The president says that he’s not a miracle worker. I guess Mark Morford didn’t get the memo.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
An Amazing Admission
From Tom Friedman:
So to recap: the Bush team kept us safe from an implacable foe by using interrogation methods which the American public approved of and by fighting (often against the admonitions of Friedman and his colleagues) and largely prevailing in Iraq. The latter effort may deal a death blow to Al Qaeda which one supposes made it a very worthwhile endeavor. Well, yes, Friedman awards Obama the prize for “doing [his] best” in a war largely waged by his reviled predecessor – who is rarely praised for doing his best, but we get the point.
It must be some other George W. Bush who was the worst foreign policy president in history – because the 43rd president, by Friedman’s accounting, got some very big things right, despite ferocious odds. (One of President Bush’s librarians might want to clip this one out for the “Bush Legacy Inadvertently Revived By Obama” file.)
As time goes on, and particularly now that the Dems own the Senate, it’s going to get harder and harder for them to continue to blame everything on Bush.
GM Thoughts
From Mitt Romney:
GM’s new proposal, clearly produced under government duress, is worse than virtually any of the alternatives. It would give GM to the UAW and the U.S. government and make taxpayers pick up the bills. Of course, billions more from government would be drawn down right away. But the UAW could also depend on the Obama administration to keep up the subsidy for years and years to come. Government and Union co-ownership: It would be as ineffective as it is un-American.
The right course for GM is an out-of-court restructuring or bankruptcy. Either would keep the company in business and rid it of burdensome costs, work rules and obligations. The government could backstop the post-restructuring debt, helping the company get on its feet. GM must not fail: If its costs are brought in line with its competition, it can ultimately thrive and grow jobs. What is proposed is even worse than bankruptcy—it would make GM the living dead.
I was never a big Romney fan, but he’s looking pretty damned good right now.
What They Said
National Review on Benedict Arlen:
Arlen Specter belongs to a type familiar to Congress: the time-serving hack devoid of any principle save arrogance. He has spent three decades in the Senate but is associated with no great cause, no prescient warning, no landmark legislation. Yet he imagines that the Senate needs his wisdom and judgment for a sixth term. He joined the Republican party out of expediency in the 1960s, and leaves it out of expediency this week.
Those who attribute his defection to the rise of social conservatism are deluding themselves. It is not as though he has been a reliable vote for any other type of conservatism. He has stood apart from the mainstream of his party on welfare reform, trade, taxes, affirmative action, judicial appointments, tort reform, and national-security law. The issue that finally caused an irreparable breach with Republicans was the stimulus bill. Some Republicans are blaming Pat Toomey for pushing Specter out of the party by challenging him from the Right. But it is not Toomey’s fault that Specter is out of step with Pennsylvania Republicans. Whatever they think of the prudence of his challenge at the time he announced it, conservatives should be rooting for Toomey now.
It’s worth noting that the notion that the Republican Party has become more socially conservative is a myth. It was actually much more so in the early eighties (one of the reasons that I wasn’t then, and have never been, a Republican). As a commenter at Instapundit points out, it just seems that it’s more socially conservative today because, with its utter abandonment of fiscal conservativism in the Bush years, the social conservatism is the main distinguishing feature from the Democrats.
[Update early afternoon]
Dan Riehl has some more thoughts:
Big picture, Specter leaving is a significant opportunity, but only if the GOP seizes upon it as a pivot point to genuinely become the party of limited government, reduced spending and low taxes. As for social conservatism, which started this discussion here, morphing into a more democratic-based discussion of a civil society based upon values without Federal legislation is a sound approach that, hopefully, social cons can still embrace. It really is more about values, than just God, in the public square, any way. As for Specter (D) – is being the Party of a 3-plus trillion dollar Federal budget really a good thing? I’m unconvinced.
If the Republicans could rebrand themselves as a federalist party, and a true one, not just fair-weather federalists, I might become one.
One Hundred Days
One hundred screwups. And here’s a pretty serious one:
The feds will ask the banks to increase their tangible equity by converting preferred shares to common stock, including the taxpayers’ preferred shares that were purchased with TARP funds. The WSJ editorial board called this a “backdoor nationalization.” That’s exactly what it is. It’s also a nationalization that increases taxpayer exposure to bank losses without recapitalizing the banks, without providing an exit strategy, and without building in effective safeguards against politically directed lending.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Look Who’s Teaching
Is it any wonder that our children are growing up so ignorant, when this kind of thing isn’t a rarity, but probably typical? A history teacher who thinks that George Washington wrote the Bill of Rights?
I guess we should be thankful that he knows that George Washington even existed. This is why people home school.
I am also awed by Cam’s ability to maintain his civility and politeness with this ignoramus.
I Am Befuddled
As Moneyrunner notes, there’s a very good question behind the latest Charlie Foxtrot by the administration.
Why in the world were they willing to create a huge carbon footprint for an ad campaign that consisted (apparently) of having Air Force One flying past the Statue of Liberty? Particularly when it could have been photoshopped for a tiny fraction of the cost? At least there was a hypocritical political excuse for that last carbon indulgence. It reminds one of the notion of saving a “Hundred Million Dollars” from a multi-trillion deficit.
But the bigger question, at least to me, is: why did whoever came up with this idiocy decide that the public shouldn’t be informed about it ahead of time, and why were instructions given to that effect to local officials? Why was it to be kept secret, particularly given that it’s hard to keep secret a 747 dressed as Air Force One flying down the Hudson, particularly being tailed by a military fighter?
If they had informed the public, some who hadn’t been informed would have still panicked, but it would have at least reduced the numbers of people running though the streets terrified and abandoning high rises in lower Manhattan. Why make it a secret? What was the rationale?
Most of the Obama administration screwups have an explanation, usually attributable to a grab for increased government power, but this one is a complete mystery. And it’s possible that it can simply be attributed to abject stupidity, but it’s hard to do so without at least an attempt of an explanation, in this case.
This is not the end of this story. Or at least I hope not.
[Update, late evening]
They knew it would cause panic, but did it anyway?
Is there an explanation for this insanity? I start to wonder…
[Evening update]
Commenter Stephen den Beste (who I would like to thank for his early contributions to the blogosphere, and apologize for any contributions of mine that may have helped drive him from it) has the only plausible explanation so far:
If people had been told, they might have objected and prevented it.
That fits with the overall theme of Obama wanting what he wants, and not accepting anything that gets in the way of his getting what he wants.
I’d sure like to think that there’s another and better explanation, but I’m still awaiting one.
“Card Check”
Milner says the men demanded that he erase his recording, and one of them took his camera, while Cerbo claims, in the Post’s words, that he “offered to erase his tape because he hadn’t been invited to the event.” No one disputes that Milner was outnumbered, or that it was he who called 911.
If this is what happens to a man at a public event, what do you expect a woman to do when these guys show up at her house with a card to sign?
I’ll be curious to see whether Benedict Arlen flips on this issue.
Gaia Worship
Some thoughts on the deification of nature.
Frankly, I’m with Iowahawk: Earth Day is the day on which we honor the ultimate MILF — Mother Earth. And people need to remember that we live not just on a planet, but in a solar system.
“Never Again”
So “never again” means that we learn from others how to forgive and forget, and ultimately live happily with one another. But that is not what “never again” means, at least for the generation of the Holocaust and for most of those who followed. For them, “never again” means that we will destroy the next would-be Fuhrer. In his entire speech, Obama never once mentions that the United States led a coalition of free peoples against Germany, Italy and Japan, nor does he ever discuss the obligation of sacrifice to prevent a recurrence. Indeed, his examples suggest that he doesn’t grasp the full dimensions of the struggle against evil. Northern Ireland is a totally inappropriate example (nothing remotely approaching a Holocaust took place there), the relations between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi are hardly characterized by forgiveness, even though the president of Burundi is striving mightily to achieve a peaceful modus vivendi, and as for Darfur, well, despite the tens of thousands who demonstrated on the Mall, nobody has done much of anything to stop the Khartoum regime from slaughtering the peoples of the south.
In the history of modern times, the United States has done more than anyone else, perhaps more than the rest of the world combined, to defeat evil, and we are still doing it. Yet Obama says that we must “learn from others” how to move on, forgive and forget, and live happily ever after. But these are just words, they are not policies, or even actions. And the meanings he gives to his words show that he has no real intention of doing anything to thwart evil, any more than he had any concrete actions to propose to punish North Korea.
Significantly, Barack Obama is a lot tougher on his domestic American opponents than on tyrants who threaten our values and America itself. He tells the Republicans that they’d better stop listening to Rush Limbaugh, but he doesn’t criticize Palestinians who raise their children to hate the Jews. He bows to the Saudi monarch, but humiliates the prime minister of Great Britain. He expresses astonishment that anyone can worry about a national security threat from Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela, even as Chavez solidifies an alliance with Iran that brings plane loads of terror masters, weapons and explosives into our hemisphere from Tehran via Damascus, fuels terrorists and narcotics traffic, and offers military facilities to Russian warships and aircraft. He is seemingly unconcerned by radical Islam and a resurgent Communism in Latin America, even as his Department of Homeland Security fires a warning shot at veterans–the best of America–returning from the Middle East. He seeks warm relations with Iran and Syria–who are up to their necks in American blood–while warning Israel of dire consequences if she should attempt to preempt a threatened Iranian nuclear attack.
Change!