February, 2009

Audacity of Advice

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

When did the “main stream media,” oh how I hate that term, it sounds like a post-op urinary or prostate condition — anyway, when did the MSM — consumed as it is by editorial writers, television talking heads, ancient voodoo trolls, news show hosts, radio talkers, guests on other guests shows, NPR “I’ve been invisible behind my microphone for too long” — yes, you Scott Simon, your sniveling laughter was far more desirable coming out of a young man’s mouth — all start giving advice to the President on a daily basis and believing that said advice is valuable and may in fact be the word of God? When did that start? And more importantly, why did it start? It’s as if everyone now can give advice to our new President and surely they can, I would never limit free speech — but the trouble is, who checks and balances all that advice, who keeps up with how often the blowhard baby boomers puke their bile from one day to another, each day dawning as a fresh start, a new day for new advice — running the 30 or 60 minute television mile, the ripe column inches. They cannot believe Obama is not one of them so they twist and turn like desperate children who have been told they aren’t quite smart enough to govern so they will just destroy the government, which is the people, which is the country, instead.

Message to Mac (Apple): Please update your spell check to include “Obama”

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

These economic times require leadership and truth-telling. Americans understand economics far better than the talking heads or politicians. Every week, individuals, couples, families and households pay bills and plan for the future. They realize that it takes time for finances to grow, unless they win the lottery or inherit a chunk of money. They plan for college, a health issue to be taken care of or how to afford food for the following week. It’s not that complicated. We have fallen behind as a country in many ways but that’s about to change.

An exciting part of Obama’s stimulus package is money for high-speed rail. There are rail lines planned in congested corridors in the country that will serve high-speed trains. That in turn will inspire local entrepreneurs to create transportation to and from the train hubs. Obama inspires us to embrace mass-rail for this new century, rightly so as oil reserves will diminish. We went to the moon in the sixties, less than ten years after Kennedy declared we would do so.

(God, I sound like such a policy wonk! I swear I’ll write a poem next time — or a non-policy wonky piece.)

I can’t say it any better myself — (what follows is from a reader of “Daily Dish”, thanks to Andrew Sullivan)

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

A reader sees an Obama trade-mark:

What many do not understand is that the government is playing for time, not some brilliant economic miracle. We do not have the money or political leverage to solve this problem from the top down by divine fiat. We have to buy time — literally — for the ten-thousand smaller acts of restoration and renewal to take place. All this flow of money, this vast seemingly indiscriminate transfusion of economic blood, has one purpose: to keep the patient’s heart pumping until the systemic crisis is past — another 6-12-18 months. It is messy, sloppy, gross heroic medicine. Sure there’s tremendous waste. Get used to it. And get these people out of the operating room!
It is very interesting to watch how this crisis reveals and highlights character: the sniveling privileged Wall Street upper-crust, the semi-hysterical, uninformed punditocracy, the puerile Republican opposition — and Obama, cool as a cucumber, playing his game, five steps ahead, setting up moves that won’t come to fruition for months or years, while his opposition flails at the thin air where he used to be. I love it.
It’s the future that is calling Obama, not the present.
The Republican reaction to this stimulus package is on a par with McCain suspending his campaign during the primary to “handle” the economic crisis back in Washington. Completely clueless, cynical empty gestures. They think we’ll forget. They’re wrong. What Karl Rove wanted, and was willing to steal by any means necessary, Obama will get, handed to him as a free gift by the American people: real political power, the power to transform society for a generation or more.

Dance with the One Who “Brung” You

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Being bipartisan is like dancing the tango, it takes two. So far Obama has been dancing all by himself with his Republican partners — they get gussied up, smile at him, look like they’re having fun and then — they go back to the Republican Club and plot against him. It’s like the Rick Warren thing, when people were saying Obama had to have a brilliant strategy behind his controversial move. What was it? So now I’m beginning to wonder if there is any brilliance behind any of these “bipartisan” decisions, for instance Gregg at Commerce. You can keep your enemies so close that your friends can’t get to you. And right now Obama needs friends because as much as he wants to dance “the bipartisan” he’s dancing all by himself. I fear his friends will abandon him and his opponents will destroy him.