The administration, after being on the defensive for some weeks, may be engaged in a concerted PR counterattack. For example, the White House is claiming that much criticized stimulus package is fixing the economy. Leading the effort was Vice President Joe Biden who maintained that $787 billion stimulus package was pulling things out of the doldrums. It is according to the AP part of a bigger White House push to sell the stimulus. Five other administration officials were expected to extol it, as part of a concentrated effort. One of them may have been press secretary Robert Gibbs, who TheHill.com quoted as arguing that the 216,000 jobs the economy lost in August is good news because it is a smaller number than in previous periods.
“We’re making progress in slowing down the number of jobs lost,” said Gibbs, who also pointed to a report released this week that showed growth in the manufacturing sector for the first time in more than a year. … U.S. Chamber of Commerce Chief Economist Martin Regalia gave credit to the stimulus Thursday for helping to turn the economy around, though he said he would have preferred a more “concise” package. Regalia also said the $700 billion effort to bail out financial institutions and a number of unprecedented interventions by the Federal Reserve had helped end the economic downturn. … In July, the unemployment rate dropped slightly, from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent, but many economists attributed the decline to workers opting not to look for jobs.
The LAtimes.com says “‘The economy is in the process of bottoming, but the job market will lag behind,’ said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University. ‘Businesses, which engaged in preemptive layoffs earlier, are not about to start hiring people right away.’”
Another front on which the Obama administration is pushing back is the school speech, which turned into a public relations disaster. Earlier FOX News quoted Robert Gibbs as saying that opposition to the speech was silly. “I think we’ve reached a little bit of the silly season when the president of the United States can’t tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. “I think both political parties agree that the dropout rate is something that threatens our long-term economic success.” But CNN says “Many conservative parents aren’t buying it. They’re convinced the president is going to use the opportunity to press a partisan political agenda on impressionable young minds. ‘Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me,” suburban Colorado mother Shanneen Barron told CNN Denver affiliate KMGH. “I’m an American. They are Americans, and I don’t feel that’s OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now.’”
The administration administration’s PR approach subtly attempts to re-take the high ground. It is potentially a very effective strategy, one which always going to appeal to people of good will. The most famous literary example is the scene in Tolkien where Gandalf comes to the foot of Orthanc. The defeated wizard Saruman comes forth with the sweetest imaginable, almost enchanting voice. His affable manner takes everyone aback; for a moment every listener feels somewhat abashed: surely they have misunderstood Saruman and done him an injustice by even doubting him. The moment lasts only as long as Saruman is not questioned. When his smooth words are rejected, the wizard lashes out again: “what is the House of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek – their brats rolling on the floor amongst the dogs and filth?” The current conservative preoccupation with Van Jones, who is Obama’s Green Czar — but who was also a 9/11 truther and alleged Mumia supporter — threatens to establish the meme. On the one hand the well dressed, Yale educated Obama administration official, and on the other a bunch of nay-saying, no-account, penny-pinching, ignorant doubters. Who would you trust, the reverend man on the high tower or a society of people with barns?
The culture wars are now pervasive and the question of what constitutes the “high ground” is now central to the debate. Recently the POLITICO reported that
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.” … The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”
It will be hard to get the two points of view to meet because the different incidents are used to illustrate separate truths in different moral universes. But is it still a debate, or verbal spears hurtling past each other in flight?
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I think the administration has squandered a lot of good will. It is now a case of “fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you.”
Were I SecDef Robert Gates, I’d be revoking a heck of a lot of Associated Press access; and showing them the door whenever and where ever possible.
Yesterday morning I noticed a curious Facebook thing: the appearance, among two distinct groups of Liberal friends (with no cross pollination I know about, or too far back for me to know about) of a status statement reading “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. (If you agree, please post this as your status today.)” One bunch was journalists, or persons in that line of work, the other was academic. The status statement appeared among both groups between about 7 and 9 a.m. central time.
Anyway, it struck me that some kind of concerted Facebook push was on from someplace, and probably everywhere else too.
I’m late to the Van Jones story, and will do some reading on that over the weekend. Amazing how that has NOT caught fire.
I think the issue about parents and the proposed Obama speech is bigger than it looks, simply because that’s something close and personal that people can understand.
The economy is improving? Slowly imploding as what I see. I live in central Oregon, one of the most economivcally wrecked areas in the country and it is far from better here or improving. The dems can spin this all they want. Once bit, twice shy and shame on the administration for more lies and deception.
My kids will not be starting school until the day AFTER the liar and thief gives his
‘indoctrination speech’ to our children in school. Both of them 13 and 17 told me and my wife that they would have requested notes to be excused from having to watch Obama while being held captive at school. Had the school refused, I would have gone to both schools and signed out my kids for that day.
They get enough crap from the NEA and OEA without this BS from the White House. But I am surprised, absolutely not.
The AP should be banned from imbed priviliges and all AP reporters removed from
such privilges. The struggle in Afghanistan is tough enough without such reprehensible and callous reporting from the AP and the reporter who stooped so low. Does she has a personal agenda she is not being up front about? Obama is finding out just like Bush did before him with Iraq that Afghanistan is becoming more unpopular with each passing day. Afghanistan has been a hell hole for how many other countries? Are we next with such a luke warm effort as we are seeing from this administration? Appeasing, bending over to Islamic kings, groveling, apologizing on the world stage for our past actions, throwing millions and millions of dollars into various arab and Islamofacist states and organizations has gotten us nowhere. What have we gotten in return from Islam and Islamofacism? 9/11 and non stop terrorism and attacks around the globe. Things will get much worse and our resolve and actions will have to become much tougher if we are to defeat the forces that are out to topple the west, the USA and establish a world wide caliphate under the flag of Islam.
Trust is not a renewable resource.
After squandering that on the lies of the Obama healthcare speeches and townhall lies, I doubt anyone believes anything they say.
What would it mean to “win” the healthcare fight?
For some, the answer is obvious: beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself.
The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.
We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.
Not a good outcome.
Even worse will be the way this fight is won: basically by convincing older Americans already covered by a government health program, Medicare, that Obama’s reform plans will reduce their coverage. In other words, we’ll have sent a powerful message to the entire political system to avoid at all hazards any tinkering with Medicare except to make it more generous for the already covered.
If we win, we’ll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism. Really though it will be a triumph for inertia. To the extent that anybody in the conservative world still aspires to any kind of future reform and improvement of America’s ossified government, that should be a very ashy victory indeed.
September 3, 2009
Conservatives See Need for Serious Health Debate
By JIM RUTENBERG and GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON — The roiling debate over health care this summer has included a host of accusations from opponents of the plan that have been so specious that many in the mainstream news media have flatly labeled them false.
Far from embracing the attacks, many leading conservative health care policy experts said in recent interviews that the dynamic was precluding a more robust real-world debate while making it nearly impossible for them to inject their studied, free-market solutions into the discussions.
And they said the focus on what they consider misleading or secondary issues was getting in the way of real questions about the plan they believed worthy of consideration.
“There are serious questions that are associated with policy aspects of the health care reform bills that we’re seeing,” said Gail Wilensky, a veteran health care expert who oversaw the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for the first President George Bush and advised Senator John McCain in his presidential campaign last year.
“And there’s frustration because so much of the discussion is around issues like the death panels and Zeke Emanuel that I think are red herrings at best,” she said, referring to a health care adviser to President Obama whose views on some issues have been misrepresented by opponents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/health/policy/03conservatives.html?ref=politics
The administration, with MSM, the Fed and the Wall Street crowd are complicit in their attempt to create another credit bubble, but nobody’s buying it – even the Chinese are onto their game.
What is evident is that with all the information forces that heretofore these entities could muster, they should have lifted the administration’s and Congress’ approval rating sky high.
So what happened to their credibility? Two words: the internet.
Thanks to folks like Wretchard and others at PJM as well as the participants here at BC we can turn off the nightly propaganda and settle into a rational (mostly), objective discussion about current events. It is a modern-day grassroots groundswell of opinion that could not have happened in another time or environment.
Now, every time one of these bastards opens his mouth, his words are suspect. That’s what the lady in Colorado rightfully suspects. Everything is a campaign piece with these louts. And we don’t need our kids exposed to campaigning liars.
The problem with the AP issuing a photo of an American soldier dying isn’t with the image itself but with the political intent behind it. This is tricky because the image is news worthy. Everyone remembers the Robert Capa image of the Falling Soldier from the Spanish Civil War. The authenticity of that image has been disputed but it’s power remains. http://tinyurl.com/lblch9
If an image of American’s in combat and wounded or dying was seen as a cause for rallying the country then who here would object? Mathew Brady took photographs of the dead of Gettysburg that were as powerful then and should be now as anything the AP can send from Afghanistan. http://tinyurl.com/knxt3g The Union will was not broken by that knowledge. Our argument should be not with the images but with the politicians in Washington and the editors of the AP who counsel defeat. The concerns about privacy and decency are real but I do not believe in a blanket ban on imagery.
6. David Frum.
I don’t think anyone would argue that the US healthcare system needs to improve. But that’s not what these folks are selling. America has, for the most part, a literate population. So when the bill written by Congress (?) hit the street, it became obvious to all that it contained provisions that did not/would not improve our system. Quite the opposite.
What also became evident through the town hall debates is that American laypersons had a better grasp of the meaning of the document that the supposed experts and sponsors. Soon, even true believers in the One began to see through the façade to the real megalomaniacal nature of the left.
So as the debate ensued, the left decided to dig in their heels rather than recant, which blew ALL their cred. Now NOBODY with an objective view of the debate trusts this crowd ON ANYTHING!
And rightly so.
As tarpon 5. correctly summarized: “Trust is not a renewable resource”.
#3 El Jeffe Maximo: I did indeed ntice the identical quote on all my “friends” facebook feeds. Thy’ve all been quite busy lately telling me that I’m evil because I’ a “hoarder”, “moron”, and “cake-eater”.
I usually don’t bother to respond to provokation, but i certainly notice when more than one person use the same quotes and phrases.
Perhaps this is an inverse equivalent to the blood on the doorways at passover. They are marking themselves so that they may be spared by the angel of death.
I don’t think the name calling is winning them ay arguements though.
Enscout. You are right. But I fear that Obama & Co have learned the lesson too. I belive the next attack will be on exactly that target, the free internet. Watch for the coming assault on our last bastion of free expression
Remember this:
Obama seizes Internet, Drudge goes viral
by Mark Silva
Al Gore invented the Internet. (not)
George W. Bush didn’t use the Internets. (true)
Barack Obama wants to take over the Internet. (Drudge hype?)
The truth is that “cybersecurity” is a big problem. The White House was told so earlier this year, and pledged to get on the case.
“My administration will pursue a new comprehensive approach to securing America’s digital infrastructure,” Obama said in an address in the East Room of the White House at the end of May. “From now on, they will be treated as they should be… as a strategic national asset. We will assure that these networks are secure.”
The fear is, among some in the industry, that the White House will be given an inordinate hand in the Internet in the event of a crisis — sort of like Bush grounding all the airplanes after 9/11, except a virtual sort of grounding.
The new draft of legislation that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors “still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency,” Cnet reported today — giving the Drudge Report a banner headline about Obama getting emergency control powers over the Net.
And this:
In Emergencies, Obama Could Seize the Internet
By Jared Newman
Should the United States be cyber-attacked, at least two lawmakers want the president to be able to switch off the Internet. A bill, proposed by Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), has been in negotiations behind closed doors for several months. Though the wording is vague, it appears that the bill would allow the president to declare a “cybersecurity emergency” and have specially-licensed government individuals take over private Internet services. Furthermore, it would require these companies to share requested information to the government. I understand the intent, but it seems like an extraordinary amount of power for the executive branch. Civil liberties groups, as expected, are outraged.
“Free internet”??
It’s already “running through” the white house.
Can you imagine how much hardware they have monitoring it?
Sr. Jefe Maximo,
I too noticed that Facebook catechism re-recited serially and verbatim, and it tickles me that my intellectual friends are so susceptible to cheerleading. I’d love to know who started it, but I’d bet money on someone from the Chicago mob.
Someone else launched an amusing counter: No one should die because they had to wait six months for an appointment, and none of our grandchildren should go broke from the taxes to repay spending bills rammed through this Congress unread.
But it wasn’t repeated. Among the arts set, independent thoughts are rare, politically. The herd is preferred.
Mr. Frum: You are setting up a false dichotomy. Defeating Obama, particularly on this bill, is a wise course in and of itself and on its own merits. Later we can deal with “health care issues”, but let us set reject that we are in a “crisis”, tht we must “do something” and that we need to “work out a compromise”. We are not. We need not. We should not. You edge here toward fear mongering. I might add that there are implications in your postings which border on innuendo against citizens who would oppose Obama on moral grounds. There is in fact no “crisis” that requires us to abandon our historic liberties, capitalism , free markets or the constitution. Not now, not ever. This too is a false choice.
The real reason why we have problems with this “system” is that we have government involvement in the first place. What we need to do is cease this vainglorious fantasy that is either within the competencies or responsibilities of government to “design eceonomic systems”, in the first place. A free people with their own money in their own pockets will be the spur to create or reform the “healthcare industry“. Please not I do not use the term “system”. I recommend that we cease calling it a “system”. The very notion compromises perception, debate and morality.
This bit of tacit Marxism, this notion that citizens get together in the public square and through political means “design a system”, is just at the root of the problem. Oil costs go up and down, so do the prices of business suits. Shall we get together and design extra-commercial “systems” for these? Shall we “design” a “home appliance delivery system” up there on The Hill? Not only will this notion of “designing systems” not work, it lead corruptions: Direct political corruption and spiritual corruptions. The Political corruptions inherent in centralized political control are obvious. The spitual corruption is more subtle. The vice of imagining that we are so hapless and slavish that we must somehow engage in collectivism to “solve hard problems” and do to for the “Common Good” is pernicous and underhanded Communism, no matter how it is gussied up by pundits or politicians. This latter vice we need to forswear once and for all. The culprit in the first place is collectivism, thr fact that it is rebranded as “communitarianism” notwithstanding, One pays money to cure one’s family, not for the “Common Good”. A Free, liberty loving people should alway take caution whenever they hear the phrase “for the Common Good”.
Healthcare is one of many economic “problems” facing us. More will face soon us in education, energy, manufacturing, etc. These are in fact not isolated “crises”. They are in fact just facets of the underlying one: The soft socialist state that has been slowly and dishoestly foisted on us by the left.
The solution to all of these problems from the political economic view is to reduce government,, get the money get back into the citizens hands and leave the citizens alone. The various “crises” will soon work themselves out.
As to just why you posit this false dichotomy, Mr. Frum, well , that is another question.
One would think that in this day and age we would look with caution on politicians, pundits and “Leaders” who point out problems and then fan the flames of fears to position political solutions which accrue to them growing powers over our lives.
We need to stop this. Fighting the Obamacare bill is a good place to start.
my cousin tells me the quote is from moveon.org.
David Frum is part of the problem — in fact he is an Obama ally, and has written at length of his dislike of Sarah Palin AND what she stands for.
Frum, Obama, Peggy Noonan, Van Jones, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Bernadine Dohrn, are all the same basic perspective: ELITISTS.
They all believe that the “special people” who are the elite, graduated from Ivy League universities, have elitist, radical, anti-populist, disdainful ideologies, are superior in wisdom and ability to rule based on their SOCIAL CLASS.
Frum believes he is BETTER and WISER than the people. He’s no different than Van Jones, or Peggy Noonan in that regard. Or Obama.
This is an old, old conflict. The Eastern elites who hate and fear the Western populists. Adams vs. Jackson. Heck the Shays Rebellion.
What is new is the astonishing, unprecendented amounts of money the Frums of the world have amassed. Money that is at near obscene levels, and acquired by relationship-middlemen straddling of resources. Such as “activist” shakedowns, government officials/lobbyists, and so on.
Frum objects that we spend money on Medicare to people who have paid into it their entire lives, presumably he agrees that Obama should be allowed to put the older folks on death lists so the money can be spent on young Latino (mostly Mexican illegal immigrants) and Black individuals.
OF COURSE elites hate, fear, and want the ordinary people of this nation “replaced” by a “young hip people of color” and Frum fits right in with Richard Lamm (“the old have a duty to die”) or Obama’s Death Panels.
The problem with David Frum, David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Maureen Dowd, etc. is their obvious class hatred of ordinary people. Anti populism has it’s place, most of America’s greatness comes from dynamic tension between very balanced forces of elites and the populists. But for nearly 40 years, the elites have had their way, to the point where lunatic idiocies of Obama’s hard Radical Left go forward unchecked. The step from David Frum’s advocacy of getting rid of Medicare to spend the money on young illegal aliens is to Ezekial Emmanuel’s advocacy of the same to Bill Ayer’s desire for concentration camps for conservative middle class people.
Each step is a minor one, and the lack of punishment and fear of elites is troubling. ANY aristocracy that has members who sit around too long, able to act decadently, becomes a mortal threat to the nation.
For example, the White House is claiming that much criticized stimulus package is fixing the economy. Leading the effort was Vice President Joe Biden who maintained that $787 billion stimulus package was pulling things out of the doldrums. It is according to the AP part of a bigger White House push to sell the stimulus.
It’s not a surprise that the WH is cranking up the flacks to tout the stimulus, particularly since no one’s acting very stimulated today.
But there were some folks back in February complaining of the timing in the “stimulus” bill, pointing out that it’s loaded in a way that its funds will mostly be disbursed in 2010. Fancy the coincidence – that will be an election year.
Could it be that the WH expected all along to stiff the workers in 2009, damn the unemployment rate – then crank up the golden fountains to prove their ability to ‘get us all back to work’ just in time for the election? Did they expect the current backlash against these unread 1000-page spending bills, and count on bribing their way to recovery and electoral victory with lavish parts of that $787 billion stimulus, as yet unspent?
The Yalie man in just pressed suit
Declares the question is now moot
The game is won we just don’t know the score
The President has made his bones
By naming truther nut Van Jones
To be the front man for the green scam store
And Mr. Gibbs says for his pains
The president can make no gains
With terroristic people who shout No!
To everything the Prez can try
To shake this country out to dry
And listen not to what their betters know
Those jobless figures now it seems
Are just one of the rightwing schemes
To make the stimulation seem inept
A trillion here a trillion there
We can’t see why the folks would care
That we pulled that one off while people slept
The VP says that jobs were saved
With bridges built and roadways paved
And anyway the numbers just don’t lie
And Mr. Gibbs just smiles and says
We have a most enchanting Prez
Who faced with No! will do it on the sly
Re the school speech: it’s sad to see how distrustful many people are of Obama–which he brought on himself–because it’s inherently a good thing for the president to address school children. If he urges them to work hard in school and they take this to heart, the country may some day benefit. It’s a shame, a cryin’ shame.
Re medical care: in the current Atlantic there is a very thoughtful article by a businessman who essentially says the whole issue needs to be re-thought from the bottom up. For example, he points out that using medical insurance for routine expenses–remember, this is “insurance”–is as crazy as using auto insurance to pay for gasoline and homeowners’ for your electric bill. His point is that the whole thing is fundamentally wrong, from bottom to top. He has many suggestions which may be good or not but his main point is correct, I think.
Yesterday morning I noticed a curious Facebook thing:…
I noticed the same thing. I also noticed that it was only two of my, ahem, friends who posted this, and each post only got 2 “likes”. One even got a snarky comment dissing the idea from someone else in her network. It struck me as an underwhelming response.
Tonight I noticed what might be round two. A Facebook poll about whether Obama’s speech to the children should be allowed without prior parental consent. It came via one of the people who posted the health care boilerplate yesterday, but I’m not sure if it’s an Obamachine effort or not. If it is, it’s a flamin’ loss for them, because the poll is running 58-39 against Dear Leader.
Walt, Made me smile with that.
Re the school speech: it’s sad to see how distrustful many people are of Obama–which he brought on himself–because it’s inherently a good thing for the president to address school children. If he urges them to work hard in school and they take this to heart, the country may some day benefit. It’s a shame, a cryin’ shame.
It’s not a cryin’ shame Gordon. I think you’re missing an important point – the venue. If Obama wanted, he could schedule a prime-time speech. The networks would give him the airtime (especially now during the tail end of rerun season). Then, if parents wanted their kids to hear an “inspirational speech” they could plop ‘em down in front of the TV.
So why did Obama decide to reach the kids via the schools? The schools where no parental supervision is possible. The schools that are staffed by what is a defacto partisan voting block of Obama supporters. The schools that have increasingly been used by Liberals as indoctrination centers for the kids, teaching them about eco-mongering, diversity, and alternate sex at the expense of math, reading, and traditional notions of civics.
Can you see why it’s not such a cryin’ shame to have all the outrage? Sure, Obama ramped up the distrust, but that’s just icing on the cake. The foundation of distrust has been building for years. And please note that the Obama campaign,er, I mean administration, pretty much confirmed everyone’s concerns with the whole “write a letter supporting Dear Leader” proposal.
Don’t assume politicans are sainted “public servants” hurrying about the land righting wrongs and bringing hope to the downtrodden. That bogus assumption is the root of a whole bunch of problems we have today. Assume politicans are scum until proven otherwise and you’ll be a lot better off. Most of them are con artists of one degree or another. We need to protect our kids from them, not usher them into our schools.
Assuming broadband would be shutdown,lots of computers still have modems. Somebody with the knowhow could write a little program based on the old bbs’ so text only could be easily transmitted between computers over phonelines.
Counterpoint as I understand is the presence of a second melody in a piece of music that coexists with the first melody. Both in the same chord structure and with the same timing. It’s the words that provide the differences. Imagine an argument that takes place inside the music and does not degenerate into noise.
After reading about the man having his finger bitten off at a town meeting one does consider the notion of comic opera. But this digression is no less silly than the the president’s school visit. While the idea of the president giving advice and encouragement to students is not a bad thing the notion that it is a packaged event that is really a prelude to the congressional speech the following night allows one to examine it as harmonic counterpoint. Now only those who manage the news would think like this but in the end that is who the message is for.
He won’t tell the children anything that they don’t already hear from their parents. Wakefield is in a high IQ zip code. He has nothing new to tell the congress. So he is talking to the cameras. As Peggy Noonan pointed out earlier the people are bored with his incessant fixation on something that seems OK to most of them. 80% or more like their healthcare. That leaves us with the camera men and editors.
The real news is that he can’t talk about the war. He can only talk about the War of the Buffoons(1750- Rameau v. Rousseau). At least those two understood counterpoint. I am afraid in this case the war is actually the missing fundamental.
Blindman: Seriously now, it is the Germans and the Italians that understand counterpoint. The French, not so much.
Whiskey, I know I’ve been a critic of your gender speculations, but your post here is very well taken. The elites are a great threat to our liberty and national will. They are pushing the common folks to the barricades with their disdain. They will lose that fight.
The AP reporter violated the spirit of being an embed. Michael Yon cut his teeth in Mosul with the 1/24th Infantry. He was considered one of the troops because he went into battle with them and told their stories. A kid who was there told me of another embed, a woman, who tried to allege atrocities and was shunned until she left. The AP reporter is a disgrace.
Under other circumstances, if the man was not already proven capable of using any venue for the most inappropriate political theater, a speech by BHO to school children would be harmless. After all he does more damage when he talks to adults. Given that people fear his taste for 1930s agitprop for good reason we should all be grateful if the event is canceled. If Obama really wants to help children then I suggest that he visit a school and actually teach a lesson. Perhaps he could read to them. Could someone please send him a copy of “My Little Pony?”
El @ 3
Oh you can bet the Obama school speech thing is bigger than it appears…just as the Tea parties were bigger than it seemed and the town halls etc. I’ve become fired up as hell with the realization that working class, middle America has come alive with good old fashioned righteous indignation at the course the left wingers have set for America.
For all the times I typed “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” in high school typing class it’s kind of cool that that time has acutually come. Joe Six-pack and Billy Beamer are both ticked off and on the move and it’s getting interestinger and interestinger. If you listen closely you can hear the whistling through the graveyard out there. Guess whose lips are puckered.
I have been gone for a while, gearing up for harvest, time is at a premium.
I am astounded at the way all the zones are being flooded simultaneously! This president does not impress me as having the knowledge or ability to conceive and execute what we see happening. I keep thinking someone with a proven ability to, oh, say manipulate global markets to their advantage.
Did you all note the Daniel Pipes dissection of the speech by the assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John O. Brennan?
http://tinyurl.com/qvhms7
onesimus
My own Facebook counter-posting.
No one should pimp for a Fascistic administration trying to control your private health decisions, and no one should go broke because of excessive government fiscal confiscation. If you agree, please post whatever you like, because for now you still have free speech and why should you follow the dictats of the Politburo? Know when you’re being used! Better late than never for a lot of you.
David Frum’s accusation about the rising cost of health care neglects to site the cause the rising cost — government imposed requirements. The same requirements that will be stripped out of government plan to make it viable. This is duplicitous. If the argument is that we want cheap health care then remove or redo the requirements. Design it be more like catastrophic care. Make elective care paid for by the consumer or have secondary policies like in medicate to take up the slack.
I am astounded at the way all the zones are being flooded simultaneously! This president does not impress me as having the knowledge or ability to conceive and execute what we see happening. I keep thinking someone with a proven ability to, oh, say manipulate global markets to their advantage.
The archetypical foreign tourist who upon encountering a native who doesn’t speak English, proceeds to speak English more slowly and louder, in the belief that by doing both the language will eventually be comprehensible, captures the whole ethos of the health care debate. It’s advocates “learned the lessons” of the Hillary care debacle. Their conclusion: wrong talking points, bad media strategy, not enough alliances with pharmaceutical groups, etc. They were exactly like a company with an Edsel who thought that a bigger advertising budget, a spiffier paint job, a little chrome could turn a turkey into an eagle. And that’s precisely what the President is doing: concluding the public doesn’t like his Obamacare project because it isn’t being sold hard enough. The solution is to flood the zone. Eventually, like the European Union treaty which when approved is forever, but when rejected is only temporary, he will get his way. You will have Obamacare. One way or the other.
#11 aaron: “Thy’ve all been quite busy lately telling me that I’m evil because I’ a “hoarder”, “moron”, and “cake-eater”.[sic]”
That “hoarder” moniker is disturbing and straight commie: with Stalin and Mao, execution followed. Then again, “moron” is straight Animal House”.
34 talnik: I know. The commies killed half the family. I aready know how this story goes. As with Islam: I will not submit.
The man who thought the USA had 57 states is going to lecture America’s schoolchildren on studying hard. What’s wrong with this picture? F
#33 Wretchard . . .
“Eventually, like the European Union treaty which when approved is forever, but when rejected is only temporary, he will get his way. You will have Obamacare. One way or the other.”
I don’t think so.
I just can’t get the image out of my mind of Obama, during his campaign, ridiculing Joe the Plumber about 2 days after their first encounter. I’ve brought this up in other BC threads but it seems to cover a lot of ground for me, re: Obama’s disappointing smallness of mind and spirit. I can never forget seeing Obama lean into the podium and with his best lopsided grin shout to the crowd, “What kind of plumber makes 200 thousand a year anyway?”
Forget the basic snidness of the comment. What about the basic blindness it shows towards American working men (and women)? What about the lack of political acumen on Obama’s part? With Joe the Plumber, Obama had the perfect opportunity to embrace America’s large force of independent tradesmen. All he had to say was something like, “Joe, you represent the best of America and all that I want to encourage in young people starting out in the working world. I celebrate your independence and drive and I’m on your side – you can count on me.” I wanted Obama to be big enough to embrace all Americans in this way.
Sorry, nope.
Obama revealed his smallness of character by attacking an American working man (actually during construction boom times an expert plumber working with 2 or 3 journeymen could knock down 200K in a year – a lot of 12 hour days, but they could do it).
Frum’s alighting here has got me thinking. For all his brilliance he was totally taken in by Obama. I never wanted to think this but now I do: I think there must be an elite in America that is only comfortable with its own members: same schools, clubs, boards, friends and networks. The members may be of the right, may be of the left; it must be fun belonging to this group; they must feel that many small rights and pleasures are theirs alone. Putting down common Americans must be one of these snall pleasures. (Note Frum’s savaging of Sara Palin); there must be a small warm feeling belonging to this elite, a feeling like downing a warm pilsner when contemplating that common Americans are lost when it comes to governance and the management of their own lives.
Oh, joy. That is like me say I am going broke slower now. I even feel dumber saying something like that, fer chis’sake.
Gibbs again:
Hey, dipsh-t, that is the parents job, not yours. To quote a certain Marine vet, “Keep your hands off my kids!” These guys presume way too much, me thinks.
wretchard writes:
That is rhetorical right? Barns for this red neck.
David Frumm @ 6:
Mmm, yes and no. The problem is that this thing was never framed correctly. The American people are not as stupid as the Libs declare them to be. Had this been discussed openly as an issue among others that needs to be worked on, we could do the incremental things to fix the inequities. I am one who suffers from the system and can detail what needs fixing. But this wholesale “crisis” mentality, essentially all of the Dems running about screaming that the sky is falling and we must fix all the crises NOW that grates.
The 0bamamantion has made a run at ALL of the decades long laundry list of pet causes and behaved like the adolescents they are in insisting that it absolutely MUST be fixed NOW…… or… or … the world will end , really it will. REALLY!11!
Sober adults realize that things need fixing but also know we have to wait until we have the money and time. Also, sometimes life is not fair and some things will not get done. And some of them maybe should not.
Ooops, as you say @ 7. Oh, well, it is a good rant and I will let it stand.
From the NY Slimes article David links to and quotes:
Nope, you do not get away with that one, JIM RUTENBERG and GARDINER HARRIS. Zeke the Younger said what he said and seems to mean what he says. He is an abhorrent creature with poisonous ideas reminiscent of the eugenicists in the 1930′s. Uck.
Mongoose @ 15:
And keep one hand on your wallet whenever the person who utters the phrase comes around. Might not be a bad idea to hide the good silver, guns and female children, also. [/snark] The rest of your post ++++++++!
Also, the blame for most of the problems with government in this country rest in one place = Congress. 535 people are responsible for all of the deficits, bad laws, etc.
wretchard @ 33:
Perhaps, but it will then most likely be the end of Liberalism for a long time in this country IF AND ONLY IF (IFF) further elections are allowed. Quite a few of us are very concerned that machinations like those of Chavez, Ortega, Morales and Zelaya (attemped) to suspend the correct Democratic processes are in the offing. Should that happen, then things will get weird. I mean it has been over a year and the supply of calibers has not improved. Shipments still fly off of the shelf on arrival. One advert for a local sale made sure that it was clear that the ammo was available for the weapons to be sold. Otherwise, limits applied.
“You will have Obamacare. One way or the other.”
Oh, absolutely. I totally agree. However, it will be a pale shadow of what was originally proposed, some sort of expanded Medicare program to cover poor children or something like that. It will not offer free health care to poor blacks and illegal Mexicans, it will not have death panels urging the elderly towards a quicker end, and it will not take away the private insurance option that 80% of Americans currently have and want to keep.
But they’ll call it “ObamaCare” and will trumpet its passage, just like they are trumpeting how wonderful it is that unemployment only crept up a few more percentage points when it could have crept up double-digit amounts.
Then we’ll vote out all the current encumbants who supported whatever dumbed down / watered down version is ultimately passed in the next election — Democrat and Republican — whereupon Obama will be as castrated as Jimmy Carter ever considered being. And he will be left to twist slowly in the national and geopolitical breezes until his term expires and he is escorted with hoots and hollers from his fellow Americans as he leaves the White House and Washington DC, to embark on his future career as a full-time race monger and America apologist.
Unless, of course, there is a repeat of 9/11 whereupon he’ll be impeached and run out of town on a rail, if not imprisoned for treason.
Nahncee @ 40:
I wish that would be the case. More likely, he will use HR 645 + Cybersecurity to clamp down claiming that us “Right wing domestic terrorists” played a large part in whatever happened OR will just ‘wag the dog’ in some fashion to the same effect.
These are truly perilous times.
Who would you trust, the reverend man on the high tower or a society of people with barns?
You know my answer to that one. By the way, we’ve had some really nice barns out this way, bigger than the homestead house, many of them, though as the decades roll along they are becoming fewer and fewer.
A well built barn should last three hundred years.
You should see some of the timbers in some of these babies.
Like This Baby For Instance, Which Could Use A Little Touching Up
We all need healthcare, that is agreed.The thing about it is we have a government that doesn’t want to listen to us as how to fix it.We have 2 wars going on in middle east and our borders are wide open.They haven’t listened to us over these(with exception of a big fence put in places)why would they listen now.I think Obama is trying to push us into a Russia type of lifestyle.Everything belongs to everybody but no one has anything.Except the government.Think about it.How much money a day does our government spend to run these wars?They say it s to fight terrorism and spread democracy.Yeah right.The more taxes you pay the more power they have.Its the same with this healthcare plan.They have an agenda and Obama is going to push it.Why do you think they always try to push for more and more gun control.There probably will be another 9/11 and it will probably come up from Mexico in some form of dirty or nuclear device.Then again they could march a whole army up threw there with no one to really stop them.Makes you wonder whether our government really cares about us at all.
@44. James; “Makes you wonder whether our government really cares about us at all.
James??? Are you serious? I hope in all seriousness that you are awake from your nap. Did you not pay attention in class? Govt has NEVER been about “caring” for the people. Govt is a necessary evil just as fire is. Geo.Washington said,
James I aint mad at ya. But lordy son! GYHOOYA and get in the fight.
“…he will use HR 645 + Cybersecurity to clamp down …”
Seems to me tht he’s gonna need some bodies to do the actual physical clamping, and I don’t see the police, the firefighters, the National Guard, nor the military doing that for him.
All Obama has been able to muster to “get in our faces” is a dumb little twinky who got caught vandalizing a Democrat office, another dumb little twinky who was the son of a Dem big-wig who got caught hacking Palin’s e-mail, a Mexican who unwisely threw an elbow at a healthcare rally, and a black-haired dude with good liberal teeth who could bite off a finger and then scampered back to his mob.
Do you *really* see the progressives and liberals we regularly hear from here and in public taking to the streets to “clamp down”?
(Although in last month’s Vanity Fair they named Obama on the year’s “Best Dressed” list [gag me with a spoon] and he said that his favorite piece of clothing was something the Secret Service gave him and his favorite place to shop is the Secret Service store [suck suck kiss kiss], so maybe he could send the Secret Service out to “clamp down”. All 20 of them.)
Wretchard,
“The archetypical foreign tourist who upon encountering a native who doesn’t speak English, proceeds to speak English more slowly and louder, in the belief that by doing both the language will eventually be comprehensible, captures the whole ethos of the health care debate.”
Amen! The analogy is spot-on. And leading…
Fact is, anyone who’s been on the receiving end of the tactic – be they French-, English-, Arabic-, or whatever-speaking, will tell you that they respond by withdrawing behind politesse – usually expressed in rote salutations, and by beat-feeting a hasty-but-graceful retreat.
Which reveals a new curl in America’s politics: malgres les Socialistes Internationales, when it comes to opposing Obama-Care, regular Americans aren’t withdrawing behind their usual graces, nor are they beating any sort of a retreat. The Anglo temperances that our domestic insurgency are relying on to keep the American heartland safely tethered to its quaint country kitchens, talk-radio, bake-sales and churches – ensconced and out of the way in their quiet, “Leave-It-To-Beaver” normalities, may be snapping.
I don’t want to wear out your behavioral metaphor, Richard, so I’ll wind this up. Your analogy begs two questions. (1) is part of the plan to destroy America’s temperance – to render her all fang, and tooth and snarl? And (2) Mogli-like, having prodded this tiger and grabbed it by its tail, does ACORN, OPEC and the civil-servants’ unions really expect that they can ride it now?
Hmmm.
Suffice it to say, my second cup of coffee found your analogy very stimulating! Thanks.
-Steve
PS: if one wants to understand the Obama administration, simply imagine that Jacques Chirac’s ex-foreign minister and French poet, Dominique DeVillepin, is ruling America. His agenda is Obama’s. That’s pretty much all you need to know.
Ro bohob o, re your no39 the scarcity of choices in the am mo dept.
Local gnu shop has a sale in progress, now in third week. All sizes and shapes, but the ones most easily avail able for a very po pular size* are st eel not bra ss, which can’t be recycled. Well, not by stand ard procedures…
The prop rietor done tole me that 6am the morning after the vote on the first Tuesday last Nove mber, a caller placed an order for three thou sand units.
Well, when you think of it, how many plinks does it take to achieve proficiency? and then how many to maintain proficiency?
Especially when your base is a tube only six inches in length, a tiny deviation off-axis at the launch gonna result in a notable dispersion down ran ge. Practice make perfect.
* (nine thousandths of one meter)
And (2) Mogli-like, [...]do ACORN, OPEC and the civil-servants’ unions really expect that they can ride [us] now?
Grammar matters! (Gulp!)
NahnCee @ 46:
Do you *really* see the progressives and liberals we regularly hear from here and in public taking to the streets to “clamp down”?
Let’s exercise some imagination, and take a look at Obama’s street army (AmeriCorps, ACORN etc) which is intended to be funded ‘at parity with the American military’. Not just the occasional dumb individual twinky which you reference. Recall, if you will, that in his campaign speeches this street army was to ‘provide national security’.
Could that not provide a “clamping down” of seriously demagogic proportions?
IS – they’d have to be recruited, trained and armed first. I don’t see that happening, unless Obama’s cadre’s go behind walled compounds a la Al-Queda (and then Google earth will be watching). I do, absolutely, think that’s what he initially had in mind, however, but now people are watching him AND the new Black Panthers AND Code Pink AND ACORN, and I just don’t see either law enforcement at the local level nor your average Joe the Plumber citizen allowing it to get that far.
NahnCee @ 51:
Agree that we citizens need exercise eternal vigilance, but will also observe Obama’s support for serious tyrants Ahmedinajad and Chavez and Zelaya, plus his far-left loonies in unaccountable czar/commisar positions.
At the moment, he has the will and the resources and Rahm Emanuel, for cashing in on manufactured crises. The MSM is egregiously in the tank for the White House, and will not furnish two percent of the necessary vigilance. The ‘stimulus’ bill includes about $2,000,000,000 for Americorps, a pretty fearsome down payment for recruiting and training and suchlike ‘community organizing’ efforts. And most of its resources remain to be disbursed during the 2010 election year.
At the very least, our vigilance must intensify.
Insufficiently Sensitive,
Obama may blow a bunch of money on his theoretical ‘army’, but let’s face it — if funded its Sargents will be otherwise unemployable social science majors and its troops will be 20-something slackers who spend all day leaning on shovels and text messaging each other.
Not much of a real threat, just another boondoggle.
Obama’s street army-do you believe after this hot summer that Congress would dare vote to fund it?
tRex – my thinking too. As an idea it’s dead in the water as far as taxpayer funding goes. Soros (or the money behind the bought Obama Presidency) could always step in and waste more money on such an idea, but you’d still be left with a whole big bunch of dreck as recruits, so why bother. Plus they’d not only have to recruit in secret but they’d have to do their training in Mexico or someplace where armed Americans with cameras couldn’t see them trying to learn how to goosestep in sync.
Well, NahnCee, then they’d be illegitimate, outlaws, and would face the wrath of the public, the police, Armed Forces.
This is why it is essential to get to the root of the impending CENSUS, and make sure that O’s goons are not given police powers, sidearms, and questionnaires that are essentially warrants to search, seize, and arrest citizens for a wide range of newly-created crimes. (i.e., failure to accurately and fully report any and all firearms or ammuniation or sharp objects or fishy stuff stored currently or EVER on property under your control. Or are you aware of any other person that owns a firearm, or who has studied the Bible, or participated in any other activity deemed subversive or threatening to the sacred one…)
The truly dangerous aspect of the so-called “CZARS” is that they have the authority to promulgate and then ENFORCE regulations with the full authority of the Federal Government. This means powers of arrest and criminal prosecution. All without being accountable to ANYONE other than Buraq Hussayn Hisself.
Comply or go to jail to await trial.
If you are found guilty of resisting the legitimate exercise of Federal Authority, that crime can be sufficient to strip you of all your possessions and wealth and freedom, impoverish your family, salt your garden, and make your wife sterile and blind.
Okay, not all of that, but just the fines and imprisonment are enough.
If st. o tries to recruit a bunch of “brownshirt” NAZI-style obama youth, and set them up with police powers, we are in for a decade of exsanguinating contention.
One real key is whether such a group swear their personal loyalty, their lives, and sacred honor to OBAMA the person, not to the Constitution of the United States.
To do so would make them his personal stormtroopers, and nothing else.
NOTHING
ELSE.
This would be true of ANY federally funded group, whatever its nominal mission.
I guess that suggests a whole new line of inquiry and FOI suits.
I was gonna correct the “ammuniation”
but I sorta like it that way.
I don’t know if that was really David Frum who commented here earlier, or just someone using his name as a screen name. If it really was him, although I’m not a fan of his, I do appreciate him coming here and speaking his piece.
let’s face it — if funded its Sargents will be otherwise unemployable social science majors and its troops will be 20-something slackers who spend all day leaning on shovels and text messaging each other.
Actually those ultra-PC social science and Angry Studies majors will be the officer corps. The sergeants will likely be gang leaders who’ve been searched out and quoted by NPR on their sincere strivings for ‘justice’. The troops will resemble the two blokes which Eric Holder’s Justice Department just declined to prosecute after being filmed menacing voters at a polling station (eg ‘providing security’) in Philadelphia.
Obama’s street army-do you believe after this hot summer that Congress would dare vote to fund it?
Ah, there’s the beauty of ramming bloated backroom bills through Congress unread and ignored by MSM. A good start for that army is already funded in the largely-unspent ‘stimulus’.
Seems to me that after this hot summer, Congress will not be passing ANY more legislation for a while, least of all bloated backroom bills that no one has read full of funding and payoffs. Maybe not even until the next elections in 2010, when everyone will be wondering if they’ll still be around to cast a vote on any more unread legislation.
I’m watching to see who will replace Teddy. Obama lost a prime backroom mover in Mr. Kennedy, I think, and that presence will be missed in the political maneuvering. I just wonder if the voters of Massachusetts are dumb enough to replace him with another rich, privileged, liberal John Kerry wannabe.
Also, if Bill and Hillary are as smart as I think they are (especially Bill), I look to see both of them distancing themselves from the Obama trainwreck real soon now. Hillary might even resign as Secretary of State since she’s been side-lined and de-looped by Obama, if she (and/or Bill) can find something equally enjoyable to do instead. Like moving to Massachusetts and running for the Senate from that state since there’s a nice fresh opening there for an up and coming Democrat.
Hillary would also be good at the UN, although Obama would never allow her to do that, afraid that she’d implement a coup to overthrow him with Kenya or something. And, actually, so would Bill be good at the UN — put him in charge of their ongoing sexual harassment issues.
Re, the resignation of Van Jones, and the plausible connection of his ‘activism’ with Obama’s upcoming street army.
I led off by presenting Van Jones’s program for Green Jobs for inner city youth, but framing it as a larger structural reform project that could, if done right, unite a progressive majority and help get us out of the current crisis. At the same time, we had to unite a militant minority around socialist tasks, so I offered the solidarity economy movement and its projects as practical examples of cooperative forms that could, within the capitalist present, point to a socialist future.
That’s from an unnamed contributor to Left Forum. It speaks for itself as far as recruiting, organizing and paying personnel who could plausibly enjoy serving in said street army.
Insufficiently Sensitive #60, “Angry Studies”, that’s a keeper. Thanks.