124 Comments

1. CatoTheShorter:

As usual, it’s the economy. Here in Michigan things are just getting worse and worse. My state is falling apart. As long as the economic news continues to sour, people are going to perceive the stimulus/TARP as a failure, and Obama will ultimately take the heat.

However, I think it’s a bit too soon to think of this as a significant trend. If this keeps up over weeks and months, then yes. The next election is a long ways off… still time for the economy to recover.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:08 am 2. Gil Dodd:

There were no adoring crowds or fawning media coverage in Russia. There were no huge crowds in Rome. The “miracle ” garden at the White House is apparently growing in toxic soil…

Barry is too thin skinned not to be bothered by these things. He will not just double down, he will look for a scapegoat.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:13 am 3. Peter Boston:

What polls? Rasmussen is a dirty, meat eating, SUV driving, son of a Republican whore who went to state college.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:14 am 4. Dave the Kapampangan:

Nanny Obananarama says:

“The only reason my poll ratings APPEAR to dip is because MY media isn’t doing a proper job of censoring inconvenient performance numbers. What’s the error margin on these things?

Where is ABC when you need them? The solution is more scripting! Get me that screenwriter from ABC again, and a bunch of volunteers from my staff! I need to STAGE ANOTHER spontaneous Town Hall meeting with more pathos in it for the American people. Give ‘em a show! Or maybe we can borrow another trillion and hand out more candy?”

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:17 am 5. Elroy Jetson:

Maybe we’ll try a capitalist solution this time…..NOT!

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:22 am 6. DeadButMorallySuperior:

Most people are going to vote “thumbs down” if they feel they’re being personally affected by TOTUS’s choices. Most won’t be thinking about his decisions on Iran or Honduras. But if the current regime can rig things so that there’s the perception of an upturn during and election cycle, they’ll be safe in 2010. And if they can jerry rig things in temporarily in October 2012…

So, I hate to say this, but since I am in favor of the long-term prosperity if this country, I’m in Rush mode. I have to admit I want this guy to fail, and fail miserably. That way the illusions of the Left can possibly be shattered, or at least, not taken as gospel truth.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:22 am 7. Alexis:

And what happens if the trend continues?

Nothing. We’re stuck with him. And he’s got a bunch of vindictive screaming maniacs at his beck and call.

So Obama is becoming more unpopular. Opinions are still polarized about him and will continue to be polarized about him. Obama strongholds will get pumped with government cash; any economic downturn elsewhere could be blamed on Obama, but it could just as easily be blamed upon people who refuse to scratch Obama’s back. In Chicago, districts that voted against Daley weren’t known for getting helped first.

So, even if the economic pot gets smaller, and even if Obama becomes more unpopular, he can rely upon his fans to back him up. Just as Bill Clinton could be compared to Elvis Presley, Barack Obama could be compared to Michael Jackson; each politician appeals to a deeply rooted social archetype.

I’ll start believing times are changing when I see fewer cars with Obama bumper stickers on them. Obama supporters still think the cure for America’s political cancer came on January 20, 2009; their opinions are unlikely to change any time soon. One can hope.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:28 am 8. Lifeofthemind:

It’s deja vu all over again. Son of Minus Five is Minus Eight. Is this an SAT type progression test?
May I take Minus Fourteen for tomorrow’s lottery drawing?

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:51 am 9. Rurik:

What matters is for whom ACORN will pack the votes. So long as he has an unprincipled mob of maybe 10 percent to act as intimidators, and another hyper-principled group to always counsel passive accomodation in the name of stability, he can maintain office. We still have not understood the fact that in this post-ACORN world, political popularity does not matter; control of the machine does.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:06 am 10. trangbang68:

If in 2010, the Dems in Congress with a 20% approval rating add seats and in 2012, Obama with sinking polls and an economy in freefall wins a landslide, we’ll know government by consent of the governed is over and we’ve all been knee-capped Chicago style.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:12 am 11. Mel Williams:

Cato is right.

The economy has already fallen apart. Now it remains to be seen if a lot of comfortable lives start falling apart – and I believe we’ll see it – that’s where the rubber meets the road.

The other possibility that will sink Obama is, of course, how he handles a big, real-time world event. Not the analyzable chess playing type of events, but the visceral/visual type.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:18 am 12. Lifeofthemind:

trangbang68,
How would you know that? Their presumption, they are presumptuous and audacious, is that this is a narrow window in which damaging information is being generated and disseminated through media, such as the Internet, that they do not control. Remember the vast majority of the electorate never heard most of the negative information about Obama during the campaign. Three years from now the ability of GE and other Obama aligned forces to control the information marketplace may be greater then it is today. You may only hear positive polling information. You may hear that we have always been at war with Eastasia.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:21 am 13. NullificationNow:

This is what I hear – Michelle is a problem with the women – she has gone full tilt diva and they are not impressed. She is acting as if she just got her first Katrena check, and has gone from Marshals to Saks without a personal shopper. This is what I hear, I have no opinion.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:22 am 14. novanglus:

LOTM/7 May I take Minus Fourteen for tomorrow’s lottery drawing?

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21…

I’ll take the next Fibonacci of -13!

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:33 am 15. vanderleun:

Interesting that on 6/9 it stood at +8 and now one month later it stands at -8.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:49 am 16. joe buzz:

I’m somewhat surprised that Team 44 hasnt taken credit for the Uighur uprising…Those stuck in China under Han thumb may be jonesing for a stacation in a tropical clime…

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:49 am 17. Doug:

Whirled Peas
Apple, Tree, ad nauseum.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:07 am 18. Roderick Reilly:

I’m always weary of taking statistical pulses too frequently and then making too much of them, whether it’s polls, the markets, or web trends. It’s still too early to tell if this is just a normal “post-honeymoon” slide, or part of a longer trend. It won’t really be significant until there’s a persistent statistical average that has a majority of respondents to several different pollsters repeatedly giving Obama poor ratings both in performance and personal popularity.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:08 am 19. Stan:

This dip is without any tough, negative press… as I commented in another thread my friend Norm of Kirkland referenced The Wizard of Oz (which made me think of W, naturally!):

who will be Toto and pull the curtain on O?

My impression of the MSM types: they are all proudly wearing t-sirts that say “I am not Toto!”

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:12 am 20. Doug:

8. Rurik:

“What matters is for whom ACORN will pack the votes. So long as he has an unprincipled mob of maybe 10 percent to act as intimidators, and another hyper-principled group to always counsel passive accomodation in the name of stability, he can maintain office. We still have not understood the fact that in this post-ACORN world, political popularity does not matter; control of the machine does.”
—
Truth
Hurts
Now What?

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:13 am 21. noprisoners:

Alexis @ #6:

Today I saw a report showing that the counties that were carried by Obama got, on average, almost double the amount of stimulus funds per capita that was received in counties that were carried by McCain. Coincidence?

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:17 am 22. always right:

Generally speaking, people really don’t pay attention to ‘news’ anymore. They either skip the political news section, or just roll their eyes at the headlines.

It is more important to know what everyone else is doing (iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, Next!). Which celebrity did what, for how much, etc.

The real societal effect this Obama admin jammed through since this Jan 21, 2009 till today won’t be felt for another two, three decades. People have a tendency to not looking too much further down the road (a mental defense for worrying too much).

Until it is too late (as we found out now), there may never be a point to turn back.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:36 am 23. Robohobo:

Stimulus As Payoff: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-07-08-redblue_N.htm
(h/t Instapundit)
Here is why he thinks he is safe, Alexis, as you said.

LOTM: It’s a Fibonacci-
-2, -3, -5, -8
Next? -12
You need at least 3 terms of the sequence to determine the next in the series.

TrangBang: Elections in 2012? Haven’t you been paying attention? See the latest doings in Honduras.

The slide is immaterial as LOTM says @ 11: The 0bamanation controls the narrative. All else is irrelevant. Until we get inside their OODA loop via Alinsky type actions, we are screwed. The real America has been out played. Think “Survivor”. (Outwit, Outlast, Outplay)

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:47 am 24. Robohobo:

For whiskey: The Mancession:
http://www.pjtv.com/video/Economy_and_Financial_Review/___The_Mancession_Is_Upon_Us/2080/

Isn’t that interesting?

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:59 am 25. JMH:

The trend will continue until Obama is replaced or the pollsters just give up (hmmmm, and FEC ruling that reporting negative poll numbers for an incumbent is a contribution in kind to his opponent?).

The economic problems are very deep and getting worse. Obama has no solutions, in fact everything he is doing or will do just makes the problems worse. The root of the rot in our economy is too many parasites skimming too much for themselves and getting in the way of the productive members of society. We’ve passed the tipping point, the parasites are taking too much and the producers can no longer keep everything afloat. But Obama is a creature of the parasites (so too, are most of the Republicans, which is another problem), draws his support from them, and is siding with them in the show down.

But even if the parasites win, they lose, because the best they can get on their current tajectory is a large slice of a pie that will never get baked.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:04 am 26. nelson:

Obama took huge risks from the very begining and there’s no way most of his bets will pay off. In such a time of crisis, even a moderately well working government would be in deep trouble. His is too ambitious an administration and, as it seems, even more incompetent than the average. Add this to the extra-high hopes he nourished and we have a recipe for explicit and even disastrous failure.

Though he can count on the MSM, the liberal media have spent not only their decreasing benefits, but a large part of their principal too in electing him. The MSM are right now expecting to be paid for their work, and that means being bailed out. But, since they are now in need of him, not vice-versa, it may be doubtful whether they are worth all the cash they need just to be kept afloat.

Though it is still rather early in the day to evaluate the damage Obama’s presidency will cause to the US and to the world, we can already see clearly where it may lead to. Within a very short time of each other two very important reactions against contemporary leftist-Islamic totalitarian tendencies took place: in Iran (against the ayatollahs) and in Honduras (actually against the Bolivarian take over of Latin America).

In both cases Obama backed exactly those parties of the conflict whose interests were/are most strikingly opposed to those of the US and the West in general. Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez (Zelaya’s true boss) know they have a partner in America.

Ultimately (though that’s far from being the main problem) America’s first black president will sour racial relations in the country for a very long time, and most African Americans (as most Jewish Americans, by the way) will live to regret their politically and racially “correct” vote.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:51 am 27. Salt Lick:

Possible 2010 bumper sticker?

“Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.”
Where? Where? Where?

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:55 am 28. Subotai Bahadur:

#17 Roderick Reilly

Normally, I would agree with you. However, for this trend to show up, and to be allowed to show up, with a media that literally worships not only the water that he walks on; but also the water he passes, is telling. Just as one can assume that the unemployment and GDP figures are “adjusted” to avoid embarrassment for the incumbent, polling figures are reported with an eye on the regime.

Is this the sign of everything collapsing for “Teh One”? No. Is it more significant for Buraq Hussein than it would be for most presidents? Quite possibly so.

I still expect some sort of Jihad against Rasmussen; political, media, or otherwise for lese majestie.

Subotai Bahadur

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:07 am 29. NC mountain girl:

In Chicago people fed up with the corruption voted with their feet. The can’t do that on a national scale. Obama is going to have to learn that the hard way.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:09 am 30. mariner:

Roderick Reilly:
I’m always weary of taking statistical pulses too frequently and then making too much of them, whether it’s polls, the markets, or web trends.

We need to keep talking about these numbers. The American people are sheep, and continuing to publicize every little dip in The One’s popularity can turn a short-term decline into a long-term decline.

We need to get over our love affair with Marquis of Queensbury rules, if we want to get our country back.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:13 am 31. Eggplant:

nelson said:

“Though [Obama] can count on the MSM, the liberal media have spent not only their decreasing benefits, but a large part of their principal too in electing him.”

Obama was put in office by the MSM. Without MSM connivance, a campaign based upon empty platitudes and skin color would have been insufficient to elect a person as President of the United States.

As with previous presidents, Obama’s popularity scales with the economy’s health. The stockmarket Sucker’s Rally has crested and is about to begin a clear descent. After it becomes obvious to John Q. Sixpack that Bernacke and Geithner have lost control of the economy (despite the media lies and illegal market manipulation) then what’s left of Obama’s popularity will implode. Even with (and perhaps because of) the MSM’s cheerleading, the Chosen One will become more unpopular than George W. Bush. It’s quite possible that Obama will eventually become one of America’s most hated presidents. Shortly before this happens, the MSM will abandon the Messiah just like they abandoned Jimmy Carter.

Again, I find it difficult to get worked up over Obama’s incompetence because effectively he’s already a lame duck. Even if Obama-Care and Cap-and-Trade became law, there is no money to fund those programs. Likewise, all of Obama’s foreign appeasement policies will go out the window after the first terrorist nuke goes off or Israel takes down Iran. The United States is effectively treading water until Obama goes away.

It’s so stupid that we’ve done this to ourselves. Obama’s incompetence was obvious from his earlier performance in the Senate. Allowing ourselves to be mesmerized by the MSM was a suicidal act of stupidity.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:25 am 32. JMH:

In Chicago people fed up with the corruption voted with their feet. The can’t do that on a national scale. Obama is going to have to learn that the hard way

This is an important point. California, Massachusettes, Michigan, all true of those places as well. Historically the liberty-seeking folks have preferred to light out for new pastures rather than fight the kleptocrats. You can even take this all the way back to the colonization of America. Europeans fled their own ossified society.

But when that old society tried to impose itself upon their new lands – including preventing them from migrating farther west to escape it – they stood and fought. And won.

There is no where left to migrate to. It’s not possible to leave the collectivists to stew in their own filth, to live out their petty lives among the crumbling ruins left them by their betters. Their filth is overwhelming the entire country. It is once again time to stand and fight.

My heart is sick at the thought of how much ruin and misery will come with that fight. I cry silent tears for my young children who’s future will be less that it could have been because of it. My stomach churs with worry that victory is not certain.

But I do believe the collectivists will lose. They may be skilled at organizing, but they are, like Sauron and his master, unable to create. They can only pervert. Eventually they will exhaust the reserves they were bequeathed and blow away with the wind.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:35 am 33. vanderleun:

What do you mean “we,” eggplant?

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:35 am 34. maineman:

Yes, the Michael Jackson analogy is apt.

Modest talents, mostly style, right place at right time, feminized, racially ambiguous. It’s a matter of time before the drug-addled corpse phase.

People here are right, though, to worry about how long it will take and what kind of stunts these guys have up their sleeves to stave off the moment when the truth of their Satanic ideas wills out. My greatest fear is that there will someday be a moment when we see him rise from the muck like a scene out of the Night of the Living Dead . . .

Meanwhile, what needs to be done is to target the dingbats who voted for the porkulus and tax and trade, especially the freshman representatives. They should have the “tax and spend”, anti-freedom, government tyranny memes hung around their necks unremittingly from now until their next election. There should be pickets at their offices, on bridges, billboards, editorials in local papers, call-ins to local radio shows.

Fix the target, like they’ve done, but do it by distilling the major threatening themes, especially the economic ones, that represent unavoidable truths and which help people understand what they’re doing to make things worse and what needs to happen to fix them.

JMH, I can get pretty grim, too, from time to time. But these new numbers give hope, kind of like the response after 9/11. I didn’t think we had in us what it turns out we do. This may not get to the “go to the mattresses” point. What has to happen for sure, though, is the death of the fantasy that is/was Obama. That will be messy, but hopefully we can leave that self-destruction to the 21% who consider themselves liberals, and we can get on about the business of healing our morally decadent culture while they tear each other up.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:39 am 35. Eggplant:

vanderleun asked:

“What do you mean “we,” eggplant?”

“We” the American people.

I voted for McCain and wasted money on his campaign as well.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:43 am 36. steeple:

The bet that Obama made on GM is the one I bet will likely haunt him the most, in that it will be clear to more voters over time that this was a poor investment. He chose to invest in a failing venture tightly linked to the UAW vs. letting the market work, and I suspect people will be able to connect with the likely failure and additional future funding required more so than they could on far away (in location) issues like foreign policy or (in time) Social Security/Govt indebtedness. It will be apparent to everyone on the road that the “new GM” doesn’t look much different from the “old GM”, even after tens of billions of taxpayer rescue dollars.

The challenge of being popular vs effective is that poor decisions made in the moment eventually catch up to you. He will do whatever possible to deflect the consequences of these choices to others. Pelosi and Reid should be regularly looking over their shoulders.

By the way, has anyone seen Hillary Clinton in the last month or two?

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:50 am 37. Peter Boston:

By the way, has anyone seen Hillary Clinton in the last month or two?

Hillary had a photo op yesterday shilling for another dictator hopeful.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:56 am 38. Eggplant:

steeple asked:

“By the way, has anyone seen Hillary Clinton in the last month or two?”

Amusing isn’t it? To be elected President in 2012, Hillary must be effective as Secretary of State –and– remain invisible at the same time. If the public associates her with the Messiah then Hillary’s political career is finished.

Though counter intuitive, it was probably unwise of her to have accepted a cabinet position from Obama.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:58 am 39. joe buzz:

The Country has a vetting problem. Just as Team 44 failed to properly vet their appointees. 1\2 of the voters failed to vet their horse in the big race…and eggplant’s “we” didnt complain loud enough to counter the claims of racism against those who were want to vet.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:59 am 40. buckets:

steeple,

I would otherwise agree with you, but I think GM will stagger on long past Obama’s time. There are ways to gimmick the system short term, and I would bet BIG money on GM landing some large gov’t contracts for police cars, federal vehicles, municipal vehicles, etc.

Jul 9, 2009 - 12:00 pm 41. exhelodrvr:

Steeple,
“The challenge of being popular vs effective is that poor decisions made in the moment eventually catch up to you”

That depends on how many voters are personally indebted to you for the “poor decision”.

Jul 9, 2009 - 12:01 pm 42. newtland:

The Governor of South Carolina and the Senator from Nevada have finally convinced me that either the Libertarian Party or a strong Libertarian branch of the Republican Party is our path up.

The reason the Republicans aren’t cool is because they are seen as hypocrites.

It may well be time to let the preachers handle the morality thing and work on improving Caesar.

A clear economic liberty “brand” can be mighty potent and give unanswerable talking points to new challengers.

When I was young, it used to infuriate me when Mr. Buckley would write that “hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue.” I realize the wisdom of that now, but it won’t dent the younger demographic that should be low-hanging fruit to anyone opposing the forced bankruptcy of their futures.

Jul 9, 2009 - 12:35 pm 43. Dave the Kapampangan:

Here’s another reason why Nanny Obananarama just keeps getting more and more popular:

http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2009/07/08/the-9th-of-july/2/

This ninth of july, as freedom-loving Iranian demonstrators once again take to the streets to protest Khameini and the Society of Evil Overlords, let us remember Nanny Obananarama’s latest “peace in our time” bargain:

The US on Thursday freed five Iranian Republican Guard officers, handing them over to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. The men had been found funding and arming Shiite militants in Iraq, and were arrested in the Iraqi city of Arbil on 11 January 2007.

The release was rumored to be part of the May 11th ransom that freed Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who was arrested in Iran in February 2009 and sentenced to eight years in prison by an Iranian kangaroo court on a trumped up charge of “espionage.”

Obananarama’s under-the-table bargain also included the impending release of hundreds of lower-level Iranian terror facilitators to be released in the coming days and weeks.

Ahmadinejad and Khameini will appreciate the arrival of the thugs, as they might need the thugs to help put down students protesting the brutality of their illegitimate regime.

Jul 9, 2009 - 12:53 pm 44. veracious:

Political blitzkrieg, changes that overwhelm the system: all strategy & tactics (S&T) require careful oversight during implementation, otherwise the full benefit is lessened. Especially for very large offenses such as DC gangs several past months.

Perhaps this offense has left gaps which may be exploited. Particularily a gap called “unfinished business”, like making sure TARP money actually gets into the system. People are defecting which changes the battles lines; lost people translates into lost _ground_.

Other potential corellaries:
* putting too many troops (effort) into one area results in traffic jams, depreciated gains
* an advance too large will lose momentum and stall
* long or large advances use up more stored supplies
* offenses always require prestaging of supplies due to the expenditure required to assault
* interfering with supply lines is a preferred method of counter-attack and attack

Jul 9, 2009 - 1:08 pm 45. maineman:

I still say, start by picking off their pawns. Right now. Tar them as tyrants, oligarchs, leftist/liberals.

The things real Americans hate and have always hated.

Jul 9, 2009 - 1:18 pm 46. ridgerunner:

30% strongly approve minus 12% blacks and perhaps 10% latinos = 8% whites who strongly approve. The racial polarization has begun.

Jul 9, 2009 - 1:25 pm 47. starling:

There is a picture of POTUS on the front page of Drudge right now that may earn him a slight bump in his approval rating among the heterosexual males. From the looks of it, POTUS was admiring the bumps and/or curves of a certain junior G-8 delegate of the opposite sex. Standing next to him is Sarckozy whose grin is a little harder to decipher. But I think I read his meaning. Either way, Mrs. POTUS is unlikely to be pleased and over the longer term the trend line in the disapproval rating is likely to continue–maybe even pick up speed.

Jul 9, 2009 - 1:31 pm 48. LarryD:

#39

But that is the sort of thing people are already expecting, and disapprove of.

Jul 9, 2009 - 1:34 pm 49. whiskey:

Thanks for link on the mancession. Women will NEVER turn on Obama because he takes care of them: nearly all the spending is on women and women’s employment. Obama does not care about (White) men and would prefer them all dead. Women don’t care either — White men are either competitors in the workplace, threats, or bearers of unwanted attention, or both.

Obama can ride out economic bad news for a long, long, time. His true believers have had stuff delivered. Went to the Apple Store with a friend — place was packed in a Weekday Afternoon. Almost every customer was a woman age 30 or under. Much of the staff too. Hip, young trendy. Don’t know where they get their money. But a big change from the same store in 2006 — when it was almost ALL MALE in staff and customers, and the average customer age was about 45.

Jul 9, 2009 - 2:13 pm 50. Harry:

I think Big O should start a war (with another country – not the US), then he can implement controls and stay and finish us off.

Jul 9, 2009 - 2:18 pm 51. rc:

“And what happens if the trend continues?”

The economy will continue to sink because Obamas policies are destroying the economy. The ’stimulus’ was nothing more than a pork laden political payoff to his supporters…and it’s starting to become obvious.

Unless his policies change, the economy will continue to decline and the Democrats will lose seats in the 2010 elections. There is no indication that he plans to change his policies. Even though, they never had a chance to improve the economy in the first place…but most of us knew that.

And this assumes that nothing bad happens in foreign affairs…which, given his strong tendency toward appeasement of (if not outright friendship with) murderous tyrants and dictators, something is bound to go very wrong there before his first (and hopefully, final) term is finished.

Jul 9, 2009 - 2:25 pm 52. hdgreene:

A good predictor of how the left will behave is to look at what they accuse conservatives of doing.

The current domestic “power grab” requires tranquility abroad, even if the peace is false and temporary and cost the US much in the longer term. However, a re-tanking — instead of recovering — economy, plus a derailed legislative agenda and declining enthusiasm on the part of the far left, might require a “foreign enemy” to stop the hemorrhaging of support in the Center. The Asthmatic MSM could try to Create a rally round effect.

When Bill Clinton was in trouble, Saddam got clubbed. Could we see the development of a “National Security State, Left” to play on people’s fears? If needed to prevent an electoral rout in 2010, I would not be surprised. Besides, any sort of war or emergency provides cover for expanding government power. Stay tunned.

Jul 9, 2009 - 2:34 pm 53. no mo uro:

And Whiskey, I’m guessing that the few men there besides yourself were pure metrosexual.

Jul 9, 2009 - 3:03 pm 54. PA Cat:

This is what I hear – Michelle is a problem with the women – she has gone full tilt diva and they are not impressed.

I see signs of that elsewhere– word is getting around that MO’s staff costs three times as much as Laura Bush’s, and that the White House refuses to release the cost of Michelle’s European vacation. Not to mention the $5950 Italian handbag etc.

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2009/07/09/marie-antoinette-in-the-white-house/#comments

Madame Defarge may be getting her knitting needles ready.

Jul 9, 2009 - 3:03 pm 55. peterike:

Buckets @39: There are ways to gimmick the system short term, and I would bet BIG money on GM landing some large gov’t contracts for police cars, federal vehicles, municipal vehicles, etc.

After all, somebody is going to have to supply the trucks and equipment needed for the new Civilian Security Force, coming soon to a town near you.

Jul 9, 2009 - 3:12 pm 56. AWH:

I also think it’s too early to draw deep conclusions about this, but I have been hopeful that his poll numbers would be extremely brittle once he started to govern.

His standard MO when faced with any decision is to give the double talk about “on one hand we have…” insert standard conservative viewpoint.. “on the other hand…” insert 60’s/70’s liberal viewpoint. He didn’t always rhetorically choose a side (although anyone who looked at his record KNEW which side he had already selected). This allowed him to convince many votors that he was on their side, even getting entire cross sections of votors to think he supported their viewpoint (which was contractictory to the viewpoints of the other people also supporting him).

The point I am making is that many “moderates” voted for this man expecting something much different than what they are getting (anyone remember that 57% of Obama votors thought the Republicans controlled congress???). Now that reality is hitting and the rhetoric has been replaced by actual policy, I suspect that a lot of the support this man got will prove to be extremely brittle. He could fall fast and hard in the minds of the majority.

Of course, he will have that core 40% of the country who are true believers, but it’s our job to make sure we aren’t intimidated by them in 2010 or 2012.

Jul 9, 2009 - 3:38 pm 57. nelson:

That the MSM are not so strong and influential as they themselves would like to be is proved by the fact that Obama was elected by probably the longest campaign in American history: eight years at least.

Ever since the SCOTUS decided against Gore, the Media have been basically in full campaign mode, campaigning against Bush, the Republicans and anything conservative (or “neocon”). Were the media so strong, Bush wouldn’t have been reelected to begin with.

Then, the fact that a Democrat –any Democrat– haven’t been elected president with at least 2/3 of the vote this time (and against MacCain) is another defeat for the media.

In short, though undisputably biased, the US MSM seems to be no less incompetent as a propaganda machine than it has been in its more traditional roles. It would be interesting if someone could evaluate more or less precisely what difference did the MSM actually make in the last elections.

I suspect that they have probably harmed themselves more (squandering whatever credibility, if any, they still had) than they have helped Obama.

And, curiously enough, even when they really help him, it is less through what they say than thanks to what they hide or leave unsaid. The Swift Boat Veterans story is a case to be studied: whenever the MSM don’t manage to silence or kill a story,they seem unable to do anything against it afterwards.

Jul 9, 2009 - 3:44 pm 58. talnik:

“There is a picture of POTUS on the front page of Drudge right now that may earn him a slight bump in his approval rating among the heterosexual males.”
Priceless!
But when every woman thinks you’re a god, it’s awful hard to resist all of them. One might sneak through…

Jul 9, 2009 - 3:49 pm 59. NahnCee:

In the last three months:

1. The Supreme Court ruled that blacks can’t jigger firefighter tests to gain an unfair hiring advantage, which is what had been happening.

2. The NY State Legislature fires 200 white workers to make room for unqualified blacks.

3. The taxpayers of Los Angeles are having to pay millions of dollars for Michael Jackson’s memorial festivities because his well-off family and friends wanted the flash but not to have to pay for it. (Ditto the Lakers victory parade, until Villaraigosa stepped in and said he had managed to corral enough wealthy donors to cover those costs.)

4. The Department of Justice declines to prosecute Black Panthers who were photographed physically threatening and intimidating voters in Obama’s Presidential election.

5. ACORN, an organization dedicated to employing only black people to register only other black people to vote, received a hefty little government subsidy from Obama’s porkulus activities.

6. A black-run cemetary catering to black families in Obama’s home state is busted for digging up and casting aside hundreds of bodies so that the graves can be resold.

* * *

You don’t suppose that Obama’s complexion might be turning people against him, do you? As his newly-empowered brethren seem to be trying to take over the country in a not-wonderful way.

Jul 9, 2009 - 3:53 pm 60. buddy larsen:

racism is racism –it’s astonishing that after all the blood sweat and tears the nation has bled to bury the demon, the sonofabitch is digging hisself back out again.

Jul 9, 2009 - 4:30 pm 61. buckets:

Nahncee, I think you are a little over the top. No need to make this explicitly about race, the whole corrupt system is being overloaded with Leftist patronage, whether it be a Dem Senator’s banking buddies or Obama’s brown-shirt ACORNs.

And that picture on Drudge of Obama “taking in the sights” is actually the coolest thing I’ve ever seen him do.

Jul 9, 2009 - 4:34 pm 62. buddy larsen:

buckets, that and the smokes –humanize the guy. And i agree, black has nothing to do with it –it’s the red that hurts. of course, race backs into the picture continually, but it ain’t what the movie is about.

Jul 9, 2009 - 4:49 pm 63. nelson:

Obama’s story and mistakes have nothing to do directly with race, but everything with low politics and ideology.

The blacks were being integrated as regular Americans and their situation was almost normalized in the US. That’s what was in the interest of most of them as individuals.

That, however, ran against the left’s interest. What is the left interested in? In creating angry and easily identifiable groups of people who owe/or think they owe it (the left) something. In a way, it was in the left’s interest to hinder the blacks’ integration in order to turn them into a dependent, captive constituency.

Unfortunately, by manipulating many blacks into becoming a vindictive and separatist group with its own agenda, the left is re-creating or re-inventing the very racism that was almost if not entirely dead.

Though the problem with Obama is not his skin colour, his origins or ethnicity, but his ideas and actions, his policy and politics, the worst consequences of his administration will inevitably be connected to his skin colour and, maybe, those voters who at least in part backed him to prove to themselves and others that they weren’t racists will be among those more deeply frustrated, and, having been forced to feel some kind of bad consciousness, they will turn against this with a vengeance.

Thanks to the left’s manipulation, what could have effectively been a colour-blind country will possibly slide back into some form of racial animosity. As usually happens, however, it is not the manipulators themselves that’ll pay for this, but completely innocent black guys. That’s similar to what will likely happen to the Muslims who live in the West: the innocents will pay for the guilty.

Jul 9, 2009 - 5:16 pm 64. RWE:

I just wonder if the MSM will ever turn on Prince Obamachivelli. The White House Press Corpse clearly is getting madder and madder about the way they are being treated, and that started basically on Day One of the One. Helen Thomas essentially blew up the other day and compared him unfavorably to Nixon.

But does it matter what the individual reporters think if the head guys at NYT, LAT, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS all are going to join hands with Obama and go over the cliff?

What do y’all think? Will they ever turn? Or will it take a Woodward and Berstine to rip the cover off something especially nasty?

Biggest problem I see, aside from the built-in MSM bias, is that he is pulling so much crooked stuff out in the open that there is no “cover up” to scream about. The MSM get most P.Oed of all that they are not told about something, because that would imply they would have to work for a living.

Me, I don’t think at the corporate level they will ever turn. That would be like Himmler and Goebbels deciding that the Nazi party was a bad thing.

Jul 9, 2009 - 5:24 pm 65. Doug:

U.S. releases five Iranians in Iraq

Jul 9, 2009 - 5:50 pm 66. wretchard:

You don’t suppose that Obama’s complexion might be turning people against him, do you? As his newly-empowered brethren seem to be trying to take over the country in a not-wonderful way.

I think race would be a terrible filter to apply to Mr. Obama, not only because it is illogical to think that skin color has anything to do with it, but because it would create the wrong “us versus them” dynamic. The damage using race can wreak is demonstrated by the way the Left has used it to sell Barack Obama. I think this was terrible and fraught with danger. They used guilt to sell a bad product, and if the product backfires then the blame will be heaped upon a racial target rather than an ideological one. Nothing describes the cynicism of the Left more than their ability to misdirect, misrepresent and mislead. They will put race in front of them as a shield. We should not fall for it.

If Obama’s Presidency ends disastrously then many people are going to wrongly conclude that it was premature to elect a black person for President. This I think is the main danger and one which, for the sake of everyone ought not to be advanced as a narrative. Not only will this fall for the scapegoat trap of the Left, but in time, they’ll be able to resurrect the racial narrative based on a race-based backlash. The best thing to do is to keep the term out of the equation entirely. Once the term “race” is in the discussion it works to the advantage of the Left. Keep on target. What do you mean “race” Kemo Sabe? Let’s talk ideology. If Barack Obama fails it will have everything to do with his background in Chicago and his ideology. His roots aren’t in Africa, but perhaps in Bill Ayer’s living room.

Jul 9, 2009 - 5:59 pm 67. Doug:

RWE:
Ingraham plays the Thomas Soundbyte regularly.
A thing of beauty, to be sure.

Helen Thomas and Robert (The Giggler) Gibbs

Gibbs suggests having the discussion later. (again)

Thomas:
“We’re having it NOW!”

(Ingraham’s is clearer than this youtube)

Jul 9, 2009 - 6:09 pm 68. Dave the Kapampangan:

If Obananarama fails, the only one who’ll be crying “Racial Issue” is the LEFT as they blame nonexistent racist strawmen for Obama’s failure, in order to distract attention away from the core illogic of their ideology.

“Boo hoo hoo. And we would have had Camelot, too, if it weren’t for a vast racist, right wing conspiracy.”

Jul 9, 2009 - 6:24 pm 69. 49erDweet:

39. buckets:……There are ways to gimmick the system short term, and I would bet BIG money on GM landing some large gov’t contracts for police cars, federal vehicles, municipal vehicles, etc.
It’s already happening. Local LE just received a few small Tahoes to replace some Explorers and are none too pleased to have had the order switched. Their “add-ons” are all set-up for the latter but must now be replaced by new stuff they didn’t really need. Scam, scam, scam, scam.

Jul 9, 2009 - 6:25 pm 70. tharkun:

46. starling:

From the looks of it, POTUS was admiring the bumps and/or curves of a certain junior G-8 delegate of the opposite sex. Standing next to him is Sarckozy whose grin is a little harder to decipher. But I think I read his meaning.

Sarkozy is looking at Obama and thinking “Quelle idiot! A head of state does not stare directly, especially when cameras are present. He instructs an aide to discretely invite the lady for a private audience to discuss the issues more deeply.”

Jul 9, 2009 - 6:35 pm 71. Chet Richards:

Esteemed people: I, as a long term lurker, now throw in my two cents.

Do not give up hope. The United States, unlike most nations, has several lines of defense on behalf of liberty:

1. The media (together with selected Democratic Congressmen and Senators) revolt. This is more than likely as O’s poll numbers sag, because a) they like a winner, b) they don’t like being used and abused, c) they want to survive.

2. The ballot box. If the electorate gets really upset, then even ballot stuffing won’t win elections for the bad guys.

3. Mass marches and assemblies. This will be especially effective if a major charismatic, such as Sarah P., whips up enthusiasm.

4. Judges who may actually gain enough fortitude to look into O’s legitimacy – and therefore the laws which he signs.

5. Judges who believe enough in the Constitution to examine the constitutionality of those laws.

6. A Constitutional convention which proposes Amendments (don’t panic, only the States can pass those Amendments and there are plenty of Conservative states to block bad Amendments).

7. Secession – The Free States leave the Left States behind. The Free States prosper as industry and people move from Blue to Red (it is already happening). This will ultimately be followed by defections of states from Blue to Red as the U.S. reknits under our traditional Constitution.

Baring the foregoing peaceful events:

8. Civil unrest and occasional officially sponsored bloodshed – this will powerfully energize our opposition.

9. Military defection and/or coup.

10. The Black Swan.

Let’s hope we see 1. and 2. so that we do not have to deal with any of the rest.

My Regards, Chet.

Jul 9, 2009 - 6:40 pm 72. Mongoose:

Wretchard: Noble thought, but race is liable to play a key part in what is to come, if only because of the demographics of the State’s clients. The fact that the Left is throwing this in people’s faces will sooner or later result in it being throw back across the barricades.

Race and class have been two key weapons of the Left’s propaganda war against us, they cannot be ignored. In fact, racial preferences and welfare support has to be dismantled, and to do this minorities will have to face their moral turpitude in all of this, one way or another. There is no getting around this.

I will add that when times get really hard, money gets tight and the batons start swinging, much of the left of center’s veneer of “Civil Rights” and “Racial Tolerance” will come flying off. It was all just posturing and moral vanity in the first place.
They never meant that the minorities could have their jobs or tell them what to do. That sort of nonsense was meant solely for those bigots out in fly-over country.

We may see the rise of White Consciousness in the very groups that were indoctrinated in Marxist techniques. Could give us quite a chuckle.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:03 pm 73. Tcobb:

Wretchard writes:
If Obama’s Presidency ends disastrously then many people are going to wrongly conclude that it was premature to elect a black person for President. This I think is the main danger and one which, for the sake of everyone ought not to be advanced as a narrative. Not only will this fall for the scapegoat trap of the Left, but in time, they’ll be able to resurrect the racial narrative based on a race-based backlash.

With all due respect Wretchard, if (and I suspect its more a question of when) Obama’s reign falls into ruin, they are going to say that no matter what. It wasn’t that their policies were flawed–oh no–its that they were willfully sabotaged by evil racists. The exit strategy for failure was determined beforehand by picking a black candidate. The fallback strategy was to pick a female candidate, but charges of “racism” tend to elicit more of an emotional response these days than those of “sexism.”

Besides, the black candidate was much more malleable than the female, at least in this last election.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:12 pm 74. Mongoose:

Oh, and his roots are also in third world world communist ideology, and with that comes the racial vilification of whites. It is really a bit specious to imagine that either the third world Communist villainization of the West or the socialist elitists’ valorizaton of minorities do not have their effects. There is indeed racial hatred at the core of Obama’s word view.

That he is surrounded by opportunists does not change this.

We must always remember that these folks believe that the white race stands in the way of civilization: Whites, particularly the ones of a Christian and capitalistic variety, did not create our civilization but obstruct it. If only they can be taken out of the way we will have their utopia for that is the natural condition of man.

Of course, that is the exact opposite of the truth, but they wil be quite content with the resulting barbarity so long as they can rule.

Racsim is part and parcel of Marxism.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:23 pm 75. Doug:

69. tharkun:
Agreed

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:25 pm 76. Doug:

“ The fact that the Left is throwing this in people’s faces will sooner or later result in it being throw back across the barricades.“

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:31 pm 77. mark_b:

Total Approve 51%
Total Disapprove 48%

They love us! Strong is too strong a word.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:31 pm 78. joe buzz:

mongoose 71 “come flying off” do you mean like this Ginsberg on abortion?

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:54 pm 79. Mongoose:

Buzz: Indeed.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:55 pm 80. Mongoose:

that was “throwN across…”

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:04 pm 81. Doug:

Sorry, I didn’t check and left only my Mongoose fragment:

“The fact that the Left is throwing this in people’s faces will sooner or later result in it being thrown back across the barricades.“

Can we spell Sotomayor?

—

“a nation of cowards”

Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, said Wednesday the United States was “a nation of cowards” on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,”
Holder said.

Holder’s speech echoed President Barack Obama’s landmark address last year on race relations during the hotly contested Democratic primaries, when the then-candidate urged the nation to break

“a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years” and bemoaned the “chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

Holder cited that speech by Obama as part of the motivation for his words Wednesday.

“If we’re going to ever make progress, we’re going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other.
It also means we have to be able to accept criticism where that is justified,” Holder told reporters after the speech.

Race, Holder said, “is an issue we have never been at ease with and, given our nation’s history, this is in some ways understandable…

—
“That wasn’t helped when I saw video of Robert Reich – if I misspelled that, it was Freudian – telling a committee of Congress that the bailout – which he largely put together – needed some infrastructure projects, but that they should be structured so that the jobs they created did not go to “white-male construction workers” or unemployed “high-skill workers.”

Personally, I get kind of peeved when, right there in front of the TV cameras and a herd of congressmen, it’s OK to publicly say that the stimulus isn’t for “white-male construction workers” and those evil “high-skill” people. I suppose they got those high skills by doing something despicable, like going to college or trade school or taking an apprenticeship or spending 20 years on the job learning how to do things right.”

—
But, I agree with Wretchard that throwing it back is not a winning strategy;
leave that to those who will and carry on.
Defending an ideological argument is much easier and safer than defending a racial one.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:07 pm 82. JMH:

I think race would be a terrible filter to apply to Mr. Obama, not only because it is illogical to think that skin color has anything to do with it, but because it would create the wrong “us versus them” dynamic.

I think one of the dissapointments erstwhile Obamabackers have with him is that he campaigned on a promise of racial healing, of post-racial politics, and instead has delivered a spate of racialist hacks like Holder and Sotomayor. Of course this disconnect between talk-talk and walk-walk isn’t a surprise to some of us, but it’s one of the things the swing voters are disillusioned about.

I think that in a roundabout, unintentional way, Obama will help move race relations dramatically forward. I think his election and the Black response to it will do a lot to undermine White Guilt, which is actually the biggest remaining obstacle to reaching a post-racial society. Once “Black Culture” is no longer excused it’s dysfunctions because of a lingering sense of guilt, we can get back on the road to harmony.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:42 pm 83. buddy larsen:

It’s been clear since the country re-knit after the Civil War that the Democratic party, whether southern cracker Jim Crow or Kennedyite urban inner city plantation overlord, was going to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of, and inject as much poison as possible into, the race issue –and to keep it as an issue –a hot issue –forever if possible. The O candidacy, as Nelson, Wretchard and others perfectly elucidate above, is just the blow-off, the climax, the grand summoning up of all their cast spells & loosed demons. It’s a gigantic KKK rally in reverse.

And we do NOT have to attend. In fact we MUST not. We have to keep the big picture –the nation we want for all of us –fixed squarely in front of us.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:50 pm 84. Mongoose:

Holder may just get his “discussions”. He will not like it. His remarks are thethose of a coward.

That is just my point. When you have an incompetent AG of the USA, who is only there because of AA and leftist mechanizations, baiting the racial majority of the country, race will perforce be an issue. And it should be. The electorate will have to come to terms with how they hae been used and just were this is all headed. The elites have morally and intellectually compromised themselves with their idiocy,duplicity, cynicism and puffery in racial matters. It cannot but be a major issue. How can it be otherwise? You better believe that the Democrats will make it an issue. Better to call them out on the matter.

Just wait until the immigration issue surfaces.

The truth of the matter is that the left wish to impoverish, degrade and debase whites in this country and their civilization along with it. They want to destroy the white middle class as an independent political force and racial politics is a key weapon in their arsenal. It has to be dealt with. We have to have that “honest conversation” and it will not be the one that Holder has in mind.

It may be masked in the next election cycle, but sooner or later it will surface.

The Left imagines that they can keep conning and intimidating people but at some point it must break, it always does, and then the open oppression ensues. It must break sooner or later along racial lines.

Look at the EU for Pete’s sake. It is going to be an issue.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:54 pm 85. wretchard:

I think the real proof that things have moved beyond race will be demonstrated not in the way that Barack Obama was elected, but in the way that he will not be re-elected. The Left elected him to a large extent, on the basis on race. Conservatives must argue against his re-election on grounds of merit. Part of the campaign to get Hope and Change established was based, implicitly on race. This token has been going round and round, like a poisoned set of packets in a network. The way to drive a stake through the heart of this particular evil is to evict it from the network.

Had Mr. Obama done a competent and sincere job of trying to fix the problems and defend the country I think everyone would have sensed this; and even if unemployment figures were at this point still rising that effort would have counted for something. Ultimately, if BHO fails it will not be due to his ethnic background. That is the truth; and therefore it is important that this key fact; his failure based on nonperformance, should be not be transmuted into racial politics again, because it is well known into whose hands that plays.

For this reason I am somewhat dismayed at the passiveness of traditional Republican politicians who seem to be leading, if that is the word, from behind. It is important that the adults take a hand or the demagogues will. My guess is that anyone who risen far up enough in the system is reluctant to take the risks. They’ve too much to lose; careers to protect; families and kids who they want social acceptance for, admissions to college for. But I think that if trends hold, then by ones and twos, then threes and fours and so on in cascade, the avalanche will start. But beware the late entrants, the guys who never showed up in the field, only to come in when dinner was ready to be served.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:55 pm 86. Batman:

The glee about O’s falling numbers is premature. Alexis’ comparison of Clinton to Elvis and Obama to Jacko is spot on.

Jackson’s popularity had been falling for years. His trial for alleged child molestation caused many fans to turn away. Yet he was celebrated, even revered, over the past two weeks.

Only a catastrophic depression or a terrorist attack will sink O’s reelection. That is because even in a recession people still want hope and they still think change is on the horizon. It is nearly impossible to defeat hope and even more difficult to argue against it. The worse things get the more people gravitate toward hope. (In his own way Clinton capitalized on being “the man from Hope.”)

Someone mentioned that Jewish voters might regret their decision to support Obama. Not in the crowd I know. They are still seeing everything through that lens of hope.

At the same time, the deeper the economic crisis the more leftist justification for making so-called fundamental and structural changes in the economy. There will be more, not less call for a government health care plan if the economy worsens. Already we are seeing hard pressed companies hoping — there’s that word again — that the government will take the health care burden off their shoulders. This is the Rahm Emanuel principle of never letting a good crisis go to waste. But in order to pass something REALLY big you have to have a crisis that is really bad.

How will the economic stresses be alleviated? By further cuts in the military initially. Then by increased taxes that won’t bite until after the 2012 election. The Bush tax cuts expire in 2011, IIRC. So the first big tax increases will be passively attained and not be felt until April 2013.

Finally, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. Polls like this measure a President against a theoretical idea of what one wants from a President. Every President will see numbers decline when things are rocky. But put Obama against any Republican on the map and you will see that no one can match him.

Romney? Gingrich? Palin? (well, she’s got the best chance because she too has intangible appeal though hers is narrower than Obama’s) Pawlenty? Nope to all of them. Do we have any rookies or “Young Turks” waiting in the wings? Not that I can see. Not as long as our bench keeps self-destructing.

When Mark Twain responded to an erroneous obituary with the phrase, “Reports of my death are highly exaggerated,” he could have been talking about Obama and the talk of his decline and fall.

Yes, Obama and his plans will take this country down big time, and Wrechard’s intuition that it may last 15 years sounds right to me. But reports of his political death prior to 2012 are highly exaggerated.

Perhaps they too are a product of that old evergreen — hope.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:00 pm 87. Mongoose:

JMH: I think the opposite will happen. “White Guilt” is prevalent only in among a portion of the “useful idiots” of the Left. Most of the left dons the mantle of racial politics to dissociate themselves from middle class, “Straight America” and to preen in moral vanity–oh, and to buy votes. They really feel no guilt at all. Again, for the left of center it will be an altogether different story when theyare affected. That is not what they meant at all.

The Hard Left of course cynically use it, but they do not share it. That is a very white crowd there.

White Guilt exists but not as widely as we might think. I know few people possessed by such a thing. I suspect that the far more common response is the thought that the Blacks have been coddled and indulged far more and far longer than any other group in the nation’s history and yet we have not much to show for it. I would venture that most find “white guilt” a neurosis at best.

I think it is far more likely that Obama sets race relations back 50 years for he manifests all that is wrong with affirmative action and all that is wrong with the Left and the Democrats concerning racial politics. The fact that minorities are the major welfare clients of the state and one of his major voting blocks will only exacerbate this.

No, I doubt very much that we will see anything but retrenchment in racial matters because of Obama. Racial matter cannot improve until the welfare and other government support–such as government make-work–are done away with and they pull their own weight. It cannot improve until AA is seen for the destructive moral force and political vice that it is and it too is done away with.

We cannot have meaningful debate in the public square until we do away with PC nonsense and rationally face reality. We cannot advance until we return to a society based on merit. We cannot go on without upholding the great principles, standards and legacy of Western civilization. White Guilt plays little part in overcoming these vices. Squarely facing the true agenda of the Left is what this will require.

And we are going to have to face reality very soon.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:27 pm 88. Wadeusaf:

Helen Thomas, “we’re having it now!”
Robert Gibbs,

“what question that hasn’t been heard yet do you object to, Helen?”
“Helen, have you sent in your question yet?”

Having determined the nature of the business are they just now haggling price or place as well.

My question which party is which?

Race has nothing to do with merit. Bias is a kind of cultural Darwinism. Only it does not allow for any transformation just stagnation on the holders of the biased opinion.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:33 pm 89. hollymer:

I think these poll numbers are indicative of a trend; a friend of mine told me this week that I was right about Obama and she was wrong. I think many moderates who were hoping for “change” are now very disappointed.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:37 pm 90. Mongoose:

Wretchard: certainly conservative should not build a racial plank to their party (parties?), but that is not what I am talking about. It will be an issue. People will be voting on the basis of the whole civl rights racket. Many people will be voting purely on the on the basis of race alone, and on both sides.

when you say

The way to drive a stake through the heart of this particular evil is to evict it from the network.

All I can say is that this cannot be done until the whole thing is honestly faced. Facing it means that we have to do away with welfare and AA, and we have to reject all of the anti-western cant of the the Left. The cynical use of race by the left has to be openly seen for what it is and publicly rejected. There is no way around this. How race has been used cannot be avoided. When this happens racial matter will not be very pretty at least in the short and the mid terms due to the very issue of merit.

As for getting it “outside the network”, well that seem a little naive to me. Race will always be an issue as long as there are races.

Buddy is right in his diagnosis but he is wrong in his prognosis. This is not the blow out–far from it. They will not let this go, it is one of their most powerful weapons.

And it is not just about the racist Democrats of yore. Do not forget that there is the foreign element of Marxism running through the middle of this. Far more than race, International Socialism drives the Democrats. Overarching power is their goal; race is just a means to an end. It is not that the Democrats are attracted to just this poison, they are attracted to almost any social poison. That is the whole point. Their manipulation of this issue for their own goals and the goals themselves have to be addressed opnly.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:52 pm 91. JMH:

For this reason I am somewhat dismayed at the passiveness of traditional Republican politicians who seem to be leading, if that is the word, from behind. It is important that the adults take a hand or the demagogues will.

This is one of my fears too. It seems the upper ranks of the Republican party are neutered, too invested in their positions. I don’t see any leaders who can harness public sentiment. Palin perhaps, though what she is up to with her resignation I can’t say. Jindal maybe, though his first national performance was a dissapointment. Both of them have the credentials as reformers and corruption fighters. But I don’t know if they have the rest. And who else in the GOP can carry the standard? Gingrich? Cheney coming out of retirement? Maybe. I’d vote for either.

But beware the late entrants, the guys who never showed up in the field, only to come in when dinner was ready to be served.

Yes, but this is a worry too. Most of the old guard are compromised, having sold themselves into the system. I’m not sure there is much patience left among the electorate for more of hte same feet shuffling. I’m not sure there’s enough patience left in the economy. I think we will need someone willing to pound on the table very hard, knowing that the alternative is to flip it over completely. I don’t see that person on the horizon. I think it may have to be a late enrant, someone who is both fed up with, and uninvested in, the existing D.C. power structure. Yes, there’s a great deal of danger that person will turn out to be a demagogue. Part of the tragedy is that the adults stood around having stupid and petty arguments about irrelevant topics while everything around them started going to hell. Having burned through our margin of safety, we’re going to have to make dangerous choices – the safe ones are all gone.

Jul 9, 2009 - 9:57 pm 92. Robohobo:

wretchard @ 84: “The way to drive a stake through the heart of this particular evil is to evict it from the network.”

In referring to racism. Dude, dude, dude. We have been trying to do this for my entire life. Beating our breasts, apologizing, etc. ad nauseum. And not one bit of it HAS MADE ONE FRAKKIN’ BIT OF DIFFERENCE! Not one bit. We still get it shoved down our throats that we are the most racist people on the face of the planet.

Frankly, I ain’t buying any of this. The Left just uses identity politics to keep the people of the country divided. Nothing else.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:06 pm 93. NahnCee:

I don’t think race should be ignored. I think affirmative action and hiring and promotion and college admission based upon skin color is just as evil when it’s tilted towards black or brown skin as it was when it tilted towards white skin. It should have the light of examination shined upon it, and it should be dragged into the courts of this country and sued into extinction. Unless the courts are somehow so corrupted that they will ignore the Constitution and the Laws of our land, and then we’re looking at revolution any way, aren’t we? Race should NOT, ever, be a factor in hiring or voting or educating and if it is, then that is not something that should be ignored just to be polite.

With re: to this statement ” …the left wish to impoverish, degrade and debase whites in this country and their civilization along with it”, I think what the left wants to do is to take away from successful whites and give to unsuccessful non-whites in an effort to make everyone equal. This, of course, ignores the fact that successful people often work very hard for their success, while unsuccessful people have a tendency to overindulge in various substances, not educate themselves and prefer to sleep in rather than going to a job. Nevertheless, I don’t think the left wants to ruin whites as an end goal as much as they just want everyone to have a union-made car in the driveway, a color TV and a chicken in the pot and to be satisfied with that and not feeling superior to anyone else … especially not feeling superior to a leftist democratic moonbat.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:12 pm 94. JMH:

No, I doubt very much that we will see anything but retrenchment in racial matters because of Obama. Racial matter cannot improve until the welfare and other government support–such as government make-work–are done away with and they pull their own weight. It cannot improve until AA is seen for the destructive moral force and political vice that it is and it too is done away with.

We cannot have meaningful debate in the public square until we do away with PC nonsense and rationally face reality. We cannot advance until we return to a society based on merit

Mongoose, we’re actually saying the same thing. When I say that Obama will unintentionally advance race relations, I mean exactly in the way you are describing. By first “setting them back” to where they were before Affirmative Action and the rise of the modern race hustlers. From there, we can get moving forward again towards true integration, a path we got sidetracked from by a passel of evil folks.

The cynical use of race by the left has to be openly seen for what it is and publicly rejected. There is no way around this. How race has been used cannot be avoided.

I also agree about this, but Wretchard is correct when he says it must not be the spearhead used against Obama. Obama must be faced and defeated on the merits (lack thereof) of his performance. Democrats must be defeated on the failure of their ideology. Then once they’ve been judged failures, it will be time to sort out how such a clearly perposterous bunch of kleptocrats got into power. That will be the point to examine the various shenannigans – included misuse of Race – that made up the Leftists playbook. But if we start with that, we play into their hands, we let them perpetuate the Race card.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:18 pm 95. peterike:

And here I was thinking that electing Obama finally got the racist albatross off the neck of the white folk.

Nah! I knew it wasn’t going to work that way. If anything, electing Obama just proved how racist whites are because they were just trying to show they weren’t by voting for Obama but they didn’t really mean it. (Incoherent logic? Perhaps, but I’m attempting to “think” like a Leftist.)

The notion of the racist white has been so pounded into the heads of whites and non-whites alike that it will take decades to de-program it, assuming that de-programming ever begins (it has not yet, of course). Many, many whites truly believe that those other whites — flyover country folks, not we urban hipsters — are complete racists. The hipsters even think they themselves are racists because they were told that in college (and high school, and grade school, and nursery school) a hundred times over. And in many cases they were forced to “confess” in front of a group in the best Commie style.

“Yes, I have sometimes had racist thoughts.”

Oh dear. Have you really? Bad, bad racist white person.

That albatross is so big and so strong that nothing will lift it in the lifetime of anyone reading the Belmont Club.

As for this:

And who else in the GOP can carry the standard?

That’s true, of course. And even if somebody shows up, we’ve seen again and again that when the MSM wants to discredit someone, they can do it. We still have not found a counter-attack to this. When they put the torch to someone, they can rapidly push a negative opinion to 30-40% of the electorate, and it only takes them a couple of weeks. Another significant percentage then feel socially pressured to say they dislike whoever, even if they secretly admire them (I suspect a lot of people who say they dislike Palin don’t really dislike her all that much, but they would never admit it due to expected social backlash. And besides, don’t you want to join in the yuks when someone makes a crack about Trig?)

Most of the Republicans are already damaged goods. Cheney? You mean Satan? Gingrich? You mean Satan? Palin? You mean the crazy fundy creationist Bambi killing baby factory? These are the mental snapshots people have.

On it goes. Anyone thinking of entering the fray understands that character assassination immediately follows.

It will take someone of exceptional skill and bravery to shoot over the heads of the MSM and to break through their wall of noise.

Who?

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:37 pm 96. WillDoMathForFood:

Wretchard: YES! I want us Americans to be Americans, not hyphenated Americans. The only diversity that matters is merit.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:37 pm 97. Cowboy:

Anecdotally, I’ll add the experience of my children. I am a white man married to an Indonesian woman. Indonesians often have very dark complexions and many of them would be mistaken for blacks if a spaceship sucked them up from the streets of Jakarta and plucked them down in America’s South, where we live.

In our public American school in a quiet suburb of a major American city, in a district that sport the oldest Boy Scout troop in the United States (which is just about dead), white kids are a clear minority. We’ve got Asians, Hispanics, and Middle Easterners every one of which overwhelms the white population. You should see my sons’ class pictures. Out of 20 kids, maybe four are white, and my own kids aren’t among that number. They’re still dealing with language barriers with my 7th grader’s class, if we take the teachers at their word.

This is the face of America around here in 20 years or so.

The thing is that my kids have started asking me a question they used to ask me back when they were really little. Back then they asked me when would they turn white like me? We all had a great chuckle over it then. But the question is back, from my 12 year old who should know better and on down. “When will I turn white?”

Maybe Michael Jackson’s death has accelerated confusion over this point and brought it to the fore, but I really don’t think that question is so easily dismissed in this fashion. I’m surprised that it’s come back into play given that my kids are older now than when it first came around. I have to conclude that it’s been simmering out there.

All this might be a leading indicator of some racial problems beginning to boil out there on the American landscape. I’m taking it as a data point, in any event. My kids are evaluating themselves, and by this probably others, along racial lines. And there’s discontent in the brew.

All this isn’t good. But it may be relective of some larger social trends. Unfortunately.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:45 pm 98. RCM:

Columnist David Warren from the Ottawa Citizen:

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1018

“The New America”

How can Americans fight this?

I don’t think they can. For not only has the Democrat party — committed in the main to the “second American revolution” I began to sketch above — control of the White House and both Houses. The Republican party is pulling itself apart. Only half of it is willing to fight: the other half thinks the only way back to power is to accommodate this revolution.

The United States has now caught up with where Canada was about 1982, when Pierre Trudeau completed the “reforms” that would make any return to our pre-Trudeau political and economic arrangements quite impracticable. It would no longer matter who won each election, the choice would now be only between the “fast lane” party and the “slow lane” party.

For the Republicans who would rather have catfights among themselves than challenge a supposedly impregnable Obama, the attraction is the path of least resistance. Once the other side in the “culture wars” has established control of the bureaucracies, the courts, the universities, and the media, standing up against them just isn’t “cool.”

The Democrats needn’t worry much about catfights, because, to use an awkward baseball metaphor, there is no longer a left-field fence. But the right-field fence has moved so far inside first base that you can bunt home runs over it. Or to vary that metaphor, all a Democrat has to do is scream: “I smell an authentic conservative!” — Sarah Palin, for example — and the victim’s own party colleagues will immediately rub her out.

————————————–

Interesting that last paragraph. That is exactly what is happening.

Jul 9, 2009 - 10:49 pm 99. Nobody:

‘Racism’ is a false name for pride. Thinking you’re better than someone else because of money, intelligence, or looks is the same thing. The left just uses it as a political lever to justify their cries of moral superiority. Only one of many vectors pointing toward their final goal of eliminating individual differences, though most would loudly deny this.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:18 pm 100. j willie:

The Belmont community is talking about the race issue like it’s something you get to decide. That’s an illusion. 2008 election demographic analysis reveals that Obama got 95% of the black vote, 78% of the Jewish vote, 66% of the Hispanic vote, 62% of the Asian vote and 43% of the white vote. If those numbers don’t spell r-a-c-e to you, then you are thick as a brick. That clearly biased voting block comprised 38% of Obama’s 69.5 million votes. Whites cast 43 million votes for Obama, versus 55 million for McCain and 2% other.

While i agree that the issues that this community cares about are ideological, not racial, let’s not pretend that those who call the shots in political campaigns, the media or the race-hustlers are anywhere near so high-minded. Especially after watching the freak show of a funeral that members of those groups threw for Michael Jackson. Note that it was filmed under copyright, yet paid for by LA taxpayers. These groups are following Obama’s lead in political/financial overreach, public sanctimony and never-ending exploitation of their exalted victimhood. If one is simply trying to forecast trends, as opposed to debate public policy and political strategy, my money says there will inevitably be a backlash from within the long silent but ever vigilant white majority. That pot began to heat up during the campaign last year, reached simmer with Rev Wright, then cooled until Obama was inaugurated, as most took a wait and see approach, Since 1/20, Obama, Holder and company have turned the heat up to boil with their policies, words and actions. It will boil over in some way because Obama is too arrogant and narcissistic to alter his bahavior, which sets the example for others. Michelle’s $600 tennis shoes and $6000 purse provide another highly visible symbol of this attitude. Also, witness the report of 50 black youths attacking a white man and his family as they visited with neighbors on their street in Akron, Ohio. The youths were yelling “its a black world”. Where did that attitude come from? What will that lead white people in that city to think about blacks “empowerment” by Obama? Is that an isolated incident or a trend? This is one watched pot that will boil.

Jul 10, 2009 - 1:15 am 101. j willie:

And here’s Rush saying more or less the same thing that several have observed within this thread regarding the “race industry” – http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_061809/content/01125109.guest.html.

Jul 10, 2009 - 1:26 am 102. dtmack:

I’m with our host on this one.

While there’s no doubt that race still casts a large shadow over this country, we need to work to reduce that shadow, not lengthen it.

Sure, if things start to deteriorate, the left will start crying racism. Let them. It’ll be a sure fire way of knowing that they’re getting worried. Once Obama, or his surrogates, start this we know we’re at the end game.

Nothing could be more poisonous to his Presidency that an overt appeal based on racism. This seems to be one of the only things he truly comprehends, but then leftist are great at stealth, if not much else.

The race baiting industry will die once they’ve overused the story. I think they’re already at that point, and whoever injects race into the issue will lose the argument. This even though many know that the issue is relevant to some degree.

Finally, there are a lot of dangers in the uncertain times ahead. One of the greatest, especially in this country, would be a large scale reversion to tribalism. There’s going to be a lot of that going on, as we can see in China right now.

Long term this country has an advantage, as it’s one of the only countries that truly attempts, with very uneven success, to judge people on their merits, rather than their skin color. We abandon this at our peril, even if the concept is partially unfulfilled. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight things like AAction, and in fact strengthens the case to make that fight. But let’s not make it us versus them.

Jul 10, 2009 - 3:31 am 103. twobyfour:

An acquaintance of mine, a Nigerian, as black as coal, calls the American “black culture” the “black trash”. I suppose that being a son of a prominent chieftain may have something to do with it–he is a very proper gentleman–but he’s got a point when he defines it as an “anti-culture”.

About a decade ago, when younger, he was working as a liaison for American troops stationed in some place in Africa (location eludes me) and amongst the troops there was a sizable minority of African-Americans. They genuinely thought that they would be received by locals as kind of “brothers”, but it was not so. The locals perceived them based along cultural rather than racial traits–they were simply Americans. There was really nothing they had in common that they did not have in common with the other American soldiers.

MLK had a dream and it is still that–a dream, and will be so long as the regressives use the “race” as their tool to “diverse” people.

Jul 10, 2009 - 3:35 am 104. dtmack:

twobyfour

I once had a very good friend named Kofi – he came from Ghana, and he wasn’t any kind of nobility (at least not formally, although I regarded him as a noble person).

He had a similar take on American blacks. I’m not sure what this means, other than that it’s culture, not skin color, that ultimately counts.

Jul 10, 2009 - 4:12 am 105. buddy larsen:

Both the Africans were probably –hell certainly –talking about the same thing that Bill Cosby caused such a sh*tstorm with a couple years ago –and that Jesse Lee Peterson, Star Parker (not to even mention the academics, Thomas Sowell and others) are trying to say today. The helluvit is, this dissoultion is a recent phenom, it began precisely when LBJ’s armies of social workers armed with Uncle Sam’s deep pockets invaded the African-American home and chased off dad.

Jul 10, 2009 - 4:31 am 106. larwyn:

Sure that you’ll let me know if you think I am on wrong track here, but a imho, a large component of why race will be an issue is we are seeing a flaunting of “getting over on the man”, to put in into the vernacular.

Imms, the Black Panthers in Philly were shouting “Blacks now rule” – similar to what was heard in the Akron, Ohio attack, ‘This Is a Black World’.

I’ve been calling it the “protective cloak of melanin” as reason that Rangel, Jefferson, Conyers & company, the Kilpatricks of Detroit, the mayor in East St. Louis running a prostitution ring out of city hall, now Governor Patterson illegally appointing a Lt. Gov, not to mention Gov Duvall’s shenanigans in Mass are ignored by the MEDIA. But now people are looking at the FAILED CITIES and who is “running” them and “Blacks rule” doesn’t seem to working out too well.

Now that “getting over on the man” is nothing new – it’s a TRIBAL RESPONSE. And that is the problem.

In a collection I sent out today, I noted that being such a mongrel of white European nationalities, it has not been in my nature to be “outraged” by ethic jokes re any one of my six nationalities. Tho I still do take umbrage at blond jokes:::laughing:::

My point really is that part of the discussion on RACE should include what Whittle wrote years ago on TRIBES. It also must include what the VRWC SHRINKS write on SHAME and Guilt cultures, tribal cultures where it has always been and probably always will be ‘WINNER TAKE ALL”.

It is that which I hear with ‘This Is a Black World’.

And I must add what really frosts me is the fact that in the world’s population WHITEY is actually the minority.

One other item which bears on the above is WON’s statement that the USA is one of the largest MUSLIM populated countries. He used eight million as his figure. Was he including the BLACK MUSLIMS in that? Think about the timeline of that statement and Holder’s Dept of SOCIAL Justice vacating all charges against the Philly Black Panthers.

And just yesterday read that VISAS are being given to PALESTINIANS who were “stuck” in Iraq to come to America. That’s in addition to the Diversity VISAS being given to Palis from Gaza. Probably pay back for running those phone banks and fund raising for his campaign.

Truly wish we did not have to face what is going on. Just don’t think it can be ignored. It’s our own fault as we allowed the “anointing” of victims to get out of hand. Just as after Sen Joe McCarthy was pillaried, we allowed the LEFT to take over our educational systems and to embed deep into our DoS, DoJ et al.

I’m lucky because I am old. Unlucky in that I have 5 grandchildren and 3 of them will be the primary targets now of John Conyers & Holders expansion of the Hate Crimes legislation if it gets passed. Those three are while males.

How does one answer someone who says to you “BLACKS RULE!”?

Thanking you for having this discussion. Apologize if I’ve rambled a bit, but all is connected, imho, even tho having been up all night, I may not have put it into correct wording/sequence.

Will subscribe to this thread and also have copied most of the discussion to include in collection today.

Jul 10, 2009 - 4:55 am 107. larwyn:

Didn’t really need to write all that – Gateway Pundit just posted why race has been made an issue by Obama…

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/07/obamas-books-banned-from-us-prisons-too.html

Obama’s Books Banned From US Prisons– TOO RADICAL
But, he’s a moderate.
Thank You State-Run Media!

Barack Obama’s books were recently banned from the US government’s most secure prison.
The radical language in the books make them “potentially detrimental to national security.”
The AP reported:

The federal government’s most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material “potentially detrimental to national security” and rejected an inmate’s request to read them.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”

But prison officials, citing guidance from the FBI, determined that passages in both books contain information that could damage national security.

A prison spokeswoman referred questions to the FBI, where a spokeswoman was looking into the matter Thursday evening.

The documents detailing the prison’s rejection of Obama’s books are included in court papers for a resentencing hearing scheduled later this month for Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen.

The rejection is just one indication of the harsh conditions imposed on inmates at the supermax prison, according to Abu Ali’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel…

Prison officials cite specific pages – but not specific passages – in the books that they deem objectionable. They include one page in Obama’s 1995 book, “Dreams from My Father,” and 22 separate pages in his policy-oriented 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope.” It was not immediately obvious what passages might have been deemed problematic, though nearly half of the pages cited are in a chapter devoted to foreign affairs.

The fact that the books promote racism probably didn’t help.
Here’s one passage from his book Dreams of My Father:

Audio was taken from the Hugh Hewitt Show.
In Obama’s own words:
White Folk’s Greed Runs a World In Need

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere… That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

The prison officials were probably concerned about stoking racial tensions(?)
Posted by Gateway Pundit at 7/10/2009 03:56:00 AM Comments (4) |

LINK TO YOU TUBE VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdLX3aRNaNk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgatewaypundit.blogspot.com%2F&feature=player_embedded

Jul 10, 2009 - 5:20 am 108. larwyn:

Mark Tapscott in the Wash. Examiner:

Political opposition is not a hate crime

[...]Yet in the latest bizarre twist, legislation quietly making its way through Congress would give the White House power to categorize political opponents as hate groups and even send Americans to detention centers on abandoned military bases.

Rep. Alcee Hastings – the impeached Florida judge Nancy Pelosi tried to install as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until her own party members rebelled – introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that gives Attorney General Eric Holder sole discretion to label groups that oppose government policy on guns, abortion, immigration, states’ rights, or a host of other issues…..READ IT ALL

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Political-opposition-is-not-a-hate-crime-7949121-50392297.html

We are in a bad spot. They are going to push us as hard as they can for reaction, so they can pounce.

Jul 10, 2009 - 6:00 am 109. Mongoose:

Nobody: I would suggest you have it backward: Racism is a name for false Pride.

There is legitimate place for Pride. Europeans and their descendants in America have every reason to have pride in the civilization that they have created. As matter of fact, they better get a strong infusion of this soon if we are to save West Civilization before the Left rends it apart.

This is an intended aspect of Marxist direct political action that focuses on race: It seeks to alienate white people from their own civilization. It is willful and calculated. It must be resisted.

It is foolish to imagine that it is not a major political issue. Race has been perhaps the major domestic political issue of the last 50 year. It is how the Democrats get elected, for heaven’s sake. To mimic their racial politics will not work and in any case is immoral. This is precisely what we must overcome. To address it it must be faced politically before it can be addressed socially. We need to get return to the sort of limited government that precludes this sort of project from government. It is the gvenment;s business to see that the bil of rights s not vioilate, it is not its business to instruct or coerce the citizenry on moral matters. That isa matter for the indivdual and society. This blurring of government and society is preciesly the vice that we much put away.

The time for moral rehabilitation is not when someone has a gun pointed at you head; first they must be disarmed and then the reform may happen.

Jul 10, 2009 - 7:16 am 110. Mongoose:

It is the gvenment;s business to see that the bil of rights s not vioilate

It is the government;s business to see that the bill of rights s not violated

Jul 10, 2009 - 7:27 am 111. Mongoose:

Golly: government’s business.

sorry–need some coffee.

Jul 10, 2009 - 7:28 am 112. larwyn:

They are playing games with us. I saw this sotry on Lou Dobbs last night.

Maguire:

Geez, That Story Sort Of Veered Left…

Lefties were reveling in a festival of deplorable racism at a country club pool outside of Philly when the story suddenly veered left.

The hate-filled country club chairman who had kicked a bunch of smiling black kids out of the pool was being fitted for his Bull Connor memorial bullhorn when suddenly some intrepid bloggers discovered that he has got the same name as a big Obama supporter and a certified (also certifiable) lefty. Oops!

The story, as broken by NBC10:

RIA:

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/07/geez-that-story-sort-of-veered-left.html

Jul 10, 2009 - 8:34 am 113. OldSalt:

Today I saw a report showing that the counties that were carried by Obama got, on average, almost double the amount of stimulus funds per capita that was received in counties that were carried by McCain. Coincidence? – noprinsoners

That’s the Democrat way, and certainly the Chicago way. In California, I’ve driven to the liberal-Democrat Bay Area and seen mile after mile of new freeways that were not on the drawing board 15 years ago. In Southern California, there’s a connector between the inland valley and coast which passes through my community. 30 years ago, it was projected and planned to be a four lane freeway. That effort stalled in the late 90’s, when the Democrats completely dominated California government. Now traffic crawls through an over-crowded local road between two Interstate freeways. Part of the problem is also that the Democrat dominated local transit district, which gets all state transportation funds for San Diego County, spends 85 cents of every dollar gathered in gas and vehicle taxes on mass transit, so we have the double-whammy going, i.e. reduced highway funds and the dedication to spend none of those funds on new highways. However, the liberal-Democrat areas have money for both new freeways and new BART (train) lines.

There’s no question in my mind that the State’s transportation dollars go to the liberal-Democrat districts, and Republican districts get short-changed. In fact, I’ve seen studies (but can’t put my hand on a link) that indicate that the liberal controlled areas get much more of each property tax dollar (which is filtered from the state back to local government) – I think San Diego gets something like 65 cents back per dollar and the Bay Area gets like $1.25 back per dollar.

Patronage is alive and well, and probably always has been. It’s destructive corruption regardless if it’s Sen Stevens in Alaska redirecting his pork or Pelosi in California directing funds towards her district (those are Federal examples; apply the same to state politicians).

Jul 10, 2009 - 12:03 pm 114. OldSalt:

For this reason I am somewhat dismayed at the passiveness of traditional Republican politicians who seem to be leading, if that is the word, from behind. – Wretchard

The GOP is dead. The Democrats did not bury them; the GOP leadership dug their own hole and crawled into it. I’m not a “bomb-throwing” libertarian, either, I’m a life long Republican and former elected (very minor) official. When the GOP refused to defend Reganism, when the GOP Senators refused to go to the mat on Supreme Court nominee “Borking”, they buried themselves. When the GOP refused to toss corrupt Senators like Steven’s in Alaska or Spector from PA from their committee chairmanships, when they continued to provide national reelection funding to them, they betrayed their own principles and buried the party.

When RINO GOP operatives attacked Sarah Palin, an average American like 80% of the GOP faithful, they finished off the party for good. When GOP leadership failed to register outrage at never-before-invectives hurled at Palin and her juvenile daughters, they corrupted themselves morally. They should have shut down congress until the Democrats repudiated the attacks.

Can anyone point to any national leader of the GOP who has demonstrated any salt, courage, effectiveness, and most importantly, a willingness to go toe-to-toe to defend core GOP CONSERVATIVE principles against the Democrats and their now-nearly-government-owned press? There were a few; now virtually none. Palin is gone. Jindal is diminished. There isn’t a GOP Senator or Congressman worth a warm bucket of spit.

I recall how quickly, suddenly, and shockingly the U.S.S.R. dissolved, and Eastern Europe was liberated. We grow accustom to the old, the large, the complex. Most Americans could not envision a country without a Republican Party as one of the two main political parties. However, memory the recent death of the U.S.S.R. should demonstrate to all (but the fairly young) how quickly large changes can happen. The GOP is already dead. The Democrat party is but one major failure from imploding on itself, i.e. it’s disparate interest groups could be splintered very quickly.

The GOP will be replaced by a new dominate, conservative party, or possibly for some interim years, by two smaller conservative and neo-libertarian parties within the next one or two election cycles. I’m not certain how long that realignment will take, but McCain’s election bid was the death of the party, of that I am confident. The GOP is de-legitimatized in the minds of most Americans. The Democrats are cheering about this now, but their policies will fail and leave America a weak, very indebted country, which will constrain us for decades. The coming Social Security funding shortfalls plus Obama’s current deficits will have lasting consequences. Debt has consequences like water flowing with gravity. The public funding shortage and sustained low growth and high unemployment will cripple the Democrats, and then their party too, will implode.

Jul 10, 2009 - 12:32 pm 115. Subotai Bahadur:

#112 OldSalt

Agreed, we are running on the same track. Not an elected official, but a delegate up to the State Convention level every year since 1980, with the exception of the year we lost a son. I have run a presidential campaign in my county. The Republicans are circling the toilet bowl and their own leadership hit the flush lever.

I’m technically a Republican still; but if a third party comes out of the Tea Parties, I’m there. If the Republican Politburo forces Crist in Florida, or blocks Toomey in Pennsylvania by finding a RINO to guarantee the Democrats keep the seat; I’ll be in the Constitution Party.

Where I think I may differ from you, is that you seem to take it as a given that there will actually be a couple of more election cycles. I am not that optimistic.

Subotai Bahadur

Jul 10, 2009 - 1:02 pm 116. j willie:

See this graph at Instapundit that highlights the “Mancession” – the growing disparity in unemployment among men (10.5%) and women (8%) – for another factor that will fuel the racial backlash. My guess is that 10.5% also skews heavily white and blue collar. Nothing fuels the resentments of that demographic more than their own unemployment, continued affirmative action hiring policies that discriminate against them finding a job and the continued overreach of the Liberals and their race hustler allies.

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/81624/

Jul 10, 2009 - 1:24 pm 117. blert:

Rocketing unemployment will destroy the Democrat party.

U-6 is over 16%…

But U-6 leaves out:

Independent Contractors — a very common employment mechanism in high tech and high skill positions generally. Lay-offs have been massive.

Illegal immigrant laborers — the were working and they really lost their jobs. But they are under the radar. Job losses are staggering.

Sole-Proprietors — one man shops are folding up. These people are unemployed but are never counted as such because they are capitalists.

Real Estate Brokers — still on the books as a commissioned sales rep. Unfortunately, no sale has closed in the last 90 days. For the BLS such commissioned troops are still 100% employed. The cash flow reality is obviously quite different.

When these workers are tacked on to the U-6 it becomes plain that we have already reached Great Depression unemployment levels.

In California we’ve exceeded the Great Depression numbers. Out here it is reasonable to expect construction trades unemployment to surpass 80%.

Yet more job losses loom directly ahead: state governments are going to have to cut spending massively. Most of their spending is on paychecks and welfare. The payments are biased towards Democrat constituencies.

The Syn-CDO trap is being sprung. Kenosha Schools are already in litigation to get their millions back. Throughout the land public pension money is at hazard to the mega-bankers. The CDS held by big banking will re-float their balance sheets at the direct expense of these pension funds. In turn taxpayers across the land will have to pony up for the losses since the teacher’s pension is an absolute obligation. Many municipalities will consequently go bankrupt.

All of the above will trigger a massive revulsion against the powers that be.

And as for the press: McClatchy CDS are priced for immediate bankruptcy already! The NY Times will have to go into Chapter 11 before the 2010 campaign — borrowing money at 14% says everything. Pinch will really be feeling the pinch!

I’m expecting a train wreck, a currency crisis and a political crisis.

Already China is doing its best to abandon the dollar. Dollar revulsion would trigger hyperinflation.

Now that’s a Reset Button !

Jul 10, 2009 - 3:46 pm 118. Robohobo:

OldSalt @ 114: “Can anyone point to any national leader of the GOP who has demonstrated any salt, courage, effectiveness, and most importantly, a willingness to go toe-to-toe to defend core GOP CONSERVATIVE principles against the Democrats and their now-nearly-government-owned press?”

Nope, not a one. One of the reasons I advocate another movement:

“Throw The Bums Out In 2010 & 2012 – Reboot Congress”

I do not care where it comes from but we must do away with the professional political classes. The elitists who believe they have a right to rule us. Those Ivy League snots from both sides of the supposed divide. Maybe The Constitution Party?

Subotai @ 115: “Where I think I may differ from you, is that you seem to take it as a given that there will actually be a couple of more election cycles. I am not that optimistic.”

As you know, I am with you there. The recent trends in legislation including Federal Detention Centers (Yup, that is what they are) outlined in HR 645 and hate crime laws – HR 1699(?) – speak about a coming storm that will make most cry. The 0bamamantion and Fascists’R'Us (Congress) seem to be making sure that the Republic disappears from view.

Just an o/t one for all. I got a call/message today. Some Indian guy who was unintelligible. I literally could not understand a word he said. Luckily he sent an email also. It turns out that they were looking for an IT PM to staff a 6 month contract but the window to fill was TWO HOURS! What the heck kind of IT PM will you get if you have that short a trigger to fill it? Just unbelievable.

Jul 10, 2009 - 10:31 pm 119. buddy larsen:

Robo, sounds like a spinning top slowing down and going into wobble.

Jul 11, 2009 - 6:34 am 120. WillDoMathForFood:

noprisoners @ 21, Old Salt @ 113: I have another data point on this. I live in Lancaster, CA, a fairly conservative community with a lot of us aerospace geeks – or at least our Congressman is a Republican. (Though there’s a lot of criminals and families of criminals who follow their incarcerated relatives who’ve gotten an all-expenses-paid vacation at the local state prison in Lancaster. My home has been robbed twice in the last six years, and I live in a “nice” neighborhood. Another way California punishes conservative communities: by exporting their most violent and ignorant liberals there.) But someone sent me a link that listed where the stimulus funds were being spent, by community. Lancaster and Palmdale, CA, population 250,000 or so combined, got $0.00 of the $787B.

Jul 11, 2009 - 9:59 am 121. AWH:

#118,

Interesting announcement today from Palin that she will be backing any candidates who support her views of “limited government, strong defense and “energy independence.” I think that is the correct view and one that resonates with the public.

Also, I have gotten similar calls from tech recruiters. People need to get things done, but they are utterly foolish about their recruiting. They are lowballing their recruiters (and getting recruiters who have no clue and can barely speak English) and lowballing their hires – and almost certainly getting people who can’t do the job. 2 hours is not even sufficient to randomly pick someone.

Jul 11, 2009 - 10:51 am 122. Josh:

Obama has a scapegoat – Bush.

And Obama isn’t doing anything but signing what the veto-proof Congress sends him and otherwise agrees with.

There’s a fairly large element of the public that simply votes against the guy in power. That’s now Obama, scapegoat Bush though he may.

We are in very ugly, crazy times.

Jul 11, 2009 - 12:43 pm 123. blert:

Josh…

Welcome to the aristocratic state.

Jul 11, 2009 - 9:39 pm 124. j willie:

more of the same – kiss my black ass

Jul 13, 2009 - 11:50 am

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