Thoughts at Christmas
Bensblurb # 515
Thoughts at Christmas, 2009.
We have dug out from the latest example of global warming here in Virginia: A record snowfall of 15-20 inches locally And happily none the worse for wear, considering our advanced years and galloping senility. So take a few moments to appreciate our good fortunes of living here in the USA and pray they‘ll continue,
OK? Times up. Now back to Washington’s follies:
You lie! hollered the congressman during Obama’s speech to Congress a few months ago.
The press scolded him severely for being so.....accurate (?) Yes, he actually was.
Obama: “Your taxes won‘t go up!!!” Unless you smoke. Cigarette taxes rose shortly after he made the promise.
Obama: “Unprecedented” agreements reached in Copenhagen. Yeah, they agreed to meet next time in Mexico City.
Obama: “You‘ll be able to watch on C-Span,” as Congress drafts legislation.. Most Democrat senators hadn’t even read the health care bill they voted on. Republicans were frozen out of bill‘s deliberations.
.Obama: In January, he said, “We’ll close Guantanamo in one year.” Maybe in 2011, says the New York Times, but not anytime soon.
Obama: “I won’t sign any bill with earmarks.” Except for a teeny one for Sen. Nelson, Nebraska, to get his vote on the health care bill.
"Overall, if you had a checklist of promises made, a lot of those promises have been kept," Obama told the Washington Post just before Christmas. But of course.
For now, check out these comments in Commentary magazine by Peter Wehner:
“...some thoughts on where things stand in the aftermath of the certain passage of the Senate health care bill.
1. Few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care. Passage of this bill will only heighten the depth and intensity of the opposition. We’re seeing a political tsunami in the making, and passage of health care legislation would only add to its size and force.
2. This health care bill may well be historic, but not in the way the president thinks. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything quite like it: passage of a mammoth piece of legislation, hugely expensive and unpopular, on a strict party-line vote in a rush of panic because Democrats know that the more people see of ObamaCare, the less they like it.
3. The problem isn’t simply with how substantively awful the bill is but how deeply dishonest and (legally) corrupt the whole process has been. There’s already a powerful populist, anti-Washington sentiment out there, perhaps as strong as anything we’ve seen...
4. Democrats have sold this bill as a miracle-worker; when people see first-hand how pernicious health-care legislation will be, abstract concerns will become concrete. That will magnify the unhappiness of the polity.
5. The collateral damage to Obama from this bill is enormous. More than any candidate in our lifetime, Obama won based on the aesthetics of politics. It wasn’t because of his record; he barely had one. And it wasn’t because of his command of policy; few people knew what his top three policy priorities were. It was based instead on the sense that he was something novel, the embodiment of a “new politics” – mature, high-minded and gracious, intellectually serious. That was the core of his speeches and his candidacy. In less than a year, that core has been devoured...The lack of transparency in this process has been unprecedented and bordering on criminal. The president has been deeply misleading in selling this plan. Lobbyists, a bane of Obama during the campaign, are having a field day...
.
6. This health-care bill shouldn’t be seen in isolation. It’s part of a train of events that include the stimulus package, the omnibus spending bill (complete with some 8,500 earmarks), and a record-sized budget.
And, as Jim Manzi writes in National Affairs...“the federal government has also intervened aggressively in both the financial and industrial sectors of the economy in order to produce specific desired outcomes for particular corporations. It has nationalized America’s largest auto company (General Motors) and intervened in the bankruptcy proceedings of the third-largest auto company (Chrysler), privileging labor unions at the expense of bondholders. It has, in effect, nationalized what was America’s largest insurance company (American International Group) and largest bank (Citigroup), and appears to have exerted extra-legal financial pressure on what was the second-largest bank (Bank of America) to get it to purchase the country’s largest securities company (Merrill Lynch). The implicit government guarantees provided to home-loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been called in, and the federal government is now the largest de facto lender in the residential real-estate market. The government has selected the CEOs and is setting compensation at major automotive and financial companies across the country...
And now, let's get back to praying for our beloved, troubled country.
***************
Thoughts at Christmas, 2009.
We have dug out from the latest example of global warming here in Virginia: A record snowfall of 15-20 inches locally And happily none the worse for wear, considering our advanced years and galloping senility. So take a few moments to appreciate our good fortunes of living here in the USA and pray they‘ll continue,
OK? Times up. Now back to Washington’s follies:
You lie! hollered the congressman during Obama’s speech to Congress a few months ago.
The press scolded him severely for being so.....accurate (?) Yes, he actually was.
Obama: “Your taxes won‘t go up!!!” Unless you smoke. Cigarette taxes rose shortly after he made the promise.
Obama: “Unprecedented” agreements reached in Copenhagen. Yeah, they agreed to meet next time in Mexico City.
Obama: “You‘ll be able to watch on C-Span,” as Congress drafts legislation.. Most Democrat senators hadn’t even read the health care bill they voted on. Republicans were frozen out of bill‘s deliberations.
.Obama: In January, he said, “We’ll close Guantanamo in one year.” Maybe in 2011, says the New York Times, but not anytime soon.
Obama: “I won’t sign any bill with earmarks.” Except for a teeny one for Sen. Nelson, Nebraska, to get his vote on the health care bill.
"Overall, if you had a checklist of promises made, a lot of those promises have been kept," Obama told the Washington Post just before Christmas. But of course.
For now, check out these comments in Commentary magazine by Peter Wehner:
“...some thoughts on where things stand in the aftermath of the certain passage of the Senate health care bill.
1. Few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care. Passage of this bill will only heighten the depth and intensity of the opposition. We’re seeing a political tsunami in the making, and passage of health care legislation would only add to its size and force.
2. This health care bill may well be historic, but not in the way the president thinks. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything quite like it: passage of a mammoth piece of legislation, hugely expensive and unpopular, on a strict party-line vote in a rush of panic because Democrats know that the more people see of ObamaCare, the less they like it.
3. The problem isn’t simply with how substantively awful the bill is but how deeply dishonest and (legally) corrupt the whole process has been. There’s already a powerful populist, anti-Washington sentiment out there, perhaps as strong as anything we’ve seen...
4. Democrats have sold this bill as a miracle-worker; when people see first-hand how pernicious health-care legislation will be, abstract concerns will become concrete. That will magnify the unhappiness of the polity.
5. The collateral damage to Obama from this bill is enormous. More than any candidate in our lifetime, Obama won based on the aesthetics of politics. It wasn’t because of his record; he barely had one. And it wasn’t because of his command of policy; few people knew what his top three policy priorities were. It was based instead on the sense that he was something novel, the embodiment of a “new politics” – mature, high-minded and gracious, intellectually serious. That was the core of his speeches and his candidacy. In less than a year, that core has been devoured...The lack of transparency in this process has been unprecedented and bordering on criminal. The president has been deeply misleading in selling this plan. Lobbyists, a bane of Obama during the campaign, are having a field day...
.
6. This health-care bill shouldn’t be seen in isolation. It’s part of a train of events that include the stimulus package, the omnibus spending bill (complete with some 8,500 earmarks), and a record-sized budget.
And, as Jim Manzi writes in National Affairs...“the federal government has also intervened aggressively in both the financial and industrial sectors of the economy in order to produce specific desired outcomes for particular corporations. It has nationalized America’s largest auto company (General Motors) and intervened in the bankruptcy proceedings of the third-largest auto company (Chrysler), privileging labor unions at the expense of bondholders. It has, in effect, nationalized what was America’s largest insurance company (American International Group) and largest bank (Citigroup), and appears to have exerted extra-legal financial pressure on what was the second-largest bank (Bank of America) to get it to purchase the country’s largest securities company (Merrill Lynch). The implicit government guarantees provided to home-loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been called in, and the federal government is now the largest de facto lender in the residential real-estate market. The government has selected the CEOs and is setting compensation at major automotive and financial companies across the country...
And now, let's get back to praying for our beloved, troubled country.
***************
posted by Ben Blankenship at
7:20 PM
