Rising Star?
Bensblurb #594 3/2/11
Changes in our firmament:
A Rising Star.....
Rising Star? No, I’m not talking about that venerable town about an hour east of Abilene on Hwy 36. If I remember correctly from 50 years ago, there’s a stop sign for its fewer than a thousand residents. We’d pass through on the way to and from Texas A&M back in the good old days.
Neither is Rising Star any more our young president of recent vintage. He looks now to be, no longer hot, but in a cool-down with occasional cold spells. A couple examples of troubles in his drifting course are below.
Rather, the Rising Star I’m seeing now is an even younger, but surely ascending body in our northern reaches. In the spotlight now almost constantly, he’s shining brightly with welcome portents for the future.
Yes, he’s Wisconsin Gov. Walker...the fellow our President has been throwing curve balls at. But with no strike-outs. As Scott Johnson has noted in Powerline, “Can Obama make an argument without false premises, without false conclusions, or without begging the question? You have to wonder. Coming from the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history, Obama's criticism of Governor Walker is, shall we say, ironic. It doesn't do ...any good to denigrate or vilify governors who are acting responsibly to balance their budgets!
On Fox News, Gov. Walker reacted to the White House offensive: “I'm sure the President knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I'm sure the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope he knows these facts. Furthermore, I'm sure the President knows that we have repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin. I'm sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn't acting like the union bosses in saying one thing and doing another.”--an excellent example of irony, meaning the opposite of what he says.
Clearly, unlike Obama, Walker’s star is rising, especially in comparison with his chief critic.
Meanwhile, see what columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote about Obama’s DOMA squirming: "There's good reason to believe that Obama has always been lying -- yes, lying -- about opposing gay marriage. For example, in 1996, he told The Windy City Times, 'I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.' But by 2004, Obama very much wanted to be president, and he understood that supporting gay marriage would be a political liability. So he opted for something other than honesty. And in a 2004 interview with a gay publication, Obama strongly hinted his opposition was strategic, not philosophical. ... President Obama says DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] is unconstitutional, and yet the 'law professor' says he will continue to enforce it. In a properly ordered constitutional republic, this would be a scandal. But in America today, it's cause for eye-rolling, shrugs and platitudes about the demands of politics."
And now even Ruth Marcus of Real Clear Politics piles on: “For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action — unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful. . . . Where’s Obama? No matter how hard you look, sometimes he’s impossible to find.”
As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit put it: It’s as if we elected an inexperienced community organizer who’s in way over his head or something. But the establishment media seems increasingly willing to point this out lately. That’s big, because without them to prop him up, he’s toast.
The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel adds perspective: to the larger irony expressed in Walker's statement: “Fact: President Obama is the boss of a civil work force that numbers up to two million (excluding postal workers and uniformed military). Fact: Those federal workers cannot bargain for wages or benefits. Fact: Washington, D.C. is, in the purest sense, a "right to work zone." Federal employees are not compelled to join a union, nor to pay union dues. Fact: Neither Mr. Obama, nor the prior Democratic majority, ever acted to give their union chums a better federal deal.
About Walker, finally, here’s PJ Tatler: “Say what you will about him, but Scott Walker is serious. His plan to save the state budget is serious and his behavior in the face of insults and attack from the White House on down has been serious. He is taking on the unions and the far left in their house, you might say, in one of the most union-friendly states in the country. And as things have shaken out, he has to win now. For his opponents to get the upper hand at this point would be to empower those who abuse the democratic process from one end to the other, recycling tax dollars into campaign dollars via union dues on the one hand, and flat out running from duty when the duty got tough on the other hand. That just shouldn’t stand.
---In short, it looks like we’re heading for a collision, right soon. Will the Rising Star be deflected?
Stay tuned.
Ben Blankenship
##############
Changes in our firmament:
A Rising Star.....
Rising Star? No, I’m not talking about that venerable town about an hour east of Abilene on Hwy 36. If I remember correctly from 50 years ago, there’s a stop sign for its fewer than a thousand residents. We’d pass through on the way to and from Texas A&M back in the good old days.
Neither is Rising Star any more our young president of recent vintage. He looks now to be, no longer hot, but in a cool-down with occasional cold spells. A couple examples of troubles in his drifting course are below.
Rather, the Rising Star I’m seeing now is an even younger, but surely ascending body in our northern reaches. In the spotlight now almost constantly, he’s shining brightly with welcome portents for the future.
Yes, he’s Wisconsin Gov. Walker...the fellow our President has been throwing curve balls at. But with no strike-outs. As Scott Johnson has noted in Powerline, “Can Obama make an argument without false premises, without false conclusions, or without begging the question? You have to wonder. Coming from the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history, Obama's criticism of Governor Walker is, shall we say, ironic. It doesn't do ...any good to denigrate or vilify governors who are acting responsibly to balance their budgets!
On Fox News, Gov. Walker reacted to the White House offensive: “I'm sure the President knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I'm sure the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope he knows these facts. Furthermore, I'm sure the President knows that we have repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin. I'm sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn't acting like the union bosses in saying one thing and doing another.”--an excellent example of irony, meaning the opposite of what he says.
Clearly, unlike Obama, Walker’s star is rising, especially in comparison with his chief critic.
Meanwhile, see what columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote about Obama’s DOMA squirming: "There's good reason to believe that Obama has always been lying -- yes, lying -- about opposing gay marriage. For example, in 1996, he told The Windy City Times, 'I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.' But by 2004, Obama very much wanted to be president, and he understood that supporting gay marriage would be a political liability. So he opted for something other than honesty. And in a 2004 interview with a gay publication, Obama strongly hinted his opposition was strategic, not philosophical. ... President Obama says DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] is unconstitutional, and yet the 'law professor' says he will continue to enforce it. In a properly ordered constitutional republic, this would be a scandal. But in America today, it's cause for eye-rolling, shrugs and platitudes about the demands of politics."
And now even Ruth Marcus of Real Clear Politics piles on: “For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action — unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful. . . . Where’s Obama? No matter how hard you look, sometimes he’s impossible to find.”
As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit put it: It’s as if we elected an inexperienced community organizer who’s in way over his head or something. But the establishment media seems increasingly willing to point this out lately. That’s big, because without them to prop him up, he’s toast.
The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel adds perspective: to the larger irony expressed in Walker's statement: “Fact: President Obama is the boss of a civil work force that numbers up to two million (excluding postal workers and uniformed military). Fact: Those federal workers cannot bargain for wages or benefits. Fact: Washington, D.C. is, in the purest sense, a "right to work zone." Federal employees are not compelled to join a union, nor to pay union dues. Fact: Neither Mr. Obama, nor the prior Democratic majority, ever acted to give their union chums a better federal deal.
About Walker, finally, here’s PJ Tatler: “Say what you will about him, but Scott Walker is serious. His plan to save the state budget is serious and his behavior in the face of insults and attack from the White House on down has been serious. He is taking on the unions and the far left in their house, you might say, in one of the most union-friendly states in the country. And as things have shaken out, he has to win now. For his opponents to get the upper hand at this point would be to empower those who abuse the democratic process from one end to the other, recycling tax dollars into campaign dollars via union dues on the one hand, and flat out running from duty when the duty got tough on the other hand. That just shouldn’t stand.
---In short, it looks like we’re heading for a collision, right soon. Will the Rising Star be deflected?
Stay tuned.
Ben Blankenship
##############
posted by Ben Blankenship at
11:32 AM
