Barack’s teleprompter is very demanding
Category Archives: Political Commentary
It Must Have Been A Real Emergency
As I noted yesterday, Speaker Pelosi’s partisan lies were a clear sign to members on both sides of the aisle that she didn’t take this crisis seriously. Or, to be fair, the alternative explanation: that she is an abject moron (a proposition for which abundant evidence is available from over the years). Now here is more evidence of at least the former notion:
…considering that only a dozen votes needed to switch in order to provide a different outcome, and 95 Democrats in the House voted against it, critics are now wondering why couldn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have assured a different outcome considering how important she said its passage was?
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told me yesterday that he felt no pressure at all to vote for the bill.
Some leader.
In other words, it had nothing to do with saving the financial markets. It was for raw partisan advantage. The tragic and infuriating thing is that, even though Congress has an even lower rating than George Bush (and if it’s possible for an approval rating to go negative, it probably did so after yesterday’s clown show), many of these creatures will probably be reelected, due both to gerrymandered districts, and the unfortunate psychological notion that people hate Congress, but unaccountably think that their own Congressperson is great.
What Went Wrong
Tom Sowell explains, as only he can:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the idea this is a failure of free markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.
Nothing about this makes me more angry than the continued lies by the collectivists that this was a failure of the free market.
Please, Get Well
And live a thousand years.
Only P.J. O’Rourke could write an hilarious column about his cancer diagnosis:
Why can’t death — if we must have it — be always glorious, as in “The Iliad”? Of course death continues to be so, sometimes, with heroes in Fallouja and Kandahar. But nowadays, death more often comes drooling on the toilet seat in the nursing home, or bleeding under the crushed roof of a teen-driven SUV, or breathless in a deluxe hotel suite filled with empty drug bottles and a minor public figure whose celebrity expiration date has passed.
I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps that slogan can be sewn in needlepoint around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.
Furthermore, I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy’s. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass … well, I’ll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung?
I don’t believe in God, but it he’s there, please bless him.
The “Obama Effect”
I think that this isn’t going to be an isolated case:
My husband’s business is a canary in the coalmine. When tax policies are favorable to business, he hires more guys, buys more goods, etc. When he is taxed more heavily, he fires people, doesn’t buy anything new, etc. Well, duh. So, at the mere thought of a President Obama, he has paid off his debt, canceled new spending, and jotted a list of whom to “let go.”
The first of the guys will get the news tomorrow. And these are not minimum-wage earners. These are “rich” guys, making between $200,000 and $250,000 a year.
My husband will make sure that we’re okay, money-wise, but he won’t give himself a paycheck that will just be sent to Washington. He’ll make sure that he’s not in “rich guy” tax territory. So, he will not spend his money, not show a profit, and scale his workforce down to the bare minimum.
Multiply this scenario across the country and you’ll see the Obama effect: unemployment, recession, etc. No business owner will vote for this man, but many a “middle-class worker” will vote himself out of a job. Sad the Republican can’t articulate this.
Unfortunately, the Republicans nominated the wrong candidate for that. Maybe the vice-presidential nominee can.
Pelosi Question
Is she (and Harry Reid) so stupid and partisan that she imagines that after that press conference last night, that she opened up by blaming George Bush and the Republicans for the mess, that she was going to get bi-partisan support for the bailout today?
That was a rhetorical question, of course.
[Update about 3:25 PM EDT]
Note that I didn’t post this with the knowledge that the bill would fail, or that it would fail for exactly that reason. It was just a thought that I had last night while listening to her presser that I didn’t get around to blogging until this afternoon. But only an idiot would have thought that this wouldn’t have a negative effect on the proceedings. That’s our Nancy, third in line for the presidency.
[Update late afternoon]
Roger Kimball explains how we got here, and who caused it. Don’t expect to hear it from CBSNBCABCCNN. Or NYT.
[Evening update]
David Bernstein has further thoughts:
Speaker Pelosi’s speech before the House today was remarkable, but not in a good way. She was trying to round up votes for a bailout package that shes claims to believe is essential for the stability of the American economy. She can’t, and doesn’t want to, pass the bill without a substantial number of Republican votes. So what does she do? You would think she would say, “let’s pass this emergency measure now, in the best interests of the country, and talk about who is to blame later.” Instead, Pelosi began her speech with a highly partisan tirade against “Bush” and “Republican” economic policies, which were allegedly to blame for this situation. She focused on an attack on the growth of federal deficits, which clearly are at best tangential to the current crisis. That, to me, is the sort of irresponsible thing you do when (a) you’re not claiming there is a vast emergency; and (b) you are in the minority, and not claiming to exercise leadership. [Commenters point out that Republican Housemember were acting equally irresponsibly to the extent they rose to Pelosi’s bait and voted against the bailout out of pique at Pelosi. True. But the Speaker of the House is a leader, not just a random member of the House, and her actions inevitably and justifiably get more scrutiny than those of her colleagues.]
That’s right. Of course, the problem is that she doesn’t see herself as the leader of the House, or a leader of the country. She sees herself as a leader of the Democrat Party, first and foremost, and it shows in her every action.
I sure wish that the historically low approval rating of Congress would translate into a new job title for her in a few weeks.
What Wasn’t Discussed On Friday Night
Shubber Ali noticed an omission, that surprises neither of us.
As I continue to point out, space isn’t important. Unless it somehow gets kids to study their math and science.
What Wasn’t Discussed On Friday Night
Shubber Ali noticed an omission, that surprises neither of us.
As I continue to point out, space isn’t important. Unless it somehow gets kids to study their math and science.
“Slippery Slope To Socialism”
According to Congressmen Hensarling.
Yes, it’s one that we started sliding down over seventy years ago. Unfortunately, though, many of his colleagues (including many in the media) see that as a feature, not a bug. As does at least one of the presidential candidates.
A Tale Of Two Candidates
Mark Hemingway notes the ongoing double standard of the press:
Not that these things are to be excused out of hand, but Palin bends zoning rules — which I’m sure are stringent and a high stakes matter in Wasilla, Alaska — and gets a free facial. Obama gets a freakin’ house with help from someone indicted for money laundering, wire fraud, extortion and corrupt solicitation; has someone raising money for his campaign with well-publicized ties to organized crime; and the Illinois attorney general is currently looking into how Obama earmarked $100,000 for a former campaign volunteer who never spent the money for its intended purpose — and yet, I don’t see too many “investigations” decrying Obama’s transparently false claims he practices a “new” kind of politics.
I guess that my thesis is going to be tested. We’re seeing exactly the same behavior from the Fourth Estate regarding the Democrat candidate as we saw in 1992–completely ignoring the candidate’s unsavory history, and hoping that no one else exposes it, while acting as an adjunct part of his campaign in maintaining the anti-Republican narrative. Will they get away with it again?
We’ll see if the blogosphere can make a difference this time.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Well, now we know what a community organizer does. He strong arms banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.
And he has the audacity of hope that the media won’t call him on his hypocrisy in blaming George Bush and the Republicans, and “deregulation” for the current crisis. Unfortunately, his audacity seems to be justified.
Someone should put together an ad, and ask which regulatory agency should have reined in organizer Obama.
[Update mid morning]
Victor Davis Hanson has more on the media double standards:
As I recall Raines was the one who, following the Enron scandals, gave public lectures about corporate responsibility and CEO honesty. And as one begins to read about Raines, James Johnson, Jamie Gorelick, and Leland Brendsel at Freddie Mac, one begins to understand their modus operandi. Freddie and Fannie were landing pads for former Democratic insiders, who milked the agencies for millions in bonuses as they covered their tracks by donations to Congressional candiates and pseudo-racial-populism of helping minorities buy homes with little down. Their careers are every bit as nauseating as anything at Enron — and yet the press strangely does not go after them in the manner we learned of Ken Lay’s deceit. God help us all.
It goes beyond nauseating. It makes me incandescently angry.
[Early afternoon update[
Geraghty has some related thoughts on the Missouri issue:
Think about it, the local television station summarized the story on their web site, “The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign,” and it seems no one at the station blinked; there was nothing in the report that indicated that this might be controversial.
I hate to be glum heading into October, but to a certain extent, an electorate gets the leaders it deserves. If the journalism institutions in a given area nod and smile as they’re given information like this — if it never crosses their mind to object — then the Fourth Estate, for all extents and purposes, ceases to exist. When Ben Franklin responded to the query about the government that would manage the young nation, “A Republic, if you can keep it,” moments like this make you wonder if we’re in the process of losing it.
These “reporters” are a product of their environment–public schools and (often) schools of journalism. Is the problem that they don’t understand the Bill of Rights, or is it that they don’t care about it, if it gets in the way of their preferred candidate? Do they not understand that it is precisely the right being potentially violated here that allows them the freedom to pursue their supposed profession? Either way, it is very dismaying.
“First, they came for the McCain supporters, and I did nothing, because I was not a McCain supporter.”