Rasmussen says that a quarter of the public thinks that lawmakers know what they’re doing in an economic crisis. He says it is “only” that much, but it seems way too high for my comfort. What are they, idiots?
Category Archives: Political Commentary
No Fascism Here
Nothing to see at all. Move along, move along.
As Jonah says:
All I need to know about your politics is whether you find this creepy or not.
Get out the crayolas and color me creeped out.
[Update mid afternoon]
Roger Simon (who knows his fascists) has more thoughts.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some great comments at the Hit’n’Run link.:
[Olympics flashback]
The worst part is that the original singers were all replaced by much cuter kids.
[/Olympics flashback]
[Update about 3:15 PM EDT]
Exurban League has more, as does Confederate Yankee. It turns out to be astroturf:
Here’s a partial list of those who helped produce this “grassroots” effort:
- Jeff Zucker — American television executive, and President & CEO of NBC Universal.
- Post-producer (former choreographer?) Holly Shiffer.
- Motion picture camera operator/steadicam specialist Peter Rosenfeld (appropriately enough, worked in “Yes Man,” a movie about ” a guy challenges himself to say ‘yes’ to everything for an entire year.”
- Darin Moran, another motion picture industry professional, who just finished filming — how appropriate — Land of the Lost.
- Andy Blumenthal, Hollywood film editor.
Jeff Zucker. This generation’s Leni Riefenstahl. Except without the talent.
Connecting The Dots
A long, detailed piece on Barack Obama, his associations, and the long-term plans to radicalize the nation through manufactured crises. And it’s a story that we continue not to hear from the press, as they have reporters up in Alaska going through the Palin family trash cans.
Hot Kinky IMacs
Barack’s teleprompter is very demanding
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.