What hope and change would all of us, conservatives and liberals alike, welcome from President Obama? Here are some suggestions, surreal and serious, trivial and quite important.
1) The UN. Recently the UN Secretary-General termed the US a “deadbeat” donor, despite our long record of more than generous donations. Cannot we hope and change this organization out of New York? There is no need to withdraw from the organization, but rather we need a liberal solution of asking the aggrieved body to relocate closer to the center of present-day global problems. Conservatives would like the UN gone from our shores; liberals could agree that multilateral solutions need to be closer to the problems—the suffering, the starvation, and the killing? Possible new host cities? Beirut? Cairo? Moscow? Tripoli? A UN headquarters in Nairobi or Lagos would save millions in transportation costs, and allow UN employees a feel for problems in a way New York does not. So many birds killed with so few stones: a) no more autocratic functionaries living it up in New York restaurants and limo-ing around the city as they trash the United States during their day jobs; b) no more media attention to UN antics, as the soap-box speeches no longer go down a few blocks from CBS and ABC, but thousands of miles away; c) the world’s reps live the life in the concrete that they advocate in the abstract;
2) The Meltdown Commission. We had a 9/11 Commission; we formed the Baker-Hamilton Commission on Iraq (never mind the utility of the conclusions). So let us try a bipartisan investigatory commission on the autumn financial meltdown. Thus far the mainstream media narrative is a reductive “Bush did it.” But let us examine past bundling of subprime mortgages, and derivatives, and who introduced more regulation of banks, who opposed it; who tried to restrain Freddie and Fannie, who fought that tooth and nail, what the SEC did and did not do—and why. Let us collate all the campaign contributions from the failed banks, Madoff, the entire open sewer of politics and high finance, and then let those of the commission, both Democrat and Republican, issue a white paper on when, why, and how it all went down.
3) Farm subsidies. From 2002-8 prices for most subsidized commodities, from corn and wheat to cotton and dairy, were quite profitable. Yet the five-year $307 billion farm bill contains billions in direct subsidies to corporate and large farmers who are already making a profit in the open market. The bill itself is full of pork, and there is no real reason to continue any of the direct cash support elements of the legislation. I’m not sure of the exact correlation, but if one were to graph the history of farm subsidies and the decline of small family farms the later line would go upward as the latter went down. We were once promised in the 1996 “Freedom to Farm” act that it would all end. It didn’t. Then right after 9/11 we rushed a renewed “farm security” bill, using the fear of terrorism as another false rationale. When that fear faded, we advanced the notion of stimuli and pump-priming. I never understood why a plum or grape grower got nothing and survived, and much wealthier cotton growers got lots, thrived, and said they would go broke without federal largess. The bill never explained why a few farmers got a lot, and most got nothing; or why the dole continued even when prices climbed.
The Chinese are already nudging, poking and standing in the way like a school yard bully to a skinny kid with glasses.
All Obama had to do was . . .
It would also help if he tended the store, so to speak.(H/T Don Surber)
[On Tuesday] Sir Gus O’Donnell, Britain’s most senior civil servant, exposed transatlantic tension when he protested that Downing Street was finding it “unbelievably difficult” to plan for next month’s G20 summit in London because of problems tracking down senior figures in the US administration. “There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is,” the Cabinet Secretary told a civil service conference in Gateshead. . . .
“You get to a certain point, and you can’t go any further,” Sir Gus said. “A whole new bunch of people come in who probably haven’t been in government before.” Fifty days after President Obama was sworn in, every senior post in the US Treasury Department remains vacant, with the exception of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, who should have 17 deputies. The vacuum has prompted complaints that it is struggling to deal with the most severe downturn since the 1930s.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cabinet-chief-obama-team-unreachable-1642088.html
Surber himself comments, “Remember that voicemail from the 1980s set to Beethoven’s Fifth? Nobody’s home! Nobody’s home!”
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2009/03/11/thereisnobodythere/#more-7720
It will be interesting to see how long the “Obama Liberals” sit by and let Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Reid and all, take the country down the drain. This Guy Obama knows nothing about International Trade or International Politics, this he proves by appointing Hillary Clinton as Sec of State, Hillary cannot hold Condelisa Rice Brief Case, With Buffett, Barton Biggs, Jim Cramer and other Elite Liberals now questioning Obama decisions, don’t we have to ask, what did these guys expect, how could you not know, what Obama and David Axelrod would do if elected, They are CHICAGO LIBERALS, TEACHERS UNION, ACLU, GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES UNIONS, ETC, ARE ALL LEFT LIBERAL ORGANIZATIONS, OBAMA IS A ANTI BUSINESS LIBERAL, A BILL AYRES THINKER. It is too late to start crying about his programs and spending actions. They get to pay more taxes.
Should an Obama Presidency fail miserably, his acolytes will find a way to make him into a martyr, and blame the moneyed interests and “false liberals” and rethugs and reactionaries like VDH for the latest light that failed. Eight years of irrational rancor directed at Bush is not going to turn into rational judgment.
Obama & Co are starting to notice a few cracks in the MSM dike holding back the flood waters of political retribution. We’ll see how much longer the lib/con contortionist pundits keep their fingers in the holes for a president who acts this lackadaisical in the midst of a crisis.
Apparently, there are admin slots under the Treasury Secretary that require a White House nomination followed by Senate confirmation. To date, Obama has not made one of these nominations. Geithner must’ve been hung out to dry.
It should be clear by now that Obama was not ready on day one. And that grating insouciant attitude of his, complete with leering grin, may imply he never will be ready.
So, time to play the race card. It’s the only card he has left in this game. Ol’ poker face there tried to run the table with a busted flush. Too bad reality called his bluff. No matter, we’re the ones who have to pay up. Just another gut check for us, and a belly full of laughs for our socialist brethren.
I’m not sure the summary in that last sentence is ALL Obama had to do.
Look. His words have been deceptive, inconsistent, and opportunistic. His ACTIONS, on the other hand, have been crystalline in their pristine clarity.
I have two brothers in the category of income earners that is looking at the wreck of its 401(k)s, and at the prospect of being Obama’s big tax target. Both took Obama’s measure many months ago, and since November have been arranging to minimize the exposure of the assets they worked so hard to accumulate to his tax policies. One, the CPA, is cutting back his income, along with the other partners in the firm. This is a strain for his family, with six kids ages 2 to 14. But the firm and its partners and employees come out better that way, given the tax burdens they expect as a consequence of Obama’s policies.
The other brother’s wife, a physician, is cutting back on her hours and accepting less income compensation from her partnership. He himself, an engineer, accepted a staff position at a state university rather than a much-better-paid job with a private firm that would have kept his tax exposure higher (and meant longer hours). They have put most of what’s left of their investments in trust, hoping to shield it from Congress.
These brothers turn 47 and 48 this month. Both families are tightening their belts and living on less. There is no point in earning what they used to, through either salaries/bonuses or investment income, when they fully expect Obama to make it counterproductive to do so.
Meanwhile, their sis here in California is in a rather lower tax bracket (making right about the national median household income), but still expects her rate to go back up in 2011. Having not become insolvent, I’m in Obama’s target sight too. My California taxes are going up, thanks to the Reagan-invoking Republican cave-ins in Sacramento. I don’t know what will come of the pending cap-and-trade legislation in Congress — but if my average $45 electric bill is going to shoot up to $110 for the same amount of carefully-watched electricity use — and all my other bills go up commensurately, since the other companies have their own electric bills — there’s no way I can spend money on non-necessities now. Home equity gone, savings radically amputated — you don’t have to feel sorry for yourself at all, and I don’t, to nevertheless know that you CANNOT spend money unnecessarily, or you could lose your home with the next tax hike, or the next carbon-reduction plan.
Obama could say anything he wanted. He could do nothing but recite the Sermon on the Mount over and over, followed by the most inspiring passages from Shakespeare and Longfellow and Tennyson. It wouldn’t matter, because his actions speak far louder than his words. Whether we are in the $250K income bracket or somewhere under $200K less, we have seen much of our household wealth evaporate, and we expect Obama to come for the rest, whether through direct taxation or regulatory mandates.
Of course we’re taking whatever we have left out of circulation. We don’t want it sticking out where the tax man can get it, and we don’t want it to be gone when our living costs skyrocket. It doesn’t matter what Obama says. Every measure he proposes will pillage us, regardless of what he says his intentions are.
Sorry to ramble here. This ain’t ABOUT what Obama says. No amount of leaderly demeanor can change our course. People who have a responsible attitude toward their finances have to have confidence that taking risks will be rewarded; and they don’t have that because of what Obama is DOING.
I do love the “toady grad student” characterization of Geithner. Beautiful.
As for the love affair turning on Obama by the end of the third quarter – as entrenched as this love affair is, I don’t think it goes away that easily. If and when they stop the lovefest, it is over a long, protracted period wherein, no one can actually point to the actual moment it finally occurred. This is their day in the sun, and the media has their guy – finally. Meanwhile, there is so much anti-business rhetoric like the EFCA card check (libs swear this won’t kill secret ballot), or GM’s bailout, Citi’s Bailout, and a portion of the AIG bailout. Where does it end? Government has no place in these failing businesses, yet they design to inject money into their failing models to prop them up. Manufacturing, once our bread and butter, is dying a slow horrible death, and instead of doing CPR, we are beating it down with a ball bat. Let’s get that union membership up around 15% and watch as the service sector and manufacturing ALL go to an Eastern Bloc country. Look this never ends, not with this congress, this president and this few people who actually understand what is happening.
Since I’m retired and living on a (Very) small private pension and Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme, I might as well drop out and wait 6 to 9-months before tuning back in. Perhaps by this coming Christmas Time, something will shake out or else we’ll all be doing the “Shaka!”
Back in 1773, The Sons of Liberty were at least a semi-respectable group. Now, that name is associated only with nut cases of the worst order. However, perhaps a new such group shall arise even if Sam Adams will not.
VDH: It’s all getting to be very confusing, but please maintain the “Work and Days” web site so at least a running dialogue relating to our shaky new world can exist. Cheers, it’s time now for a bottle of Stout!
Yes! You referred to his actions as “teen-age”! I’ve been seeding comment boards everywhere with my personal nickname for Obama: “the Teenager-in-Chief”. It evokes the petty vindictiveness, emotional manipulation, blame deflection, and flair for melodrama that have come with our new President. His behavior on all those fronts is adolescent (not to mention his new “seal of approval”, which makes me envision a kid sitting at his school desk drawing logos for his someday rock band).
Great work as usual, Dr. Hanson.
It will be interesting to see how long the “Obama Liberals” sit by and let Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Reid and all, take the country down the drain. This Guy Obama knows nothing about International Trade or International Politics, this he proves by appointing Hillary Clinton as Sec of State, Hillary cannot hold Condelisa Rice Brief Case, With Buffett, Barton Biggs, Jim Cramer and other Elite Liberals now questioning Obama decisions, don’t we have to ask, what did these guys expect, how could you not know, what Obama and David Axelrod would do if elected, They are CHICAGO LIBERALS, TEACHERS UNION, ACLU, GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES UNIONS, ETC, ARE ALL LEFT LIBERAL ORGANIZATIONS, OBAMA IS A ANTI BUSINESS LIBERAL, A BILL AYRES THINKER. It is too late to start crying about his programs and spending actions. They get to pay more taxes.
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi
Obama’s hubris was evident from the beginning. We are now witnessing Obama’s atë. And, yes, nemesis is sure to follow.
Ironic that a man whose philosophy is the polar opposite of the tragic vision of humanity is now the exemplar of the tragic cycle.
I sure hate paying for the education of all these democrats – couldn’t we just give them an honorary degree and get them off the stage?
You must remember this,
Claude Rains’ gambit kiss,
Hypocrisy isn’t a lie,
When Big Brother’s eye goes by…
The “Bush did it” mantra won’t go away for a long while, I fear. They’ve gotten a lot of traction from it already and plan to use it in the future.
Here’s the full verse from Casablanca:
You must remember this,
Claude Rains’ gambit kiss,
Hypocrisy isn’t a lie,
We must all worship privildged others,
When Big Brother’s eye goes by…
“I think Warren Buffet, Jim Cramer, Jack Welch and other in-the-news, conflicted capitalists counted on Obama being a sort of Robert Rubin, Clintonite neoliberal like themselves.”
It was abundantly clear that Barack Obama was a shallow and poorly read lefty. And they also knew he was a liar. But Obama wasn’t supposed to be lying to them, the “elites!” Gosh darn it, have we already forgotten University of Chicago economist Autan Goolsbee? He’s known to be fairly sensible regarding economic matters. Many naive dupes were persuaded to jump aboard the Obama bandwagon because of Goolsbee’s support. This is also the same guy who told Canadian government officials that the Democratic Party presidential candidate was still for free trade—and he was essentially lying to the blue collar voters in Ohio.
If you have heard rumblings of “Shocked! Shocked!” now, they will be nothing compared to the expression of outrage during and after the upcoming grand tour overseas in April.
Our historic first Islamic apostate president has passed his initial stage of retribution, the symbolic one, that of targeting the bull’s-eye of American prosperity, the stock market.
His next step will be to make retribution personal. He will soon travel into enemy territory, Europe, and descend into that inferno of colonial spoilage, Britain, deposed master of Kenya, to scold the ghostly heads of imperialistic capitalism.
His nose tilted to the sky, his disdain seething from every pore, his hand steady on the lever of the defenestration of the West, he will proclaim the new rules of the world, the doctrine of fairness, in such terms as he defines them to be, which everyone will understand as retribution.
Then his travels on the road towards salvation (but not yet his official Hajj) will take him to Turkey, one of the 57 states of dar al-Islam, where his ritual cleansing will sooth those scars inflicted by western generations past and give him comfort in his designs to smooth the way for the decline and fall of America as we know it.
Get ready for his rhetoric to finally describe the retribution he has in mind.
4. zhombre his acolytes will find a way to make him into a martyr
I sometimes listen to an am talkshow, here in the Central Valley not far for Dr Hanson’s farm, to get a sense of the ‘average joe’ take on all this stuff. These guys are not political junkies, often get the actual facts wrong or jumbled, are sort of moderates, hoping for the best & all that. They’re are already floating ‘Obama really wants to do X (insert campaign promise), but others behind the scenes are forcing other things on him’ memes. ‘Course, that begs the question of Who the Heck IS in Charge then guys, but I digress.
I expect the administration to keep the Bus idling quietly, ready for the whomevers who will be thrown under it as blood-sacrifice when pressure gets too great. Me thinks Geitner will be the appetizer course.
As far far as I can tell, the petulant one has been busy trying to repeatedly rub everyone’s nose in it with each and everything that either comes his way, or in something he arbitrarily forces in to the ugenda, such as re-government funded stem cell research, vets pay their own health care, etc.
Same thing on the foreign policy front- now foreign govts see him as both weak and a jerk, a viable combination to exploit.
He’s an identity crisis in full swing, and the identity he seeks is to grow up and become a man, but instead he thinks rattling his autocrat “executive order” saber will serve as a substitute.
The Icarus myth serves only to well as Icarus, like childe ubhamas, is a fool with his magical child imagination in full meltdown. It’s all so exemplary of the leftist preoccupation with the dysfunctional family, and the feeble dysfunctional ways they try to “fill the hole in their soul”(s). Not gonna happen here, as there is too much adult responsibility required of the office. Men are required, not children, and this one is just plain spoiled rotten
It must be noted, in fact- Attention Must Be Paid! -that however conspiratorial the notion that childe ubhamas is purposely trying to destroy the middle class (as we know it, huh huh) while pretending to be stickin’ it to the super-rich man! is all straight down the line, orthodox Jeremy Wright.
Yeah, Ol’ huffin’, puffin’ Jeremiah, and Michelle-0 herself, lectured us all on how success and prosperity at the middle class level, was in fact sellin’ out to “rich white people!”
Funny how the super rich, and childe ubhamas can wink at each other, knowing that both their positions can endure, through an abysmal economic period, no matter how long it may last, when, per the black liberation theology protocol, it was the equal-opportunity middle class annihilation priority that was always paramount on the u-genda.
Two classes, super rich and super poor, the latter forced to succour at the teat of gummint. Corruption not an anomaly anymore, but a way of life. Permanemtly Institutionalized by our great parent, childe ubhamas as he finally becomes the the master father man of the masses. Hallelujah! (/sarcasm off)
The election of the class president as US president has proved the wisdom of the Framers, when, originally, only property owners could vote. The vote of the non-taxpayers has doomed the goose that laid the golden egg. I’m not sure we can expect the toothpaste to be put back in the tube. It’s sad to watch this once great country commit nationcide by choosing a president like it’s American Idol.
I guess when it’s all over, in retrospect, historians in the 22nd century, will look at Obama’s failed presidency as an experiment in global social re-engineering that got out of hand and was eventually rejected by a significant majority of the American people. Historians will also note that post Obama America had one of the largest economic booms of the 21st century reaffirming American exceptionalism well into the next century.
Schadenfreude and a sip of gin!
Obama we got the entire kitchen sink—drain, pipes, basin, and faucets thrown at us all at once.
And those pipes had a fair amount of noxious sludge packed in them as well.
A modest prediction, if the economy does not show positive growth by the third quarter of this year, the media will finally turn on Obama
I think that aside from Obama himself there will be two other casualties. One will be the MSM. They did their damndest to get Obama elected, neglecting, distorting and camouflaging their hipster candididate. Of course it was obvious to anyone with a brain who chose to use it, but an awful lot of people bought the scam. When they realize how wrong they were, they won’t admit their own mistake, their own greed in wanting Obama’s snakeoil so badly that they ignored the obvious alarm bells. Instead, they’ll blame the media for not vetting this con man. The media is already in rough financial shape, this will be what finally kicks them into the dustbin and shuts the lid.
The other casualty will be elites, the Cramers and Warren Buffets who supported Obama (if they were so damn smart, why did they get fooled?).
Too bad the rest of us have to pay such a high price for all this.
I recall not long ago how the appointment of Rahm Emanuel was hailed as proof — proof! — that Obama would govern as a centrist. That Hillary’s appointment was evidence of “pragmatism”. Oh, and that Geithner’s appointment was clear evidence of Obama administration competence and, taxes be damned, why, he was the only person on earth that could fix the problems Bush left behind. So, the genius elitists (Brooks, Buckeley, et al.) got it wrong before the election, got it equally wrong immediately after the election, and are only now realizing their blunder.
VDH, great stuff. You seem, like many of us, to be losing patience with elitist morons. And with BHO himself.
Andy
CA Diss@7
Look this never ends, not with this congress, this president and this few people who actually understand what is happening. Inexorable suppression.
Hopefully, we’ve a few “understanders” on our side, and they’ll begin to rally. I think it does end and abruptly – and not well for the productive class…US enablers. We’re suicidally-so it seems. After all, aren’t we paying the overloards a way-above market wage to do what they’re doing to US?
Political rivalry: we bring reason, they bring tanks in camo? The Left has proven countless times, it will unrelentingly slice/dice/splice away individual freedoms, at each and every opportunity, by any means availed. Pure, unadultered, recidivistic evil is intolerable to a moral society. Some heavy shackles are applied here.
Our current major moral dilemma then, is merely about the LAST CHANCE for democracy – anywhere. For me, this boils up to it’s about whether we’ll continue to be willing parties to insuring and facilitating the enslavement and/or termination of everyone yet to be, or we won’t.
Ergo, the longer we delay starting whatever it’s gonna be, if we manage to, then the more severe the punishment meted out to the losers. Either outcome; it has to be ugly – no reaching across the aisle again. Compromise kills freedom!
Thinking ahead leads me to believe that one outcome or the other, the US becomes a single political party system. The Survivor Party.
Say we could stop the encroachment and reverse direction; reducto ad absurdom –
We the People (as winners) cannot allow the Left to exist in our new political system. Ever, ever again. Socialism, progressivism et al, delenda est. Otherwise, it CAN NEVER be worth the effort to take it all back; to Inflict Democracy, if you will.
“Radical agenda” – if we want to be the Survivor Party, no? Hard decisions ahead. The hardest ever. This “good and evil” thing has gotten way out of hand, thanks to our collective lack of vigilance, community, outrage, courage and enforcement. Harsh rewards realized. I wish humankind the best. They’ll think me a hypocrit.
Bruce@23
I sincerely hope you are right. However, as to giving odds on that…so far it’s just you and me. The winner gets to write the history, and if you check the latest textbooks, you find less mention of that pesky stuff like “how it really was.” Which shows they’ve been educating the reserves, while we dithered. We should probably have a plan; we don’t. Time is obviously on their side. This looks to be risky and gruesome, to us reasonable folks.
Thanks Doc for another great article.
I was in France the last few days and Obama still walks on water in that country. Michelle Obama was on the cover of one magazine with the banner, ” At Last, The First Lady We Have All Been Waiting For.” A drawing of Obama appeared on another magazine cover (a fashion magazine), with something about the coolest President ever.
You are correct, it’s much easier going to sophisticated social events (especially in Europe), now that Obama is our ruler. As I was getting on my plane to Paris, I overheard some people talking about how Obama is going to solve everything.
On the BBC, a British Lord was interviewed about how wise Obama was to incorporate “green policies” into his stimulus package. The interviewer gushed in agreement.
People have so much personal investment in the messiah that they will never let the facts get in the way of their opinion of him. The MSM will continue to lie on behalf of Obama rather than be proved wrong. When it all comes crashing down, the failure will be attributed to poor advisers, wall street fat cats, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and the religious right. Robert Reich will be on every MSM TV show explaining how Obama’s plans would have worked but the evil Republicans undermined him.
I’m wondering what Hillary Clinton must be thinking. She has to know that she would have made a far better president than this Urkle character. When will the Clintons make their move to crush him? Wouldn’t Wall Street back them in a coup?
Remember GB is a group of white males, so we don’t have to worry about them. Forgot they are our #1allies we can find new ones. WELL we got what we voted for, I hope it will help to remember WE VOTED FOR CHANGE. So we are getting change. As we stop being a supperpower with the strongest economy we can always remind ourselves WE VOTED FOR CHANGE.
I really, really, hoped not to see a repeat of the Carter years – I was young enough then such that I was mercifully shielded from the messes he created – and yet here we are, getting the exact same thing, but with a vengeance.
I can see how some people might have hemmed and hawed, and then pulled the lever for Obama, thinking, “Eh, what the heck; let’s have some change”, and knowing full well that it was a bit of a gamble – but those who truly bought into Obama’s smoke-and-mirrors, his phony “Heal the sick, and stop the ocean’s rise” dialectic, the idea that this man really and truly had what it took to “Fix” America – those people are all fools.
And those fools are finding out just how much pullin’ that ol’lever is gonna cost them. Personally
It never fails to amaze me.I am talking about the divisions in our country.Left/right,republican/democrat, the coasts and the heartland.Will we ever come together?In honesty I don’t think we will.Too many people are convinced of their being right,of possessing the “truth”The future bodes ill for us all.
Indeed, the fun will really begin when the press turns on Obama. My vision is that some young whippersnapper who didn’t sacrifice his back muscles to haul Obama across the finish line in the election will come walking in on his hind legs and start investigating and asking bothersome questions and calling out the grey-hairs and eye-jobs for being lazy and wrong, and then the dominoes will start to fall.
And yes, Pops in Vienna, the grand failure of the noble experiment will be blamed on the mean old Republicans. “We could have done such great things if only they hadn’t been so stubborn.” Oprah will do a show on the infuriating, mystifying, sad phenomenon of Obama’s fall. “America wasn’t ready. We didn’t deserve him.” No one will remember that he and his supporters claimed that his wisdom was greater than Republican greed.
“The Meltdown Commission”
Isn’t it curious that there is so little interest in understanding the most important world events since the World Wars and Great Depression.
Gee, you would think that somebody would ask why the key portion of the Meltdown just happened to occur at the precise moment that McCain took the lead in the Gallup polls.
You would think that somebody would ask why a slow-motion crisis that had been going on between the fall of 2007 and the fall of 2008 suddently became white hot at precisely the point in time when it was most advantageous to Obama’s election hopes.
You would think there would be at least a little bit of curiousity about why Sept / Oct 2008 saw 4 or 5 events that occur once in three lifetimes (biggest drop ever in the market in the 2 months prior to a general election, jump in market volume so large it had happened only once in the prior 60 years, biggest run on MM accounts of all time, biggest drop in oil prices of all time, first time ever to declare an alternative to a 700B bailout was the extinction of civilisation, etc.
There sure were a lot of amazing coincidences happening at one time, weren’t there? Wonder what George Soros was doing about that time. As he said in a May 2008 interview for the New York Review of Books “Well, we are close to a tipping point”. Did something make it tip or was it just a curse of random events?
But hey, as the Blackstone CEO said, it’s only a decline of 40-45% of the world’s wealth.
Easy come, easy go, right? Nothing there to be curious about.
If we stick to just one point, a 9/11 commission on the melt down, then the proceedings would make for great theater. The maximum would be to know what went wrong, the minimum would be the political howling, and the optimum would be to prevent the wide gyrations in a global economy. The good news is that we do not all agree.
Everytime I hear someone blame Bush or Republicans for this whole mess, I just remind them of Enron Hearings, Gas Price Hearings and ask them where the hearings are for this mess. They never seem to have a good answer.
#34: Yes, indeed, history will be altered by the scribes who will write innumerable books about the fall of Camelot II. I fully expect Obama to win the Noble Peace Prize either while still in office or shortly after leaving it. Look for a few movies to come out about how Obama was undermined as well.
#38: I’d like to know where the hearings are as well. Why aren’t we looking into the failures of the SEC? How did Standard & Poors happen to rate so many toxic securities as AAA?
There’s a lot of strange stuff going on and one wonders why it isn’t being investigated. People claim that Obama is very intelligent, yet he won’t release his college grades. People claim Obama is a brilliant speaker, yet he won’t speak unless he has a teleprompter. Our economy is going over a cliff but there is no outcry to install a person with the ability to come up with a viable plan.
What will happen when the first BIG international crisis pops up? China has already jabbed our navy. North Korea intends to launch a multi-stage missle. Iran will soon have enough material to make 50 nuclear bombs. Russia is feeling its oats again.
Can anyone really expect Obama or our Congress to save us?
Thomething a-mith, here. I’m seeing comments on the previous VDH post, appended to this one.
Oh, well. Plunge ahead. Yes, yes, yes! — stop the subsidies to wealthy corporate agriculture. Stop ‘em all; but let’s start with subsidizing the big corporate farming organizations. Put sugar at the head of the list.
Put the UN HQ in Jerusalem. :-)
I sympathize with the comment on ambassadors, but there’s another side of that one. I believe it was Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore who made a very salient point about the quality of ambassador Reagan sent: a long-time businessman and friend from Reagan’s days as a celebrity spokesman for General Electric.
When queried by a senior administration official on how the ambassador was working out, Mr Lee said, “Look, if you sent me an ambassador from the senior foreign service, as you do to the African countries, he wouldn’t be able to do what this man can. This man can call your president up, speak directly to him without having to explain his purpose to a staffer first, and greet the president with ‘Hey, Ron.’ That’s the ambassador I want to have between me and the American president.”
Sign me up for the petition against naming things after the living.
Before any hearings on the meltdown, Attorney General Eric Holder should be petitioned by a group of senators and representatives to open investigations immediately on Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, and Charlie Rangel also, for good measure, keeping pressure and a spotlight on them, day and night, 24/7, until they all start squirming, Holder included, and Obama, too.
At great taxpayer expense, a walking bridge was just finished linking Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa.
It is named after the former Democratic Senator and Governor of Nebraska: J. Robert Kerry. Mr. Kerry was on the 9/11 Commission and is the current President of the New School in NYC.
This bridge gets very little use. The cost in 2008 dollars was almost as much as the Golden Gate Bridge. Thankfully no one died during the construction the Kerry Bridge.
The bridge is a perfect example of government gone crazy.
The banter used to describe Washington policy gets more Orwellian by the minute, and the metaphor and simile we use to translate it is very nearly exhausting the horn.
If I hear another sales campaign promoting the new multi-trillion dollar “stimulus” package (No. 3 in the series) without noticing the verisimilitude with which it resembles those interminable viagra commercials, not to mention all the built-in class warfare-retribution-teeth-bared-revenge cycle subliminal style, well I may have to default and just start referring to it as (another) new grudge package.
This is what I’m expecting to happen:
U.S. is stunned by G-20 countries refusal to follow Keynesian lead and expand deficit spending (they’ve seen it and know it doesn’t work). Coincidentally, the U.S. administration believes China is politically motivated when discussing their $700 billion investment in U.S. treasuries.
Liberal democrats continue to unearth new targets for blame regarding the failure of BHO’s programs. If they need to go down the line all the way to Bristol Palin, they will. It’s only moderates and independent that were fooled by thoughts of a centrist Obama, left wingers want what he’s doing. When these types of moronic programs damage the U.S. standing and/or economy they assign blame to Republican or conservative ‘conspiracies.’
UN?
Defund Evict Withdraw
UNDEW!
William L,
The Rodney King approach to life.
When two ideas are diametrically opposed, at least one is wrong. Both can be wrong; but by definition, both cannot be right.
Let the sorting out begin, soon.
All good points, VDH, but entirely too civil.
When will the gritty truth of DC’s betrayal of the citizenry get bared, and by Whom?
E.g.(for just one): Rep. (MA) Bwany Fwank evicted his lover (homosexual) from his mansion when the public discovered he ran a call-boy ring from it. He then took on another lover, appointed him to run Fannie Mae, showered him with millions (now billions?) from our treasury in return for hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions for the candidate’s personal use, all the while placating the hoi-polloi with free housing at our expense — and the mobsters with free mansions.
INCREDIBLE raw, criminal abuse of power at the top echeon of the world’s greatest power ever, and outdoing Rome at it’s corresponding point of evolution as a Republic. AND NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING!
Where was caution and red flags when US was creating massive debt to fund deficit spending Lo these past 25 years..? Where was this outrage when manufacturing was shipped to third world countries…this has been building for a generation but as long as everyone got theirs it didnt seem to matter. The pressure building from social security and medicare and other unfunded liablities has not begun yet, that is the next shoe to drop. We kept expanding programs we cannot possibly pay for while alowing the infrastructure of the Nation to crumble.
We are supposed to believe that the world came to this in the last 100 days…? its intellectually insulting to propose or accept. If that is the case then we deserve to be in this situation, for we really are that stupid.
And nothing will be solved as long as we approach solutions from a religious or political perspective. Solutions do not lend themselves to being christian evangelical or democrat, they are the best option to solve a particular problem at a particular point in time regardless of their origin.
It would be funny if not so serious that USA is moving itself by default or design to unregulated socialist economic system, while China is thoughtfully planning moves to a well regulated capitalist economic system.
Item #2 is a stroke of genius. The Rs in congress should make that priority #1. They should answer every question from the media with “we need a bipartisan commission”. They should answer every question on the floor of the congress with “we need a bipartisan commission”. And they should never stop, until it happens.
3- farms-subsidies, same by us, but it not often that I can read that the american’s one are, generally the EU’s are pointed for good raisons.
I think ours were created for counter-balancing the american’s ones, though very unfair too, they killed our traditional agriculture and lots of our small farmers had to resign because of no means in front of the union, SAFER, that made impossible to offsprings for inheriting from small farmers, SAFER is devoted to the biggest farms owners, who are some kind of princes, ie Queen of England, prince of Monaco, european politicians… european GAEC (agriculture societies), that get the biggest subsidies. I know from papers that many small farmers comitted suicide because they couldn’t transmit their property to their offspring, or because the bank, Crédit Agricole, managed to make them bankrupted.
So, subsidies should be cut down everywhere
William L, (33) the key to us “coming together” is for us to collectively come to the conclusion that we do not have to come together. We are a nation of individuals. That is how this country was created. Independent enterprise is what has made us great.
Look at your statement:
“Left/right,republican/democrat, the coasts and the heartland.Will we ever come together?In honesty I don’t think we will.Too many people are convinced of their being right,of possessing the “truth”
I agree with your observation. However – I do not agree that it is a bad thing. Let me seek excellence as I define it – you do the same. You may think I am wrong, I may think you are wrong – I am fine with that. My way may work – or not. You may succeed or fail. We each enjoy the fruits of our efforts and suffer the stings of our failures and learn from them. We learn from each other’s experiences as well.
The problem happens when someone has the power to define and impose a single right way. That typically results in people who succeed (in the newly defined “wrong” way) being punished and having the fruits of their decisions and labors being taken to compensate people who fail (but in the newly defined right way).
William, the right way is individual freedom to choose one’s own right way. It works every time. Central control almost always fails.
He who would trade freedom for security eventually has neither.
You wrote “4) Our Ambassadors. Can we stop appointing the wealthy and well-connected to ambassadorships?”
Response: I am a retired diplomat of the US Dept. of State and sadly almost all career diplomats are “word nerds”, people at the 99.8+ percentile in verbal skills, but typically uncomfortable with people and numbers.
Almost all of the career diplomats are very poor actually functioning diplomatically. Rather, they are analysts who are more happy in their own offices with their doors closed.
Most of the political appointees have real skills much more related to being diplomats.
Yes, there typically are five to ten political appointee ambassadors to nice (but typically unimportant posts) who know nothing.
The careerists in the State Department and CIA already run separate foreign policies from the President (Republican definitely). Political appointees are the only influence Presidents have against these fifth columns. Congressional confirmation and purse string control should be enough to prevent big donor Peter Principle problems as long as these tools are actually used.
Dr. Hanson,
The six ideas presented here are brilliant.
Sadly, however, none of them will ever be implemented. The reason? They’re too reasonable. They make too much sense. They are presented easily and effortlessly, so that anyone, regardless of educational or cultural background, can understand and readily agree that these six suggestions are excellent.
If you were to send these six ideas to a congressional committee, they would then deem it necessary to form five or six sub-committees for each recommendation to research the viability of each proposal.
The members of the sub-committees would have to hire several research assistants per committee member, who would then do the ground work, gathering the data and statistics. They would in turn hire their own group of poll takers and telephone canvassers.
The main committees would meet monthly to review the findings of the sub-committees. The sub-committees would meet weekly to review the findings of their research assistants. The research assistants would have daily debriefings to analyze the results of the polls and telephone canvassing and to refine their queries as needed so that the responders can understand the questions being asked.
After a couple of years of this activity, that first congressional committee would take all of the research, polls, meeting notes, debriefing notes, and they would have a week-long conference, preferably in a warm, tropical locale with an airport capable of landing several dozen Gulf Streams.
They would then glance at the conclusions and findings, engage in meaningless discussions, and then render their opinion, in the form of a memo to the president, that these six suggestions are unfeasible due to the complexity of the proposals and the cost inhibitions.
HOW ABOUT REAL CHANGE FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
GOVERNMENT SCHOOL EDUCTORS HAVE MONEY ON THE BRAIN
The more the taxpayers spend, the more the teachers whine and the worse the kids do in school.
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/teacher-unions-about-money-not-results.html
Obama is the JOKE we all been waiting for.
The only change that would give me hope is a press release that begins with, “Effective at 12 noon, tomorrow, March….., 2009, I am submitted my resignation from……”
About four of these, signed by obama, obiden, oreid and opelosi.
I think that would put hillary in the office. She’s has enough self-interest, I believe, that she would very quickly behave in a bipartisan way, distance herself from the destruction and at least salvage something of our existence.
I don’t think there is anything that could give me hope now as long the same players are on the field.
It’s so tiresome to see really talented and knowledgeable trot out columns based on “what if’s” that are never going to happen, because they always require some conscious capacity for rational reasoning that this bunch has demonstraed they have no interest in.
Buy flowers and wait for instructions. If others can have orange and rose revolutions, so can we.
Don’t you know that I am supposed to work my ass off so I can pay higher taxes so someone elses kid can go to college instead of my own?
I hate to say it-if we can’t have a conservative in the White House, where’s Bill Clinton when you need him!
I have an idea, why don’t we try and figure out why we have discovered so many Democratic appointee tax cheats or worse. Is there some sort of inside joke that these dems vowed not to pay taxes in order to protest the Bush government or are they all just that corrupt in the first place?
If it’s the former, what a bunch of sophmoric fools and if it’s the latter then we have a corrupt government requiring a major house cleaning. Are there no law enforcement agencies that care to investigate? Time for another commission?
Maybe it’s that all of Obama’s trusted friends are fools or crooks.
Sophmoric fools or crooks, not many options here. Let us clean house.
This was a great premise for an article.
augustr #37: Great point.
I moved to this country during R. Nixon years. I remember how the liberals where upset with him for going to China just for a visit. Now we owe lots of money to the Chinise, when did all this happened?? Which president started using them as a bank? Eventuly we will have to pay all this money back, I hope not to soon. I have found out that I can move back to my old country and live on $600.00 a month. After I retire, I will be forced to consider it. Least I have a choice.
There is little point agreeing with a point that is wrong about everything that counts.
Previous incarnations of the Democratic Party would have difficulty recognizing this radically further left version.
http://trackacrat.com/2009/03/12/the-pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword/
The second “point” in my first sentence (above) should read “party.”
Indeed, the suggestions of Dr Hanson currently have no chance of being enacted, as he acknowledges. The extent of corruption and self service in Congress is all too apparent. It is close to impossible to unseat an elected legislator whether in Congress or in State legislatures. They accumulate huge war chests (campaign contributions?), tax free, become beholden to those who provide them with the money; and worse they see themselves as indispensible, kingly, rather than respresentatives of the people. This whole problem is exaggerated in Washington now that one party controls the Congress and the Presidency. It will be difficult if not impossible, given the foregoing, for the Supreme Court to protect God-given rights, expressed in the constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court is not immune from politization.
May I respectfully nominate #6 as the ‘comment to carve in stone even if the guy is still alive’.
And point out one obvious dynamic in this whole mess: those who Produce, can generally move farther, faster and ahead of, those who Consume. That was and is an enteral Troof about the financial types (that they self-select for keeping ahead of the Regulators), but until now, the rest of us never had much incentive to emulate it…..
Unfortunately, there will be ‘aftershocks’ once 0bama is gone if/when we survive his psychotic agenda [good riddance].
I want to believe [in my heart] that this country is strong enough to overcome even the worst/usurper/liar.
There are days when I cry for my country and then I pick myself up and tell myself, “Don’t you dare, soldier! Get up and get moving!”
Only few of us, who came from former communist countries can really understand this administration. It follow in the same steps as the former socialist/communist governments.
Kiseta50: I have the same choice, and with the so called social security retirement I can live like very well. Hope doesn’t come to that.
67. Delia: . . . “Unfortunately, there will be ‘aftershocks’ once 0bama is gone if/when we survive his psychotic agenda”
You’re not suggesting, Delia, that someone will “inherit” something from the Obama administration are you? Setting up your denials of incompetence already? My, you Republicans do start “catapulting the propaganda” early.
You go on . . . “I want to believe [in my heart] that this country is strong enough to overcome even the worst/usurper/liar.”
Me too. That’s why I voted for Obama. The damage your way did the last 8 years is immeasurable. Your denials are irrelevant, because the majority of the people know it to be true. So I suggest you conservatives start trying to win people over with ideas instead of attacks and denials.
Perhaps we require a “hypocratic oath of politics?” First do no harm.
But I’m not holding my breath…
If a man continually shouted “Fire!!” in a crowded theatre panicing its occupants, causing a stampede for the exits resulting in many injuries and deaths he would be arrested and prosecuted, but this is exactly what our mortician-in-chief, Barack Obama, has been doing with impunity ever since he took office. So far, he and his administration have proved to be fundamentally dishonest not only in their shrill and exaggerated description of our national condition but also in how they have described and characterised the remedies they intend to apply in order to save us.
Blog: paulschnee.com
The salient fact is that the “stimulus” bill and the “omnibus” bill and almost everything else coming out of the White House is a cover for the massive expansion of government moving us closer and much faster to the model of a European socialist country and he is using fear, exaggeration, and the ensuing panic to accomplish it. His extreme socialist agenda is much more dear to his heart than rescuing our economy. Understand that and you will be able to grasp why the thugocracy at ACORN, an organisation that is currently under 14 federal indictments for voter fraud in the last election, has been rewarded with around $4 billion in earmarks and why our airports have only been awarded $1 billion for improvements. Understand that and you will be able to grasp that his policies defy common sense and attempt to contradict the laws of economics let alone past fiscal experience and practice. With the help of a servile mass media he has perfected Hitler’s “Big Lie” theory into an art form. Comrade Barack Pinocchio Obama promised to reduce the federal budget deficit, but his spending proposals will literally double the entire national debt by 2014 and triple it by 2019. Now there’s CHANGE you can believe in and you had better believe in it because it is going to ruin us all. Our children’s grandchildren will not even get close to retiring this debt. His proposals will derange the relationship between the citizen and the state. His policies, such as they are, are wrong because they are unsustainable. Churchill once described socialism as standing in a bucket full of water and trying to pull it up over your head. It simply does not work. Along with political correctness, in all of its destructive forms, socialism merely succeeds in reducing us to connoisseurs of mediocrity.
Our ship of state was taking on water long before Comrade Obama took office and so he likes to remind us that he inherited a mess beyond all imagining and for which, of course, he is not responsible. However, he fails to point out that the catalyst of our current woes, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, was started by the Clinton administration when it imposed affirmative action standards on lending practices. For this, we have to thank Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and the woebegone Harry Reid. These are the ones Obama can thank for his inheritance. Frankly, they should all be in jail. Using Bush as a scapegoat is getting boring particularly when federal revenues actually reached all-time highs during his tenure. Anyone for tax cuts?! Anyone? Anyone at all?
During the election Joe Biden, our current vice-windbag-in-chief, told us that it was patriotic for us to pay more in taxes. One hopes that he did not come to this conclusion without the benefit of alcohol. Come to think of it, one hopes he didn’t get to look the way he does without the benefit of alcohol either. Anyway, here’s some news for you Joe, I’ve always paid my taxes but I would feel just as proud and just as patriotic for half the money.
In a financial debacle the ship of state requires not an inexperienced midshipman and marxist idealogue at the helm, but a captain of war. We don’t have one. Even FDR, for all of his terrible miscalculations, wanted to save capitalism. Comrade Obama wants to destroy it. During the election and since the inauguration, global investors have been assessing Obama’s agenda and the signals he has been telegraphing from atop his poop deck. Each new ridiculous cabinet appointment, each speech, each new proposal, each new political stunt in a career based on political stunts, has been digested to determine whether he would fulfill his solemn campaign promise to govern as a bipartisan moderate or assume the role of a big-government, far left radical and extremist. Well, the verdict is now in. We are suffering from the Obama Effect. The Dow has plunged to 6500 points evaporating over 30% in total market wealth. To be sure, the stock market is not the “economy” but it is its barometer. Since Obama won the election the barometer’s needle has been spinning out of control as it witnessed the worst January in history and the worst February since 1933, that’s 76 years for Timothy Geithner who seems to have trouble with his calculations.
Clearly Obama is making a bad situation much worse. The recession that started in 2007, the financial shocks, and the explosion of the housing bubble, have all been taken into consideration for some time now. The stock market, by its very nature, looks forwards not backwards. Its performance is based on its assessment of where the economy is going. The Dow is more concerned with what lies in the future under Comrade Obama than with what happened under President Bush. It understands when a politician is far more interested in the redistribution of wealth than in the creation of it. Now, the stock market is not perfect but it tends to be the most immediate barometer of current and future economic realities. It is becoming more and more clear that Obama himself is inflicting new wounds upon the national and global economies for he has set upon the most radical upheaval of the relationship between government and the economy in the history of any democracy and is responsible for the first crisis of globalisation. Worse still, he uses beguiling rhetoric to dupe his audience and to camouflage the enormous disparity between what he says and the aspirations ostensibly entertained. In short, there is a complete disconnect between his words and his deeds. He is an articulate incompetent. He is a liar, a fake, an imposter, and the most egregious of mountebanks.
One is left with the ardent hope that some day very soon, after having replaced the bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office for one of Vladimir Lenin and while wandering along a corridor absorbed in reading his favorite book, “Das Capital”, for the twentieth time, Obama will fall down one of the White House elevator shafts never to be seen or heard of again. Meanwhile, we are left with the sinking realisation that Comrade Obama, commissar Biden, the entire cabinet and its apparatchiks, are all noxious toads perched upon the nostrils of the great American eagle. If left unchecked, during the next two years, they will do to this great country what it took the Roman Empire a hundred years of enjoyable decadence to accomplish. That should please George Soros, David Geffen, the divine Oprah, and other members of the fulsome glitterati, but I suspect Warren Buffett, now poorer by about $25 billion, is having second thoughts. Well, you can’t pick winners all the time, Warren, but you’ve still got over $40 billion left! Don’t blow it on supporting Comrade Obama in 2012. By that time he will have gone down as the worst president we have ever had if, in the meantime and as a result of his policies, he doesn’t go down as the last one.
““The Meltdown Commission”
Gee, you would think that somebody would ask why the key portion of the Meltdown just happened to occur at the precise moment that McCain took the lead in the Gallup polls.
You would think that somebody would ask why a slow-motion crisis that had been going on between the fall of 2007 and the fall of 2008 suddently became white hot at precisely the point in time when it was most advantageous to Obama’s election hopes.”
The white hot pustule burst when the US government decided not to bail out Lehman Brothers. Free market traders gave the process a no confidence vote and corporate paper went to 10+% and US Treasuries to near 0% because bond traders deemed the relative safety to be so, and money flowed accordingly. When panic rules the roost, there is no way to objectively evaluate and that’s what happened. Why the Treasury Secretary, Bernanke, and the Bush admin in total went in this direction, while bailing out AIG, I do not know. Perhaps they felt “fiscally conservative” at that moment and decided to save money, but as they saw, if any one piece of the jigsaw puzzle were to fail chaotically, the whole construct might topple. The morning of the 15th Sept, McCain indicated he thought the economy looked pretty good, that fundamentals were strong. That afternoon, after the Lehman freefall, he looked like an idiot. Assign blame where you will, but it was within the power of a Republican administration to not embarrass and fillet the Republican candidate for president and they did not do it. I don’t think they understood the gravity and the financial markets and investors large and small made them pay. If you wonder why there is a fetish to save AIG now through costly multiple bailouts, it is exactly that panic scenario, due to what AIG’s Financial Unit has insured. AIG is currently a “second FDIC” and if it goes under, so many banks would fail, that the FDIC would have to make good on maybe $50 trillion of deposits, essentially printing money far in excess of any currently projected stimulous or bailouts. I don’t know of any conservative or liberal who might want to see that scenario play out. Irrationality and panic are very dangerous things to a democratic society. As for letting things fail, this scenario, is exactly why some entities are just too large to fail. Bankruptcy works well when Joe’s muffler shop goes under, but not with super-size corporations. One possibility is organized bankruptcy, which will probably be necessary for GM or Chrysler. Why are they bailing out these two? Because they are trying to drag out things to a more economically stable moment when a highly organized bankruptcy might make sense, and there is a further advantage here, at least the two auto companies have sizable tangible assets easier to evaluate. A report on Lehman’s bankruptcy noted that since it was a normal bankruptcy, on a normal time frame using a small over worked staff, as much as $50 billion just evaporated from the assets, because they were non-physical assets, sold on a rush basis, by people who were good, but not the best experts. Is it socialist to organize things better so that better value can be obtained? Instead of ranting on Obama (using “childe”, “phony”, “liar”, “psychotic”, “islamic”, “shallow”, “teenage”, “deceptive”) like a terrible two, perhaps dial back the anger, let a few months go by, and see where the nation is as a whole. I swear, if you treated next door neighbors, like you write comments on this blog, most of you would be locked up locally on a minimum of disorderly conduct.
The democrat party is an ongoing criminal enterprise aided and abetted by the main stream media.
VDH,
How true it is… “Can’t We All Agree” that without the soothing salve of sarcasm during these trying times we’d all go stark raving mad? So, how ’bout:
1) Move the UN to Bagdad. Let those worthless deadbeat diplomats see for themselves a country remaking itself after years of living under a tyrannical regime. In lieu of wasting American dollars supporting their lavish lifestyle in NYC, we could promise to provide the Dips’ security in Iraq. And nothing more.
2) Do No Harm. Take a therapeutic break from intervening in this financial “crisis” and reassess the situation. Gotta’ make sure the treatment is not worse than the disease. After all, the real patient here has been thoroughly bled and is now dangerously anemic. Might be time to remove the leeches and let him recover a bit. Remember, you can’t get blood from a stone dead patient.
Feel better yet?
one of my own:
“Setting up your denials of incompetence already?”
No idea what you mean by this.
“So I suggest you conservatives start trying to win people over with ideas instead of attacks and denials.”
Ideas instead of attacks? I see your post is full of them. You Obama supporters need to grow up and get used to the IDEA that all presidents and their policies come under attack. That’s how democracy works. The attacks on Bush the last 8 years were over the top in the level of vitriol, but were otherwise par for the course in American politics. Obama won the election in large part because Republican mistakes were extolled constantly in the media and on blogs. Now that he’s president, don’t expect Obama to be treated any differently. If he can’t take the heat, he should get out of the kitchen.
Re: No. 6
A sly move, VDH! Most morons aren’t aware that the President and congress have a very limited window to complete legislation. After the first year, it gets increasingly difficult to affect real change in any branch of government. How convenient that this 100 days off would come at the beginning of Obama’s presidency! Shrewd.
71. Paul Schnee:
You are the only one on this page that used the term “incompetent”; Has this word been forbidden by the teleprompter jesus? I’ve been saying he is incompetent for months. Are we in violation?
# 69 One of my own
The case against Obama is not so much against his ideology any more, it is the growing sense among the general populace, that Obama is way over his head, and quite frankly, is incompetent to be President. Just look at the Pew and Rasmussen polls. You cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Old adage, but apropos.
No worries, people, our problems will be solved – King Nothing will be on Leno tonight! Big problems require bold action, and nothing says “action” like an appearance on a crappy late night TV show. My friends and I are going to play a drinking game – everytime the Czar of Narcissism says “uh” and looks up with that smell-the-fart stare of his, you drink! We should all be blasted by the first commercial break.
Remember in December when they wanted the foul BushChimpHitler to step aside and allow the O to takeover?
Ready To Lead!!!
My Ass
Its Tue. Mar. 17 and in taking the measure of leftist punditry today, I come across Dana Milbanks “Obamas Outrage Gap” collumn, to see that the left is looking over here, looking over there, irritatedly readjusting themselves in their chairs, and courageously commentting on the faux pas of 0′bzzz’es statements concerning the “nothing we can do about it”, [these] “bonus payments to AIG exec” (clowns) as if it’s some infraction of etiquette at some unbearable hear-a-pin-drop tea party.
Gee, what an understatement.
The ringmasters of the Main Stream Media circus are getting unhappy because the owners of the circus are getting unhappy. They want to line their pockets as much as any other person. I expect the clowns and monkeys of the MSM circus to say whatever their ringmasters tell them to say, and if it is go on the attack against Obama for the sake of profit, that is what will happen. The “it is all the fault of Bush” is wearing really thin as Obama keeps doing that which even his worshipers know will only make the economic situation worse, and the economic situation is rapidly getting worse indeed.
Few seem to realize just what the “cap and trade” madness is actually going to cost, and with only huge negative returns. When it actually hits the pocketbooks of all, even the liberals will be wondering why they thought the way they did, were that possible.
I think the Admin and congress have severely miscalculated.
This is the most non partisan thing I have ever seen: Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all have their hard earned money in 401K retirement portfolios, and to see their livelihoods washed away like this, aren’t going to be able to separate what they wanted (from democrats in power, change, etc) from what they realize has been done to them for long, no matter how this discrepancy is (not) represented in any poll(s).
In all the futuristic movies, the media always supports the despotic regime. Life imitates art.
Why didn’t all the Jews leave Germany in the late 30′s as Jews were fired from government jobs, university positions, one profession after the next?
It was because, like most of us here, they thought things would change for the better. They thought people would realize how mad Hitler was. They thought their fellow Germans were intelligent enough to realize that the constant slander was ridiculous. They couldn’t comprehend that so many friends and neighbors would believe the propaganda and be intimidated into submission.
As the community organizer becomes the national-organizer-in-chief, we await the product of his real if hidden skill.