Listen to the passion of your soul, set the wings of your spirit free; and let not a single song go unsung.
Sylvana Rossetti
House Approves Debt Ceiling 269-161: Thumbs UP!
I have written several commentaries over the past week; compromises are necessarily suboptimal from an ideological perspective. A debt default is not a viable, responsible position. I have to admit that I would have been amused to see Obama have to manage a no-win scenario of deciding what 40% of the budget wouldn't get paid. I am frustrated that the only thing the politicians seem to see from controlling Medicare costs is not streamlining benefits or increasing premiums but cutting provider reimbursements. Some resistance from conservatives is ideological (e.g., Michele Bachmann, which I think is an indulgent free ride on the backs of Republicans whom have to take the tough vote of an imperfect piece of legislation). The other substantive objection by other Republicans (e.g., Mitt Romney and military conservatives like Lindsey Graham (R-SC)) is the fear of cuts in automated Defense and Medicare program funding if the joint congressional committee can't come to an agreement on a package of cuts by the holidays. In fact, just as the Congress finally came to a compromise with a possible default and credit bureau rating downgrades on the ground, I fully expect the committee to do their job without the triggers activating.
I am disappointed with Romney's position on this. I expected him to reinforce his proven bipartisan credentials in Massachusetts. I understand he is particularly interested in establishing his defense credentials and a potential across-the-board cut is serious. A President Romney is at least 50 times better than the current incompetent occupant of the Oval Office.
Peggy Noonan/WSJ, "They've Lost That Lovin' Feeling": Thumbs UP!
Peggy Noonan takes an Obama campaign job description about data mining and related analytical software. This falls under the scope of my academic and professional disciplines: I've administered several large relational data warehouses. Think of data mining as panning for data gold: including the identification of novel, unsuspected relationships. For example, within a political context, it may well be that Latino entrepreneurs visit particular websites or respond to certain salient issues (say, small business loans, immigration reform, and improved access to government contracts). Peggy uses the job description jargon as a metaphor for Obama's personality: aloof, sophistical, clinical, impersonal. What came to mind when I read Peggy's column was the famous quote by Bill McKay (Robert Redford) at the end of the "The Candidate": "What do we do now?"
The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn't really very good at politics...The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being [George W. Bush]. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue... He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.
So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forces—the presidency, the U.S. Senate... He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser.
Peggy Noonan refers to Obama as sly and shrewd. He's certainly analytical. I think it's more a question of sophistry, with an intentionally misleading legalistic argument--his pseudo-centrism: he will attempt to co-opt language and concepts, e.g., "shared sacrifice". Veronique de Rugy has a good textbook example of how Obama operates in her short post "The Truth Behind Obama's 2012 Budget": we can broadly characterize federal spending as discretionary or mandatory (e.g., entitlements). Obama claims that discretionary spending is being cut by 5%--but what happened is a couple of large programs got shifted from discretionary to mandatory spending, not subject to relevant funding restrictions. We've seen the same type of word games with things like salary freezes (which, for example, may be limited to certain political appointments). Other examples by de Rugy included no reference to likely doc fixes and unrealistic economic growth and employment numbers.
Gabby Giffords Returns to Cast Aye on Debt Ceiling Increase:
Thumbs UP!
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| Tuscon shooting survivor Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) at debt ceiling vote (Still: AP) |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Eagles, "Best of My Love". The first Eagles' #1 hit...
