Blithe SpiritRigged elections are commonplace in any banana republic. But a number of factors make this electoral outing and its aftermath noteworthy.
via Civil War in Venezuela? – Taki\’s Magazine.
We have known of this kind of republic for a long time. It may be replaced by “oil republic”? When oil riches come atop inadequate founding in how to be a republic.
Writing now, day after Inauguration 2 of the Black Messiah. “We are made for this moment,” says Sun-Times pages 2 & 3 (hard-copy) head, quoting the Black M. Egad. This, his 2nd coming to the inaugural pulpit, is the sum of our existence, the Great Reckoning? I may vomit.*
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* Opening line, “Man Who Came to Dinner, B’way play of ’40s, Monty Wooley in lead, his line.
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Obama “pushes for unity,” says S-T hard-copy subhead. Phew. If this is how he sounds when pushing for unity, how does he sound when drawing line in sand?
It’s a Natasha Korecki story, typically good starting with lede ‘graf. However, O. “made it clear” his “progressive [far-left] agenda,” with its “reforms” in this and that, etc. No. Rather “changes,” as in “hope and change,” which some of you may remember. To say “reform” is to baptize it. It’s to editorialize. Shame on you, Korecki, except of course that’s how everyone talks, unfortunately.
Great quote toward end of story, Charles Smith of Milwaukee, i-d’d as Afr-Am, will “probably never see a black president again, not in my lifetime,” strongly implying belief in after life.
Then the unsinkable Mark Brown, who had to read speech over twice “to better appreciate” what he’d heard O. say. Personal Journalism 101 here — I, I, me, me, my, my — as in Roger Ebert’s reviews over the years, all variations on the easily parodied “It works for me.”
More Mark: O. is a “constitutional law expert.” Oh, senior lecturer, aka glorified adjunct prof, at U. of Chi, on special appointment never offered tenure? Writer of what articles in juried journals? Wrote anything, ever? Shined at Harvard Law? (We don’t know, do we?) It’s a measure of Mark Brown carelessness here. Mark is a credit to his race when he does this.
The speech was “surprisingly brief,” says Steve Huntley, who knows how to hurt a guy without seeming to.
President Obama has been using the days and weeks leading up to his inauguration to show the depth of his disdain for the leaders of the other major party and, by inference, that party’s voters, which is to say more or less half the country. He has been spending his time alienating instead of summoning. It has left the political air more sour and estranged.
In his news conference the other day,
he didn’t seem to think he had to mask his partisan rancor or be large-spirited. He bristled with unashamed hostility for Republicans on the Hill. They are holding the economy “ransom,” they are using the threat of “crashing the American economy” as “leverage,” some are “absolutist” while others are “consumed with partisan brinkmanship.” They are holding “a gun at the head of the American people.” And what is “motivating and propelling” them is not a desire for debt reduction, as they claim. They are “suspicious about government’s commitment . . . to make sure that seniors have decent health care as they get older. They have suspicions about Social Security. They have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research.”
As if he’s bitter.
Chicago’s most important Catholic, Alderman Ed Burke, 43 years on city council (a record) and longtime chairman of the council’s finance committee, professed himself defeated by a recently passed privatization plan but voted for it anyway.
“The good Dominican sisters” had not prepared him for this, he said during debate . . .
The rest is here.
Not to mention the troubles the poor Democrats — do not our hearts go out to them? — suffer when their leader flaunts his power by flouting the law.
And neither to mention the perils of one-party rule, as in Cook County. Nor the danger of taxing and spending in the Democrat way.
Nor the motivation herein provided for mistrusting government far more than the private business operation, except when it thrives because of its own clout with the political powers which are invulnerable to correction or punishment.
This is why there’s a Tea Party movement. Precisely. Keep it in mind next time politicos and pundits bemoan Tea Partiers and/or celebrate their presumed but inadequately demonstrated demise.
Yes.
The Obamas lived high off the hog at the White House — far higher than previous occupants. State dinners, that is. Why not? He’s got a good government job, and that’s good for something, isn’t it?
This is very big. Slugger O’Keefe hit a home run:
A lot has happened in the last 24 hours. The entire political establishment is in an uproar over our latest report on voter fraud.
Since yesterday, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran’s son Patrick has resigned from his position as campaign Field Director, and the Arlington County Police have now opened a criminal investigation into the fraud exposed by Project Veritas.
And after she was grilled about our report on CNN, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to admit what the vast majority of Americans have known all along: . . . .
Back in May, I wrote a column laying out possible scenarios for the 2012 campaign different from the conventional wisdom that it would be a long, hard slog through a fixed list of target states like the race in 2004.
I thought alternatives were possible because partisan preferences in the half dozen years before 2004 were very stable, while partisan preferences over the last half dozen years have been anything but.
Now, after Mitt Romney’s big victory in the Oct. 3 debate and his solid performances in the Oct. 16 and 22 debates, there is evidence that two of my alternative scenarios may be unfolding.
Steve Huntley in Sun-Times today on failure of “trickledown government.”
New one on me, but goes back at least to last January, when Indiana governor Mitch Daniels called Obama’s economic policies a “grand experiment in trickle-down government,” which three days later Joe Biden predictably praised effusively.
“Grand experiment” is pretty good too, I must say.
