Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
9 December 2010, a Thursday
Night temperatures in the 20s and day temperatures barely reaching the 40s can really mess up a Southerner.
Nice to know it’s not only Costa Rica feeling the cold. I wonder how Cancun is faring?
Have they written off the importance of Kos and the far left? The
NYTimes reports this morning:Of all the questions swirling around President Obama in the wake of this week’s tax deal with Republicans, this one may matter most to his political future: Can he win back the center?
As Mr. Obama defends the tax accord, the nation is witnessing a pivot point in his presidency. Gone is the leader who, during a tussle with Republicans over his stimulus package in the earliest days of his administration, boldly declared that "elections have consequences" and "I won."
What is interesting about this is for the last two years all we have been reading in the liberal MSM is that it has been the Republicans, described as the "Party Of No," who were supposedly taking the uncooperative position. Obama has always been portrayed as the moderate man stretching out his hand to them and being rebuffed.,
Now, this morning, the NYT suddenly recalls that actually it was Obama who took the hard line from the beginning. When Republican came to talk he very bluntly told them to forget it.
This is because the last election pointed out to them how poorly his attitude played in Peoria, the nation’s center that he now discovers that he needs. Well, he’s going to find that even if the press managed to ‘forget’ his "I won" and "elections have consequences" for most of the past two years of Democrats unilaterally passing legislation which has been less then universally acclaimed, a lot of those people in the center have not.
So can he win them back? Hard to say...elections have consequences, I’ve heard. I suspect as long as we see continuing opinion polls with a 2:1 majority say that he’d heading the country in the wrong direction that the answer would be no.
Maybe the election results convinced Obama that even though he thinks the people are wrong and he is right, he still has to stop saying "I won" and at least listen?
Could the MSM members, a vast majority of whom have described themselves as frankly liberal, no secret to it, have suddenly realized they represent only 20% of an electorate who describe themselves similarly?
Still, the NYT, now discovering some polls it likes, say that he might:
Analysts across the political spectrum agree that if Mr. Obama is to win re-election in 2012, he must recapture the support of the independents who have abandoned him over the past two years. Polls show that even before the tax deal, he seemed to be making a start.
In October, roughly one-third of independents — 35 percent — approved of how Mr. Obama was handling his job, according to a survey by The New York Times and CBS News. But in the most recent CBS News poll, nearly half — 49 percent — approved. By forging compromise with Republicans and demonstrating a willingness to break with his own party, analysts suggest, Mr. Obama may begin to solidify that trend. ,,,
"When you make it clear that you see yourself as the president who has to govern responsibly, not carrying out an ideological agenda, I think that’s what independents are looking for."
Research by
Which makes it fairly clear who the nay-sayer carrying out the ideological agenda was in their minds, and it wasn’t an impotent minority party whose ‘no’ votes did not matter. Now they will, though, and there’s your difference.
While I might not want Obama back, I can sure stand him a whole lot better if he gets off of his high "I won" horse and stops ramming through unpopular legislation simply because it suits HIS agenda along with that of a liberal minority. And the more that he cooperates and compromises, the better I’ll like him. If he can transform himself into a Clarence Thomas or a Thomas Sowell he’ll discover that his race has nothing to do with our objections to his policy.
But can he do that?
Mr. Obama sought to cast himself as post-partisan and pragmatic during his presidential campaign. But in office, he has been largely defined by his efforts to expand the government’s reach into the economy, health care and financial regulation — an agenda that has left him vulnerable to efforts by conservatives to portray him as far too left for the country.
Mr. Kessler said he did not think "the die is completely cast" for Mr. Obama. But Republicans like Tony Fratto, a former deputy press secretary to President George W. Bush, disagreed. Mr. Obama, Mr. Fratto said, has "already set his course" and "can’t help showing his real stripes."
Even supporters of Mr. Obama say it will take more than one tax deal to change perceptions about the president that have become ingrained in the public mind.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Once again I disagree with
Gail Collins:"This isn’t the politics of the moment. This has to do with what can we get done right now," the president said heatedly as he defended his tax deal with the Republicans against outrage from the Congressional left.
It takes a lot to make President Obama incoherent.
I don’t think it takes all that much, but it’s only now that the liberal press is beginning to notice. The truth is that he cannot speak coherently without a teleprompter.
He’s probably smart that way, though. After watching what they did to Bush, speaking frankly without a script at press conferences, he first decided not to have any of the damn things and speak only from a teleprompter whenever possible.
...the Senate has worn me down. The filibuster rule makes it impossible to do anything more difficult than passing rules against tainted food, and the Democrats have not made any serious attempt to get rid of the filibuster rule. So work around them, I say.
Gail, of course, wouldn’t know where the filibuster rule came from. Trust me on this, the Senate Democrats who right now are gazing in horror at the possibility that they will be in the minority after 2012 absolute LOVE the filibuster rule now. Senators of both parties are against the filibuster rule only when their majorities are between 50-59. Over 59 and they don’t care. Under 50 and they declare it to be necessary to ensure that democracy survives in the world.
We have no idea if Obama’s unheroic attempt to get a deal done is going to pass. The Democratic senators who totally failed to exempt the wealthy from a tax-cut extension are outraged at the president for giving up on them.
"This is beyond politics. This is about justice and doing what’s right," said Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana as she slammed "the almost, you know, moral corruptness" of tax cuts for millionaires.
It was a stirring statement, and would have been even more so if Landrieu had not been one of the few Democrats who actually voted to put the tax cuts on the books in the first place in 2001. Senator Harry Reid has already warned that members of his caucus "have concerns" that will need to be addressed. He has one himself about legalizing online poker, a matter that the casino interests in his state of Nevada are very excited about.
So this is what it takes to put the drama in Obama.
It takes the politics of the moment. Democrats are very much aware that their votes are going to be the ones necessary to pass Obama’s legislation...the Republicans do not have majorities anywhere yet. This is why you are now reading, as I pointed out yesterday, the sudden discovery by liberal reporters and op-ed columnists that hey, the package is really a good one, an Obama victory, and the money "the rich" gets isn’t really all that much compared to the deficit, it wouldn’t even dent it.
I’m waiting for the next shoe to drop. Remember all the complaints that the rich won’t help the economy by going out and spending all of their tax money, instead they’ll save it in the bank where it won’t do any good?
Tom Friedman suddenly complained the other day that Americans weren’t saving enough money. He can’t mean the struggling middle-class, who will get only enough tax savings to spend at Target and Sam’s Club, as Richard Cohen told us would save the economy, so he has to mean savings by the only people who have enough left over to do so.
How long before we find the liberal press and op-ed writers suddenly discovering that increased savings, not increased taxes, is actually the way to build a growing economy? When that shoe finally drops we’ll be on our way back.
Maybe even Gail Collins will figure that out?
Ah, here comes the top item in the Washington Post with the new spin on it:
Democrats are still angry, but lawmakers say the magnitude of the concessions President Obama won in the talks came into sharper focus.
See? It’s really an Obama victory, therefore it’s okay to vote for it now. Te absolvo, and all that.
And this headline item, from one major political op-ed columnist:
Several soon-to-be ex-senators say partisanship has given way to political gridlock that's crippling the chamber. Are they right?
Wait until they are in the minority after 2012 and see their change in attitude about what their new responsibility turns out to be with respect to a Republican agenda.
Liberal
Dana Milbank chimes in as he says...Congressional Democrats berated Vice President Biden. But there wasn't much more they could do about the tax deal.
...congressional Democrats' thinking as they stew over President Obama's tax-cut deal with Republicans. They know they have little chance of blocking the compromise, which preserves low rates for millionaires.
They do actually know better, of course, because they still hold the majority in both houses and it isn’t possible for the Republicans to extend the tax cuts bill on their own. The ONLY people who can block the compromise, as Dana well knows, are the Democrats.
Now the rationalization begins:
The administration fought back with a campaign-style persuasion effort. White House officials distributed to each of the Democratic lawmakers a bar graph labeled "What WE Got" and "What THEY Got." (According to the graph, "we" got more than "they.")
Forget about this "good for the country" bipartisan rhetoric stuff, Obama still weighs things as "we" versus "they" in front of his own people. More rationalization, please.
The Democratic National Committee was reduced to disseminating blog posts and editorials with half-hearted endorsements of the deal: "This morning, I awoke feeling less angry," and "Good enough for now."
The average insurgency, the foreign policy experts say, lasts about ten years. The average liberal rebellion against Obama appears to last about a day. The crumbling began early in the day Wednesday, when Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) issued a statement calling the tax deal "the ultimate stimulus plan." ...
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) forecast with confidence: "In the end there will be enough Democratic votes in the Senate to join with Republicans to pass this bill."
That’s Joe...always telling the uncomfortable truth. If the Democrats don’t join in, the bill will not pass. Blaming the obstructionist Republicans is, as they say, inoperative. But in order for Democrats to vote, they first have to create a valid reason and they’re working hard to find out.
How much longer before someone points out that Dana’s description of "low rates for millionaires" aren’t actually all that low and millionaires still pay the lion’s share of income tax even at the present rates? Will they get that far? No, probably not.
In the end, "we got more than they did" will carry the bipartisan day.
David Broder is working hard to find victory for Obama, too:He has set the stage for follow-on proposals that can convert the cumbersome tax system into a growth-spurring mechanism - and force Republicans to explain and defend their preference for serving their wealthiest business backers.
Except that the best way to do that is reduce taxes. Surely Mr Broder has not forgotten this famous event?
"That the power of taxing it [the bank] by the States may be exercised so as to destroy it, is too obvious to be denied , and That the power to tax involves the power to destroy [is] not to be denied." -- Chief Justice Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 327
And while I concur with his suggestion that Republicans be forced to explain and defend their preference for serving their wealthiest business backers, so, too, should Obama and Democrats be forced to explain and defend their preference for serving their wealthiest anti-business backers.
The Chamber of Commerce wants to know, too.
And if Obama and the Democrats say oh no, they aren’t anti-business, then who are THEIR wealthiest business backers? I don’t think they are going to convince Chamber of Commerce small business members that THEY are the ones the Democrats support with their tax schemes.
See, this is where it gets messy and why grinding the Republicans for disclosure is a knife that cuts both ways. I’m all for it...but I want to see Democrats do the same.
But let me just make one point: economic growth is not going to come via taxation, which is ultimately the power to destroy, but by way of investment capital from people who have money to invest, and obviously the wealthiest have the most money with which to do that. If you want the banks to resume lending then you first have to have people depositing money in the banks for them to lend.
Democrats have associated themselves with the notion that Big Business means Bad Business, they are against and mistrust Big Anything and have forgotten the words of Justice Marshall. They think they can grow the economy by means of taxing away the investment capital of the people they like to call either the wealthy or else the richest Americans, which for them are terms of envy, not admiration.
Is it any surprise that those people will turn to Republicans for help if they don’t want to be destroyed?
The stock market should prove to be interesting now. Reports are that corporations are sitting on records amount of cash, even though some of it is not actually their own but borrowed because rates are so low. But sitting on cash is not good economics unless you are uncertain about your unexpected cash needs...such as for tax rates you cannot predict for sure.
If Democrats were truly pro-business and looking for income then they’d slash capital gains and corporate taxes...like the Republicans will do next year. When that happens the corporations are suddenly going to put their stockpiles of cash into productive use.
If Democrats wanted the credit then they’d do that now. Will they? I suspect not, they’ll let the Republicans do it...and THEN try to give Obama credit for the resulting recovery,
The ironic part is that they just might get away with that.
From
Watts Up With That?Some people will sign anything that includes phrases like, "global effort," "international community," and "planetary." Such was the case at COP 16, this year’s United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico.
This year, CFACT students created two mock-petitions to test U.N. Delegates. The first asked participants to help destabilize the United States economy, the second to ban water.
The first project, entitled "Petition to Set a Global Standard" sought to isolate and punish the United States of America for defying the international community, by refusing to bite, hook, line and sinker on the bait that is the Kyoto Protocol. The petition went so far as to encourage the United Nations to impose tariffs and trade restrictions on the U.S. in a scheme to destabilize the nation’s economy. Specifically, the scheme seeks to lower the U.S. GDP by 6% over a ten year period, unless the U.S. signs a U.N. treaty on global warming.
This would be an extremely radical move by the United Nations. Even so, radical left-wing environmentalists from around the world scrambled eagerly to sign.
The second project was as successful as the first. It was euphemistically entitled "Petition to Ban the Use of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)" (translation water). It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused.
Despite the apparently not-so-obvious reference to H2O, almost every delegate that collegian students approached signed their petition to ban that all too dangerous substance, which contributes to the greenhouse effect, is the major substance in acid rain, and is fatal if inhaled.
Perhaps together, the footage associated with these two projects will illustrate to mainstream America the radical lengths many current U.N. delegates are willing to go to carry out an agenda no more ethical, plausible or practical than the banning water.
But look how DANGEROUS the stuff is!
The sound quality was poor on my link, but these guys are all drinking water from the water cooler while signing the petition to ban it! Hilarious!
Another very dangerous byproduct as a result of carbon dioxide sequestration, especially in considering how to remove the dangerous carbon from the environment, is how to safely dispose of the remaining inorganic residue, something which hasn’t been extensively studied, not to my knowledge.
And yet it is the leading factor in the destruction of millions of acres of precious timberland every year, the essential factor in the weakening of perhaps billions of dollars worth of structural steel I-beams essential in high-rise construction (and a major contributing factor in the collapse of the Twin Towers), something the US Navy spends endless man-hours and billions of dollars defeating, can be poisonous to human life in sufficient concentrations which have already caused the life of three of America’s astronauts, so far, as well as being dangerously explosive if accidentally introduced into gasoline stations all across the United States.
And yet what have you heard about studies regarding how to deal with the O2 removed from the CO2?
Worse, if you manage to remove only half of it then you are left with deadly CO1. I suppose the good news is that carbon monoxide is not a greenhouse gas.
I’ve never watched the guy, but I found this
American Spectator piece on Keith Olberman funny:...Olbermann told his viewers, this was a "searing and transcendent capitulation," the primary victims of which were the long-term unemployed who have exhausted their benefits, the so-called "99ers." Whatever Republicans had ceded in this compromise was dismissed by Olbermann as utterly insignificant: "Mr. President, for these meager crumbs, you have given up costly, insulting, divisive, destructive tax cuts for the rich and you have given in to Republican blackmail which will be followed by more Republican blackmail." And after many more hundreds of words of this kind of verbal excoriation -- this "Special Comment" was nearly 12 minutes long -- Olbermann lowered the boom: "It is not disloyalty to remind the President that he was elected by people to whom he had given a clear outline of what he would do for them, and if he does not steer out of the skid of what he is doing to them, he will not only not be re-elected, he may not even be re-nominated."
This threat of a 2012 primary challenge to Obama, coming from a man who claims to speak on behalf of the Democratic Party's grassroots activist base, surely ought to gladden the evil hearts of Republicans everywhere.
Thoughts about the recession, from the same source:
...on average since World War II, now 65 years ago, recovery from recession has arrived just 10 months after the recession began. The longest previous postwar recession was 16 months.
But as of last Friday, nearly 3 years after this latest recession began, the unemployment rate was still rising, flirting with double digits at 9.8%. ... Instead of a recovery after a previous recession record of 16 months, the unemployment rate has now remained stuck at 9.5% or above for a postwar record 16 months.
Democrats have been in control of both houses of congress for 47 months.