I don't share the obsession of Fox talk show hosts (e.g., O'Reilly and Hannity) regarding rather shameless, crude humor during the recent White House correspondents dinner, in particular, the shots the hostess Wanda Sykes took at Rush Limbaugh, suggesting he was the 20th hijacker on 9/11, making light of his addiction to painkillers, and, making reference to Limbaugh's much-quoted hope that Obama fails at implementing his redistributionist agenda, saying she hopes that Limbaugh's kidneys fail (and Obama was caught on camera laughing at the line). I mean, do we not remember things like Whoopi Goldberg making a crude joke linking President Bush's surname with pubic hair?
A side note here: As someone known for my quick wit and ad libs, I think Obama needs some help with his delivery. This is not the first time he cracks himself up laughing at a joke before or while delivering it (remember last fall's Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner?) And he could use better material: Classifying Rush Limbaugh a "troubled asset" on Republican Chairman Steele's fictitious application for a federal bailout of the GOP and suggesting a title to Cheney's upcoming memoir: "How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People" (an obvious reference to Dale Carnegie's iconic self-help book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People") are not funny. The joke about Sasha and Malia being grounded for taking a joyride on Air Force One and buzzing New York City was funny, but I would have added one about them asking for a bailout of their zombie piggy banks...
Advice to Limbaugh Over the Failure Kerfuffle
Liberals love the kind of deliberate ambiguity at which Obama is a master, e.g., claiming he's always been for the Second Amendment while supporting a DC gun ban, or vowing he's against earmarks but signing an omnibus budget bill with thousands of them. But they are unamused by Limbaugh's failure to flesh out precisely what he meant by hoping Obama fails; I did a random search on the Internet and found liberal groupthink on Limbaugh's statement calling it "treason". (Conservatives, with the possible exception of acerbic Ann Coulter, generally avoid using the term for political reasons, although we find Obama's recent apology tour and trivializing American exceptionalism as a betrayal of the public trust.)
We know precisely what Rush Limbaugh means: the ideas of punishing economic success and creating dependencies on government programs undermines the individualist ideals (self-reliance, hard work and initiative) that helped build this country and made it the world's greatest economy; we know of the anemic economic growth and sticky high unemployment in European countries that have implemented Obama-like policies of tax/spend/regulate. For example, if a country has inflexible labor policies (e.g., in laying off workers), business are reluctant to hire new workers until they are confident of business/economic trends.
That being said, I seriously doubt that ideological liberals would have been placated by Rush's dotting the i's and crossing the t's on what he meant to say. It's going to be immensely difficult for conservatives to undo the economic damage that Obama and Congressional Democrats are doing even if and when we vote Obama out of office in 2012. The net effect of all this is put the pressure on Blue Dog Democrats, whom have paid lip service for years against the national debt but meekly have gone along with Obama's tax-and-spend agenda.
A side note here: As someone known for my quick wit and ad libs, I think Obama needs some help with his delivery. This is not the first time he cracks himself up laughing at a joke before or while delivering it (remember last fall's Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner?) And he could use better material: Classifying Rush Limbaugh a "troubled asset" on Republican Chairman Steele's fictitious application for a federal bailout of the GOP and suggesting a title to Cheney's upcoming memoir: "How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People" (an obvious reference to Dale Carnegie's iconic self-help book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People") are not funny. The joke about Sasha and Malia being grounded for taking a joyride on Air Force One and buzzing New York City was funny, but I would have added one about them asking for a bailout of their zombie piggy banks...
Advice to Limbaugh Over the Failure Kerfuffle
Liberals love the kind of deliberate ambiguity at which Obama is a master, e.g., claiming he's always been for the Second Amendment while supporting a DC gun ban, or vowing he's against earmarks but signing an omnibus budget bill with thousands of them. But they are unamused by Limbaugh's failure to flesh out precisely what he meant by hoping Obama fails; I did a random search on the Internet and found liberal groupthink on Limbaugh's statement calling it "treason". (Conservatives, with the possible exception of acerbic Ann Coulter, generally avoid using the term for political reasons, although we find Obama's recent apology tour and trivializing American exceptionalism as a betrayal of the public trust.)
We know precisely what Rush Limbaugh means: the ideas of punishing economic success and creating dependencies on government programs undermines the individualist ideals (self-reliance, hard work and initiative) that helped build this country and made it the world's greatest economy; we know of the anemic economic growth and sticky high unemployment in European countries that have implemented Obama-like policies of tax/spend/regulate. For example, if a country has inflexible labor policies (e.g., in laying off workers), business are reluctant to hire new workers until they are confident of business/economic trends.
That being said, I seriously doubt that ideological liberals would have been placated by Rush's dotting the i's and crossing the t's on what he meant to say. It's going to be immensely difficult for conservatives to undo the economic damage that Obama and Congressional Democrats are doing even if and when we vote Obama out of office in 2012. The net effect of all this is put the pressure on Blue Dog Democrats, whom have paid lip service for years against the national debt but meekly have gone along with Obama's tax-and-spend agenda.
The Boorish Case of Janeane Garofalo
I really didn't think Fox News would follow Garofalo after her obnoxious characterization of Tea Party protestors as "redneck racists". The Tea Party protests, in fact, were not partisan and included members from different racial/ethnic groups. She claimed that there were racist signs at the rallies, in particular "What's up Willis?" (a Gary Coleman tag line from the 1980's TV show "Diff'rent Strokes", a situation comedy based on a white businessman's adoption of two black brothers). (I did a recent Google search, and the only hits I found reflected others unamused by Garofalo's own allegation.)
I really didn't think Fox News would follow Garofalo after her obnoxious characterization of Tea Party protestors as "redneck racists". The Tea Party protests, in fact, were not partisan and included members from different racial/ethnic groups. She claimed that there were racist signs at the rallies, in particular "What's up Willis?" (a Gary Coleman tag line from the 1980's TV show "Diff'rent Strokes", a situation comedy based on a white businessman's adoption of two black brothers). (I did a recent Google search, and the only hits I found reflected others unamused by Garofalo's own allegation.)
The primary reason I'm citing Garofalo in a second post is a different allegation, repeated by numerous other Democrats: She also claimed that Republicans or conservatives were hypocritical over the Tax Day protests over Obama's unprecedented deficits, claiming that we never objected to the deficit under President Bush. In fact, House Republicans (and many Senate Republicans) strongly objected to the bailouts in the aftermath of the financial tsunami, and the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during the last term. There have been numerous other examples, including conservative opposition to earmarks and the new Medicare drug benefit pushed by President Bush.
Antle, in a 2003 article on a growing fissure in the traditionalist-libertarian alliance in The American Conservative, suggests two reasons why the GOP didn't push stronger for smaller government or hold the line on spending during the Bush years: first, there was a certain scale of government needed to pursue the War on Terror; second, it was a pragmatic, politically expedient attempt to avoid unpopular spending cuts and to provide a middle way against pricier Democratic programs. For example, there is some anecdotal evidence that DeLay threatened some holdout conservative GOP Congressmen with allowing a floor vote on a far more expensive Democratic proposal on Medicare Drug coverage if they didn't vote for the GOP version.
As far Garofalo and all other Kool-Aid-drinking leftists disingenuously attacking the GOP on the deficit, we know better: most of the whopping 0.5% budget cuts (on top of huge spending increases) came out of Defense Department programs. The budgetary criticisms of Democrats during the years of Bush deficits, other than Defense Department spending, were principally that the GOP did not spend enough on domestic programs.
A Telling Admission by Treasury Secretary Geithner
The lead editorial for yesterday's Wall Street Journal focused on PBS' Charlie Rose interview last Wednesday with Timothy Geithner, where instead of oversimplistic scapegoating of "greedy banks" as Obama himself routinely does, Geithner admits the elephant in the room: that "monetary policy...was too loose too long...real interest rates were very low for a long period of time." Geithner, the former president of the New York Fed, was quick to chime in, as have Fed successive chairs Greenspan and Bernanke, that loose global monetary policy overall counteracted US Fed Reserve's belated attempts to tighten. I believe that the editors are correct in pointing out many foreign currencies (including China's) were pegged to the US dollar and hence the Fed is understating its global impact and the printed dollars made their way back to the US because of relatively lower foreign consumption and related investment demand.
The Politics of Envy Continues
Deborah Solomon and Damian Paletta in today's Wall Street Journal outline a number of steps being considered by the Obama Administration, the Democratic Congressional leadership, the SEC and the Federal Reserve to deal with compensation in the financial services industry. The administration, of course, is denying the obvious: that it is attempting to micromanage pay in the bank industry. Obama in Wonderland believes that private banks want outsized executive salaries (after all, don't investors love lower profits?) and want to write risky loans where they are forced to write off losses on foreclosures in a buyer's market which wipes out equity. After all, the all-knowing government bureaucrats know better than the market what it takes to recruit smart CEO's in the banking industry and how to judge managers in terms of long-term performance. After all, who better than the Democrats to talk about long-term viability of entitlement financing like Medicare and social security? Who better to lecture banks on financial responsibility than Barack "Trillion Dollar Deficit" Obama?
It may surprise people to know--but government regulators ALREADY HAVE the ability to flag banks for excessive compensation packages. But they have rarely done that. The Federal Reserve ALREADY HAS the ability to flag predatory or gimmick loans. But they silently stood by while get-rich-in-real-estate speculators were flipping Florida condos still in construction faster than pancakes and homebuyers were given mortgages without down payments and verified stable employment. And the Congress stood by while the GSE's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gained a dominant market share (versus the private sector) in the secondary market using cheap government financing, snapping up questionable mortgage notes and securitizing them.
What I think is outrageous is that the banks, hardly operating in the Wild, Wild West, are getting scapegoated for problems that should have been nipped in the bud by a functional regulatory system, SEC, Federal Reserve, and Congressional oversight. We didn't have a single point of failure; we had multiple points of failure. Where were the credit raters? Where were the accountants? It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. The bottom line: the solution is not tying the hands of banks so they are unable to hire or keep the best and the brightest managers in the financial services sector or forcing banks to become so conservative in lending that young, growing, promising enterprises or existing well-managed, financially responsible companies are unable to get the financing they need to bring innovative products and services to America and foreign markets.
Obama Makes the Right Call on Blocking Release of Controversial Detainee Photos
Just a month earlier the Obama Administration, providing rationale of "transparency", was willing to release photos from Iraq and Afghanistan purported to be abusive and sensational in the tradition of Abu Ghraib. I believe this has been consistent with their unprecedented and ongoing political attacks against the Bush Administration and the attempt to criminalize policy differences. We already know, as in Abu Ghraib, some troops in charge of prisoners abused their authority, despite written US policy on treatment of prisoners and without the knowledge or consent of their supervisors. I am confident that the US military has addressed or will address any violation of the military code and is not seeking to cover up wrongdoing of which it has knowing evidence. If the ACLU or other investigators have evidence that the military has stonewalled prosecution of known abusive behavior by rogue American personnel behind any controversial photos, I would say the photos are material evidence and should be used discretely in relevant legal contexts. However, even in that legitimate case, the last thing I would want to happen is to see these photos, definitely not representative of overall US treatment of prisoners, be used for purposes of anti-American propaganda, putting the democratic leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan on the spot and providing a rallying cry for the recruitment of radical Islamic terrorists and a justification for abusive treatment of prospective US POW's.
