Most of us miss out on life's big prizes. The Pulitzer. The Nobel. Oscars. Tonys. Emmys. But we're all eligible for life's small pleasures. A pat on the back. A kiss behind the ear. A four-pound bass. A full moon. An empty parking space. A crackling fire. A great meal. A glorious sunset. Hot soup. Cold beer.
Anonymous
Politics in Review and Sunday Talk Soup
The one thing that really irritates me is how STUPID and PREDICTABLE next year's Presidential candidates ARE, regardless of whether we are talking about the AWOL Leader in Chief, Barack Obama, on his way to another summer vacation to Martha's Vineyard (you know, just like all the lower middle class families back in Chicago whom don't own a mansion and can't afford to send their kids to private school) or many in the GOP field.
Take, for example, Barack Obama once again shooting down Congress--and let's by clear, he's hoping the American people are stupid enough to think the American people are thinking of the GOP-controlled House is the Congress: you know, the body which actually now produces a budget, provides a roadmap for entitlement reform, etc., while the Senate Democrats, like their former colleague whom now pretends to be President, fail to come up with a budget, have failed to come up with a single constructive piece of legislation. The Democrats have a very easy job to do--they know benefit cuts are politically highly unpopular. (Of course, people see their piece of the federal pie as intrinsically worthy; everybody else's slices of the pie are unworthy.) The Republicans have to play bad cop: We've already been there, done that. The Democrats expand domestic spending by 24% over 2 years while federal revenues go down or are flat.
The progressives are trying to use the 1937 recession to "prove" the ultimate validation of Keynesian economics. There are two arguments: a decreased federal deficit and de facto tighter monetary policy as FDR allegedly mishandled liquidity from the economy. The problem is caused by austerity. This is nonsense, of course. For instance, a critique from the Austrian school of economics argues that the decrease in the deficit resulted from higher tax revenues (fringe benefits, e.g., social security), not decreased spending. They argue that, in fact, labor regulatory policies interfered with entrepreneurial decision making, and there was a loose monetary policy particularly marked by increased government prices for gold in 1934 and a gold inflow versus a decrease in interest rates through an increase in savings.They argue that increased regulation of the stock market, thinning out the number of investors, increasing volatility and uncertainty, essentially provided a pricking of the liquidity bubble, resulting in a recessionary contraction (their difference with Friedman was the relative position of the horse and the cart). The concluding paragraphs are particularly instructive:
It is evident that the recession of 1937 was not a product of low government deficit spending or contractionary fiscal policy on the part of the Federal Reserve. It was, instead, a product of expansionary monetary policy and heavy government regulation.
These are important lessons to learn, for we face a new period of recession and slow recovery. We should not be fooled into believing that the economy will crumble without high government spending and loose credit organization. The actual situation is far different. Indeed, high government spending and easy money will only increase malinvestments and forestall necessary readjustments, promising a decline in prosperity.It should be obvious that increasing the number of $100K employees in the Transportation Department is not intrinsically stimulative. (Perhaps they can afford to buy more $4 cups of coffee at Starbucks or more $7 lunches at Whole Foods... Of course, under Obama, we've become Food Stamp Nation.)
The Democrats never learn. Remember during the early Obama Presidency, when Obama and his cronies insisted that propping up ailing domestic auto production was necessary because nobody would buy a car from a bankrupt auto company. So we continued to fund a failing business model that should have gone to bankruptcy earlier. Of course, Americans would buy a car from a bankruptcy manipulated to prop up failing union cronies by the Obama Administration. The sheer hypocrisy is offensive. The point the above cited article makes is sometimes it's better to purge one's system from the get-go versus pointlessly postpone the inevitable...
It's obvious why Obama is using the Congress as a whipping boy, but it's a transparent partisan attack on Republicans. Where do the Senate Democrats differ from Obama on core policy issues? The fact that the GOP House and the Democratic Senate differ from each other is precisely because the GOP House and Obama differ from each other. For Obama to pretend he is above the stalemate is sheer arrogance. And whenever he starts arguing a "balanced approach" (i.e., Democrat-speak for class warfare tax hike) he is tacitly coming in on one side of the stalemate.
Now on Sunday talk soup, there were a couple of things that really irritated me. The first was Chris Wallace publicly apologized, I believe over the "are you a flake" incident:
CW: “The rap on you in Washington is that you have a history of questionable statements, some would say gaffes,…are you a flake?”I never believed there was a reason for Chris Wallace to apologize: he's saying that other people are saying she's eccentric--which is absolutely true. (For example, there was the time she was spying on a gay rights function from behind bushes and claimed she was merely resting her heels. After all, everyone crouches behind bushes while they're resting their heels...) He really didn't expect her to say 'yes'; he was providing a focal point for her response. The fact that she chose to play the victim card is utterly pathetic; there were a number of more appropriate ways to respond to the question, e.g., "I think like most public officials I've made my share of mistakes; I don't think mine are that much different. VP Biden has also made a number of memorable gaffes as has Barack Obama." Or "I think my gaffes have been exaggerated out of context."
MB: “Well I think that would be insulting to say something like that, because I’m a serious person.”
Second, I was particularly annoyed by David Gregory's unconscionable questioning of Bachmann on her gay views; we do not see comparable questioning of progressive candidates, which would be far more legitimate. For instance, Barack Obama has said on one hand, he believes in the traditional definition of marriage, but then he opposed the proposition reinstating the traditional definition of marriage to the California Constitution after the California Supreme Court ruled against it. He also opposes the Defense of Marriage Act. So when has Gregory (to my knowledge, it hasn't happened) probed Obama's deliberately deceptive discussion of the issue. Gregory even tried to get Bachmann to come down on whether a gay couple plus an adopted child is a family. I really wasn't thrilled with how Bachmann responded to the line of questioning, although over the whole interview, she did do a good job of standing up to Gregory. He was particularly annoying in probing whether she would appoint an openly gay jurist to the bench. She repeatedly stated the conventional GOP view of appointments based on judges respecting the balance of power (i.e., not legislating from the bench).
I probably would have responded something like this to the gay "family" concept: I see the family as based on the foundation of marriage between a man and a woman. Issues of marriage and family are usually addressed at the state, not federal level.
Pawlenty Drops Out
I am saddened to see Pawlenty leave the race; there are rumors another pragmatic candidate, Rudy Giuliani, may enter soon. I think pragmatic candidates are more electable. However, negotiating a compromise is like kissing your sister. I think future pragmatic candidates need to reinvent themselves to focus on a key, distinctive issue. For example, perhaps there was a way Pawlenty should have exploited a high unfavorability rating by the Congress, e.g., in dealing with the deal ceiling issue, to contrast himself against Obama and/or the rest of the field.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Eagles, "Hole in the World"
