If the Republicans were on the ball, and had the money in the bank, they should look up the parents of the kids who are about to get kicked out of the school that the president’s kids are attending as a result of the Omnibus Bill, and have them plead for a veto of it in front of the camera. Then run the ads.
[Update late evening]
For those who don’t want to follow all the links in the linked article, here is the relevant one.
Now this is a gaffe (i.e., when a politician/bureaucrat accidentally tells the truth):
In an extraordinary blunder, the usually-guarded Sir Gus said no-one in the U.S. Treasury department was answering telephone calls.
He said it meant the Government was finding it ‘unbelievably difficult’ to hold discussions ahead of the meeting of world leaders in London.
Even though the world was in the grip of the worst economic crisis in decades – top of the G20 agenda – Number 10 was having trouble getting in touch with key personnel, said the Cabinet Secretary.
‘There is nobody there,’ he told a civil service conference in Gateshead.
‘You cannot believe how difficult it is.’
No worries. It’s all part of that new, smart diplomacy that we were promised by the Obama campaign.
The Omnibus Spending Bill has passed.
I sure hope that people remember this in the fall of 2010.
Some meditations on mugshots. Of course, without them, one of the most popular features of Iowahawk’s web site would disappear.
Apparently, GM has been underwriting Ken Burns’ documentaries for years. It is no longer doing so.
I supposed the gut response is a big “Duhhhh…” The company is going broke, and can’t afford it, right?
Well, maybe. This seems to me akin to the stupid, stupid demagoguery about corporate jets (from people who ride them themselves at taxpayer expense).
Look, is the company in business, or is it out of business? If it’s in business, it has a CEO with great responsibilities, and only so many hours in a day, and it doesn’t make sense for him to waste time with TSA and sitting in Dallas for layovers (or stupider still, driving from Detroit), despite how bad it appears when he shows up in Washington with his hand out.
And if it’s in business, it is presumably (at least theoretically, even if it looks more like a finance company, pension and health-care provider that just does it on the side) in the business of manufacturing and selling cars. In order to sell cars, one has to market them. One of the traditional ways one does this is by sponsorships, to provide brand recognition.
Now one can argue that perhaps this is an ineffective form of marketing, particularly for a company that has been around as long as General Motors, but one could have argued that during boom times as well. Unless it was purely viewed as philanthropic (in which case they certainly should cut back, since they have no available funds for pure do-goodery), it was presumably previously justified as part of their marketing budget. If it was justified then, why wouldn’t it be now, when marketing is more critical than ever? The problem with marketing, as the old saw on Madison Avenue goes, is that only half of it is effective, but no one knows which half.
My question is, does this mean that, after all these years, some analyst did an analysis and said, “Hey guys, it turns out that the Ken Burns stuff doesn’t sell cars! Sorry I didn’t let you know twenty years ago — I could have saved the company a lot of money.” Or is it just one more sign that the company is bankrupt, but won’t admit it?
Why can’t I get fun emails like this one? I particularly liked the berating of the evil “CAPITOLISM.” I’m always a little surprised when I hear conservative bloggers talk about the vitriol in their email, because I just don’t see it.
I suppose that it’s partly, or largely because I have a comments section where unhappy customers can vent (and demand their money back). But even there, I rarely get this kind of stuff, other than from Elifritz.
Here’s a blog that tracks businesses closing in Saginaw, thirty miles up the road.
Now here you have functional commercial real estate, at bargain prices, close to scenery and abundant recreation just to the north, and a work force looking for work. Why aren’t businesses flocking there from other parts of the country?
Might the problem be fifty miles to the southwest, in Lansing? The state is spending a lot of Michigan taxpayers’ money trying to attract them — I’ve seen the television ads. What the ads don’t say is that in order to pay for the ads, it’s got high taxes, particularly on businesses, and that it’s not a right-to-work state. But Jennifer and the legislature will no doubt continue to point fingers everywhere else.
Thoughts on the decrepit state of the teaching “profession.” Like the commentator, I find the notion of a “graphic novel” of the teachings of the terrorist sadly ironic. As one commenter notes, in a sane world, holding a teaching certificate would bar you from the classroom. And there would be no federal support for colleges of “education.”
I have pretty close to zero interest in and, prior to the current movie hype, zero knowledge of The Watchmen. But for those less apathetic than me, WIll Collier has a review. He’s not impressed.
[Early afternoon update]
Heh.
Jeff Goldstein, on how he learned to stop worrying and love the f-bomb:
if, as I’ve argued, political realism as a strategy is doomed — not because we can’t be more careful with our words, but rather because it is not always rhetorically effective to do so, nor does such care prevent us from being misrepresented, no matter how precise we try to be — what is the alternative? As many pundits will patiently explain to you, ideological purity and idealism doesn’t win elections, so if not pragmatism, what?
To which I reply, pragmatism is fine. But why not use our idealism pragmatically — which is to say, why not make it our strategy to use idealism as our cudgel against the media and the left in such a way that their tactic of misrepresentation and outrage no longer pays dividends? Why not make it our strategy to destroy their tactics — and in so doing, reaffirm the very principles at the heart of classical liberalism?
The fact of the matter is, for all of Limbaugh’s provocation, his statement, having been carefully and purposely misrepresented by the media as a way to demonize him and drive a divide between conservatives and more moderates within the party, has had the rather happy effect of getting us talking and arguing about what we as a movement should do next. And it was precisely his choice of language that baited the press and the left (and, more frightening even, the White House) to engage him, and to force the ideas of conservatism center stage.
We have to continue to fight to take back the media, and the language, regardless of the demagogues, semioticians and word twisters.
[Tuesday morning update]
More lies about Limbaugh. This is as stupid as Harry Reid’s continuing moronic accusations that he disrespected the troops. Kaus offers some advice, which they’ll be too stupid to take:
The whole Begala-Carville coordinated campaign against Limbaugh seems misguided when Obama is supposed to be leading the nation out of crisis (see Warren Buffett’s comments, below). Quite apart from whether it’s a good idea to take one of your smarter opponents and build him up, the campaign seems petty, partisan and poll-driven — not designed to produce any kind of national pulling-together. If Begala weren’t around I’d suspect Chris Lehane of thinking it up.
I too am shocked, shocked, that when Warren Buffet is critical of The One, suddenly no one in the media is interested.