It’s all Bush’s fault
No surprise here. Yglesias preaches to the BDS choir. Fortunately, the American people are no longer taking the bait.
The demonization of Bush was an important element in the sequence of events that paved the way for Obama’s election. But Americans tend to think that there’s a statute of limitations on blaming your predecessor for everything, and that it ran out on Obama some time ago. But for Obama and his shills such as Yglesias, the buck never stops at Obama’s desk, only Bush’s.
I get a laugh every time I hear Obama say he won’t tolerate finger pointing… hah.. of course, because some of the fingers are pointed at him.
Government was not ready to follow their own emergency plans while Obama has been chief exec for over a year (doing a heck of a job O).
His department gave permit waivers to people doing oil drilling (new policy).
He got a lot of donations from the industry.
I’d actually let a lot of these slide (ie, an in I don’t politicians getting donations from industry and maybe permit waivers were the only way to enable more drilling… I don’t know)…. but the high minded BS talk on top of everything (and/or Bush bashing) is just too much.
Oops, I meant I do not mind people getting donations from industry. It is not an automatic bad thing in my book. I don’t think they are always pay offs.
I regard business contributions to politicians as a form of protection money: “Go harass my competitors; leave me alone.”
I saw a great article online within the past few days that explained how increased taxation and regulation of business in turn stimulates efforts by the affected businesses to influence legislators and regulators, in a sort of feedback loop. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I saw it. If I think of it later, I’ll provide a link.
To take another example, I read recently that Goldman Sachs gave the bulk of their 2008 contributions to Democrats, but in 2010 they are giving more money to Republicans. They can tell which way the wind is blowing.
From my experience corporate PACs were primarily started to insure that your organization did not get hurt by not being recognized as a player. The political contribution process has an element similar to mob extortion because too much power resides in government. The big donors no doubt get preferential consideration, but if you are among the missing watch out, you could get hurt and have no voice at the table.
The movie Casino had a few scenes that made the government = mob comparison pretty explicit.
“Fortunately, the American people are no longer taking the bait.”
Well, at least less and less are they taking the bait, which is the 800lb gorilla in the democrat’s tent.
Shills like Yglesias are to be cherished, as lacking the acumen to realize that blaming Bush has for quite some time, been counter-productive, they now actually drive more independents away from Obama and the Democrats when they blame Bush.
That political dynamic will continue, as until the new Congress takes their seats the dems own it all and for just once have to take responsibility for their actions and policies, or in denying that responsibility, look even worse.
Juveniles make unappealing leaders and inmates running the asylum are even more disturbing.
Who?
I’m pretty sure the majority voted for Obama so they would be able to claim they were part of history in the making. Now that the history has been made, though, that’s no longer an issue… haranguing people for thinking about voting against The First Black President is the vinegar to the honey of voting The First Black President into office. Obama has to stand on his own merits now, but the base he’s made his stand on is demanding he follow through on campaign promises that he knows will cripple the US for decades, and the other bases he could jump to are too suspicious of his motives ever since he started breaking promises (or making promises he shouldn’t have made in the first place).
I just came to a new realization regarding all of this Bush-bashing by the left, the denizens of polite society, and even some on our side — go ahead. He’s been dealing with this for ten years, and he never lost his good humor. Look at him now. The guy looks happier than a majority of the elected officials in Washington. His decisions are being vindicated every day. His institute is shining a spotlight on the dissidents facing down the worst regimes on earth.
All the snide and stupid attacks will rebound back on the attackers, so go ahead, try to paint everything as “Bush’s fault.”
It is obvious that Yglesias doesn’t know a thing about oil drilling in the coast. There have been hundreds of wells drilled in the last decade with one barrel of oil spilled. No one conceived of such a massive number of failures occurring all at once. I am uncertain what happened, but here is what I think happened. When a well is drilled mud is sent down the drillpipe in order to, among other things, prevent an uncontrolled escape of high pressure oil or gas. For some reason the mud was not made heavy enough and the gas escaped. However there are supposed to be gas detectors on rigs as well as blow out preventers. The blow out preventers are supposed to be closed as soon the high pressure gas is detected in order to prevent explosions. I do not know what happened, I hear vital records were destroyed in the explosion. I suspect the crux of the matter is 1) that no one imagined the mud was so light that it could not contain escaping gas, 2) that the escaping gas would not allow for detection and correction 3) an explosion would knock out the blow out preventers.
The point is that there were proven systems in place to prevent exactly what happened.
As for bureaucrats writing letters about anything: that is all they do in order to justify their positions; write memos, circulate them for review just in case they need to CYA, then run off to meetings in Las Vegas on third generational functional concepts, laptop in hand, return to the office and write a memo on the importance of third generational functional concepts. In short, all they do is write memos about anything that could be a problem, just in case.
Blaming the crisis on Bush is, as Neo stated, is BDS, actually the “D” is unnecessary.
If Obama wins a second term, and one of our cities gets nuked in 2015, it will still be Bush’s fault.
Here is the article I referenced in my 5:37 pm comment yesterday. It’s off-topic in that it’s not about blaming Bush, but I did promise to link it if I found it.
Regulations Have Consequences
It turns out that I only read a couple of excerpts on another blog. The whole article is very good.
Dennis, over at Dennis the Peasant has a brilliant series going on slamming Yglesias, among others. It’s well worth your time.
Reminds me of a joke about preparing three envelopes…
President Obama seems still stuck on envelope #1. I strongly suspect the American people are getting ready for envelope #3.
Colin: amen, brother! I don’t know how the man continues to take it, but he does, and he doesn’t stop smiling. What an amazingly strong center he must have.
The man has taken more verbal abuse than any public figure in living memory. You’d think that some of his detractors would realize that, and offer him some grudging admiration for that alone. President Obama could not take one-tenth of the abuse that his predecessor did, which he continues to make embarrassingly obvious.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline