This was utterly predictable, and in fact, smart people predicted it. Of course, to be fair, it was Pelosi and Reid’s “stimulus,” as well. But at least it looks like it did stimulate the electorate to replace them with someone competent, though we’re stuck with Obama for another two years.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
The Democrats’ Trained Clown
…trotted out to distract from Obama’s DoJ scandal.
Yes, it seems to have gotten about ten times the coverage, so if that was the goal, mission accomplished.
The Pied Piper
Obama may be an ephebe, an utter novice at the post of command, but it must be admitted that he is a consummate sorcerer who was able to seduce and enchant multitudes, especially the horde of grown-up children so ready and eager to be piped to. Unlike the Pied Piper, however, he did not work alone but arrived on the scene surrounded by a retinue of plutocrats, political mandarins, and clever enablers, and of course by the usual train of cavillers, pettifoggers, sybarites, and janissaries, that is, journalists, feminists, intellectuals and academics. This only facilitated his task which he would not have been capable of accomplishing on his own.
Nonetheless, he had the magic, the gift of bewitchment, and no hesitation in using it. It wasn’t long before he was able to spellbind a vast swarm of believers with the promise of auroral benefictions (if I may coin a term). The tune was irresistible but very few heard the infrasonic lyrics, which actually belied the melody. These poor dupes followed him willingly into the new dawn of mellifluous beginnings, only to find the bright morning of the future suddenly changed into the grim presentiment of the coming debacle. This is what inevitably happens when one invests uncritically in fairy tales and surrenders one’s intelligence and autonomy to the blandishments of a false messiah.
Read all.
What Took So Long?
CNN has finally fired Jon Klein. I hope that his successor is an improvement (hard to see how it could be worse). Who in their right mind would want to watch a show with Elliot Spitzer (or as Jim Garaghty calls it, Client Number Nine At Eight)? It sure would be nice to have two cable news channels that don’t suck.
[Update a while later]
Wow, coincidence? Jeff Zucker is out at NBC, too. I wonder if he’s been protecting Olbermann and Ed Schultz?
The Tax Issue
Broadly speaking, the Right believes that your stuff is yours. The Left believes your stuff doesn’t really become your stuff until the government says it is. So the Right sees taxes as a way to pay for necessary government services. The Left sees taxes as an instrument of social control and redistributive justice.
Because it’s what Marxists do. And Barack Obama is a perfect example, when in the debates he said that he’d raise capital gains tax rates, even if it resulted in reduced revenue, out of “fairness.”
Slamming Shut The Open Door
…of “diplomacy“:
Ahmadinejad understands perfectly well that confronting Iran is out of sync with the “new era of engagement” that is the trademark of Obama’s foreign policy. “Engagement” looks like this: The president of the United States keeps talking about “extended hands” and “open doors,” and the president of Iran keeps building nuclear weapons. As recently as September 19, even Secretary Hillary Clinton told Christiane Amanpour, “We’ve said to the Iranians all along…we still remain open to diplomacy. But it’s been very clear that the Iranians don’t want to engage with us.”
Ahmadinejad, therefore, took the opportunity provided by the U.N. to slam the door once more in President Obama’s face. While he lectured about the “lust for capital and domination” and “the egotist and the greedy,” the American U.N. delegation sat stoically in their seats. They had instructions to tough it out until Ahmadinejad really got offensive — though what would count as sufficiently offensive was never publicly announced.
The tripwire turned out to be Ahamdinejad’s suggestion that 9/11 was an inside job. “The U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grip on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.” With that, the Obama representatives finally hauled themselves out of their seats and put engagement temporarily on hold.
Not for long, though. These fools will soon be knocking at the door again.
[Update a while later]
Is Israel already starting to attack Iran?
The Current State Of Play On The Hill
Alan Boyle has a good description of the battle over NASA’s future this morning.
Institute For Liberty In Space
Few people, at least in the space community, had heard of the Institute for Liberty prior to their press conference earlier this week, in which the organization’s president, Andrew Langer, lambasted the House NASA authorization bill as a “travesty,” and called out space subcommittee Representatives Gabrielle Giffords and Alan Grayson by name as some of the chief perps behind it. I decided to see what this was all about, and interviewed Andrew earlier this week. Continue reading Institute For Liberty In Space
Old Ideas In A New Package
Why Obama is losing support — it’s the arrogance and condescension, stupid:
By now it should be clear that the only new idea Obama introduced into American politics was the idea of Obama: Obama the voice of a new generation, Obama the brilliant technocrat, Obama the postracial leader.
The reality of Obama has been quite the opposite. The fresh-faced young leader has governed according to stale old ideas. The dazzling intellect has proved inadequate to basic managerial challenges. We haven’t even been able to enjoy the achievement of having elected a black president, because so many of Obama’s supporters (though not Obama himself, to his credit) won’t shut up about how every criticism of the president and his policies is “racist.”
Yet in America’s current predicament, there is ample reason for optimism. We’d like to think that the failure of Obama’s policies will discredit the bad economic ideas on which they’re based, that his incompetence will discredit the notion that the cognitive elite should run the lives of everyone else, and that the phony charges of racism will discredit the long-outdated assumption of white guilt, at last bringing America close to the ideal of a colorblind society.
I’m less optimistic. There’s a reason that the left’s ideas are the oldest ones in the world — they have a superficial appeal to people who don’t give them much thought, and so we have to suffer repeatedly from their failed social experiments, and relearn the lessons every few generations.
[Update a few minutes later]
When you’ve lost Shephard Fairey…well, I’m not sure who you’ve lost, but he has. On the other hand, he seems to remain in denial:
“To say I feel disappointment is within the context that I know he’s very intelligent, very capable, very compassionate,” Fairey said. “I think he has the tools, and he does not trust his instincts in how to apply them.”
What a fool. And a tool.
[Update a while later]
An Obama primary challenge?
Its always bad political juju to have a primary challenge against an unpopular incumbent, particularly when the unpopularity is as a result of policies, but it would be particularly disastrous for the Donkeys in 2012, because the blacks would probably stay home in the fall if he were defeated in the primary.
Good Luck With That
Paul Ryan attempts to have an adult conversation with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
She’s very annoying to listen to — she always sounds like she’s talking with a mouthful of marbles.