Obama would like the public to think he can’t negotiate and that to do so would be unheard of. But in this, as in so many other things, he’s lying. What is actually going on here is that, in the past, presidents who have had to deal with divided government (as Obama is; the House is in Republican hands) have always known that in such a situation they must negotiate. Whichever party they have been affiliated with, and whether you think they were good presidents or bad ones, they have kept faith with the basic gentleman’s/woman’s agreement on which our government has always run, and that is that if the other side was duly elected to be in control of another branch of government, that group has some legitimate power and must be negotiated with.
Obama is different. He had the brilliant idea that, although Republicans are in control of the House right now, they have no power unless they agree with him, and it is okay for him to defy them because it will have no repercussions on either him or his party (which is largely aligned with him). Therefore he can Just Say No to whatever Republican demands might be, and blame them for the failure to come to any sort of agreement. And the reason he is able to get away with this is a simple one: he knows the media will not call him on it, but will instead support him and amplify his message.
It’s a toxic combination, and that’s what’s “unprecedented”—at least in this country.
…if America’s body politic continues to run a fever, that means it is still suffering from the underlying illness. And if the Republicans are fevered–or are the fever–then it follows that Obama and the Democrats are the infectious agent.
When you think about it this way, the metaphor makes perfect sense. The body politic heated up during 2009 and 2010, as Obama overcame its resistance and advanced his agenda. The 2010 election was a massive immune response, which seemed to have restored a measure of health.
By 2012, when both Obama and House Republicans were re-elected, the fever seemed to have broken on its own. Instead, as we now know, the Internal Revenue Service administered an anti-inflammatory treatment that merely masked the symptoms of the underlying infection.
Taking a longer view, one could see America’s current condition as a chronic one, which has gradually grown worse over decades. “Chronic infections become chronic in the first place due to an insufficient initial immune response,” Durant notes. If a virulent strain of the bug has now produced an acute fever, it may be a sign that the country has some vigor left.
Ultimately, the only cure will be to wipe out the nasty virus that continues to infect the body politic from the White House.
As Johnson has reported: “At the time, the deputy commissioner for services and enforcement — her boss — was none other than Steven Miller, who held the post of IRS commissioner from November 2012 until his resignation in May after the IRS scandal broke.” Grooms herself left the IRS in 2011 to rejoin House Oversight as its chief Democratic counsel. There she advises ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings on how to handle the IRS scandal, which involves the people she used to work with at the IRS. That’s called a conflict of interest, with bells on it.
There have to be major reforms in the civil service.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Mens Rea: Lerner sent confidential information in private emails. She knew it was wrong, and being a lawyer, she almost certainly knew it was illegal. If we didn’t have such a corrupt Attorney General, she’d be doing a plea deal right now, in exchange for telling everything she knows, and where the orders came from.
OK, call me crazy, and I haven’t looked into this at all. But would anyone be at all surprised if they were selected on how much they filled Democrat campaign coffers rather than track record or competence?
Why is ObamaCare such a hot steaming mess? Because Obama cares more about campaigning than governing (though he does like the part of governing where he can push his political enemies around).
[Update a while later]
The Republicans didn’t sabotage the health exchanges. Obama did.
This train wreck was perfectly predictable, and many predicted it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
It’s ObamaCar.
[Update a while later] USA Today: “…an inexcusable mess.”
There’s still a long way to go. The fusion reaction will need to release many times more energy than it consumes to be viable on a commercial scale. But this is still worth getting excited about. Figuring out fusion would be a game-changer, and breakthroughs like this one remind us of the dangers of predicting the future based on current technology. The rate of technological change is accelerating, and the only ones who stand to lose are the prophets of doom.
