This is where your earmarks are being spent. “BOSTON – More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys. The bill includes $5.8 million for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The funding may also help support an endowment for the institute.” In the meantime, taxes are being cut and compensated for by borrowing! “Democratic state leaders announced the elimination of $1.3 billion in proposed nuisance taxes from the state budget Wednesday, and will pay for the move with federal stimulus funds. … The agreement between Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith eliminates new taxes on common items — including previously tax-free goods and services such as clothing under $110, sugared drinks, digital downloads, cable and satellite television, and manufacturers’ coupons. ”
One of the tell-tales of a growing dysfunction within a system is the collapse of priorities. When small things begin to loom large and truly momentous events are regarded with a dispassionate, almost distinterested attention, it is often a sign that leadership culture has lost its way. The Week describes the strange narratives being emitted by the Obama administration: talking up fiscal packages that they know are ineffectual; making fatalistic references to Depression Era history and Happy Talk in place of real plans.
Behind Romer’s delicate words is a question: Why does the Obama administration talk down the importance of monetary policy? The Federal Reserve still has weapons in its arsenal, including what’s called “quantitative easing”—technical jargon for what amounts to printing more money and deliberately inflating. These measures are not only powerful, they are a lot easier to stop when they are no longer needed—unlike, say, the administration’s big spending plans. …
In an administration that increasingly seems baffled by the financial crisis, a White House official who is willing to pierce the illusion of happy consensus can do a real service. We don’t need jolly, bogus reassurance. We need real thinking and a more open and productive debate. The administration’s top economist has now publicly, if elliptically, served notice of the likely inadequacy of the administration’s plans. Better to correct course early rather than too late!
It almost seems like one of those movies where paratroopers are telling jokes before jumping into certain death; almost as if the main issues are foregone and so the conversation must turn to something else. Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist caught the obsession with trivia in the midst of an existential crisis perfectly. When Fagin is sentenced to death, he can think of nothing but unimportant things on the brink of his own execution.
He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; for the crowded place was very hot. There was one young man sketching his face in a little note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and made another with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done.
In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his mind began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what it cost, and how he put it on. There was an old fat gentleman on the bench, too, who had gone out, some half an hour before, and now come back. He wondered within himself whether this man had been to get his dinner, what he had had, and where he had had it; and pursued this train of careless thought until some new object caught his eye and roused another.
Dickens might almost be describing the Obama administration. Maybe BHO’s grand speeches aren’t really promises to save the world. Perhaps he’s really saying the precise opposite. Here the illusion ends. There is no cake, as one reader wrote to me, “the cake is a lie.” You know when a man really has hope because he’s full of fight; bursting with defiance. In Obama’s case, it is like watching a man go through the motions while the world prepares to go on, almost without him.
Stratfor describes how al-Qaeda is getting back at Saudi interests in Pakistan because the Kingdom has been getting on their case. “All these threats raise an obvious question: Why is al Qaeda so fixated on the Saudis? One obvious reason is that, since the launching of a disastrous offensive by the Saudi al Qaeda node, the Saudi government — which previously had turned a blind eye to many of al Qaeda’s activities — has launched a full-court press against the organization. … Leveraging its successes against the al Qaeda franchises in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Riyadh also is working closely with governments to combat the jihadists in places like Yemen as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is, in effect, a global Saudi campaign against jihadism, and we believe al Qaeda has no choice but to attempt to derail the Saudi effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Where do we fit in all of this, if the War on Terror is over? If history has ended and we with it? The British newspapers say the President can’t even fake an interest in foreign affairs. Maybe at the end of the rainbow, the one he’s been chasing all his life, was the thing that had been pursuing him.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always–
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
From the Senate’s obliged noblesse
In order to relieve our distress
When Ted is a goner
We’ll have a Kennedy honor
That recall’s Ozymandias.
— —
L3
wretchard, on a trivial note it should be clear that there is a transition in the first paragraph from the financial excesses of Massachusetts to those of New York.
If the government mortgaged our future merely to erect edifices filled with larger than life size tributes to the sexual organs of Democratic politicians then that would be less harmful than what they are intending. The real damage, as I commented two threads back, is in the twin strategies of weakening America before its enemies, by de-industrializing through an environmental policy that is based on a religious faith more than any science, by deconstructing the armed forces, by instituting legal regimens that make future successful military activity impossible and that make future private entrepreneurial capital growth unlikely, and by the entrenchment at public expense of a vast army of foot soldiers for ACORN that has already been shown as an agent of vote fraud and intimidation to destroy the lawful operation of business. As I noted on the last thread there are precedents for his strategy of expanded bureaucratic regulation, capital extraction by intimidation and anti-Semitism.
Psalm 42 (New King James Version)
To the Chief Musician. A Contemplation[a] of the sons of Korah.
1 As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?[b]
3 My tears have been my food day and night,
While they continually say to me,
“Where is your God?”
4 When I remember these things,
I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go with the multitude;
I went with them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,
With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance.[c]
6 O my God,[d] my soul is cast down within me;
Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan,
And from the heights of Hermon,
From the Hill Mizar.
7 Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls;
All Your waves and billows have gone over me.
8 The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime,
And in the night His song shall be with me—
A prayer to the God of my life.
9 I will say to God my Rock,
“Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As with a breaking of my bones,
My enemies reproach me,
While they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
I agree that a lot of the fiscal money will be flushed down the toilet and most the fiscal money will be ineffectual this year.
But compare the anecdotal Boston Story to the Anecdotal
Alamogordo story.
btw imho the Aussies are doing a better job with this stuff.
So NOT Bonfires of the Vanaties? More like adulation of the vanities.
And then to adoration of the venal?
Wouldn’t want to be a democrat now.
Sic transit gloria aparatchick.
ADE
We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Please place the device on the ground, then lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party.
Wretchard wrote:
Maybe at the end of the rainbow, the one he’s been chasing all his life, was the thing that had been pursuing him.
This has been exactly my assessment of Barack Obama’s character for some time now. It amazes me that it is not more widely apparent. He has always been an angry, bitter man; a man with a grduge to nurse and an unbounded appetite for destruction. He jumps Jim Crow in front of the successful white liberal Kennedy set. Knowing that he cannot ascend to their ranks through his own qualities, he has become their courtesan, fluffing their egos and indulging their prejudices, all the while resenting them and seeking to cut off the sources of their attention-grabbing power. Likewise, he garners the sympathy of the many ignorant ant gullible voters of the land who harbor secret sentiments not greatly differing from his own: resentment towards all that is good and beautiful, all that is high and hale, all that is noble and free. His presidency is destined for tragedy. He has attained the highest office in the land and already he realizes that it will do nothing to satisfy his empty self. Already he grows tired of the burden: nihilistic, aloof, and fell.
I pray for him. I offer up my own anxieties as a penance for his soul, and I ask that some of his burden be shifted unto me before he really loses it. For there are millins of people in this country and around the world who do not know their right hand from their left; people whom Barack Obama and his policies will lead to ruin if he is not prevented from carving the signs of his torment across the face if the country.
Correction: Typos
grduge = grudge
millins = millions
face if the country = face of the country
Test:
I’m trying to get my name to display as a linked text.
Wrichard writes: “Where do we fit in all of this, if the War on Terror is over?”
Obama seems to see the world in terms of spheres of influence, each with a dominant ideology. A cynic (moi?) might see a direct analogy with Orwell’s 1984, with Obama taking the lead for Oceania, home of Ingsoc(Gordon has annointed Obama as leader.) And of course we have a re-emerging Eurasia and an already emerged Eastasia. The contested areas are in play, with the Saudis taking a role in that regard.
As we observe the growth of Ingsoc, we will be treated to an increasing dose of Newspeak: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.”
It’s very curious that the US press shows so little interest in Obama’s biggest you-are-a-part-of-the-system plan: digitization of medical records.
Do you doubt for a moment that if medical records were available electronically we would not know every detail of Joe the Plumber’s medical record . . . as well as every detail of Sarah Palin’s?
Good luck to anyone trying to run against Obama in 2012.
Thought of Buddy, Wade et al. when I watched this interview with Geitner. Not my cup of tea – and I hate charlie Rose – but do you think this guy sounds clueless?
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/03/charlie-rose-conversation-with-timothy.html
Chccking in occasionally to check on Wretch’s latest flailing against (Who Sent Him) Obama…This last one is nice “In Obama’s case, it is like watching a man go through the motions while the world prepares to go on, almost without him.”
You wish! I think we’ve got clincal case of projection on our hands…
In the closing months of WWII in Europe, Hitler staged elaborate concerts and operas. I guess we cannot know if he was simply in denial about the war’s direction, or trying to rally the people by giving them something “good” to believe about their country.
Today, Obama’ soaring oratory would have us believe in a new world filled with hope, when there is much evidence to the contrary. The question now is: Are we just being entertained, or actually having our attention diverted so as not to perceive what is really about to happen?
WSL
actually having our attention diverted so as not to perceive what is really about to happen?
Doesn’t Wretch’s counter-conjury suggests the people “let the Left know what is really about to happen, if they are unsuccessful?”
What would victory look like?
The place you might want to ‘check in’ to benj, is reality.
Look around you.
Obammy fiddling, Rome burning.
You, sitting at his feet, swooning at his sweet sweet music.
funny:
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/03/brilliant.html
Benj: You wish! I think we’ve got clincal case of projection on our hands…
*** sigh ***
Still in love.
I wonder what France and their experience with a socialist president, Francois Mitterrand (a media darling with a dicey past), can teach us. From the wikis:
The beginning of his first term was marked by a left-wing economic policy based on the 110 Propositions for France and the 1972 Common Programme between the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Left Radical Party. This included several nationalizations, a 10% increase of the minimum wage (SMIC), a 39 hour work week, 5 weeks holiday per year, the creation of the solidarity tax on wealth, an increase in social benefits, and the extension of workers’ rights to consultation and information about their employers (through the Auroux Act). The objective was to boost economic demand and thus economic activity (Keynesianism). However, unemployment continued to grow and three devaluations of the franc were decided upon. This policy more or less came to an end with the March 1983 liberal turn. Priority was given to the struggle against inflation in order to remain competitive in the European Monetary System.
Basically, Mitterrrand was busy pushing France off the cliff when his instinct for self survival kicked in. He jettisoned the old program and made a hard right turn but not so much as to reverse course. The French economy has run along the edge of the cliff ever since. The bad news: He got reelected.
Obama’s administration is looking more and more like a Partial Birth Abortion.
You know, the type where the baby is born alive, but is left to die in a bed pan.
I normally abhor abortion, but in this case, it may be for the best.
Aether21
Leaving it in the bedpan to die is not abortion; the baby is born alive. Call it what you wish; but to me that’s premeditated murder.
Aether, a grotesque analogy you offer us. But to extend it– this baby won’t be left to die quietly. No, pulled from it’s natural habitat at 24 weeks it will be transfered to the Neonatal ICU, intubated, put on a respirator and cared for for a year or so. Stabilized finally it will be released to a stunted, permanently damaged life. You and I will get the bill. I want to puke.
Aether, America had the chance to abort this back in November.
Now we will live with a problem child that will bring his juvenile delinquent friends into our lives, wreck the car in an accident that get us sued for all we’re worth so that we have to move into a run-down rental in a neighborhood where the neighbors steal from us and there are no cops, before finally, the kid steals what little we have left, shoots us, and burns down our apartment.
And that’s just the first 4 years of his administration…
Hey Peter! Listening to anything good, lately? Got a double-Dylan bootleg from 99 – just amazing…You heard/like “Cross the Green Mountain” on Telltale Signs? THat last line is a killer, no? – Here’s the pollster Nate Silver on O from a day or so ago …Lists a few things he wishes O and Co had done differently – Having Peolso try to sell the Stim, Overpromsing with Pre-Geitner roll-out, then lays it down…
“But for me — and yes, I know, I drunk the kool-aid a long time ago — there’s still nobody that I’d rather have in office right now. A large fraction of the country evidently feels the same way.”
Benj/13; i’ve never thought him clueless. I’ve studied him at work on three other crises –i KNOW he’s not clueless. i fervently wish he WAS clueless.
Hmm, so it IS true:
“Speak of the Devil, and the devil will appear.”
wretch, the quietly transcendent ending of “Little Gidding” implies way too much depth in this vain and supercilious politician. I think the Wile E. Coyote analogy is much better.
Charles’ response was a good try as always, but really Charles, if the administration is so stupid on housing and finance how will they succeed at energy? Hunting Pelosi’s mice with elephant guns, they’ll give us 10 megawatts of “green” energy, for the cost of 100 megawatts of conventional power. Its time for you to put them on notice. It’s just noise coming from me.
Benj…”Got…bootleg from 99″
In other times men of honor bragged about their good deeds, not their petty thefts.
This nation is too important for goofy street talk. It is not a game. The fact that so many were fooled (an ever shrinking number) is only indicative to the levels of deciept practices by MSM….
Never mind….you can’t fix…
typos exist.
George Stephanopoulos writes:
@31 Stephanopoulos quotes “it’s back to the drawing board.”
During which time no one is at the helm. When the helmsman is disabled, and no other available the captain stands to the wheel.
International Collision Regulations (Rules of the Nautical Road)
Paraphrased.
Rule 1 Applies to all
Rule 2 The reponsibilties of Master, Owner and Crew to comply
Rule 4 These rules apply under any condition
Rule 5 Every vessel shall maintain a safe speed. Further “all available means” shall be used to minimize risk. Warning is given against assumptions based on scanty information.
We the owners seem to have erred in the selection of captain. Who will stand to now?
One would have to think that Diogenes of Sinope will be wandering for a long time in Democratic America.
Cohen has been a counsel to just about every major player on Wall Street, which perhaps complicated his nomination.
Apropos of Diogenes, Bill Buckley’s favorite example of an oxymoron was “honest lawyer.”
benj is a big asset to the blog –i’m gonna be civil and maybe he’ll clue us to what’s in the administrato-casino of the futureman mind.
Cohen is an impressive guy –for one thing he’s been around the powers for a very long time and can frame questions from experience with similar issues long lost in the policy arcania. he was untying knots as far back as LBJ. Too bad he declined. wish i knew why.
weswiger/28; my governor (rick perry) said the other day that the ten billion stimulus headed for austin was a great deal as it only cost the state ninety billion.
22. geoffgo:
I agree 100%.
Since the Saudis are known billion-dollar funders for jihad and da’wa worldwide, in what meaningful sense are they campaigning against jihadism? Also, jihadists have notoriously short prison sentences in Saudi jails, and when released they are only required to renounce jihad against Saudi Arabia, not against the infidel.
re geoffgo/22; i have a gut feeling that as a nation we gonna pay for all those little people that never even get a funeral. maybe what we’re experiencing now is one great big global one for all the many millions of them, all the sad little regiftings of the gift of modern medicine and its idol the therapeutic.
Well I think all the posts addressing Benj have been civil enough. Despite his ham-handed attempt to psychologize our host I daresay Benj comes here because he knows he has things to learn. As the Book of Changes tells us, it is the student who seeks out the teacher.
Seriously Benj, you don’t really think the world is leaving Wretchard behind, do you? That’s just rude. He is in and of the world, as well you know, which is why you are here. You’re just lacking the manners one hopes to encounter in this blessedly adult alcove of the blogosphere.
For what it’s worth, I get the impression you’ve only just grasped the concept of projection or you’d have learned to be a little more subtle, dare I say introspective, before pitching it the way you did.
Buddy –
Fox News tonight said Cohen removed himself from consideration due to the Dem vetting process that calls for a 5 year IRS complete audit, with receipts. I’m beginning to think they don’t want to fix this.
Walt
Well, today the barney committee had the experts from FASB and SEC in for a hearing –or as it were, a listening –on those rules which’ve cost us so dearly. It was a show –as if i stole your car, then called you in to tongue lash you for handing me the keys that day i broke in and held a gun to your head.
Time to switch forms: let’s try a villanelle.
— —
I drunk the Kool-Aid long ago
Then pulled the lever for the One
And now my body’s all aglow
With chimpy quashed by my new beau
There’s so much work to be undone
I drunk the Kool-Aid long ago
He sort of closed Guantanamo
Because rendition’s much more fun
And now my body’s all aglow
He promised earmarks would all go
Then spent our money by the ton
I drunk the Kool-Aid long ago
He’s reached across the aisle to foe
To say, “My way or none; I won”
And now my body’s all aglow
So now the government will grow
His brave new world has now begun
I drunk the Kool-Aid long ago
And now my body’s all aglow
— —
L3
Buddy: Well, today the barney committee had the experts from FASB and SEC in for a hearing –or as it were, a listening –on those rules which’ve cost us so dearly. It was a show
Buddy, I don’t have a fraction of your savvy on things economic. So tell me…. what the heck happened at that meeting? It seems to me the bottom line was they said something like “we’ll think about thinking about changing the rules.”
The market rallied even at the maybe on top of a maybe. Or I am misreading the whole magilla?
The shorts are running for margin call relief…
THAT’S the rally.
The baked-in pounding to come from Alt-A loans, and pick-a-default loans…
They are already straight ahead….
When the synaptically challenged finally figure out what happened three years ago…
Hair will ignite, throats will rage, hope will implode.
Worser will, in fact, not be better; the torrent will be too much.
Worser-is-better ONLY works if you are NOT the power elite.
Oh, oh !
At some point the wizard-without-a-curtain gets exposed.
L3…
Keep ‘em coming.
You, too, Walt.
Blert, I can’t compete with L3 in this format, but the passing political scene is a target rich environment, and sometimes only a limerick can adequately paint a word picture of our best and brightest. And so, with trepidation and apologies to our current limerick artists, I offer the following:
Hillary our Sec of State marvel
Changed brains with Begala and Carville
When she tried to reset
What did we get
An overcharged woman more parful
Obama said he needs Tim Geithner
The economy needs a good tightener
But the record doth show
With the banks ‘bout to blow
Obama misspoke he meant frightener
Now Burris he did something neat
In the Senate with no one to beat
Now he sits in his chair
With a long vacant stare
Just the man for that Illinois seat
The Press man by name Robert Gibbs
His job is to tell little fibs
To reporters whose job
By the softballs they lob
Is to cover for their fellow libs
peterike, tnx for props, wish twer true –what happened is that the two bodies agreed to craft new rules on how to value assets, and how to trade stocks. New rules, within three weeks (any grad student at Wharton could do it by midnight, but who’s complaining), to present a truer bank system balance-sheet, and to fend off from the trading floor the wolf packs who’ve been using a flaw in the rules to chop down share values of targetted firms.
I note nobody proposed simply returning to the old rules of pre-mid-2007, which worked fine for everyrthing except busting out the system, putting your people in control of DC, and short-circuiting the currency into capacitor accounts now fully charged and ready to electrify the long side and power up another cycle in time for the mid-terms.
blert, on those alt-a’s, we may well get the recrocal of w’s ‘revenge of the 2nd derivative’ –wherein many mortgages that stunk in a downtremd will feel like investments again, only temporarily out-of-the-money. same snapshots, different perception direction inflection rejection erection.
jeez, my typing is inventing a gnu langidge
42 – you got a point! Once/if I get into the guts of the threads – I DO learn stuff! Probably more (or at least as much) than I would if I checked Kos threads. IT’s America, after all, and there’s intelligence all over, as, ah, Obama has repeatedly pointed out…
Buddy, wade, Alexis, et al. prove that all nnight. As for Wretch – he’s the one who brung me back in the day when I was trying to figure out what was happening on the ground in Iraq. But I’m NOT lying when I say he’s been a creature of pathos for some time now. What the hey – consistency may be the hobgoblin of small minds but that quote I cited above is symptomatic. You can’t assume an attitude of Olympian disdain – “O is ‘gonig through the motions…as the world goes on almost w/o him” etc… – when you just spent months cultivating creeps who believe the guy is a mysterious stranger responsible for the Decline of the West.
Jesus – just go back to the two recent posts about the O and Brown/Brits. It’s not Mind that’s organizing Wretch’s inconsective takes on Obama in the World. It’s just pique. My bet is that some Patriots here will recognize (some one of these days) they’re getting played by Wretch…
Meanwhile I’ll keep being grateful to everyone
The only issue that consumes Obama is himself.
Is it possible that he is having such trouble gathering decent and smart people around him because decent and smart people won’t?
Derek
Benj, what you’re missing is w’s ‘tragic’ approach to ideation –his placing a pertinent action onstage for interested parties to react to and to see others reacting to.
attitude is stagecraft, stagecraft tactic to strategy, strategy the reaction formation. Is (or more often, was) there a better way? Where are discounts toward ideal; when & how might normative appreciate.
and you a professor –pretending, for the sake of straw man political criticism, that you don’t understand that orthodoxy teaches about the teacher over the topic, or that a perfected & finished ideal Apollonian can never stray far of thought’s enemy disdain, while a worthwhile blog , will never be as anything else but Dionysian .
…where chaos umpire sits, and by decision more embroils the fray
yeeeeHAW john Milton !
I had always hoped Obama would be a bigger person that he is. Men know how to recognize other men with a certain authority; it is hard to describe but you see it in guys (and in certain women, too) that have been tested in a major way and come out the other side with a kind of quiet authority. You don’t always agree with them but you naturally respect them. Obama doesn’t have that; he is too quick to play to the crowd, to clown, going for the laugh at the expense of someone else. Witness his sliding, rubbing the side of his head while giving Hillary the finger at a huge campaign event. Or his reaction to the whole “Joe the Plumber” media flash. Here was a perfect chance to connect with white working class guys on a mass scale. Obama could have taken the sting out of Joe’s challenge by saying, “first off, you are just the kind of citizen America needs; you’re hardworking and ambitious and you want to expand your business; why don’t you put together a five point list on how we can help you succeed?” Instead, a day or two after meeting “Joe” Obama hit the podium and mocked, “What kind of plumber makes 200 grand a year?” This was very sad. For any public servant to mock working men or women is to reveal a pretty sorry looking x-ray of said public servant. Talk about off-key. Then he took on Rush Limbaugh. Independent of Rush’s ideas, it is such a weird encounter, the most powerful man in the world two weeks into office taking on a talk radio jock. Just weird. We’ve got nutty dictators with nukes scattered around the world, America-hating Muslim terrorists plotting and planning bigger 9/11s and the president is wrangling with a radio host? A real leader knows how to draw in various kinds of energy – even opposition energy and turn it to his own purposes. He knows how to co-opt, if you will. Obama just doesn’t have the largess for “turnability.” This is not to say that he is not likeable. He is, very much so. But he doesn’t command; his character is filtered through the exigencies of party politics. He is needy, his ego is hungry, so much so that it satisfies him to be a symbol.
Sometimes my tongue is so stuck in my cheek, I fail to laugh, for fear of biting the lovely instrument off, and so I find my laughter’s turned to tears of joy, you see,. This is not misery you see. It is hope, you see? Misery died with the death of JEC’s Presidency, you see! Honor with WJC, you see. Some commentators claim the Republicans died with GWB, some only wish it were true. But I figure Cohen had President Obamas efforts nailed descriptively and much more so aesthetically pleasing than my lowly attempts or those of Sullivan.
“Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
“Like a worm on a hook,
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If i, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If i, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.”
“Like a baby, stillborn,
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
“But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
“I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, you must not ask for so much.
“And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, hey, why not ask for more?”
“Oh like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
have tried in my way to be free.”
Geitner on the economy, was generally two faced, describing the problem, then telling all to hear that the solution, for now, was basically more of the problem. Long term he gave some hope for fixing regulatory matters, but the problem is surviving to that longer term, using more of the same spending borrowed money backed by…hope.
Not faith, not credit, not even misery so you cannot say were kiting the checks.
Education sec, has some nice ideas but sounds more like a urban planner than an educator. Nice left handed complement to No Child Left Behind, although in fairness the stuff that works is all the Bush, the stuff that doesn’t can be chalked up to bipartisanship– Another Kennedy moment to add to those silky sow eared monuments in Boston, no doubt. Another inflated price tag.
Bud – you’re over my head or…mebbe…above my pay grade? Wade – you’re closer to my speed. Try Cohen’s new book of poems/lyrics. Great stuff. You notice that Bob D. and Len are Obama men?
Das – O can’t hold a candle to W. when it comes to First responses. W. seems to have a genius for immediate personal connection. He had charm. Lacked imagination though. That’s O’s strong suit. Makes him a helluva counterpuncher. Think of the resonance of that “I screwed up.” after Bush’s history of great refusals to ever ack anything had gone seriously sour…
Joe the Plumber hmmm – ” a plumber making 200K?” – O seemed to have that one perfectly calibrated. Right up there with his dis of Hillary as Annie Oakley….Of course you may be one of those who looked forward to Joe’s second and third acts as a Middle East expert and country singer…I’ll stick with Alan Jackson on both of those fronts. “I don’t know the difference in Iraq and Iran” but HE’s an American treasure…
benj, i was tryoing to use psychobabble to answer yore psychobabble –i didn’t like it either. what does the elliptical pay grade crack mean? you know i’m stuck in O’s Master Plan getting cleaned out of whatever pitiful pittance i’d had built up over the past lifetime, right? the last $ i ever made in politics was a punk kid at University of Texas who somehow ended up running the Harris County Neighbors for Nixon campaign. Won, too. that was a cool deal –we used phone banks and reverse directories to get a commitment in every neighborhood, every tenth house was the goal, to go walking on election day, knocking on neighbor’s doors with little campaign gifts and lite neighborly chit chat leading up to YOU ARE GONNA VOTE, AREN’T YOU ?!?!
national cmpgn would send cash weekly for expenses and per diems to my 50 or so GOP ladies running the phones –i’d walk the three or four blocks between boiler room and bank, 20 yr old kid with a briefcase full of ten grand of 1968 cash, thinking, “Shit i oughtta haul ass to Mexico!”
maybe O cops easier because he knows it’s just velveeta for his press –while GWB’s press was like a backseat full of ten year old on the way to disneyland, “didja screw up yet didja scew up yet didja screw up yet didja didja didja?????”
Benj, did they send you over from central casting? You’ve got all the liberal tropes down cold. The faux intellectual arrogance: “ha! he doesn’t even know the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan!” The usual disdain for common Americans: “Ha! Obama was right to smear his nose in the lie of a plumber making 200 K!”
I was trying to make the point that there is a way that real leaders, men with large spirits have of surrounding challenge – co-opting it through their largesse of spirit. Obama doesn’t have that; he is a small man – look at the way he reaches back to blame Bush and whine to the press. I wasn’t making comparisons to Bush but since you brought that up – that was something Bush never did.
Geithner takes beating in hearing on Obama budget
Conrad said he has been beset by senators on the floor of the chamber, and they have not been heaping praise on Obama’s budget plan. In fact, they are lodging threats.
“There are so many things in it where I have colleagues coming up to me and saying, ‘If this is in, I’m out,’ ” Conrad confessed. “And I’ve heard that on both sides.”
Conrad, who will be a chief architect of whatever compromise is crafted, has already made public his belief that the budget in its present form does not have enough support to pass the Senate, where it is difficult to stroll down any corridor without hearing either a Democratic or Republican declaring their firm opposition to one of its provisions.
One of the biggest nonstarters for a group of senators in both parties is Obama’s “cap and trade” proposal, which would require polluters such as coal power plants and manufacturing companies to pay for their carbon emissions. Such a plan would cause much higher energy prices, particularly in regions that derive most of their power from coal-fired plants.
Conrad is also skeptical about Obama’s plan to fund a major health care reform initiative in an effort to stave off massive costs that will burden the government in future years.
“Is this really a move to save money or is it just going to cost more money?” Conrad said.
What makes Obama sad is this: he knows that there are superior men out there; men like general Petraeus. But he knows that at every crucial stage of his life he took the easy way. He knows he’ll never be like Petraeus but he is compensated for it psychologically by accepting to be a symbol.
Bud – Don’t mean to mock your losses. My mom has lost some serious bucks too btw…
Your Tex-mex tale reminds me of an elder’s – a friend of mine who was heavily involved in Tex Dem campaigns in the late 50s/ early 60s – Yarborough etc. Told me had a memorable conversation one time with a Genius political consultant on the Texas right – Hell mebbe you knew him? – Anyway – they had a drink and my friend asked the guy what the left did wrong. The Right man said – you don’t go BIG enough. Gotta make a CLEAR distinction…Mr. O. gets that, though of course he’s been a walking BIG distinction from the jump so he’s got to take it light as well as heavy…Beyond the black and white thing which made his election a crucial event in American history – it was always pretty clear he was out to revive National Greatness liberalism…It wasn’t going to be about Clintonian triangulating…
As for O and Bush and copping…I’m reminded of accounts of Bush’s response to the first Kerry debate. Bush thought he’d won. (As you’ll recall, it was a debate that resulted in something like a 20 point turnaround for Kerry in the polls.) That’s a guy with a pretty serious deficit on the self-awareness front. As for O and the media – He knows all about their puff-up-and-puncture deal. He’s beat it so far in part because he doesn’t pump up the refs’ significance or intelligene. Might have something to do with his own intellectual confidence. He knows he’s got a better mind than your average pundit. (After all he’s had “Dreams” in his back pocket for years. – On no, I forgot, Bill Ayers wrote that, right WRetch?) As Bob once sang,”I know I can think my way out”…Bush had NO negative capability. No ease with doubt, uncertainty. No real sense of… history and history in the making?
Das,
So many do that until reality forces them to confront the truth.
Obama’s defense was to construct a fantasy for himself and others to buy into.
(made possible by all the programs afforded “victims” or victim-enabling “public servants.”
In a Whirreled of dumbed-down, PC/White Guilt ridden sheep, he fooled most of the people some of the time.
…so far, it’s worked.
Cap and Trade, benj, tax relief for the downtrodden.
(for whom energy is a greater portion of their budgets than “the rich”)
Sidwell Friends:
Good for the elite Obama offspring,
NOT GOOD for poor ghetto blacks.
NEA wins again!
Benj: it was always pretty clear he was out to revive National Greatness liberalism…
The problem with that is that “National Greatness liberalism” has a history of almost complete failure. Even when it can claim a victory, like with Civil Rights, that victory rapidly turned into the permanent ghettoizing of a large percentage of the black population, putting them on the welfare plantation and keeping them there while relentlessly stoking their resentment at “the Man.” The number of black lives lost, shattered and destroyed by National Greatness Liberalism dwarfs the number so effected by “racism” in the past fifty years.
So if O is signing on to that particular project, it doesn’t show “imagination,” it shows a stunning ignorance, a hidden agenda, or both.
Das @64: What makes Obama sad is this: he knows that there are superior men out there; men like general Petraeus.
This jibes with a thought I had recently. One of the side benefits to the Left for their endless campaign of lies against the Iraq war is that they have effectively squashed the chances for a national leader to come from that war. With a large portion of the population still thinking the war was a disaster, it seriously impedes the chance of a Petraeus gaining traction as a Presidential candidate. This is a very great shame.
Doug – take your point re Sidwell- Those kids should be in public schools! – Be careful what you wish for Peterike – Petraeus hasn’t voted for a while – once mused that he was a “Rockefeller Republican.” That’s certainly how he approached counter-insurgency, no?
Be careful what you wish for Peterike – Petraeus hasn’t voted for a while – once mused that he was a “Rockefeller Republican.”
Fair enough, but I’ll take a Rocky Republican over the current crop of Student Government Marxists any day of the week.
And I’m not all that concerned on the conservative social issues anyway. Way down on my radar of what’s important. And clearly Petraeus has shown an ability to adapt to the facts on the ground. With the current bunch it’s “ideology, ideology, ideology” and damn the facts.
Oh and by the way Benj, my latest Band du Jour is Gogol Bordello. A hard-rocking band led by a Ukranian front-man, combines uber-hard-rock (not metal, but hard) with Eastern European dance rhythms, violins, singalong and accordion. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Highly recommend their latest, “Super Taranta!” and the one before, “Gypsy Punks.”
LL3–
A villanelle!
There was an unveiling of a newly discovered Shakespeare portrait this or last week, housed for a long time in Ireland. Indeed it looks convincing. Just like one would think Shakespeare might look, and by a very skillful painter.
benj, you should be asking me: “how do you know about Obama’s overriding concern with the form of party politics over subtance?” Because my south Seattle neighborhood has seen a dozen murders of young black teenagers over the past year. Obama has not mentioned a word of this but instead elevates Seattle’s Police chief (Gil Kerlikowski) to Drug Czar; Obama elevates our country executive (King County – Ron Sims) to Housing Sec; Obama elevates our ex-governor (Gary Locke) to Commerce Sec. NOT ONE MENTION OF THE DEAD BACK KIDS! These three men should be strung up by their nuts – they do not give a damn about our community and it showed…it shows…and Obama…oblivious….my blood is boiling.
BACK=BLACK, but you know what I meant.
Benj, stop going back to Bush – I have many harsh things to say about him too, but – stop diverting the tide of analysis and comment on Obama into a compare and constrast with Bush. At some point you boosters of the Big O will have to lay the Bush Binky aside and measure your man by his own stature…
Thanks for word Das – I’ll look for more info on Seattle sit. – Once you go National as O chose to do – always a danger of getting removed from local truths/ action… One key to real demos is what one great historian calls “fire-fighting” – You got use your boililng blood to light a fire – Though I’m not sure it’s O’s house that should be torched! He did good, thogugh, by those Republic factory-occupiers. So maybe you and ME should get a fire going in the N.E.
Down with GB Peter – though I didn’t have bucks to get their latest. There’s a movie/documentary out now too re Eugenge guy’s times with the Gyp/Balkan undergrouind in Queesn..Haven’t seen it but it sounded promising…Look out for a book called “Bright Balkan Morning ” – forgive the title! – re gypsy music and culture by Charles and Angeliki Keil – Nice ethnography and pics (and pretty deep verison of how culture actually works from the inside). GB’s front man is the step-son of a guy named William Lhamon – very interesting writer on american culture – did a real good book on the 50′s – Deliberate Speed – Great chaper on Little Richard and the gay underground – Tuttie Frutti – Good booty – Amazing…
PS Here’s a link to a Lhamon thing on old timey American music – he has a shorter thing on a James Brown in FIRST OF THE YEAR: 2008 – that’s in the JB tribute on the site… http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2007/02/the_difference.html
Well benj, we like you: you seem to be the kind of lefty that can thrive in a Belmont thread (many of us are ex-leftys that still feel like leftys); so far you don’t seem to be infected with Koz Kidz-itis…just please don’t start talking about melting points of iron girders inside the collapsed World Trade Towers I & II…
What gets me about our ex-police chief Kirlikowski is that, say, after, say, the 5th black teen is murdered wouldn’t you start to go a little crazy? I would, if I were the police chief; I would be screaming for the national guard, I would be posting cops in schools, I would be calling for meetings with every black pastor in central and south Seattle, I would pay kids to turn in guns, I would call out the parents, I would call on national stars, Michael Jordan or Oprah or J-Z or whoever to come to town to talk to kids; forget budgets and protocol – kids are dying; I would have staged a rally with corporate money at one of our stadiums (Saefco field); in short: DO EVERYTHING SO THAT BLACK KID #6 IS NOT NEXT.
Instead we got dead black kid #6, #7, #8,#9, #10, #11…because Seattle is an Oprah city wrapped in NPR blinders…as long as we wear earth shoes and buy local produce we’re O so righteous…who cares about a bunch of dead black kids…..
AAAHHHHHHHAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Benj,
in defense of Joe the Plumber,
Joe working on his employeers license (a legal and respected practice that places the responsibility for good plumbing on the contractor) had plans to purchase his employers business which, with multiple employees all working off of the boss’s license, could very easily be in the quarter mil bracket on gross receipts. From that however and all the risks it supposes, President Obama’s tax plan proposed to punish the business for having the audacity to make a good living possible for multiple families while accepting the responsibility to teach and train new plumbers.
In a risk reward system, the greater the risk taken, the greater the reward needs to be or nobody is going to take the risk. There has to be an incentive for training up new plumbers and providing for families beyond a love for plumbing. BTW, there is no way Joe’s boss takes home that 200k amount, for good practice demands that his own take is a percentage with the rest plowed back into the business or under the new regime into payola or protection. To insist a plumber cannot make any amount because he is “just a plumber” is not only highly irresponsible, the continued harping on it as a matter of “common sense” or perhaps some divined absolute that plumbers cannot make money because…(insert rational here), shines a spot light on the speakers ignorance and extreme lack of an even basic understanding of economics.
From that I can only conclude that the President does not know he is a Marxist, because he does not understand what what it means to be a Capitalist nor the ramifications of Marxism, even in a limited form, a la EU. Probably the greatest result of the EU and other countries adoption of socialism is the entrepreneurial brain drain that results in the best seeking to emigrate to the US.
I think there is a very real Joe as Burt thing going on within the President’s tax policies.
About small family business… Having read the link to Lhamon, the hypocrisy part is something you need to focus a little gray power on cause your man is knee deep and the stuff is rising. Waste deep now as he claims he’s looking for the answer, chest deep and the observing can’t tell if its cause the river’s rising or the channel is just getting deeper, neck deep going under, now hold your breath…,
…The durn’d fool says to keep on.
We need change. Were getting a twisted and surreal “stay the course”.
The pinnacle of sail came around the turn of the last century. The technology of the time allowed the building of steel-hulled ships with steel masts with cable and chain rigging. On-board steam donkeys allowed the raising and lowering of sails to be done by only a few men. For instance, the great 5-masted ship, Preussen, had a crew of 45-50 men, but could be sailed with half of that complement if necessary. As an old rigging man I have dreamed sometimes of living back then and having a chance to crew on a ship like this. Because of the strength of these ship’s construction, sails could be left up even during a gale. Their average speeds were around 6-8 knots, but during strong winds they could easily hit 15-20 knots. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preussen_(ship)
How did my comment end up here? I thought I had posted under “The Fatal Hour”