The WaPo continues with its “Perry is a sorta kinda racist. Why? Because we say so!” plan.
My guess is that it’s working with a significant segment of readers.
Is this some sort of metaphor?
Whatever it is, it’s quite a photo:
I know it’s not a bald eagle, but close enough. And that’s a gull attacking it, or piggybacking on its head.
The EU/euro concept: going down together
I must confess that I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the way the EU and the euro began. What did it have to do with me, anyway [sic]? The only time it would affect me directly would be when I visited Europe, which happened very seldom. And in that case it would actually help rather than hurt, because the euro would make all those different and confusing currencies go away (especially those wacky non-decimal British ones) and leave me to deal with just one. Simplicity itself.
I did notice, though, on my trip to France in 2006, that there were quite a few rumblings and grumblings about the EU, especially the fact that ordinary voters had so little say in its affairs. The EU seemed to represent the triumph of the “we know better than you little people” European elites, which are even more entrenched and more elite than in the US.
And now that the EU and its euro have been exposed as a stupid concept to begin with, it’s staggering that the system ever got set up in the first place. Who could have thought even for a moment that this sort of thing would work out in the long run? Hey, it’s almost as stupid as thinking housing prices would never go down (oops!):
The guiding principles of the currency, which opened for business in 1999, were supposed to be a set of rules to limit a country’s annual deficit to three per cent of gross domestic product, and the total accumulated debt to sixty per cent of G.D.P. It was a nice idea, but by 2004 the two biggest economies in the euro zone, Germany and France, had broken the rules for three years in a row. It belatedly occurred to everyone that the proposed sanction on rule-busting countries””huge fines””wasn’t the smartest solution for economies that were already having trouble balancing their books. So no sanction was actually imposed.
Perhaps that was the euro’s original sin””the reality that fiscal and budgetary rules could be broken without consequence. Or perhaps the sin was more fundamental than that: perhaps it was the attempt to create a currency union among countries with different economies, histories, cultures, tax rates, fiscal systems, legal frameworks””and doing so with a European Central Bank to oversee the currency but with no controlling political institution in parallel with that bank. Or perhaps it was a simpler, democratic deficit: the fact that for voters unhappy with pan-European policy there was no direct mechanism to commit the most basic political act of all””throw the bums out. Voters could manage this at the level of their local governments, but the management of the euro was always an uncomfortable compromise between varying, and often competing, national interests.
Duh!
And yet such a system was set up, and now we are faced with a possible (and probably probable) Lehman-like collapse in Europe that could make the 2008 crisis look like a walk in the park. The main question is whether the problems will snowball throughout Europe and especially its banking system, which holds a lot of Greece’s debt as well as that of other threatened countries. Most financial prognosticators seem to think it will be very bad and very widespread indeed (see this, this, and this, for example; this article makes some very specific predictions and then says at the end we just don’t know, and this one is quite succinct).
The problem of what to do is a familiar one to anyone who’s been paying attention during the last few years. Bailout just postpones the inevitable, and lack of bailout hastens it. You pays your money (or not) and you takes your choice.
Yoking all of Europe’s currencies together was supposed to help the weak ones be stronger, not make the strong ones weaker. Now it threatens to bring the whole edifice tumbling down. A while ago I used the 1965 power blackout as an analogy for this sort of situation, but I actually think a better one might be that of mountain climbers roped together and traversing especially threatening terrain:
However, what you would never do is climb with the rope still on and NOT place any protection ”“ if one person slips then everyone is going for a ride.
The reality is that climbers do it all the time. And that is because real mountains are complicated buggers.
And so are countries and their economies—complicated buggers, all.
Non-news story of the day: Christie’s not running
Chris Christie has made it official once again: he’s not running for president in 2012.
Did anyone ever think he was?
Christie explains that he’s not throwing his hat in the ring because New Jersey still needs him as governor, and he’s not finished there. Although that may indeed be a reason, I don’t think it’s the whole reason, or even the real reason. Perhaps he doesn’t have the fire in the belly. Perhaps he’s got some skeletons in his closet along with those size XXXL jackets. Perhaps internal polls told him he couldn’t win this year against the Republican contenders, or against Obama. Perhaps he wants to lose some weight first to end all the fatty jokes. Perhaps—well, we’ll never know.
Personally, although I happen to like Christie’s style, I think he would ultimately have been rejected in the Republican primaries as an opportunistic RINO. I don’t happen to think that’s what he is, but I do think it will be fine to let him do his thing in New Jersey and show the public more of who he actually is and what he might do if president.
In 2012 the Republicans will just have to be energized by their desire to vote Obama out of office rather than great love and enthusiasm for his eventual opponent. But I am highly encouraged by the up-and-coming field of possible Republican candidates in 2016 and beyond—that is, if the press doesn’t manage to destroy them first, and if the country is still functioning by then.
Obama the underdog
This is a very odd interview from President Obama.
In it, he breaks what I would consider one of the cardinal rules of campaigning for an incumbent, and answers the age-old question “are you better off than before I was elected?” with the truthful “no.” This seems to be an attempt to set himself up as an underdog, which is certainly an odd stance for an incumbent:
“Absolutely,” he said in response to a question from ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos about whether the odds were against him come November 2012, given the economy. “I’m used to being the underdog. But at the end of the day people are going to ask — who’s got a vision?”
Wow. Obama is used to being an underdog? Certainly the 2008 election was hotly contested and close, but never was Obama an underdog except perhaps towards the beginning of the Democratic primaries. As for his earlier elections, he was always in safely Democratic districts, and his only underdog status came in the primaries as well. As far as I know, he lost only one of those, an ill-thought-out 2000 challenge against incumbent Bobby Rush for his House of Representatives seat; the older (and fellow African-American) Rush trumped Obama by stating the following about him during that battle (which I submit that a white man would not have gotten away with saying), “Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool. Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it.”
In fact, Obama’s main claim to fame in his campaigns prior to the 2008 election was his skill and/or luck in knocking his opponents off the ballots before the election, through means fair or foul, planned or fortuitous (see this and this). Underdog? Don’t think so.
And if Obama is an underdog today (and if he is, it’s by only a tiny bit, and it depends on who he’s running against) he has only himself to blame. But true to form, that’s not who he’s fingering. Why, it’s those Republicans:
“At every step of way, I have tried to get the Republican Party to work with me on the biggest crisis of our lifetime. And each time we’ve gotten ‘No,'” he said.
Let me get out my handkerchief.
And then there’s the vision thing. At the end of the day people are not going to ask “who’s got a vision?” That’s very 2008. Now that you have a record, Mr. President, people are going to ask about that.
Dudley Williams, dancer
The other day I was doing some YouTube surfing of old dance performances. But try as I might, I was unable to find a tape of one of my favorites, Dudley Williams of the Alvin Ailey Dance company doing the “Rocka My Soul” excerpt from Ailey’s masterpiece “Revelations.”
I’d hate to think that Williams’ ebullient, exuberant yet understated performance is lost to antiquity. I’ve seen many younger dancers try to fill his shoes, but they just can’t, no matter how hard they try.
The following clip of Williams will have to do instead for now. It’s from a different portion of the same piece, his solo “I Want To Be Ready. Williams, a man whose skinny frame belied his considerable strength, didn’t retire from performing until the extremely advanced (in dance years) age of 66, and the YouTube clip I’m about to offer here shows him in his later years, when his technique had diminished considerably.
But Williams was never really about technique. Here’s what he had to say about “I Want To Be Ready,” and about performing itself:
“Revelations” is credited to Ailey, but “I Want to Be Ready” was actually choreographed by James Truitte, an Ailey dancer who, like his boss, had studied with the California dance guru Lester Horton. Williams says the whole dance is just a Horton class exercise: “It’s a coccyx balance””laterals, hinges, laterals, hinges.” In Truitte’s hands, however, it became a dance. When he taught it to Williams, he told him how it was supposed to feel: “He said, ”˜When you start, it’s like someone is on your shoulder, and pushes you back down. You try again, and you go a little higher, and they push you down. You try again, you go higher, and you break out.’ ”
Williams radiates calm onstage, but he says he is a very nervous performer: “I sweat in the palms of my hands””I wish the theatre would burn down.” He sees this as part of the process. “Dancing is about acting, about being a liar, basically,” he says. “Because often you don’t feel like dancing, but it’s your job. So you get out there and you do the movement, and it’s not happening. So you work harder, you work harder, you go deep inside what you’re about.” And what started as an act becomes a reality.
Williams was always ready.
Beware of lawyers and their…
The MSM’s battle plan
Commenter “southern James” has some observations on the WaPo/Perry/n-word thread that I think worth highlighting:
We all ain’t seen nothing yet. The MSM is going to pull out every possible trick and artifice and propaganda talking points, which will be pounded over and over again until it is perceived by a significant percentage of the populace as the truth ”” in order to try to get this failed President re-elected. “Didja hear that Palin said “she can see Russia from her porch, as her answer to how qualified she is in foreign affairs!!” ”¦.”Yeah, I did ”“ I mean, WTF, Dude? Is she, like, a moron or something?”
“What do you think of that Perry guy?” “Hmm, not sure”¦.wasn’t there something a few month ago about him and the N-word they had on some rock on a ranch of his is or something”¦.I heard that he is kind of a racist.” “Oh”¦.wow”.
Don’t think they can’t do it, either. Don’t let yourself assume that the general public is in any way on top of things, based on exchanges in little echo chambers such as this one.
Whoever gets the GOP nomination will be in for the worst sliming, and repeated talking point attacks, any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.
President Zero cannot run on his record or on any more Hopey Changey Bulls”“t. And he knows it and the MSM knows it. He is already doing nothing but running for re-election ”“ and it appears to be based on two themes: 1) pretending to still be a Washingon outsider ”“ even tho his party controlled the entire govt for his first 2 years, and he has been president for almost three; and 2) class warfare combined with demonization of Repubs.
It would be an absolute landslide loss ”“ worse than what McGovern suffered in 72”¦”¦but for the fact that the GOP candidate is going to be pilliored from every major media outlet, non-stop.
The most depressing thing about all of this is that there’s every reason to think the tactic has a good chance of working. That’s why it’s so popular with the press.
[ADDENDUM: By the way, the brouhaha over the original name of the rock at the hunting camp that Perry’s father leased is similar to problems around the country, such as this one in Utah, which was solved by obliterating the original offensive place name and adopting “Negro Bill Canyon” as its new moniker. Just shows how hard it is to keep pace with the times; should it be rechristened “African-American Bill Canyon” instead?
And is “christened” now an offensive word?]
[ADDENDUM II: In Texas they’re aware that Rick Perry is no racist. But don’t sit on a hot stove till the WaPo mentions it.]
The once proud WaPo goes fishing—
—finds nothing, and refuses to throw it back.
And quite a few of its commenters don’t seem to notice that there’s no “there” there, because one thing they do know is that southern Republicans are racist SOBs.
Recommended reading
Madame Roseanne Robespierre…
…says “off with their heads!”
Or maybe it’s the Queen of Hearts Roseanne’s channeling.
Which one you think it is may depend on whether you find Ms. Barr amusing or not. She certainly doesn’t seem to be making a joke here:
Churchill/Christie: the visuals
Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest has offered this teaching aid in response to my piece on criticism of Christie’s girth. I thought it merited a post of its own:
