It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs."
"Business, not government, is the engine of growth in this country"
Four to seven years ago, our fathers scored and brought forth on this continent, some new homes, conceived in stucco, and dedicated to the proposition that all men can get second mortgages.
Now we are engaged in a great economic crisis, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated to overspending -putting in built-in pools - blowing a wad in Vegas- buying way too much crap on eBay, then stepping up to a “C” class - can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of this credit crisis. We have come to dedicate a portion of this field, as a final resting place for those who did the right thing; paid their mortgages, lived within their means and gave of their livelihoods, so that jackasses that didn’t put ANY money down, and still spent more than they had, might walk away from their homes scott-free and punk an entire neighborhood of innocent families. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, until it doesn’t work- and we need to do it again.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground, without Pelosi, Reid and Frank standing up and taking all the damned credit. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled to pay their mortgages, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to pork-up the stimuli.
The world will little note, nor long remember that I’m commandeering the census, but I will make sure it never forgets, when this all goes kablooey, that it’s still gonna be all Bush’s freakin’ fault.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work of paying through our noses and bowels, year after year, propping up those who overspent, high-tailed it, and are now running up another Capitol One credit card. It is also for us here to be dedicated to the great bailout ballooning before us — that from these toilet-less trashed foreclosures, we take increased devotion to the mighty socialistic causes that will give the short-end to the responsible ones.
That we here highly resolve that these four bedroom wrecks, shall not have foreclosed in vain — that this nation, under the Democrats, shall have a new birth of socialism– and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall never be seen again.
Could the new president be simply using his cabinet as a committee of figureheadsin this blog post.
You ****ed up, Flounder! You trusted us!!
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear
A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe
"We know there is no God who condones the killing of an innocent human being."
Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny.
We are quite literally after two weeks teetering on an Obama implosion—and with no Dick Morris to bail him out—brought on by messianic delusions of grandeur, hubris, and a strange naivete that soaring rhetoric and a multiracial profile can add requisite cover to good old-fashioned Chicago politicking.
First, there were the sermons on ethics, belied by the appointments of tax dodgers, crass lobbyists, and wheeler-dealers like Richardson—with the relish of the Blago tapes still to come. (And why does Richardson/Daschle go, but not Geithner?).
Second, was the "stimulus" (the euphemism for "borrow/print money") that was simply a way to go into debt for a generation to shower Democratic constituencies with cash.
Then third, there were the inflated lectures on historic foreign policy to be made by the clumsy political novice who trashed his own country and his predecessor in the most ungracious manner overseas to a censored Saudi-run press organ (e.g., Bush is dictatorial, the Saudi king is courageous; Obama can mend bridges that America broke to aggrieved Muslims—apparently Tehran hostages, Rushdie, serial attacks in the 1990s, 9/11, Madrid, London never apparently occurred; and neither did feeding Somalis, saving Kuwait, protesting Chechnya, Bosnia/Kosovo, billions to Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinians, help in two Afghan wars, and on and on).
Fourth, there was the campaign rhetoric of Bush shredding the Constitution—FISA, Guantánamo, the Patriot Act, Iraq, renditions, etc.—followed by "all that for now stays the same" inasmuch as we haven't been hit in over seven years and can't risk another attack.
Fifth, Gibbs as press secretary is a Scott McClellan nightmare that won't go away, given his long McClellan-like relationship with Obama (McClellan should have been fired on day hour one on the job). Blaming Fox News for Obama's calamities is McClellan to the core and doesn't work. He already reminds me of Reverend Wright's undoing at the National Press Club—and he will get worse.
Six, Biden is being Biden. Already, he's ridiculed the chief justice, trashed the former VP, bragged on himself ad nauseam in Bidenesque weird ways, and it's only been two weeks.
And the result of all this?
At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution.
Abroad, some really creepy people are lining up to test Obama's world view of "Bush did it/but I am the world": The North Koreans are readying their missiles; the Iranians are calling us passive, bragging on nukes and satellites; Russia is declaring missile defense is over and the Euros in real need of iffy Russian gas; Pakistanis say no more drone attacks (and then our friends the Indians say "shut up" about Kashmir and the Euros order no more "buy American").
This is quite serious. I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and the Secretary of Defense. If he doesn't quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.
The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
