Obama and the mid-course “correction”
By his own admission, Obama is poised for a mid-course correction.
I don’t recall whether Clinton announced a mid-course correction, but I know he performed one. What’s more, he actually had a previous track record of working with Republicans rather than being at war with them while pretending to court them, and of being a moderate prior to his presidency rather than just rhetoric to that effect.
But this is Barack Obama speaking, not Bill Clinton. Obama’s moderation and bipartisanship on the domestic front have been all rhetoric, no action—and what’s more, his action has been the opposite of his rhetoric. So everything he says should be taken as potentially meaning its opposite.
What he may be saying is merely this: I know I must pretend to be changing my ways because the people hate what I’ve been doing, and I’m up for re-election in 2012. So I’ll use my silver tongue to say I’ll change, and hope I won’t have to actually do anything (there’s that “hope and change” thing; it worked before). The people are stupid and gullible, and all I’ve done wrong so far anyway is to fail to sell myself better.”
That’s one possibility. Another is that Obama actually will move towards the middle, in deed as in word. But it will be a temporary feint, a move made to convince doubters that he’s gotten the message and changed his ways.
It need only be until the next election. If Obama can moderate himself enough to be able to point to a few small but real compromises with the Republicans, he won’t be losing much and he’ll be gaining a lot. The American people are a generally genial and forgiving (not to say trusting) lot, predisposed to like him, and by then he may indeed have rehabilitated himself in the eyes of enough voters that he will win his bid for re-election and even increase the Democrats’ Congressional representation.
And then, and then—voila! Four more years! Four years in which he won’t have to answer to the electorate at all. He will be unleashed to do whatever it is he really wants. And does anyone think that would look moderate at all?
I don’t think he will do it, he always does the opposite of what he says. He may fake some stuff here and there though. The tax cuts will be an indicator.
Obama won’t correct. He won’t be able to do it. When Congress convenes in January, Obama will be faced with a hostile House that will withhold appropriations for his programs, and deluge his administration with subpoenas. His office is going to go to ground and a bunker mentality will set in.
When people are under enormous attack and adversity, like Obama will be, they revert to their core principles to find strength. They do what they think in the bottom of their heart is the right thing to do .
For someone like Reagan, their core belief is their belief in the American people, and the free enterprise system. For a Clinton, the core belief is in compromise and common ground. For George W Bush, his core belief is in God and freedom.
Barack Obama’s core principles are socialism and communism. Those are his deeply rooted principles. They are what his heart is made of, and they are what he believes in the bottom of his heart is right for America, and right for the world. He will see his challenges and instead of setting aside his beliefs, he will try harder and harder to find ways to ram through his beliefs, as if by overcoming the hated Republicans, he can tear down the barriers in his path, and finally establish the Socialist paradise that he has been dreaming in and believing in for his entire life. For him to compromise would be preposterous. It would be like Reagan compromising with the Soviets to bring communism to the United States. For Obama to tack right is abhorrent to his very nature and to everything he believes in. It will not happen.
“I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
How do you find common ground between a free market and that?
jms: but my point is that compromising temporarily and in small and relatively unimportant ways, as a strategic move in order to deceive the electorate as to one’s true intentions, requires very little mental adjustment and is no violation of core leftist principles. I believe Obama fully capable of doing just that.
Obama’s best allies will probably be the old guard Republican elites. If they start up their reaching-across-the-aisle compromise BS again, then there will be a conservative third party challenge in 2012. That is Obama’s best hope for re-election.
Glenn Beck has explicitly stated that the 2010 election is the Republican Party’s last chance, and if they don’t deliver they are finished as a party. Marco Rubio said something similar but less explicit in his victory speech.
This is why I wanted to see a bigger blowout last Tuesday. I wanted to see the Republican ruling class elite utterly crushed. As it stands, they have not been destroyed, and probably think they are still in control. If so, they are very wrong, and they can still do a lot of damage on their way down.
Obama will have a hard time faking compromise when Congress passes bills that run counter to his tax and spend agenda. Will he veto bills without proposing his own cuts? I see Obama in a lose-lose situation.
Obama can tap dance like mad around the issues but it will really be tap dancing on a land mine.
I used to think along the lines of jms above. But I changed my mind after the elections. The reason I changed my mind is due to how Republicans have acted since the elections.
The Republican rhetoric after the eletions make it pretty clear they believe repealing healthcare is a winning message that they want to use in the run for the presidency. As Obama’s defining acheivement, he will do whatever is necessary to prevent repeal. As I see it, that leaves him two options:
1) The most likely option is that he gives the appearance that he is moving to the center as a way to improve his chances for re-election. However, there is NOTHING in his historical background to suggest he will move to the center. So I totally agree with neo that he will try to persuade voters he is moving to the center using rhetoric without doing much legislatively.
2) The other option, which I think is less likely to happen, is that he won’t run for re-election. While I think this is unlikely to happen, I don’t think it is impossible. Alot of Democrats have expressed dissatisfaction with the Pelosi/Reid/Obama agenda. For example, Alex Sink blames Obama for her loss of governor of Florida. Several centrist Democrats say they won’t vote for Pelosi for Minority Leader. Also, there was a story a week or two ago that high level Democratic Party officials said they wanted Obama to decide whether he was going to run by the end of December, suggesting there is at least some question about his intentions.
The implication in the second option noted in my previous comment is that by not running for re-election, the Democrats can run a more moderate candidate with a better chance of winning than Obama, and the moderate would veto any repeal bill.
He may not have the initiative any more.
1. The House may send short 20 page bill after short bill over to the Senate, which will then go nutso trying to decide what to do and Obama will be caught in the back and forth in his own party.
Examples: 1) A short bill simply repealing O-care goes to Senate. They decide how the 24 Dem Senators up for re-election will vote on it after Repubs make their case.; 2) Vote to keep tax rates at Bush Levels, up or down…
Vote after vote. All very short bills any American can read in 20 minutes if they want to.
On all of these, Obama is reacting and actually getting twisted up like a pretzel.
2. There are maybe 6 months at most before Election 2012 begins. Candidates will announce and they will spend every day criticizing Obama, just like they did with Bush. Bush paid it no heed. Will Obama be able to stay silent? I would not bet on it. He’ll get pulled into the fray where he calls people his enemies, as he recently did.
3. On that point, 3 weeks ago he was in “punish your enemies” mode. People know that about him. Now he wants to compromise? People won’t buy it and he won’t be able to pull it off.
The Dope said that is the message, not the policy, that led to the recent Democrat debacle. In other words, we don’t get it. So, perhaps Andy Griffith will be selling his new primer, ” Dick and Jane Explain Health Care for Dummies”. starring Spot as the new Secretary of HHS.
This guy can’t run a meeting, let alone listen to a dissenting voice. He won’t concede a thing. He is unable to do so. And, the White House crew will be seen more as the four or five apostles than serious advisors. Nothing that goes on there involves an iota of common sense or political acumen. If he makes noises that he is interested in compromising he will be so inept in the attempt as tp prove what we have come to strongly suspect. There is no there there.
Obama was recently overheard saying, “Whew, if there were 57 states, we could well have lost the Senate, too.”
What Obummer will do and has done in the past is essentially to redefine his position as now being “in the middle” and therefore it is now up to the Republicans to come to his “middle” position or risk having them being called partisan extremists. Of course, the LSM (lame stream media) will go along with this charade and like Lucy and the football we will be Charlie Brown ending up on our back yet again.
Obama has a political tightrope to walk. If he is too willing to compromise or moves too far to the center he will have a primary challenge or a third party run from the left.
And, if as seems likely, we begin to experience high inflation and continued high rates of unemployment there may be nothing Obama can do that will save him in 2012.
Neo — All Obama could muster up at his press conference was meta-compromise. Talk about hypothetical compromise, without getting into specifics. The few specifics he would get into were laughable. He’s willing to compromise on energy by promoting natural gas and electric cars. He said that about 3 times. That’s his big compromise. Not a word about drilling for oil. That’s off the table. Crazy Republican talk.
His biggest jaw dropper —
what the American people don’t want from us, especially here in Washington, is to spend the next two years refighting the political battles of the last two.
What does he think this election was about?
No, I think he’s in full denial. Republicans are sharpening their (metaphorical) knives and steeling themselves to fight for the very life of their nation, and Barack Obama is off dancing with children in India while his party licks their wounds in the wake of the election.
I remember when Bill Clinton was impeached. At the time, my sister was a Congressional page and quite the fly on the wall! The story that stuck with me the most was she said that that during the course of the impeachment hearings, Democrats would testify over and over again about how great and honorable Bill Clinton was, and how he should not be impeached, then, when off the podium, in private, surrounded by only other Democratic Congressmen (and the pages who scurry about unnoticed), say things like “God I can’t believe I have to support that g** damn son of a b**** who can’t keep his f****** pants on. There was a hell of a lot of personal loyalty to Bill Clinton from other Democrats. He largely earned it. Obama has not earned and is not earning that loyalty from his fellow Democrats.
Perhaps he will try to compromise in small but insignificant ways, but the Republicans are going to be fighting for huge concessions. They want the repeal of Obamacare. They want to tear down and scrap virtually everything done by this administration in the last two years. Obama will find little common ground to compromise on.
I respect your opinion, and he may well try what you suggest, but I think that he’s in way over his head. He was always in way over his head, but this is the first time that he or the Democrats have truly paid for it. He’s lost most if not all of his political capital, and grossly weakened his party. He may try to deceptively fake moderation, but he is not in the political position of Bill Clinton. I think that events are going to move much too fast for the scenario you suggest to play out.
Scott: I agree Obama will not compromise on HCR. But he can compromise on a lot of other smaller things—like allowing a couple of tax cuts to go through that he was otherwise against—and he’ll gain goodwill among some voters because he can point to it and say, “See, I compromised on that, and those mean old Republicans are still against me in so many other ways!” Plus, if the tax cuts actually end up improving the economy, he can claim the credit for that.
Tracking the mind of Obama, I find his self-congratulations are in order. He succeeded. The progressive platform is much advanced and if not repealed will lead to a weakening economy and hence a weaker position in world affairs.
But that’s just a nice benefit and not the real purpose of Obamacare, which was to expand the power and scope of federal government. The game is not Obama’s to lose; it is ours to lose. The current India trip may just be a diversion, and we may get two years of diversion so that people’s minds forget about all that messy business. Two years of diversion while the Republicans, who have so often snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, are given opportunity after opportunity to blow it.
And then there’s always the MAD option of hyperinflation in case it looks like the Republicans may stay united in purpose and person.
The question is: Are Obama’s policies his biggest problem, or the fact that he’s a compulsive liar that can’t be trusted? And just how do you tack toward the center if it’s the latter? If this man isn’t turned out in two years then America just doesn’t have the people with the common sense to keep our country.
It’s called taquia; it’s not for no reason he changed his name to Barack Hussein Obama…
Neo – thanks for giving me a nightmare! Please don’t let anyone near the Obama administration read that post 😉
Mike mc – you nailed it. A good strategic thinker always considers the OTHER side’s strategy, and your strategy takes into account neo’s nightmare scenario:
“Drag him into the fray.”
This is the way to do it, because it pokes Obama where he’s softest, weakest – his ego, his radicalism, his narcissism. Whenever he gets into a political battle he cannot control himself. He goes full “slurpee.”
In the end, your strategy is totally old school in the best sense: divide and conquer.
Divide the dems by the “thousand papercuts” (the clear, simple little bills you suggested); once they are divided, and Obama gets sucked up in campaign mode and the need to not vote present, he will inevitably side with the left-edge of the Democratic divide. And then we have Obama, Pelosi, and Reid singing the same sweet music all over again – and this is our best shot for 2012. Stomp the left, not by name-calling, but by using Obama’s inner convictions against him. Total jiujitsu – I love it.
As some wag said, once you learn to fake sincerity, the rest is easy. Obama is a natural BS artist. He’ll talk a good game and fool lots of people. That’s how he got elected, and that’s how he’ll try to do it next time. He starts with minorities, college students and people crushed by the recession. That should be close to 40% before he starts his charm offensive. I presume the MSM will remain in the tank for him.
Seems to me that there is too much Obama and dem talk about having failed to c’municate for them to try to actually change things much.
If their talk so far exemplifies their beliefs, their primary effort will go into improved marketing.
Won’t work.
Re India trip: I don’t think this was pure diversion. CNN World reported on the trade deal which will ease some pending contracts for GE and Boeing. How much do you want to bet that the result will be a couple of opinion pieces in WSJ and other business media, along with some domestic hiring by these companies and their suppliers that will be heavily reported as signifying an economic upturn? Business types will start to say that Obama isn’t as bad as we thought. The unions won’t bitch too loudly about the agreement because they know their piece of the pie is coming next. And Michelle’s dances with the children are an attempt to win back the pro-family women.
Meanwhile everyone will “forget” to mention that Bush, who is loved in India, set the conditions for all this to occur. We make a mistake if we forget that foreign affairs is another dimension in the 3D chess match. While we concentrate on Obamacare repeal, he is trying to undermine us on another plane.
And WTH is Gates doing by saying that the lame duck congress should repeal no gays in the military even before the military evaluation is received, much less debated. Having Gates do this keeps Obama’s hands clean while sending a signal to the gay part of Obama’s base.
I just hope the blogosphere doesn’t get so hot for direct confrontation that it plays into Obama’s hands.
The elephant in the room is the inevitable financial maelstrom that is coming, which may in fact be just over the horizon. We will probably, very probably, paralytically await its arrival because the denying Dems will do nothing, leaving the Repubs to touch the 3rd rails alone, if they dare. Thus ensuring a shift back to Obama/Pelosi/B Frank et al. Thereafter, the State will explain the need for “unavoidable” totalitarian rule by blaming the Rich Evil whatevers, aka Repubs and Tea Parties.
NRO gives some depth to the India trade negotiations.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/252681/barack-obama-dealmaker-editors
OMT: Think about Obama and Afghanistan. His ignorant promise to pull out trips next year was not played to the full by Obama’s opponents because they wanted to seem fair and gave him credit for the surge. Obama thereby took A’stan out of the debate. He is a master of getting people to think they missed a bullet while he is pulling them underwater by their feet.
expat: If this is the case than Obama just totally screwed his party. If he really had billions of dollars in trade deals in his pocket, and waited until after the election to close the deal and make them public, then he shows a complete lack of political skill.
It’s supposed to be an October surprise, not a November surprise. If he had announced billions of dollars in trade deals in October, he might have saved the election.
I suspect that the real story is that he didn’t have those deals until after the election — that the unspoken precondition for all those deals was the end of single-party Democratic rule.
But hey, he found a way to take credit for it. I’ll bet his fellow Democrats appreciate the gesture.
Another line of attack is energy policy. Obama has made an offering in natural gas; his bid should be called and raised, for fracking everywhere, not just in PA. When the enviros start shouting, the GOP offers amendments requiring compensation funds and fast, full compensation for anyone injured (literally or financially).
Likewise, Drill Here, Drill Now. Alaska has a good set of safety policies, including requiring operators to take part in regular safety drills and to have the means of dealing with emergencies in place. Offer that as an amendment to Drill Here, Drill Now, and you’ve got something that will be hard to refuse.
Another column can approach on the nuclear energy road. This will take longer, but that may be a good thing if it keeps the debate going.
Finally, the environmental regs for upgrading plants were “tightened” a few years ago, requiring that whole plants be upgraded instead of doing incremental upgrades to parts of the plant. The problem is that depreciation schedules are specified in tax law and utilities face regulatory limits on how they can pay for upgrades. Put up a bill to roll the all-or-nothing requirement back. When the enviros object, add an amendment to the effect that changes must increase plant efficiency, which necessarily means reducing carbon emissions. Then hit them over the head with it.
The biggest problem is that the MSM will not care to report it. Make sure that it’s covered on CSPAN and keep Fox News and the Web news sources well-appraised.
We are in unexplored territory with Obama. there has never a President so inept, at the same time so genuinely hateful of the US as the narcissist in chief. We can only guess how he would feign moderation, and whether enough people will be fooled by it.
We have this going for our side, he may offer to moderate Obamacare but he will not repeal it. The harmful effects are now seen all over the country; at least one Senator and possibly several will have their ended careers because of it (Ben Nelson of Nebraska). Add to the mix that he has surrounded himself with knowledge-less sycophants and alienated a mass of the surviving Democrats, I can see where his only hope would be walk around looking sexy for two years.
I doubt anything will save him, but I must confess H.L. Mencken may have been on to something when he wrote that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Hymn to (Obama)… this is a great article:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2010/11/god-as-government.html
jms: Obama has screwed his party friends before. Look under the bus. Maybe he knew the party was in trouble and wanted to distance himself from them. Also, the Blue Dogs got hit pretty bad. All he needs to do is put some bones in the Happy Meals for the hard lefties and remind them how much worse the conservatives wwill be on their issues.
Do not trust this guy for one microsecond.
Judging from the comments here it is worthwhile recallingl Churchill’s statement at the end of the North African campaign “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
At least the commie SOB is on the run.
Mike Mc. had an interesting idea of peppering the Senate and WH with bill after bill reflecting public sentiment. I don’t know the possible pitfalls of that strategy, but it would make the Dems play defense and they’d be the ‘Party of No’ for a change.
Obama will move to the center as much as he is forced to move to the center and no more.
Don’t underestimate Obama/Pelosi/Reid. They will be fighting all the way.
Seems to me that rolling back Obamacare, cost of government, size of government, and taxes will have to be forced by the House.
But whatever they send to the Senate will have to be something that is completely budget neutral or will reduce spending.
However, it has to be moderate enough to get a fair hearing and vote in the Senate. Otherwise, Obama won’t have to veto it…he’ll let the Senate shield him from that. We won’t even know for sure if he’ll veto a bill that isn’t laid on his desk.
Hopefully anything laid on his desk will be a vast improvement of our government and can be passed or at least something very popular that will lose votes for him if he vetoes it.
Boehner and McConnell MUST do good jobs of promoting bills to the public…force Reid and Obama to give in. They shouldn’t just rely on communicating with persons in Congress. They need to go over the heads of the Democrat senators and Obama and go straight to the public.
As Obama pulls off a superficial India “trade mission” public relations stunt, the man caused disaster/ prevention coalition takes us to yet another threshold level of behavioural conditioning:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-fondles-women-and-children-refusing-airport-naked-body-scanners.html
The Republicans have one strong asset they haven’t considered yet:
Nancy Pelosi.
She’s not well-liked by her Dem colleagues in Congress, and apparently all the Republicans loathe her. If they need any help keeping party discipline, she’s a big help.
Plus, she suffers from the delusion that she’s beloved by the American people, when in fact most of them find her kind of creepy and unpleasant, like that one aunt who always smelled like hair spray. The more she puts herself in the public eye, fighting in her accustomed ham-fisted way against things the public supports, the more she’ll damage the Democrat cause.
I’m one that doesn’t think he can do it.
I say this because I note he already talks about how much he has compromised to us in all he has done – and frankly I think he believe what he is saying.
Lets put it this way – if your intent is to cut of my legs and arms and throw me out in the streets surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves then leaving one leg, giving me a rolly cart, and reducing it to one wolf that is only partially hungry is one heck of a shift from where you wanted to be.
From that sense he *did* compromise a great deal, I suspect he will shift a great deal again – however he is so far removed from not cutting my appendages off and throwing me into the street I just can’t see him doing it. He may allow us to keep an arm and another leg to the knee, but it is still not acceptable.
Clinton was more or less interested in personal power (and, thankfully was just more interested in getting it that really using it – I think he liked the extras that go with it: women, parties, jets, etc). Obama is a believer and that makes a WORLD of difference. Clinton could have easily been a Republican and the most conservative person on the planet if it let him get what he wanted so it wasn’t hard to make that shift.
Obama is determined to cut our appendages off and throw us into the street – ultimately there is no compromise he can make that we can accept unless he just drops his own agenda. There is no compromise with that doesn’t include cutting off appendages.
A “compromise” on taxes will not work for Obama.
A two year break on upper income earners will do nothing for employment. 18 months from now the unemployment rate will still be around 9 to 10%.
Obama can blame the Republicans all he wants – but he will just sound like the whiner-in-chief.
Obama only knows how to grow government, he has no idea what a private sector job even is.
Bob from Virginia: did you see the YouTube video I posted at the end of this post, the day after the election?
The 24,000 Obamacare hires-to-be need to be decapitated by no $-teet from the new Repub dominated congress. NO bureaucrats provided for=NO Obamacare right out of the gate. Then, dismantle the remainder and start from scratch with Massive Tort Reform.
Severely,
That was not my idea about the small bills. I heard it on the radio from some Republican somebody or other saying this is what they were going to probably do.
It makes sense on several levels:
1. It forces Dems in the Senate to vote against things the American people want. There are 24 Dem Senators up for re-election in 2012 and only 10 Repub Senators. Those 24 just saw what happened to seven of their colleagues and 60 former House members. Good luck.
2. It forces Obama to veto bill after bill. He becomes the obstructionist against America again. Since he bullied everything through and never gave reasons, he will be forced to give reasons he doesn’t even know exist yet. He’s in deep doo doo because the man is not really smart at all.
3. It gives total respect to every grown up American who knows in their heart and soul that a system where the bills a re short, to the point and readable and understandable by averge adults is better. We all know this. It’s not rocket science. Actually bringing bills forward like that is a major major plus in and of itself.
If the Republicans do this right, they can be one of the best Congresses ever.
Anyone paying attention to the bigger picture? bonds, china, gold, buildups, south america, etc?
move to the left or tack center, its still the same person with the same genius that will have to tackle those things, and right now china and other countries are getting very angry at the prospect of a 20%+ devaluation of the currency.
Art,
The bigger picture is that life is tough every day; there’s a new challenge and a new threat every day; you get up and fight the bad guys every day.
Right now, the biggest problem is Democrats – bigger than China and everything else.
We can deal with China. We can deal with debt and producing and prosperity and everything.
But we can’t deal with anything if the Dems defeat America from the inside. Liberals are the biggest threat America has ever faced by a long shot. That’s the bigger picture. The stuff you mentioned is spare change.
Art is right, Mike. It’s all about our money or the lack thereof. My earlier post expressed the same financial concern.
Art and I are very aware of German 20th century history; particularly the 1923 hyperinflation.
We cannot borrow our way upwards out of the enormous and deepening debt hole, which Baraq and his Dems have destined to get deeper by $1 Trillion or more, PER YEAR, for the next decade. Interest (Interest, not amortization of principal) on the national debt will exceed all Federal budget items, except the massively unfunded entitlements, in about 5 years. Interest payments will exceed all Defense expenditures.
The fit’s gonna hit the shan bigtime. Gridlock won’t fix that. Only major national unity, which we have not seen since 1945, will give us a chance, a slim chance, to head in the right direction. If we can stay on that course, once set.
Art and I are doubtful.
Tom Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Yep, I think that is where it’s going. The economy is about to get much, much worse (thanks to current policies), and the Republicans are going to be blamed for it, since they will be in power when it hits.
On the bright side:
Palin to Bernanke: ‘Cease and Desist’
Sarah seems to get it. Bernanke has to be stopped. Period. The man is an absolute menace.
The $64 question is: Is Ben Bernanke a knave or a fool?
I just had another thought about Obama that was prompted by Jarrett’s “bored” statement and by his narcissism and “pragmatism.” Obama’s commitment to socialist ideas is really based on defending his own self image. He can toss any one of his grand schemes because he doesn’t care about them, except that they make him look brilliant. All his life, he hung with the smart folks who loved to play the intellectual game of saving the world. He was pretty good at this and it brought him attention.
But when it came to implementing his schemes, be they mundane bills in the Illinois legislature, the Annenberg Challenge, or health care reform, he didn’t really care about the nuts and bolts or making things work. He found that he got his high from politics, from beating the other guys, from being the smartest guy in the room, The Won. I think now he will sacrifice anything so long as he can sell himself as smarter than everyone else.
This is the real challenge. Most people play the politics game on issues. Obama will sacrifice any issue so long as the move can be used to confirm his brilliance. Any remnant of Obamacare that he doesn’t have to sacrifice will be a testament to his brilliance in laying a permanent foundation for a better world. He will spin this to win another election, just as he will spin India or any other issue that is somewhat off the radar. He will use the intensity of our attention on the economy to hide his bumblings (or as in India, his inherited successes) elsewhere.
We follow this game because we care about what it means for the country. He plays this game to win the title Most Brilliant Man Who Ever Lived. He will be completely ruthless. Right now he is trying to erase our memories of his screwups and make us question whether our doubts about him are justified. May be we were right in the first place; maybe he does care about gay rights and the economy and clean energy and Lilly Ledbetter. When he has calmed our doubts a bit, he will try to produce another WOW moment when legs tingle and no one will bother to read the fine print on page 1, 999. Yet, it is exactly this fine print that can do us in.
He is a very dangerous man.
I agree Mike Mc. The problem now is the Democrats.
It isn’t that people with the perspective that me and Mike have are oblivious to our sovereign debt problems or to the threats from China. It just that China is on a collision course with itself* as well, and much of this stuff is out of our hands.
To prevent China from dumping our debt,** for instance, all we can do at this point is to make sure we send the message that we are strong enough to withstand such a dastardly deed without it crippling us (and, in fact, we are, despite the efforts of the Democrats to signal weakness).
Signaling is all we can do at this point, and the Republicans in Congress will do well if they communicate a willingness to assert American strengths at home and abroad. If that proves insufficient, then it does. It’s not an excuse for passivity though.
*On being bearish about China:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/30/the_japan_syndrome?page=full
**On the financial maelstrom to come, I don’t deny that it’s possible, but Art and Tom make it sound like it’s virtually guaranteed.
In a previous comment I made on another post here, I linked to an article by Fred Siegel that raised the possibility of a showdown between bankrupt states and a Republican House – the states threaten to default, thereby threatening the national credit standing, and Republicans are indeed placed in the parlous position of having to consider bailouts. It is a live possibility, and I don’t deny it. It could very well lead to what Art and Tom foresee.
On the other hand, if it is guaranteed to happen, then what should we do? Either nothing, or – fight the Democrats. I think Mike’s point is that whatever one thinks about the probability of an impending solvency crisis, there’s only one way at the moment to do anything about it, and about anything else (after all, Obamacare and stealth cap and trade are rather large problems as well, which both raise the likelihood of debt catastrophe) – fight the Democrats tooth and nail.
But lets grant that Art and Tom are right that disaster is more or less inevitable – I don’t question you guys as an enemy, but as a friend – I really do wonder what you would have us do. What’s the game plan?
Sociopaths NEVER change their ways. They can fake repentance, but they can’t repent. Obama already shown inability to own his mistakes and faults, he always blames somebody else. His Grandiose Self don’t allow anything else. So I do not expect from him anything except new theatrics and con artistry.
I agree democrats are the biggest problem. In essence, they are in a game to extort confiscatory taxation from productive Americans to leftist voting deadbeats the world over and are holding our sovereignty as a country up for ransom to get their way. China and other countries are big problems, but the democrats are the ones giving them leverage to be a problem.
What’s the game plan?
It may seem provocative, but it can work: do what Hitler did to rise his country from unemployment and hyperinflation. (FDR and Reagan did this too.) That is, wastly expand military industry and infrastructure projects. Also expand military enlistment to fight youth inemployment. This with create lots of jobs and similtaniously prepare the country for big wars abroad which are inevitable anyway. Manufacture jobs that are virtually extingished now will return, giving new life to Rust Belt and heavy industry from coast to coast. One new air-carrier group project can create million new jobs. Construction of, say, 20 new nuclear energy plants in 10 years will bring another millions of non-outsourcible jobs. That will be a real stimulus!
Sergey,
Don’t need government spending on anything. They are the problem. They need to get out of every one’s way.
Agree on manufacturing but that is back to government interference again. Regulation and taxes make US Manufacturing nearly impossible. Therefore the factories go elsewhere. It’s not rocket science.
The Nanny Staters have chosen bike paths over factories for us. Until we defeat the nannies, we have no chance. These are the Dems. They are the single greatest threat America and world Freedom has ever faced. It is us or them, period. They are more dangerous to us than the Nazis of WWII. We could have avoided them. We cannot avoid Obama, Pelosi and Reid and all the millions and millions they represent.
Government investment in manufacture are quite different from government investment in public sector. The first are only seed money for projects which attract much more private money of subcontractors. This has a big multiplication factor in it, unlike investment in public sector. In many cases this does not even require direct investment of public money, only government guaranties of bank loans for private firms, and without such guaranties no progress in development of nuclear energy is possible anyway.
Mike Mc,
We can deal with China.
We can deal with debt and producing and prosperity and everything.
Kolnai,
I agree Mike Mc. The problem now is the Democrats
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To prevent China from dumping our debt,**…
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Strong enough to withstand such a dastardly deed without it crippling us
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Fred Siegel
Et cetera, et cetera…
Lets start first with your refuters reference:
Here is an article by Siegal, but I only draw your attention to his CREDENTIALS…
The Commanding Heights:
The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=1570&kaid=125&subid=162
Fred Siegel is a New York-based senior fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute and the author of The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities (The Free Press, 1997).
Yes, a person whose job it is to pretend that everything is ok, till its too late WOULD tell you that things are ok. no?
PEOPLE (everyone): This isn’t shop for the answers you want and support your team rah rah rah… if you’re shopping for an answer you want, you’re searching for the liar that tells you what you want to hear, unless what you want is the truth no matter what it is.
Either people start weeding out the people whose ideology STATES plainly that they have an ulterior motive; practice such with end justifies the means totality of action, etc.
But lets grant that Art and Tom are right that disaster is more or less inevitable – I don’t question you guys as an enemy, but as a friend – I really do wonder what you would have us do. What’s the game plan?
Well, way way way back when it was UNREASONABLE to hold people to their word, assume communists hated capitalism as an antithesis, etc… would have been to start cleaning house way back in the 60s…
What would we have you do?
Well, we no longer have any answers that are clear; EVERYTHING is now out of our hands, COMPLETELY. Its time now to make sure you have extra food staples, means of egress, means of holding up when things are too wild, and going out when they settle.
Time to stop the bs and learn first aid, how to set a bone, how to fix a wound… not first aid to keep ok till someone else bails you out, as Katrina shows that they will NOT endanger themselves to bail you out anymore, that was the patriarchal pre feminist individual free state, where a man can choose to die to help others… with women on any and every force, safety of the force takes paramount, even at the expense of the people who they are employed to help.
With a state in which 40% or so get some assistance and over 30% are permanently on support, they are going to have to seize apartments and things just to keep them in homes and not rioting for more government cheese.
Right now everyone is going to sit still until suddenly the food prices are up, the gas prices are up, the power prices are up, and so on.
They are going to do what EVERY one of these do in history, they are going to let it go to hell then they will calm the waters in exchange for our freedom and their ability to control everything. They wont give back the control like Lincoln did, but you can guarantee they will evoke him.
I am NOT saying stock up on ammunition, build a bunker, etc.
Get to know your neighbors, get to know who you are good guys, who are not. Make some meals and visit. People help those they know, communities can repel people forcing them to another less prepared community.
Learn skills that have nothing to do with a regular economy.
Agree on manufacturing but that is back to government interference again. Regulation and taxes make US Manufacturing nearly impossible. Therefore the factories go elsewhere. It’s not rocket science.
Actually if it wasn’t rocket science we wouldn’t have let them do this faster than normal. There is a big difference between natural diffusion and just pouring an arbitrary quantity into a bucket.
What is missing is INFRASTRUCTURE, the supporting structures and experience.
You think doing expert tool making, die, and those things is something you get from a book, or that the old timers that made up this infrastructure that supported manufacturing wrote it down when they were fired and the chain of information passage was broken.
Like breaking the culture chain. When that happens you lose how to raise kids without schizo mental problems, whats normal, abnormal. You are basically an animal pretending in cargo cult fashion to be better capable and better informed. But in truth, you can see that this is a farce, as they do things that older people knew turned out bad.. (ergo why they used to keep women from stress during childbirth, and more)
Same with corporate culture, and how to do business. it was all that hidden custom and such that made our companies so successful. not that we had special people, or special magic.
The youth will not be organized by the experienced. The businesses are throwing away the experienced in favor of soviet women who don’t know that they are soviet and don’t know that the whisper in their ear of superiority is only a whisper.
80% of the people being dumped are not women and not minorities and are not gay…
And so unless you figure out how to get ceril from the basement and have him pick up the knowledge he missed from childhood from an old man he would rather piss on, and then somehow get the drive to do something.
The democrats and such can change to real angels and it wont help!!!!
Critical mass of social stupidity has been reached..
Its completely politically incorrect thanks to women, to do anything that would change it.
To do so, would be to incur all their wrath at once that we just want to oppress them!!!!!
Hows this…
When you guys figure out the words you can say before July of next year that would cause all young people to abandon Che shirts and bags, remove the red stars, capture their fellow young who at protest destroy property, and completely eradicate the soviet stuff in movies and their remakes (notice the new karate kid is black?)
Momentum means we don’t have the energy, knowledge, power, or much of anything to now effect a change of course that will mean anything…
An army runs on credit…
Got that?
The US military is about to be defunct MORE than it is since our troops are under armored, undersupplied, and fined for equipment, harassed, and so on by leadership.
Funny thing… underneath places like Yamentau mountain, you can have a huge army of all new military equipment, never ever seen…
4000 tanks could fit inside easily… in 60 years of open borders they could have 1000 people in each major city, all sleepers like the ones caught but more competent. Not only that but many countries can have this, as well as well armed and funded race gangs and cartel gangs all happy to step in once the female police are overwhelmed and its not safe for them.
All you have to realize is that since the socialists lost last century, they have identified the reason to be the manufacturing capability of the US… and that their using huge amounts of people would amount to nothing as long as manufacturing can respond, and Americans inventor individuals could participate.
In a new conflict the US can’t borrow money to pay for equipment and material
In a new conflict the US cant manufacture such as it not only has lost the factories, but the supporting infrastructure and the cultural knowledge of how to integrate and work to an end without whining as to how many women, how many race, how many gays, and so on.
The US cant replace the chips since the fabs are overseas and take as long as 5 years to build and over a billion in borrowed money we cant borrow.
The leaders who are idiots think that they are part of an international team to make the change, not the dups… they think that what they learned is valid, and not toxic to deicision making.
They are ECONOMICALLY ILLITERATE making ALL the wrong moves…
They CANT devalue, or else china will dump (it may dump anyway)
They cant continue, as china will no longer buy debt from a nation that doesn’t manufacture.
Why?
Because manufacturing is the well spring of new wealth and progress.
NOTHING ELSE IS………….
That’s BASIC economics and if our people knew that, and the public knew that, they wouldn’t have turned an argument as to our fitness and abilityt o survive, into a gender war argument of those white factory guys just don’t like Chinese, or other colored people.
Way to go ladies… RATHER than get the real argument over economics, factories, expertise and infrastructure… you turned it into a sex war argument, and the outcome could NEVER be the right move from that moment on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not only that, you claimed you were so advanced you didn’t even have to learn this expertise from the men your putting out of work!!!
Whose going to defend us?
Young men with germane Greer posters and posters of the Nazi press corps woman?
To the young what would they be fighting for?
For pin up girls and that? no way, they are rapists and that’s evil
Moms apple pie? Mom dropped them off with a low paid person that abused them at best (like ignoring them and not doting on them the way their parent would)
Dad? Dad was kicked out for being a moron, and the kid will get kicked out for that too.
For the nation? They hate nation….
For capitalism? They hate capitalism… to them all this fascist socialism is capitalism..
For the most part the women remolding the children into being the right thing to fail in an altercation..
How long do you think the average kid in high school would last under the conditions that there grand parents fought and refused to give up under?
Do you think our gay friendly military can really stand up to spetznatz?
Whose training is still similar to the training they got before?
Could they stand the 40 below zero conditions and not give up?
Can they think that life isnt like a video game or a movie long enough not to have their head shot off when they take a look?
if Mexican narcos came over the border in the 40s, and 50s, there would not be a warning sign 90 miles inland to people. There would be a warning as to the border, and they would be shooting them as they crossed it… good people wouldn’t try to cross under those conditions, and so, its self sorting.
OT: Did you see this NYT article on Obama and Ghandi? It seems like some Indians are shaking their heads over the reverence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/world/asia/07gandhi.html?_r=3&hp
Obama is in love with the Ghandi of his dreams, not the one Neo has talked about.
Kolnai @5:54am:
The Chicomms cannot “dump” their >$1 Trillion holdings in US Treasuries. Dumping requires willing buyers and substantial discounts from face value. Dumping would cause an immediate reset of market value of the rest of the Treasuries in the hands of others, to higher yields, with corresponding drops in asset values. Who would be the buyers?
And none of this would help the USA out.
Thus Bernanke’s QE2. He intends to monetize our national debt by encouraging inflation, but only to a degree he thinks the Fed can control. That will be one heck of a tightrope walk, and the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed’s record on the tightrope has been awful.
Tom and Artldgr are correct, our monetary problems are past nightmare status.
Here is an interesting article on how this might play out:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/desperate_economic_action_ahea.html
Ghost, I remember reading that AT article and also remembering the biblical warning of “whatever a man sews, that shall he reap.”
Good advice, BTW, Art. And some very fulfilling ranting.
“To the young what would they be fighting for?”
Somewhat a repeat of the fin de sié¨cle greyness.
I agree, Obama has no intention of correcting anything except perhaps his rhetoric (i.e.- eneimies to opponents)
He’s already dug his heels in ahead of “serious talks” on tax cuts. Ix nay on the wealth-a. Obama said giving the tax break to people earning more than $250,000 a year will cost the country $700 billion over the next 10 years.
This could easily be offset by revoking Obamacare.
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