Interesting: Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama: Lifestyles of the Rich and Progressive

David Pietrusza spends a few paragraphs examining the similarities between Woodrow Wilson, and our current president.  In particular, he looks at work habits – or the lack thereof.  Those progressive-elite types have a different set of standards than you and me when it comes to work: you need to do it to fill the government’s coffers to fund more give-aways.  They will be busy doing the hard work of thinking / ruminating/ elucidating – while they travel or play golf, or go to the theater, or Martha’s Vineyard, or Spain.

American Thinker: Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama: Lifestyles of the Rich and Progressive.

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The Impending Democratic Bloodbath

I borrowed the title from Jamelle Bouie’s article at The American Prospect, because I couldn’t have said it better.  Bouie showed this graph of the new Gallup poll indicating Candidate Preferences in 2010 Congressional Elections, and it’s not pretty:

This is the largest advantage for Republicans in the poll’s 60-year history. If this holds, Republicans have an excellent chance to regain the House, and possibly the Senate.

Seeing as how it’s the Prospect (if you want to get a good idea of how the so-called liberal intelligentsia in this country think, this is as good a place as any), Bouie couldn’t help but regurgitate the party line that’s being spun up for when the Dems get crushed in November: it’s witch-hunt season.  Yes, just like our friend Paul Krugman, Jonathan Bernstein (and presumably Bouie) believes the Republicans will occupy themselves with investigations of the corruption that has run rampant since Obama took office.

Clue: when Republicans do it, it’s a witch hunt; when Democrats do it, well – for goodness sakes, it was that fascist Bush!

Spending taxpayer dollars conducting investigations doesn’t seem like a productive thing to me, but if they’re busy investigating, that means they won’t be busy passing any more of Obama’s economy-wrecking agenda.  Gridlock, in this case, will be better than progress.

Read it: The Impending Democratic Bloodbath

Moonbat alert: It’s Witch-Hunt Season

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Amongst lefty moonbat theorists who are currently prominent in media, Paul Krugman has to be the moonbattiest.  His woefully misguided economic pronouncements are systematically eviscerated (at least until he restricted the size of comments in his New York Times column, so anyone with more than a “you tell ’em Paul!” is shut out of constructing a reasoned argument) by almost anyone who has the slightest inkling that Keynesian stimulus is, once again, a colossal failure. His latest column in the Times is sure to prompt delighted howls from anyone who hasn’t drunk the “Obama, descended from Olympus, is Lightworker and Genius” koolaid.

He laments that the right is unleashing a witch-hunt on the Obama administration that’s “even worse” than the one perpetrated against philanderer Bill Clinton and his Whitewater co-conspirator Hillary.  Of course, Rush Limbaugh gets mentioned by the second paragraph as one of the ringleaders. I laughed out loud when I read the abject horror with which he describes the malevolent Limbaugh:

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

Did you get that?  Rush Limbaugh, much to Mr. Krugman’s dismay, is “utterly mainstream”.  And, because about 20 million people regularly listen to the likes of Rush, the Republicans gaining control of one house of Congress is going to very, very ugly.  So, Republican control of even one house of Congress, while the Enlightened One is trying to work his special social-agenda magic, is ugly.  The odds are not extremely high, but the possibility exists that Republicans could gain control of both houses of Congress – this, I’m sure, would produce apoplexy for P Krug.

Another laugher comes just two paragraphs later:

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals (my emphasis)— legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

What that sounded like is an attempt to paint Barack H. Obama as a “very moderate liberal.” Yikes.  I’d hate to see how things would have turned out if he had been a far-left liberal.  And, just for kicks, he flips out the tired and tattered race-card.  The dissatisfaction that is being manifested through the activities of millions of Tea-Party types can’t be anything but racism.  Yawn.

Adding to his list of witch-hunt perpetrators, Krugman tags Glenn Beck:

Again, though, there’s an extra level of craziness this time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame compared with Glenn Beck.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

Glenn Beck, regularly preaching the twin heresies of being decent to one another and observing the Constitution as it was written, is bringing “craziness” into the picture.  He’s inciting all those bitter clingers out there to resist the efforts of “He Who is Enlightened”, and preventing O from accomplishing his altogether moderate and reasonable agenda.  “If you’ll just comply, you’ll begin to see just how great everything will be.”  I love the reference to “partisans…going too far” – where was Krugman when George W. Bush was regularly being tarred as the perpetrator of atrocities akin to Hitler and Stalin?

Krugman offers some advice to the Enlightened One, presumably as a shield for the Konservative Kryptonite that’s being pointed his way:

If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic.

He can’t resist saying that Obama should serve up some more stimulus or something that produces less output than the tax dollars that are confiscated to finance it.  Yeah, that Keynesian multiplier magic needs some more fuel to really get that Summer of Recovery going.  What? Oh, summer’s over? Well there’s still plenty of time to get some more shovel-ready projects going.  Dollars for Dumps would be a good candidate.

There’s some other good stuff in there, too, but I’ll let you enjoy them yourself.

Here’s the link to the article in the New York Times

And now, some useless juvenile humor…

My question is – what is a “purpose-built boning hall?” (H/T to Smitty at TheOtherMcCain)

It’s not such a mystery: Why Obama and Co. are doing a lousy job.

I have to give Michael Tomasky a little credit for at least admitting that the Obama administration is doing a lousy job of governing.  But only a little.  His in-depth “examination” of this mystery betrays his complete lack of understanding of the why.

First, he lays out some possible reasons why Obama was “two steps ahead” during the campaign, and now appears to be “two steps behind” (at least) on everything.

1. “Campaigns are easier than governing” – No sh*t, sherlock.  Running the equivalent of a Fortune 500 corporation is a lot harder than reading speeches from a teleprompter, and striking thoughtful and enlightened poses in front of Greek columns.  For a guy who had absolutely no experience running anything, having a job running stuff would probably be pretty damned hard.  And it has turned out to be exactly that – Obama’s painful lack of executive experience is displayed on almost every issue he touches.
2. “They were overwhelmed by events” – Huh? They knew the Afghan and Iraqi wars were going on already,

   

   Image via Wikipedia

   and apparently had enough info to determine they could end them for certain by a given date.  Tomasky mentions the oil spill – it was a big deal, but was it any bigger or more serious that 9/11, or Katrina?  Yeah, I hear what you’ve saying: “but Bush screwed that up big time!”  Funny, that’s not what people down in Louisiana are saying now

3. “They didn’t expect the partisan onslaught” – Tomasky says “he didn’t either…” Is that what it’s called when folks who respect the Constitution and the rule of law try their best to keep the country from being turned into a socialist collective? ObamaCare, and the administration’s support of Prop 8’s and AZ 1070’s overturn by renegade judges are just a couple of shining examples of the administration’s utter disregard for the rule of law. We should be angrier, but we let reason govern our outrage.  They certainly haven’t gotten it any worse than George W. Bush got it from liberals for eight years (actually, it’s more like ten years now, since Obama is still blaming him for stuff). The real onslaught will be at the ballot box this November
4. “It’s about personnel” – Tomasky debates whether it would have been better to have David Plouffe or Rahm Emanuel as part of Obama’s White House team.  I don’t see the difference – all of these guys are liberal elite types that see the folks in flyover country as a bunch of dimwits that don’t have sense enough to understand why government control of health care is good for them, or why we should keep taxing the daylights out of the “rich” (who already pay a HUGE portion of our tax bill, while nearly half pay NOTHING) to feed the insatiable leviathan that is our government. More and more of us are waking to the administration’s total disregard for what WE think.
5. “It’s Obama himself” – “the conservatives will say…ding ding ding ding ding” but Tomasky “doesn’t think so. He’s a plenty smart man. His instincts haven’t often seemed great, but hey, they did get him this far, which is far.”  This statement betrays Tomasky’s severe lack of understanding of the problem.  Obama’s instincts haven’t gotten him anywhere, except to turn everything he’s touched into crap. He rose to the heights of Senator and President because of the efforts and smarts of other people.  To date, NO evidence of any kind has been presented to back the claims that this guy is some kind of genius: no transcripts, no writings, no testimonies from his law school students, nothing.  He is truly a mirror, reflecting whatever set of values is expedient for his current cause. He might have been a great community organizer, but that’s hardly a breeding ground for geniuses, and certainly not qualification to be a chief executive officer.
6. “Maybe they didn’t really run such a great campaign and were overrated from the start” – I agree with Tomasky’s assessment on this: Obama’s wasn’t that great (though he was extremely effective at raising TONS of money – whether it was all legal is another question); he only had to beat Clinton’s and McCain’s (which was horrible).

Tomasky goes on in the article to try and posit some themes that the administration should be emphasizing in order to get the great unwashed in the “rural, white areas” to understand that Obama and Co. really are doing a bang-up job. He lists education, broadband, and innovation as areas they should be touting.

Wait a minute – what?

Education – What is the administration doing to improve education, aside from using billions of stimulus dollars to prop up bloated union-run school-system administrations all over the country?  Most of the public has gotten it by now: spending more money on “education” (not on teaching kids the important stuff they need to know, like math and science, but on green buildings, and more distracting technology, and adding more administrative positions by a huge margin over the growth of actual students) hasn’t improved learning by American children.

Broadband – Are you serious?  You think that telling the rural white folks in flyover country that the government wants to spend even more taxpayer money to bring them high-speed internet will convince them that the Obama administration is doing a great job?

Innovation – The only kind of “innovation” that I hear the administration talking about is making huge investments in so-called “green” technologies and industries.  You know, the ones like solar and wind power that can only survive with huge government subsidies (translation: once again, your tax dollars)?  Please.  Try eliminating, or at least reducing corporate taxes, and hold off on the expiration of the Bush tax cuts -for everyone, not just the “non-rich”.  And, while you’re at it, eliminate some of the ridiculous regulations that complicate everything we try to do in this country. Take away the twin millstones of taxation and regulation, and you’ll unleash all the innovation we need.

My problem with these “themes” is they don’t resonate with anyone who’s watching the havoc being wrought by the administration.  Most Americans don’t think the Obama administration is doing a good job, because they’re not.  Even left-leaning newspapers are calling for Obama and his economic advisors to dispense with the Keynesian stimulus joke that they keep promising is “going to work, if we’ll just spend even more.”  No thanks, Paul Krugman, we don’t buy it anymore (well, a lot of us never did).

The great unwashed know what’s going on, despite what folks like Michael Tomasky might think. And, come November, folks like him will be engaging in the same kind of befuddled, and deluded “analysis”, conducted through the flawed prism of the elite mindset.

Yes, yes, YES! Dollars for dumps is our way out of the housing slump!

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

John Hayward (otherwise known as Doctor Zero) has a guest post at Death By 1000 Papercuts today.  He explains how we can use the superlative model for economic stimulation and recovery that was Cash for Clunkers to save the housing market.  Dollars for Dumps, in short, involves using taxpayer dollars to buy and destroy millions of underwater-in-their-mortgage houses on the market.  The shortage of housing would serve to drive prices back up, and you’d have “shovel-ready” employment for tens of thousands of “destroyers.”

Seems like a great idea – the Obama administration should be calling him any minute now, as they are bereft of ideas on how to fix the flagging economy.

See the exciting details at DBKP.

Alveda King’s Speech at the KKK…er, Restoring Honor Rally

What an awesome speech by the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King.  I’m surprised that she would be invited -and accept

Image via Wikipedia

that invitation- to speak at a gathering of the KKK (civil rights ‘leader’ Walter Fauntroy’s words, not mine).  Seems like it was pretty well received, too, by the exclusionary racists there at the Glenn Beck-sponsored rally.

She has a dream, too. God bless America, indeed.  Watch it.