Peggy Noonan, describing the pushback on the administration’s health care proposals, eloquently describes what many commenters at the Belmont Club have mentioned over the past years: the “design margin” — that reserve of money or energy that let politicians try goofy or risky things — has vanished. The searching hand has reached the bottom of the pocket and come up with lint. The resistance to the administration’s health care proposals isn’t rooted in a failure to “bend the curve”. It’s rooted in the salesman’s calculation of his customer’s capacity to buy.
The White House misread the national mood. The problem isn’t that they didn’t “bend the curve,” or didn’t sell it right. The problem is that the national mood has changed since the president was elected. Back then the mood was “change is for the good.” But that altered as the full implications of the financial crash seeped in. The crash gave everyone a diminished sense of their own margin for error. It gave them a diminished sense of their country’s margin for error. Americans are not in a chance-taking mood. They’re not in a spending mood, not after the unprecedented spending of the past year, from the end of the Bush era through the first six months of Obama. Here the Congressional Budget Office report that a health care bill would not save money but would instead cost more than a trillion dollars in the next decade was decisive. People say bureaucrats never do anything. The bureaucrats of CBO might have killed health care.
The final bill, with all its complexities, will probably be huge, a thousand pages or so. Americans don’t fear the devil’s in the details, they fear hell is. Do they want the same people running health care who gave us the Department of Motor Vehicles, the post office and the invasion of Iraq?
What’s really interesting is why the Administration thought it could be sold when the CBO told them the price. The majority of airliners don’t take off without enough fuel to get to their destinations. Most hikers don’t set out on a six day hike with a day’s worth of grub in the pack. Most people know the subway fare to wherever they’re going. So why does government, which asks its citizens to trust it with its health care, open its campaign by demonstrating its fecklessness?
The last ten decades have been such a cycle of “seek and ye shall find a tax dollar” that a mystical belief in the hidden stash has come into existence; an irrational conviction that even when bottom has been touched it will transpire that someone has been holding out and the money will come out of somewhere — the bottom of a shoe, the cuff of a sleeve, maybe a gold dollar hidden down the throat — but come it will. I think the real manifestation of inability to read the “national mood” isn’t the ill-fated health care proposal, it is environmental legislation. Buying into that is like paying for a set of diamond studded cuff links with the remaining limit on your credit card. Why is affordability rarely an issue? Why are wants always believed to be satisfiable now? The New York Times describes how environmentalists have become disgusted by the “limited” action of President Obama.
For environmental activists like Jessica Miller, 31, the passage of a major climate bill by the House last month should have been cause for euphoria. Instead she felt cheated. … But over the last few months, as the ambitious climate legislation was watered down in the House without criticism from the president, Ms. Miller became disillusioned. She worried that the bill had been rendered meaningless — or had even undermined some goals Greenpeace had fought for. And she felt that the man she had thought of as her champion seemed oddly prone to compromise.
“I voted for the president, I canvassed for him, but we just haven’t seen leadership from him,” said Ms. Miller, who rappelled down Mount Rushmore on Wednesday with colleagues to unfurl a banner protesting what they called President Obama’s acquiescence to the compromises.
Her banner read “America honors leaders, not politicians”. But leadership can’t squeeze blood out of a stone; and the first test of a genuine leader is the capacity to recognize that. Real leaders, like real airline pilots, know how far and high their airplane can fly. They know the design margins of their vehicles. May she should consider another banner: “America honors activists who can add and subtract.” I wonder sometimes what it is like to live in a world unfettered by such considerations. Perhaps that place is Gaia, or the Worker’s Paradise. But it’s not the planet earth.
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May she should consider another banner: “America honors activists who can add and subtract.”
Part of the problem is the large pots of money poured into various social justice projects over the past few decades by foundations that didn’t insist on measurable results and financial accountability. Remember Obama’s squandering of the Annenberg money that was supposed to improve the quality of education in the Chicago public schools?
So Obama is not far enough left for environmentalists? Good grief.
People like Jessica Miller confirm my suspicion that Obama should–and probably does–fear his disgruntled erstwhile supporters than his opponents on the Right. Obama is trying to pull off a multiple “tiger ride”, with one “tiger” being the Bolshevik wing of his own party. Unfortunately for him, the tigers are beginning to show their extreme irritation at being leashed. The One can’t let go of the leashes, but he can’t straddle the tigers indefinitely. What to do?
This isn’t going to end well.
In a parliamentary system the Leader of the Opposition forms a Shadow Cabinet. The Opposition may be loyal to the Sovereign but it does not pretend to be loyal to the government. They are by definition a government in internal exile waiting to take power at a moments notice. In the American system the roles of Head of State and Head of Government are conflated. This leads to endless confusion and even such piffle as hacks complaining when Rush Limbaugh says that he wants Obama to fail. Also the American system encourages infantilism by the party out of power. They are essentially encouraged to take a two to four year vacation during which they may criticize but have no obligation to propose an alternative. This does not serve either the parties nor the Republic well since if the out party does take office it is usually due to the failures of the incumbents and not due to any articulated proposals of their own. That means that instead of being ready to hit the ground running and govern from day one the new administration will spend at least six months finding where the bathrooms are and how to get anything done. The Republicans are particularly hard hit by this phenomenon since they are not leavened by as many experienced bureaucrats and do not have as large a network of NGOs, think tanks and academics to draw on.
If my previously described desire to reform the Electoral College were adopted it should hopefully encourage potential candidates to articulate their positions in a more meaningful and assertive way on an ongoing basis. Right now the Republican leadership should be attacking everything about Obama right down to the way he cuts his hair. They should be assertive, confrontational and on top of every issue and they should be disciplined. The thought of local Senators acquiescing to Satomayor in order to cut a deal with local immigrant advocate groups should be anathema.
As was the case with voting “present” in the Senate so many times, I am thinking Obama hopes to set the agenda but have others (Pelosi, Geithner, et al.) do the leg work (and hence bear the responsibility if things go wrong). It only works that way to a limited extent — you need to take responsibility for your agenda and work for it sometimes too. Obama is doing that less and less. I suppose he’s thinking of the 2012 elections and trying NOT to give anyone ammunition to be used against him at that time. But Jessica Miller and her like are gathering ammunition to be used against him when he does NOT do what they were hoping for. Welcome to the real world, Mr. President! You were elected to lead, not vote “present”. F
Supporters are not going to let go of the tenets they began with: at least he is not Bush, and Barack is still a cool guy.
At most they will wonder if they should have stuck with Hillary. Likely not even that. They will simply move on and ignore all of the damage they did to themselves and the country.
Nice to see Peggy Noonan back on the reservation. Never could understand what came over her during the election.
But then again, it’s people like Peggy Noonan who helped put Obama in the White House in the first place. Witness this pangyric on The One from back during the campaign.
Peggy Oh-So-Erudite Noonan is quite simply phobic about Sarah Palin, and when push comes to shove she’d rather take her (and our) chances with an elequent, ivy-league huckster like Obama than give a plain-spoken suburbanite like Palin a chance by endorsing John McCain. She’ll take a big vocabulary and a $100,000.00 education over honesty and straight-forwardness any day.
At this juncture, what does Noonan really bring to the National Conversation but a beautifully crafted description of the problem she helped to create.
The Democrats are reaching the apex of their power cycle and the Republicans are at the nadir of theirs.
I’ve seen a number of conservative activists go through the same let down. People seem to have this notion that their president can work miracles. Many conservative leaning folk complain to me that President Bush did not do enough to curb abortion on demand. I would try to patiently explain to them there is only so much he could do, especially without an overwhelming majority in the legislature.
The price the Democrats paid to get their majority in the house and senate is being extracted. A lot of those representatives and senators are not flaming lefties. What they really are I don’t know, but they were very reluctant to support Captain Trade and are now very reluctant to support this current monstrosity.
One issue near & dear to the hearts of the left is conspicuously absent and that is gun control. Oh, I know, there is a bill out there but it is not attracting any co-sponsors and I find it amazing national full faith and credit on concealed carry permits nearly passed (however, some of those voting for it may have received the blessing of DNC to vote that way knowing it did not have the required votes to get past filibuster).
Presient Obama was voted into office due to his charisma and Republican fatigue, we’ll see how rapidly him and his congressional allies bring on Democrat fatigue.
In her conclusion there is an echo of the parochial American who has been shattered by past run ins with reality. Those of us (and we are the majority- not silent but previously unengaged) generally find a way to regroup and re-gather. Not always stronger but certainly more solid. Not always smarter but definitely wiser.
But I think the lesson drilled through our financial family souls in October 2009 has been “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”.
Waxman and Pelosi are sorry seconds for Robespierre and Madam Defarge. But they will never hear their critics since they live in a Jacksonian bubble- Micheal’s. They have become the new believers. Priests of the church of the gifted and talented. They won’t call themselves Overseers but rather the Providers.
” When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not.
Americans in the most personal, daily ways feel they are less free than they used to be. And they are right, they are less free.
Who wants more of that? ” – Noonan
We may all recall that Bill Clinton ran into this same wall in 1993-94, which led to the Republican majority in 1994. That cycle will NOT be repeated in 2010 for a variety of reasons, but the result was that Bill Clinton began to “triangulate” on many issues with public awareness, but still let his appointees run the Executive with various mandates, etc. to carry out his policies where possible.
While Obama is in many ways a talented politician, he is actually more of a novice in dealing with real opposition than Bill Clinton was. He will still have a majority in both houses after 2010, but it is possible that his reach will be diminished.
It is also possible that many of the “Blue Dog” Democrats may be the ones to pay the price for Obama’s political ambitions, as these people are from more centrist districts and not safe districts such as the more radical members like Pelosi, Waxman, Conyers, etc., who will serve in Congress until they croak or just quit.
This may actually lead to a more radicalized Congress after 2010, with ever more bitter fights over policy than now.
Do you actually expect Obama to come and surrender to the Republicans like Hirohito did to Douglas MacArthur?
Socialized health care has been a plank in the Democratic platform since the days of Harry Truman. This fight is not over by a longshot.
And I am appalled at the public space given over to people like “Greenpeace”, enaballed to drape banners over a National Monument such as Mount Rushmore.
What’s next, grafiti all over the Washington Monument by Global Warming advocates?
Lifeofthemind @4:
I don’t mean to be contrary, and I do agree you make several good points about the warts inherent in our republican form of government, but a brief look at the parliamentary governments of the U.K., Canada, Italy, etc. should demonstrate beyond reasonable debate that politicians & apparatchiks in parliamentary systems are just as stupid and irresponsible as our U.S. crop of congress weasels or the political hack apparatchiks appointed to positions of prominence by our Chief Magistrate. In fact, with the exception of the U.K., none of the other parliamentary governments have ever dealt with “grown up” responsibilities for all of western civilization. The farcical state of the current U.K. government and its atrocious performance in marginally difficult times detracts significantly from your point about the inherent “efficiencies” of a parliamentary form of government when compared to our fiasco here in the U.S.
So let me get this straight. Obama hands the leftards in congress a sardine and a crouton with instructions to craft a bill of reform, feed the masses, cover everyone. The leftards cast these into their cauldron and gather around it chanting..leaving no room for blue dogs or the eyes of Newt. Then Obama without looking into the basket they hand back (reading the bill)proclaims it pre-recess adopt into law worthy……. and wants his disciples to hand it out in faith. Does anyone else feel like a pig running for the water?
I think that America took the Republic’s common understanding (or Social Contract lacking a better term) for granted in the last election. They were led to believe that this person was “like us”, no more different than AlGore or Hillary. What is happening is a great awakening. We are having an understanding of the erosion of the Economic/social Design Margin. (I hope.)
LOTM #4 – Rush is an entertainer. But he thinks clearly. He’s lots better now than he was 6-8 years ago. Seldom wrong but never in doubt.
Bush’s problem was all that “uniter” crap. Pure modern Country Club Rebup BS. Never understood that the Dems wanted his balls. If he had crammed a couple of dozen things down their throats early on, he’d be better regarded. All he’s got is Iraq. Pity.
LOTM @ 7: I would imagine some whisper campaign from the matrons of the cocktail party circuits in Manhattan, Boston, and DC, that’s what.
But one can hope that is was her conscience that finally got through to her.
Armeggedon Rex,
You are correct in all your caveats. My suspicion is that the universal quality of politicians was well understood by the Founders and they crafted the federalist system as the best device to peel off the grossly incompetent or parochial before they could demean the national stage. That proved an imperfect reed even before the Civil War and since the passage of the 17th Amendment it has been in effective abeyance. We need to find a way back to Madison and company’s original intent.
herb,
My instinct was that Bush erred in bringing Ted Kennedy onboard for the Education reform bill. He gained nothing for it but abuse.
LOTM: The current malaise of the GOP has little to do with a lack of a parliamentary system in the USA. It is altogether different disease. The lack of such a system does not seem to hamper the Democrats much either I have noticed. I would submit that the last thing that we need is a “shadow” president”, though with Clinton and Carter we appear to have such a beast.
The so-called “shadow governments” in the UK are pretty much taken as a joke these days by the UK electorate, particularly since the Tories have an even more dreadful strain of the same disease that afflicts the GOP here. Should they be forced out, a Labour “shadow government”, would be met with loud public derision and amusement. The whole business of “shadow governments” in the UK actually is more for media consumption with an eye to throwing party members some red meat from time to time. Their actual functional impact may be less than you imagine.
Having lived in nations with parliamentary systems, I would only wish them on nations that are our or enemies. The wisdom of our forefathers speak no more loudly than in their decision to forgo parliamentary government.
#11 E Nigma,
Your idea that the likes of Pelosi, Waxman, Conyers et. al are safe is correct — they are in districts where their only fault is they are not leftist enough.
In addition, your point about the blue dogs being in danger is real and this is on reason we’ll not be seeing any national gun control measures come up. Now, chance is a number of them are probably going to be sent back home (our district is in dire need of another allergist) and this would most likely start bring the house back, but we need to get backed off from 60 and gain some space.
Marcus: Sometimes I think that Obama got in merely because enough of us wished for some plain peace and quite and hoped that this would shut the Democrats up for a spell. Wishful thinking, of course.
Peggy Noonan is a wonderful writer. She picked the wrong time to go wobbly and I, for one, will never trust her again; but she is a wonderful writer.
Which is why I wish to say to our illustrious host that when you spend so much time quoting Peggy Noonan and still come off with the best sentence of the post, you have accomplished something! “[C]ome up with lint”, indeed! Bravo, sir!
Wretchard, worry not, there is more in the pocket than lint. A lottery ticket! That will fix everything, we’ll all be rich if the government gets a winning ticket. Happy days will be here again
When I was at the Pentagon we were told by Congress to give an extra $20M to a program that we had concluded we needed to cancel. One of the Senators supporting this action was noneother than John McCain. So much for his legendary opposition to pork.
But rather than saying “Take $20M from Programs W and X and give it to Program Y.” which was the normal way – and would represent opposition to those programs, and would come at a political cost, they did not. When this was pointed out they replied “You have a total of $500M in those kinds of funds, just get it from somewhere in there.”
This was the first time I am aware of them coming out with the “Just get it from somewhere” approach but it summed up a popular attitude in DC. This is seen most notably in their attitude toward the number of hours available in a day, which in their view is an infinitely extendable number.
And the $20M? We told them we were not giving it to that program. Period. I think the rest of the country finally has caught up to this position.
– posted wrong thread — removed by Cowboy
The ‘gentry Democrats’ have been itching to see if they could tax and spend as the European elites they admire so much do, and get away with it, for decades. It was always likely that they would one day get an opportunity to try, and here we are.
If they succeed, which is to say if the middle and lower classes bow their heads and accept their new role as the largely ignored peasantry in a new hierarchic social order, then in their own terms the Democrats were right to try. On that day, if it comes, the American Revolution will have been pretty thoroughly reversed by the installation of our political, academic and financial elites as a largely hereditary aristocracy (no successful aristocracy has ever been completely hereditary).
Don’t you think that Obama came into his Presidency after having watched Mr. Bush burn through gazillions of dollars and go wildly over budget without too much trouble during *his* tenure? So that Harvard-educated slick Obama figured if that dumb Texas cowboy could spend that kind of money and get away with it, why couldn’t Obama, too, and much much more easily.
Thing is, Bush was spending it on defense of our country. Obama is spending it on repaying his political backers *and* in trying to institute a socialist system that will spread the wealth around — taking from the rich and giving to the poor (who, incidently, are also his political backers).
So after a few months of watching his grandiose visions of spending other people’s money while, at the same time, refusing to protect ANYthing about the Homeland, folks are just naturally saying, “I don’t think so”, and slamming shut the door on that thieving hand trying to slither into their pockets.
As for Peggy Noonan, the female can write. I despise her wiffle-waffleyness, but she can write and evoke and poof up a listener. I think what she secretly really wants is for the White House — ANY White House — to call her and beg her to come and be their A Number One Most Bestest Speech Writer again — to be offered a job as a significant power behind the throne.
Once she’s given up on an politician giving her that call, she becomes waspish and spiteful in writing about him (or her). I wonder how she’d react if Sarah Palin called and offered her a Very Important Job on her team, which would become even MORE Important once the White House had been achieved. Or, even scarier, how she’d react if Michelle Obama called her. If Michelle and Hillary could manage to get along together the three of them could be a veritable MacBeth’s trio of witches boiling up a heated pot of trouble for the entire world to suffer from.
mongoose/19; –precisely. The Cloward-Piven, ever since the Dems had to cover their 9th Ward handiwork @ Katrina.
Balls-out public-square & institutional savagery 24/7, until only ‘hope & change’ could offer some peace. And not just peace but a ‘fierce moral urgency’ peace!
Hey, a clean peace!
It worked especially well on the 18-29 cohort, with their lack of experience in recognizing a distributed cloward-piven media offensive. It worked especially well because in being the truth (“only the wrecking ball operator can stop the wrecking ball”), it was able to transfer or parlay that truth into a castigation of the oppo on the legitimate grounds that ‘conflict is poisoning the atmosphere’.
Really, the more one considers what has happened to us, the clearer it becomes that it is all due to a simple takeover of a top-down corporate media by Bolshevik subversives.
See related: masquerade of Leninist “ruin, then rule” as Rousseauian “rule or ruin”.
Observation. Just how did Reagan win the cold war? He outspent the opposition. Now, how do you destroy a capitalist democracy? You cause the democracy to outspend its own economy, with ever growing entitlement programs. EU cannot afford to defend itself, all is spent on health care etc.
So, where do we get the money? From defense of course. Then, as soon as Europe is Islamized, and we are socialized, the marriage of convenience between Islam (Facist) and Liberalism (Left) turns into the Great Patriotic War…Ah History…
See Buddy @ 26….”ruin then rule”
MH/27; it’s clear to whoever can stand the sight of it that the Dollar and the US Military are the true targets. In a way, they’re two sides of the same coin, in that being the world’s banker allows being the world’s policeman. When either function degrades, both do.
Whatever it is that waits on the far side of the post WWII system is yet dark and formless.
To echo “Cellec” (#8), Noonan is part of the problem. She’s fine as a priestess of The Church of What’s Happening Now — describing present reality. But as a prophetess, she stinks. Remember in late 2004 when she told conservatives to cooperate with Arlen Specter’s nomination to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee? How’d THAT work out? She’s been dumping on Palin since last fall, yet Palin continues to connect with the party base.
Noonan can write eloquently about the obvious. She should be listed on IMDB as a “David Gergen” type: useful if you need a token RINO on your liberal talk show. The “design margin” for her type has vanished.
Outside of one incredible post-9-11 article that really caught the moment and the emotions perfectly, Noonan has succumbed to a long decline likely caused by too many cocktail parties with the liberals that infest NY. She’s way too far away from the common sense world of regular people to be right more than sporadically.
Her, Frum, Brooks and others are simply not to be trusted with the future of conservativism.
Joe Buzz,
Just heading for the cliff with the rest of the herd.
Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009 –and more to be found at Arts & Letters Daily, column left, four down.
dead-set enemy of “the self-deification of mankind”
“Now, how do you destroy a capitalist democracy?”
I’ve been thinking about this and here’s my latest Scientifically Logical Theory:
If you look at the difference between the West and the Muslim East, a huge difference is in the treatment of females in the two societies. There are, of course, many other differences but that is one that acts like a stick in the eye to every good Muslim male person both over there and over here.
So if you wanted to bring down Western civilization, wouldn’t it make sense to attack how women are treated and enabled in the West and most especially in America?
I’m thinking now specifically of Whiskey and his on-going diatribes here on BC focusing on “what all women want”, the virtues of polygamy, and how everything would be so much better for everyone if women were just stripped of the vote and relegated back to the kitchen where they were meant to be by God and/or Allah.
I think it’s worth considering whether or not Whiskey is Al-Queda’s version of Tokyo Rose. That his constant dumbing down of every topic to “the stupid stuff that all women want” is a deliberate propaganda ploy to drive a wedge between men and women of the West, so that we, too, are only working with 50% of our capabilities and capacity.
The Republicans are following a viable strategy. I call it the “Let them keep digging” policy.
The Democrats have all these WONDERFUL ideas so let them right the specific legislation to make it happen. Once the specifics are down on paper, then they can be NAILED in the public’s eye.
Obama knows the risks and that’s why he tries to push his specifics through in the middle of the night.
“Really, the more one considers what has happened to us, the clearer it becomes that it is all due to a simple takeover of a top-down corporate media by Bolshevik subversives.”
What else could possibly explain the public tolerance, let alone popularity, of Rachel Maddow, a sneering Bolshevik slut?
I try to resist the thesis, but I am not a believer in historical inevitability. And there only needs to be a tiny vanguard, right? Voila.
I admit that I have not bothered with Peggy Noonan since she helped found the Noonan-Parker-Frum-et.al. Republican wing of the Democratic party during the 2008 campaign. Yes, she can write. Far better than I could ever dream of being able to write. But I assume that Josef Goebbels had good writers in his equivalent of a roladex.
This is her first substantive criticism of anything Obama has done [as opposed to minor criticism of how he has presented it; firmly accompanied with scathing denunciations of those who would speak ill of "Teh One"] since Obama announced and sent her political libido into nymphomania far beyond Keith Olbermann’s and Chris Mathews’ leg tingles.
She deliberately, after her own process of introspection, to side with those who would destroy our Constitution and society. Even when what she writes something that contains aspects of truth [as this did]; I assume an ulterior motive. Once a traitor, always a traitor. If Obama fails she will be fortunate to only be sent to Coventry.
Subotai Bahadur
Nan @ 33. Now I am in a mess, I find myself defending whiskey. I do not believe he is trying to state what women want, I believe he is trying to highlight what women have been TOLD by a vocal subset (not necessarily female) that they want.
He certainly never supports polygamy, but points out its negative impact on any society.
The line of women in my life laugh at all the PC garbage…and have never ever been at a loss for respect or appropriate authority. None of them take prisoners.
It is unfortunate that Whiskey doesn’t expand his view or presentation, it does get tiresome and etc etc
To your primary comment, you are certainly correct in that any reduction of any portion of a population to a lower status by dent of a group trait (rather than individual malfeasance) is wrong. It is cognitively disonant with any reasonable approach to a functioning society.
So, I am basically on your side.
PS Big T-storm brewing here (DC-VA). Hope this gets through it time out before lightning litterally strikes
Buddy Larsen #28:
“being the world’s banker allows being the world’s policeman. When either function degrades, both do.”
There is a great deal of truth to what you wrote, with the way our economy is configured today. That is only because we aren’t serious about national defense. If our economy were on a war footing, as my occur after the first or second nuclear terror attack on a U.S. city, the dollars position among world currencies won’t matter much. The U.S. is blessed with an abundance of resources of all kinds. We have everything required to build up and maintain our armed forces, from uranium, gold, iron, nickel, copper, aluminum to very substantial petroleum reserves. We have the manpower and the infrastructure to use it with lethal results for our enemies. What we seem to be lacking in enormous amounts, at the moment, is common sense and political will!
We are running short of shipyards readily able to produce large warships, and heavy vehicle manufacturers able to churn out main battle tanks, but even these shortfalls can be quickly corrected if the FedGov gets serious about “wartime” production and un-muzzles and unleashes the few industrialists and horde of entrepreneurs here in the U.S.
In many financial circles before W.W. II, the U.S. was considered to be the junior varsity team, compared to the British Empire. The Pound Sterling was the world reserve currency. That didn’t stop us from training and equipping armed forces in just a few short years capable of conquering the entire planet.
If the political will existed, we could do that again. I just pray the Islamo-fascists will stick their foot in it, and trigger our overwhelming response, before they are really equipped to cause widespread devastation in North America.
Wretchard’s post reminds me of this principle:
“For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.” (Luke 14:28-30)
That also describes what will happen to Obama when he can’t finish what he promised.
AR/38; as the young cowboy said in Lonesome Dove about carrying a sixshooter, “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
Literally a world of hurt in that second part.
buddy larsen #40:
I’m entirely in agreement with that cowboy.
I think the folks who have succeeded in stopping F-22 production should be drawn and quartered for treason against western civilization!
How do you destroy a capitalist democracy? By destroying its educational system.
Mr. Hoskins – yeah, but how can he sublimely overlook stuff like men are the rapists and serial killers and kitten torturers of the world, and still be able to blame EVERYTHING bad in America on the dingbat women among us? Not to mention just lumping everything with a vagina under the one category of “stupid women who all LOVE Obama”.
Which is why I’m looking around for a new theory to explain his behavior, and him being Al-Queda’s Tokyo Rose seems to fit the scenario.
Which is worse: Archie, or Edith, or Meathead, or Gloria?
Buddy from the previous thread
Especially given that CIT is in TARP for $4bbl or so –and apparently Geithner & Summers were willing to just let that to-be-paid-by-taxpayer sum evaporate, even tho it was at risk to begin with due to the Government Sacks’ boys’ TARP program (which is fast becoming known as the “Obama National Bank”, “Why did the O inner circle cut the test off at 19, and leave hanging CIT to compete against free discount window money –which CIT can’t get? CIT, the big vital jobs generator of rural and small biz America?”).
Puzzling through that and all I got is a guess that the reason goes back to the failure of Barclays or Bear Stern or any other institution which like CIT participated in the mortgage backed securities, but were not allowed to resuscitate (sink or swim) on their own. CIT did take the money, but some residual benefit from its participation is either missing or just not worth the trouble to bail them out. The too big to fail measure does not apply.
But figuring out what the measure actually is for eligibility for free money, is nearly impossible to figure, the magic formula remains unpublished and kept hermetically sealed in Merlin’s vault. I can only venture, as one Yale law school professor guessed, “CIT… didn’t have enough Clout”. It hasn’t enough big union or government employee accounts to affect the support of unions.
We will see if it succeeds in saving itself. I hope it does as that would point the way to solvency for a number of troubled institutions.
Wade, here’s Irwin Stelzer via Times Online via Instapundit:
THE NEW ECONOMY: Trouble Ahead As Politics Replaces Market Forces.
Posted at 8:57 am by Glenn Reynolds
(yep, “market forces” being such benign, easy little walks in the park, y’know, where the world just rushes to your door to drop off ‘livings’ for you and your team, WHY NOT load on top of them some parasitic, gratuitous, arbitrary, influence-peddler-cooked, draconian impedimentia?)
For years I was a chevy man, especially favoring the toyota/gmc hybridized products and their vastly more fuel efficient designs.
I am now a FORD man, (except for the Saturn).
Civil Service was reformed, wasn’t it? The services being pandered to and peddled by president Obama are in no way civil, and no service at all. Healthcare is going the way of Social Security, subsidized by the young, without regard for long term viability of which there is no viable answer under government, just a fading barely viable beast under government’s foot.
The approach to governance displayed by the current administration is in my opinion a peculiar mix of cynical, unethical and discredited approaches. The only thing that can be said in its defense is that it is more transparent (blatent?) than the former Corporate Political mix if only because the number of players is shrinking. And no, I don’t think that is a defense.
well, the lefties will point to the country club GOP ‘good old boys network’ and ask what’s the dif? the answer is that by and large the GOBN does ‘legal’ crony business, while the soviet model, ok, over here and now i guess we call it the Chicago model, just does crony business.
The difference is total, and when it comes to the one model or the other controlling the government, the difference is even more than that.
“”"”"”"At this juncture, what does Noonan really bring to the National Conversation but a beautifully crafted description of the problem she helped to create.”"”"”
cellec: I believe Noonan has been helping create problems for a long time now. I may be wrong, but I think she was the author of that stupid, unintelligible “Thousand Points of Light” speech that Bush the Elder gave. Through Bush, she helped throttle Reaganism in its infancy because, like George H. W. Bush the country-club Republican, she was offended by the very notion of more limited government. Being a useful idiot has been a life-long preoccupation with this destructive snob.
agee on Noonan. used to love her, but when she turned on GWB, it was too harsh, and with too much satisfaction –as if she had merely been waiting for the zeitgeist to shift enough for her to turncoat.
The melodrama is the message with Peggy.
I don’t think she was ever on the reservation. Her first big boss was Dan Rather. She says he was the best boss she ever had. I think she worked for RR because of his attractiveness(repeated with Obama). Maybe she is looking for the ideal husband.
Do they want the same people running health care who gave us the Department of Motor Vehicles, the post office and the invasion of Iraq?
Hey, wait a minute. We got the invasion of Iraq from an almost unanimous vote of both houses of Congress to do same – a testimony to the leadership abilities of the greatly underrated GWB.
It was only when the current ‘leadership’ of the country realized that they could gain political advantage for themselves, at the expense of the country at large, that they began caterwauling to quit, get out, scream ‘failure’ and cut and run. To the thundrous cheers of the MSM.
How quickly some forget.