Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins

15 April 2008, a Tuesday
 

So what's going on here, as the New York Times headlines all sorts of small retailer bankruptcies?  Why?

The Fed is providing liquidity and slashing interest rates...and the banks want to sit on the money?

George Will on Obama:

So far Obama has been compared with Kerry and now Stevenson as former presidential candidates...and that's not good, it doesn't seem to me.  Especially since both comparisons seem apt.

Last election, when all of the talk was about the red and the blue states (and still is, for that matter), one of the newspapers or someone on the net published a color-coded map by COUNTY, rather than the state as a whole, which made a great deal of sense for the more populous states of wide geographic area.

What it showed clearer than any state map could was that the blue populations are very tightly congregated along the coastal cities, for the major part, plus one or two large inland cities, with the red population constituting what liberals refer to--with what Will would describe as 'perfect' condescension--"flyover country".

Liberals don't land in flyover country; not if they can help it.

They can't help it, though, during presidential campaigns,  And, like Obama, there they find themselves strangers in a strange land.

Eugene Robinson is miffed at Hillary's play-acting:

Except that the ploy would not work...not unless there was truth to it.  And the truth is that Obama isn't anybody's kind of "regular guy" in middle American.

You cannot boast of your international schooling experience in Indonesia, any more than Kerry could in France, and still tell Midwesterners that you are any kind of regular.  You can't go to an expensive prep school in Hawaii, followed by elite colleges seldom visited by the working class except to do the scut work there, and claim to be just another one of the gang.  It won't work.

I was an anomaly when I joined the Marine Corps at age 18, because I had started college when I was 16 and had almost two full years under my belt when I enlisted.  Trust me, I learned early not to even mention my college years while trying to relate to a bunch of kids, not even quite young men yet (we would be soon enough), just out of high school, if that. 

Most of the regular guys never knew, as a result.  The officers were somewhat a different case, however, because most of them had access to my record book and one of their responsibilities was to know about the men under their command.  To them, I was only a couple of years behind them in college experience, and they looked on me with mixed emotions.

There is--or at least was--a distinct, and I do mean distinct, difference in the Marine Corps between the enlisted ranks and the officers, and a great deal of this comes from the tradition which is handed down in the military...and the Marine Corps is very big on tradition.  Military officers have always been drawn from the ranks of the educated, and the educated have always consisted, for the most part, of those young men coming from families with enough money and leisure time to afford college study.  The gentry.

Most officers had a difficult time figuring out how they should relate to me.  From the perspective of this many years I'd venture to say that perhaps it was not unlike the nobility in medieval times used to treat the bastard children of their fellow nobility.  Not quite good enough to inherit the family title and lands, but considerably better than the rabble. 

Don't get me wrong, though, because my point is that the 'difference' appeared to be just as distinct down below the salt as above it.  "We" enlisted men looked at officers as a class distinct, too.  Not only were we not allowed to fraternize with them, most of "us" would not have felt comfortable doing so, anyhow. 

Kipling's fabulous masterwork, "If", says:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch...

By which Kipling meant that obtaining this comfort zone was a very difficult thing to do, quite as hard as all of the other strenuous lessons he had enumerated in the previous three full stanzas.  He meant that being able to have this capacity would confer exceptional greatness.

Obama doesn't have it, obviously, but I don't really fault him for that...because, in fairness, how could he?  He's as much a captive of his childhood as we all are, a product of what shaped him.  He doesn't know Muncie, Indiana, but how should he?

Now, in fairness to Robinson, he's right in pointing out that Hillary is also faking it with the boilermakers, but somehow it comes of as being a politicians falseness, done for the crowds...and Obama promised us he wasn't like that.

You know why the first President Bush didn't get reelected?  No, not because he raised taxes when he thought that was the right thing to do...it was because he promised us that we could read his lips, that he could be trusted to speak the truth.  When he lost that trust, he lost the election.  I voted for Clinton for that reason alone, which I suppose in retrospect reveals a certain shallowness on my part...and, full disclosure, I really thought Bush would win anyhow, I just wanted to send my message of deep disappointment somehow.

As wryly amusing as it is for me to find myself in the unusual position of defending Hillary, she came a lot closer to living the poor, black experience in Arkansas than "Barry" Obama did in expensive prep schools in Hawaii.  Hillary may have had a family background of wealth, but they seem to have lived pretty dirt-poor in Arkansas on Bill's meager governor's salary, which is one of the reasons why they engaged in so many questionable things (Whitewater, cattle futures, Chinese restraint money) to obtain what they now have to laughingly think of as incredibly small amounts of money. 

Obama became a millionaire at a considerably younger age than Bill and Hillary did, and endured a lot less getting there.  Hillary may not drive the Ford F-150 pickup, but on the other hand it was Obama who felt that he had to step down into community organizing (whatever that is) and join an "authentic" black church in order to try to gain the common touch.

Now he explains to us, amusingly enough, that we just don't understand, but that's the way black folks behave in church, it's perfectly natural and normal and we shouldn't get all upset about it...besides which, he rejects such behavior, personally.

As usual, I'm commenting as I read, and now I am absolutely taken aback!  Robinson is staunchly defending Obama for not actually being elitist but merely seeming to be so, when he says this astounding thing!

Wow! 

It is crystal-clear that Eugene Robinson knows the difference between Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama and Joe or Josephine Sixpack.

And it's equally crystal-clear that Barack Obama does, too.

And you wouldn't want one of their kind running the country, now would you!

But, wait...Robinson, despite that bombshell conclusion, thinks he has a gonzo finishing 'gotcha':

Gotcha, Hillary!

What are the polysyllabic words they didn't understand?  Religion?  Antipathy?  People?  Immigrant?  Sentiment?  Or, maybe, Frustrations?

I think the voters who had not attained a certain income or education level understood them well enough.  Barack's problem was that he chose to speak those complicated words not to those voters but behind locked doors to people who had reached income and education levels greatly exceeding those of the people he was describing to them.

He thought he was speaking of them in private, behind their backs.  And, forgive them for feeling patronized about that, but they were. 

And Joe and Josephine Sixpack didn't need Hillary to explain it to them, either.  But if they missed her, they can always catch Eugene Robinson putting them in their proper place. 

I find myself almost as amazed to see E. J. Dionne Jr. getting at least part of it:

Besides that, it's not considered polite to talk about anyone behind their back.  And especially not in a condescending and patronizing way.

But lest I mistakenly credit Dionne with suddenly no longer being clueless, he straightens me back out again:

So what is Dionne saying here?  That making $109 million transforms Hillary into one of the elite and thus ineligible to use that word any more?  Dionne did fine with the Wellesley and Yale points, but couldn't resist the money charge.  I didn't notice McCain actually being enthusiastic about it, myself, speaking more in sorrow than in anger, but perhaps I missed something. 

And, of course, being a good Liberal, Dionne is as unable as Obama to distinguish between assault weapons and hunting rifles.  Well, for that matter, I'll give them a pass, since the NRA doesn't seem to know the difference, either.

Being a good Liberal who equates having millions with being elite, or even going to expensive schools with being elite, reveals that for Liberals it's really all about money conferring status.  Dionne seems oblivious to the fact that by far the wealthiest Senators and Representatives are Democrats, or to recent reports showing that the wealthiest people in the country are mostly Democrats; he has his schtick and he's schticking to it.  He totally overlooks the fact that the loving audience to whom Obama was speaking behind those closed and locked doors consisted of the Left Coast's wealthiest citizens.

The people upon whom the elite look down, Robinson's Joe and Josephine Sixpack this morning, clearly unqualified to ever be presidential material themselves, simply cannot recognize that there's a difference between being a good old boy and an elitist, and money--and even family--have nothing to do with it.

George Bush was and is a good old boy, and in fact Dionne and his ilk implicitly recognized this every time they worked so hard to mock his walk and his talk, his syntax and stumbling phraseology.  Every time Liberals put Bush down as a moron, possibly even an idiot, they told the good old boys that his Yale and Harvard Business School credentials didn't really count for anything with them....

...yet now Dionne suddenly says that they should have.  He's an elitist after all, Dionne says, just like Gore and Kerry. 

Except that all that the good old boys had to do to instantly spot the difference was watch Gore heave his patronizing sigh, something a good old boy could not imagine matching on his drunkest day, and recognize instinctively who the haughty snob was on that stage, and who was the good old boy.  And Gore pales in comparison with Kerry when it comes to pure snobbery.

Liberals don't understand that it is impossible for anyone to run as a good old boy when they aren't, it's one reason Hillary comes across as being so false whether bowling or boilermaking, because the good old boys recognize their own when they see them.  They're standing in the Liberal's blind spot.

Gore and Kerry and Obama can no more fool the good old boys that they were one of them any more than George Bush fooled the liberal snobs that he belonged in their group.  They rejected him quite firmly.

Now Dionne wants him back?  I'm laughing so hard that I have to sit down.

Dionne is incapable of understanding: you can't successfully fake it.  Obama and Clinton are revealing who they really are, just as John McCain is being clearly shown by the elitists that he's never going to be allowed into their closed society, not ever.  They recognize him as the pork-rind eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populist that they never intend to be.

And then Liberals, and Dionne, wonder how McCain manages to successfully pretend that he actually is one, when they cannot?

What's that?  Hillary comes closer to James Carville's famous "Drag $100 bills through trailer parks, there's no telling what you'll find"?  Come on, now, that's unkind.

But isn't this great fun this morning?  Two Liberals defending Obama as not being elitist, while at the same time they point out that they wouldn't want Joe or Josephine Sixpack as president and they recognize the common folk as port-rind eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populists?

Could it get any better?

Well...maybe.  Next we find Richard Cohen:

We can add insurance agents to Joe and Josephine Sixpack, pork-rind eaters, NASCAR-watchers and gun-toters!

The insurance coverage was useless because Richard couldn't figure out any way to collect on it!

As George Will would have put it: perfect! 

What follows "frankly" is a lie?  Not this time, you see.  Of course he doesn't believe it.  He's incapable of that.  It doesn't seem to be out of touch and patronizing to him because, well, because that's the way ordinary people that he knows act and talk. 

Remember the famous quote by the liberal lady who was astonished that Nixon could possibly have won because "nobody I know voted for him"?

Nobody Richard knows believes Hillary, either.

But that's the entire point that Richard cannot see.  Obama did mean it.  And he 'misspoke' only in the sense that he intended his words only for the highly-restricted elite audience he was facing, not the people he was speaking about.

Richard gets richer yet, though, when complaining about Hillary:

Magically, you see, she turned his statement into something which it might actually be!  Wow, what a trick!  What consummate artifice!

Did I miss something in the translation?  How does this relate to Obama's statement being the affront that Richard admits perhaps it is?  Are we attacking the messenger here?  Oh...of course...silly me.  Back to dragging that $100 bill through the trailer park, again.  Paula Jones...trailer trash, you know.  Anything she says has to be artifice.  James Carville would be proud of Richard.

What Obama fears is that it won't be.  And the reason why the maitre d' showed you to the bad table was why?  Well, of course...you didn't give him a big enough tip!  Is that what Obama wants?

The Liberal blind-spot.  You see, this would be a perfectly defensible argument if Obama had, in fact, said it in front of the people in Pennsylvania.  Showing empathy to people can be admirable.

But Obama never intended for his empathetic comments to be heard outside of the closed and locked doors of a very exclusive enclave of some of the richest liberals in San Francisco,

People as far away from Robinson's Joe and Josephine Sixpack, or Dionne's pork-rind eating, NASCAR-watching gun-toters, or even insurance salesmen, as Obama could possibly imagine!

He wasn't expressing empathy, he was expressing condescension.  He was being patronizing of them to an elite audience completely foreign to people who wouldn't drink a domestic beer or eat a pork-rind if they were starving, and always choose the opera over a NASCAR race, and shiver at the thought of anyone owning a gun, much less themselves.  And, it would seem, Obama agrees.

Richard wants to criticize Hillary for her lack of qualification to be the messenger, and he's right enough on that score, but the message is no less valid for all of that.

And Joe and Josephine Sixpack, eating pork-rinds and watching NASCAR races when they aren't out toting their guns, or maybe even selling insurance, know it.

Kindly note that I've left the religious aspect out of all of this discussion, but that's quite another matter entirely.

I wondered a bit about the McCain thing, so I went to a Washington Post item titled: "McCain Echoes Clinton's Attacks" and this is what I found:

John!  That's vicious!  How could you!

How could anyone imagine this man being condescending?

Ye shall know them by their spin, as the Washington Post, having so badly mischaracterized McCain with their headline, next tries this:

Hey, that sounds good...except that "the political landscape" isn't what Obama was asked about.  As I recall, he was asked specifically why it was that HE wasn't doing better with the white working-class voter in Pennsylvania.  There's quite a difference in the questions, and so there's quite a difference in meaning in his answer when taken in the correct context.

Which the Washington Post undoubtedly knows, but clearly hopes that you do not.

And I assure you, when I am talking to foreign leaders on that 3 a.m. phone call I'll speak more clearly to them.

You all know that I find politics to be highly amusing, even if often wryly so, and here's another good example:

But how is it that Rep Doyle cannot see that Obama is merely spouting more of the same?  For instance, why did the steel mills close?  American corporations face much higher taxes than do their foreign competitors who now have those mills, so does Obama propose the elimination of corporate taxes in order to get those jobs back?  No, he does not.  In fact, he wants to raise corporate income tax rates.

While pandering to the people of Pennsylvania that, like all good liberals, he feels their pain.  Smarts, don't it? 

Obama knows that the suckers will always listen to promises they like to hear.  Romney told the auto workers in Detroit that he'd get their high-paying jobs back for them.  McCain said they'd be better off getting retrained, because those high-paying jobs weren't ever coming back.   Romney won.

Puck said, in wonder, "what fools these mortals be".  And you have to laugh at their foolish antics, however wryly.

If I have a fear about McCain, it is that he will start thinking like a politician rather than a naval aviator.  For instance:

But gasoline taxes are supposed to go into the highway fund, and everything I've read says that our highway infrastructure is falling into gross disrepair for lack of funding.  Giving people cheaper driving vacations seems like a foolish thing to do, to me...but no doubt will be popular, just the same.

I'll bet you this much, though...double or nothing.  I'll bet that it doesn't reduce consumption one drop or save the drivers one cent, as they simply buy more gas and drive further than they would have done.

The student loan program is a fine idea, but who should fund it?  Why shouldn't it be the richly-endowed colleges the students are attending?  Why should they charge any interest at all on those loans, making them easier to pay back?  But how do student loans ease the pain of laid-off mill-workers bitterly seeking guns and God in Pennsylvania?

I don't know what to think about tax exemptions for dependent children, frankly, but the tax system definitely needs to be simpler. 

Oddly, he wants to stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a truly odd decision for a military man who should clearly understand that's a last line of defense, however slender, against a cut-off from the Middle East.  Maybe he figures it wouldn't amount to much more than a fart in a wind-storm (and he'd be correct) and so what the heck...

Which makes no sense at all.  Lenders should prefer to fund federally backed programs.

Here's the Washington Times, parroting the John McCain worry:

But other than that little detail, you understand, he was absolutely horrible!  Ooooh, poor Barry.

Which McCain, apparently, did not.  Oh, well...good to hear that Barry is going to be tough enough to answer the phone at 3 a.m.  Now if only he doesn't misspeak when he does...

Wes Pruden, meantime, caught me with a LOL line!

The twin pillars of sodomy and secularism...another GW 'perfect' score.

Amusingly, even Richard Cohen figured out that much.

Hillary continues to pound the man from Illinois, exploiting his fumble with the grim intensity of a linebacker. This fits perfectly her strategy of relentless pursuit of the theme that nice guy or not, powerful preacher or not, "Obama can't win." Shady associations on the South Side of Chicago, a far-left agenda still hidden in the shadows, a confusing life story riddled with troubling contradictions, his wide and inexplicable selection of bizarre mentors, all render him vulnerable, probably fatally, when the real hitting begins after the conventions.

The label "can't win" terrifies the best of politicians. "They can say you are a liar, a cheat, a crackpot and a licentious old man," the late Mike Monroney, a wise old senator from Oklahoma, once said, "and most politicians don't care. But if they say you can't win, you're through.

And now I come to a comment from John Fund in the Wall St Journal that brings together everything that I have been writing about with respect to Barack Obama as perceived by George Will, Eugene Robinson, E. J. Dionne, Richard Cohen, and myself, all neatly summarized:

He, and his fellow liberals, honestly cannot see it!

I consider this to be somewhat akin to diabetics not being able to properly metabolize sugar.  It isn't a 'fault' or something 'wrong' with them, something they can somehow fix...it's just a fact of life.

But this also describes why Obama has been unable to apologize or appropriately repair the damage: he doesn't know how it happened in the first place, so he's unable to understand why the repair is necessary, let alone exactly what it should be.

Explains quite a lot.

And I have no doubt that he couldn't see the problem with that question, either, until it was explained to him.

Back when Carol and I first began thinking about our move to Costa Rica, 1993--and no, Clinton had nothing to do with it--I had a business friend in Jackson who not only liked my idea but actually moved well ahead of me in acting on it.  He even bought a property over near the Pacific beaches at a time when I sure wish that we had.

Anyhow, they later recanted and decided they didn't want to move here any more.  I asked why not?  He said that his wife thought it got too hot.  This was on a Jackson day which was approaching 110 degrees, so I suppose my bewilderment showed.  Here in La Fortuna, I find today's higher-than-usual 85 to be eminently comfortable, but then all I ever wear are a tee-shirt, shorts and my leopard-patterned bikini underwear.

Apparently he caught my look, so he added his clincher: and they couldn't buy licorice anywhere!

Well, if that's your make-or-break for moving to Costa Rica, don't.  They don't have Whole Foods stores in Iowa, let alone arugula, and if they have licorice in rural Costa Rica then I have yet to see it.  Fortunately, what they have are beautiful 85-degree days which are sheer luxury for my naked skin, weather suiting both my clothes as well as any lack thereof.

Today I had to stop my car, get out, and shoo a 4-ft long iguana off of the road before anyone else came along and hit him.  He looked at me quizzically before he ran off, puzzled about my concern. 

No doubt as puzzled as Obama over what it was that he said.

The part I don't get is the part THEY don't get...why does Donna feel this will be painting a picture instead of merely illuminating one?

It's like Dionne bleated piteously, earlier, about Democrats allowing the Republican candidate to pretend that he is the salt-of-the-earth candidate, the ordinary guy who actually does drink beer, like guns, eat pork-rinds, sell insurance, and watch NASCAR races?

Full disclosure: I've never watched a NASCAR race and I only thought about selling insurance for New York Life, one time.  Instead, I sold real estate, but I feel sure Obama would consider that to be equally disqualifying.

Especially now that the market is down.  We aren't popular in down markets, for some reason.  The economic frustrations tend to make us cling to our guns and religion while fearing strangers and trade agreements, further alienating us from our Obamic cultural superiors.

Unless, that is, I'm the one who is out of sync.

Obama, by the way, has put his American flag pin back on.  Since he implied that it wasn't really a symbol of true patriotism, what do you suppose that means?

Cynicism?  Come on, now, don't be so cynical.

I laughed at Power Line's assessment of Carter:

I don't know...seems to me the other side has a powerful argument.

Hot Air has a video clip:

Like I keep telling people, the truly wealthy don't ever pay any estate taxes.  There are foundations, trust, you name it, all designed for the sole purpose of avoiding paying estate taxes.  You have to have a certain level of wealth in order for them to become worth the expense, of course, and the low-level inheritors don't pay anything, so that leaves the middle-class with the bill.

Hot Air also quotes Bob Herbert with his version of the spin:

This sounds good, except for one thing: why?  Obama was speaking before the ultra-liberal, ultra-rich, ultra-sophisticated in the most select sealed and secret area of San Francisco, completely off the record as far as he knew.

So why would he fall back on a "tortured response that was demonstrably incorrect"?

The obvious answer is that he wouldn't.  And didn't.  He meant what he said.

Are there white people who will not vote for a black man just because he is black?  Undoubtedly.  But would the number be the same if the black man was Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Colin Powell, rather than Barack Obama?  Because, you see, that's the real question.  There are men who would never vote for a woman, too, but that number swells significantly when the woman is Hillary Clinton.

I'd bet you that Condoleeza Rice would surprise a lot of people, for instance.

Did you hear about the popularity hit Oprah took after she both endorsed and then campaigned with Obama?  She was as black before as she was afterwards, so the popularity hit was not about race.  People admire Oprah for who she is and what she does, not what race she is, and Bob Herbert needs to understand things like that.

Racism in America is not going to be totally eliminated any more than it will be completely expunged from Bob Herbert's breast, but let's not confuse it with the actual issue here. 

Namely, Obama is an ultra-liberal expressing an ultra-liberal point of view, one which he finds so normal that he's surprised when it causes offense.  I believe that he honestly was, too.

Here's a great article by Bill Bradley explaining how it came to be on Huffington Post at all.  Fascinating!  Many have wondered why in the hell it appeared at all, and dig this answer:

Like the confused Obama, wondering what he said that was so insulting, the liberal HP site was similarly unable to see it.

They need to catch and cage a conservative somewhere and use him like a canary in a coal mine, testing the air, only in reverse.  If he suddenly sits up and starts singing, then liberals know it's bad news and can start running away before any damage can be done.

She couldn't see it, either.

I have to laugh, though.  These guys are complaining about the Clinton's and their $109 million paydays, and Obama and his wife earn millions while buying a Chicago mansion with the help of some shady friends, the fundraiser is an exclusive area of San Francisco where few can even enter, Arianna is on a billionaire's yacht...and one of the three liberal pundit columnists I quoted solemnly assured us that the Republicans were the party of the rich.

Hey...that's the way they see it.

What they say when they are upset and off balance is tremendously revealing and funny.  Like this:

Note the incautious words.  Hillary CONFIRMED them.  Arianna is probably already spinning that comment differently, but you see what I mean. 

What the liberals are maddest about is simple: the truth got out!

Well, that's okay...I don't view a lot of reporters for the MSM as journalists, either.

See?

As Victor Davis Hanson puts it:

And then there's this key recognition:

Perfect.

And here is what the superdelegates were created for, their raison d'etre:

They will have to wait until the convention before all of the scores are in to be counted.

And while Hillary could probably assure herself of the nomination by acclaim by merely shooting Bill now, standing over her man at long last, Obama probably couldn't do the same by similarly stifling Michelle...and, besides, he has all of those other mouthy surrogates he can't control.

And this, I think, is extremely perceptive:

It may not be a tragedy now, but it will be when Hillary gets nominated, after all, and black people misperceive what happened to their candidate. 

And, finally, this is brilliant:

I think #8 is particularly important.  Someone earlier was spinning that Obama was merely expressing empathy for those poor people.  My point was that it would have been empathy if expressed to them, maybe even sympathy (and possibly pity), but the venue in which those comments were made, and the secrecy, clearly meant empathy was not the feeling being expressed.

Now that we've gone through all of this...what?

I expect it won't hurt him this time as much as it might have, mainly because Hillary is going the most of the punching.  A lot of people will reject the charges simply in order to reject Hillary.  This is the same way that many reject any good news from Iraq, simply because it might reflect well upon Bush. 

But if Obama gets the nomination, Hillary will be gone (maybe), and she won't be there for Barack to punch back against.  And McCain doesn't have nearly the 'unfavorables' that Hillary does.  The issue may play much differently when the Pennsylvania voters are comparing Obama with McCain.

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