus from so much pain? If he really cared He’d be here by now. Clearly He does not care. That means He has a hidden agenda. He must be doing these miracles in order to exploit the non-deity classes. We can’t trust Him. Even after He raises Lazarus. Who is He to say Lazarus wasn’t better off dead? I want to sue. Jesus can turn a wine to water, He can damn sure create me a pile of gold. After all I stood here by Lazarus, in mental anguish, waiting all those hours. Get me a jury of peers, i’ll clean up.
Mongoose, Talk to a working class guy in flyover country, and you will hear much of what you hear here. Its expression not be as eloquent, but the content is basically the same.
Once my associate in VA asked me what I am doing in semi-rural Oklahoma (when I lived there not too long ago), me, such a worldly one, with European roots… wouldn’t I be more comfy in some more cosmopolitan settings?
Replied that I prefer one authentic honest to god redneck to 10 cosmopolitan pretentious schmucks.
In other words, I concur.
Dead-end jobs do exist. if you were back there in the 1920s coal mining, and smart and energetic and communicative and young, you might move up and out of the mines and into the office. but otherwise it was pretty much mine til you couldn’t anymore. So put the mine under marxism. now, is it still a dead-end job? of course. unless you want the job, in which case it’s giving you what you want, every day. and if you don’t want the job, you can quit –oops –no you can’t, i forgot, we already put it under marxism.
steveaz, 75:
I offer this to erase the distinction between academe (including the lower primary and secondary schools) and what we usually call media. The two are simply different brands of media, and, if we intend to permanently disable the Left’s juggernaut in this country, we’ll need to disable mind-tricking shell-games like this one.
Yep, both are a part of indoctrination biz. Edu venues lay down the track, and MSM/NME then play it like Stradivarius violin.
Xactly like gramscian manual sez.
By 1979, the whole shebang was essentially in place. That was when Newsweek announced without any hint of shame: “We are not in business of providing news, we are in the business of forming public opinion”. They just needed roughly one generation to be sure the process is completed–e.g. majority is remodeled.
It would be interesting to get a bit of insight what changes in education specifically were put in place in 70′s and 80′s and whether there is not some direct relation to a specific triggers that may have been used by 0 in the campaign.
mongoose:
Oh my someone get my hankie. I feel faint.
I conceded buddy’s point that history is frequently dwarfed by a subterranean context (that is sometimes not so buried) that is all about Message. The Industrial Revolution did not occur in a vacuum, but along a continuum that eventually swung in a better direction. (It also left a legacy of it’s own that is shown in the pictures from the 1920′s.)
The argument can be made that the RB’s were responsible for the rise of the super big economies (see book by Charles Morris) – the ones that are coming back to bite us in the b^tt right now. But I don’t want to get into high school cherry-picking debate mode.
As Tio said above, whatever the historical reality of the robber barons doesn’t excuse the behavior of the current crop of miscreants, who aren’t even remorseful for jacking 40% of middle America’s portfolios – the forgotten class that wasn’t decorating every bathroom with a flat screen.
I am approaching the point, but not quite there yet, that the aggressive behavior required to forge new paths is incompatible with a degree of judgment and yes good will towards one’s fellow man.
#80, Well said, 2X4.
Another benefit to living in less-crowded quarters is, you can really see who you’re dealing with. Good, bad or evil – peoples’ real natures are more easily discerned out here.
The trappings of fashion, name-association and wealth don’t work so well out in the sticks. Chrome hubcaps, elaborate piercings and alphabet-soup credentials can’t distract your neighbors from who you really are, so most don’t try. And those who do, usually give it up after a few years and come down to earth.
Nothing against my pierced, free-thinking interlocutors – we need every free mind in the fight, but most of you’ll admit that it is an urban thing, and that, had you known you were going to seek a quieter rural life in your thirties or forties, you’d have forgone that second brow-stud!
OT, kind of: Tribal insignia like these can become retrogressive as we age. As enforcers of tribe-cohesion, faddish physical malling often can confine a elder apostate within the realm of a tribe that he has outgrown. If that realm is an urban center, by virtue of applying these insignia permanently to your body you may have consigned yourself to living in gray, dilapidated cities for life.
Watch out for that, kiddies!
@ 84. steveaz
When my older daughter was 18, she mentioned she wanted to do piercing (nose studs). I asked why? She replied to be different. Since we were walking on a busy street of Vancouver BC, I started to point out young ladies with studs in their noses. In a span of 5 minutes, I counted about 60. “So, you want to be different, eh?”
It has been about 5 years since that day. She sometimes teases me that she will have it finally done. But that is just her game of pushing buttons.
Thanks, Buddy.
I’m a fan of your leavings, too.
If enough of us pit-bulls can gain lock our jaws onto Progressivism’s skirt-hem, and if we can hang on long enough, I think we’ll be able to disrobe this debutant and send her off running naked into the dark woods!
Keep up the posts,
-Steve
I prefer one authentic honest to god redneck to 10 cosmopolitan pretentious schmucks. – 2×4
That is a truly offensive statement, as I think you well know.
That’s one of several reasons why the Republican tent is tattered and why the centrists out there won’t join.
@ 83. slade
Of course things are not B&W.
One may point out that at the beginning of 20th century, a lot of “Captains of Industry” started to entertain socialistic ideas as a way to tidy up the raw power of capitalism and it was not just because they wanted to protect their turf. They followed somewhat mechanistical model that society must be stratified in order to work, too many self-conscious free individuals would result in unraveling. How to achieve that? By dumbing down the hoi polloi, so only the brightest would arise from the multitude to be taped into leadership positions. The rest–bread and games.
@87. slade:
That is a truly offensive statement, as I think you well know.
LOL! Is it?
Good. I loathe pretentious people. I wouldn’t mind an authentic cosmopolitan, though. But they are rare.
2×4:
I recall the less than stellar story lines of social engineering in Hersey, PA and the TVA. They remind me of the so-called “SMART” growth/planning so in vogue at present. (They said in Portland that SMART stood for Send [the] Mexicans Across [the] Rio Today.)
There’s a deeper point – or maybe not – about the middle class. The old Redneck character doesn’t capture the fullness of the modern middle class. And that’s neither to disparage rednecks or to embrace the pretension of those who try but fail to bring a deeper quality and life enjoyment into their existence. At least they tried. And some succeed.
Slade #87:
I’ll go with 2X4 on this one. Maybe you should go out and get truly acquainted with one of those rednecks before you take offense.
@ 90. slade:
The old Redneck character doesn’t capture the fullness of the modern middle class.
Of course not. That creature is rare too. It’s the new “redneck” I were talking about. A member of flyover country that is presumed by the “cosmopolitan better ones” to be a redneck of the old.
noprisoners and 2×4
Just simmer down. You both miss the point. Bowl and drink your favorite suds until your fingers fall off. My point is that Red ain’t the sum and totality of the modern middle class. It’s a much bigger more diverse demographic. Both sides of the aisle miss that.
Which explains – I think – the Congressional surprise that only 40% are buying into this package. Their mental pictures need to be updated.
2×4@92:
Oh. That Redneck.
Why didn’t you say so?
I need a Remedial Redneck Recognition course.
slade,
It’s a much bigger more diverse demographic.
No one is arguing that point.
Both sides of the aisle miss that.
Actually, no. The peeps in flyover country have far lesser pool of prejudices than a sizable segment of metrosexual urbanites. They call themselves “rednecks” with a strong hint of irony, and with a “wink-wink” pride.
Really, you should go out sometimes and expand your horizon.
@95. slade
You are already half-way remedied.
…and (half jesting)
My God I love this forum. I’d try to contribute but it takes me too long to type two or three paras and by then two or three of you have said what I was trying to say and done it so much better than ever I could!
@ 99. Quig
Don’t rely on it! We wanna read your contribs, too.
reminds me of Quigley Down Under. Great flic, by great NRA-member actor & Rosie riveter Tom Selleck. come to think of it, that’s rosie’s problem –she’s quigley down under. (*groan*)
Well Buddy, I’ve just returned to Canada after living for 27 years in Australia. I used to wish I could grow a “mo” like Sellek’s. Sure coveted that rifle he had as well.
It’s a much bigger more diverse demographic. – slade
No one is arguing that point. – 2×4
noprisoners was arguing just that point.
RE: the getting out more part. Don’t pat me on the head. I’m 55 and I’ve lived and worked in eight states, which is 8, not 50 or 57. After 4 years of doing meaningless cr@p, I saw 40% of my investments evaporate because fat cats weren’t doing their jobs. It will take more than an old rhetorician’s trick or debate about robber barons or getting out more to change the way I think.
You know what they say about old people.
They were young once.
And, buddy, actually I was fully jesting, as I was when I riffed off the proper wardrobe for remedying intractable relatives. I am sensing that humor is being squeezed out of the dialogue. Another bad sign.
Incidentally, whatever happened to the $284 billion that was allocated in 2005 for infrastructure work?
Anybody know?
RR @ 105; afraid most of it got into the National Science Foundation’s account, where it founded what they’re saying is a “virtual art museum” of ancient roman bath house murals as interpreted in live action by artist Bubbles McClanahan and her assistant Long John Silver.
@ 103. slade
55 is not old. I am 55 and I am not old. OK, it may be that you feel like being old. Your call.
noprisoners was arguing just that point.
Was he/she? Did not see it. Maybe you tend to infer. Some people do. I was doing that too for a long time, but it did me no good. Wish I realized that earlier.
RE: the getting out more part. Don’t pat me on the head. I’m 55 and I’ve lived and worked in eight states…
“I’ve been around!”
Well, that’s commendable. But sometimes it help keep one’s eyes open. Just saying…
After 4 years of doing meaningless cr@p, I saw 40% of my investments evaporate because fat cats weren’t doing their jobs.
Sorry, sh1t happens. If I may make some suggestions…
Do meaningful stuff. No matter what, at least you have a satisfaction of something accomplished.
Don’t rely on fat cats doing their jobs. They generally don’t. Some of us learn it early, unfortunately some at a later point. But no matter when that happens, that is the silver lining.
It will take more than an old rhetorician’s trick or debate about robber barons or getting out more to change the way I think.
Pity. See two points above. Maybe you need to be more flexible in your thinking patterns? It is never to late to try.
And I am not trying to pat you on your head. You seem to be bitter. I am twobyfour, and thus rather a direct sumfabitch, but that is my way of expressing concern and compassion.
biddy@106: Is that metrosexual humor?
As opposed to that Redneck classic “Deliverance Does Dallas.”
::))
“biddy” is “buddy” of course
2×4:
My position is that the situation is hopeless but not critical. I am bitter but I will get over it. I am simply angry that I wasn’t paying enough attention in the right directions to read the cards. My fault.
Oh and some of the things I have seen with eyes wide open – just give it some room – my thinking is not (completely) uninformed or without the context of experiential conditioning.
The timing is just so miserable. But it always is.
If we could just get better flight service for us rednecks.
@ 110. slade
The timing is just so miserable. But it always is.
Tell me about it. Murphy should have been shot!.
I always try to find some humorous aspect in everything. But have to admit, it is not easy, oftentimes.
If we could just get better flight service for us rednecks.
Well, my take is that we ought to start providing redneck based service. It seems that nobody is willing to provide it for us. Now, the question is how.
2×4@111:
well I understand that several corporate jet orders were recently canceled by publicity-shy CEO’s. I’m guessing there’s a deal to be made. Sign me up.
yuk yuk –naw, i’m more of a “memorysexual” –you didn’t see that bit yesterday about the NSF i guess –take a look @ say [ nsf porn ] and be happy that you can account for at least $58k of yo tax money –
RR, sorry for flip answer –i’ve seen that question asked of officials at least twice lately and both answers boiled down to “it’s in the system as far as i know”. the dot gov sites will yield info –but as a multi year markup i suppose there was no way to yank the tail forward and front load the whole package –bulldozers can’t work at four times their usual groundspeed alas.
From default to asphalt:
PAUL GIGOT: Now it’s often said that the most dangerous place in Washington is between a Congressman and asphalt. And members of the House this week reverted to the usual form when it came to spending on transportation projects that are near and dear to their hearts. By a vote of 417 to nine — 417 to nine — they approved spending 284 billion dollars on highway and other projects over the next six years, 28 billion more than the president proposed last year, and 66 billion more than the last six-year highway bill. A lot of work on the transportation infrastructure does need to be done and paid for. But this bill also provides for such things as 423 million for two bridges in Alaska, including one for about 24 people who live on an island, three million for improvements to an Ohio museum dedicated to the Packard automobile, and seven million dollars for snowmobile trails in Vermont — in all, more than 4,000 projects costing about 12 and a half billion dollars were included at the request of individual congressmen.
Well that’s just awkward.