This weekend, President Obama discusses the budget that he sent to Congress this week. Its goals are ambitious with tons of spending and a promise to cut the deficit by $2 trillion in ten years. To say that this dynamic approach to our economic crisis has generated controversy is putting it mildly. The recent rant of CNBC analyst Rick Santelli represents the views of many in the country. President Obama’s call for citizens to be involved in their government cuts both ways. There is the loyal band of supporters who helped Obama get elected but there is also the loyal opposition. As James Pethokoukis of US News and World Report puts it:
Santelli, though, represents not a call to mere awareness but a call to action for those folks who, as Democrats like to put it, “work hard and play by the rules” — and who now are watching those that didn’t get rewarded. Here is what “Larry from L.A.” emails me:
“I was actually travelling and was watching [the Santelli rant] live from my hotel room while preparing for my day. It struck such a cord with me personally that it has, along with the way the stimulus plan has been handled by Congress and the Obama administration, ignited a fire in me to really get involved in the political process.”
Personally, I find Santelli’s approach uncharitable to say the least. The notion that we now lay a blanket label of “losers …. who don’t carry the water” on an entire population, many of whom were not trying to game the system, highlights a disturbing selfish streak in the current American mindset. No one has a crystal ball telling them what will and will not work to get us out of this economic crisis. If someone did, we wouldn’t be here in the first place. Let’s hope that Barack Obama and the skilled economic advisors that surround him have a plan that works.
And now, the President of the United States of America:
As this is President Barack Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress, it is strictly speaking not the State of the Union but it certainly will be in terms of content. I’ll be live blogging the speech tonight. The link below will deliver you to the live blog, or to the replay of it should you miss the live event.
So sit back, turn on your TV, crack open a cold one and watch along with me as our President addresses the huge mess we are all in!
At the one end of the “sanity spectrum” we have our President, Barack Obama, who in this week’s video address spelled out the benefits that will be reaped from the recently signed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The President also announced that the Treasury has been instructed to lower taxes which should, by April provide the average family with $65.00 a month more take home pay. Finally, President Obama seems to be listening to the criticisms of former President Bill Clinton, who said earlier this week that Obama needs to communicate more positivity. He ends his address with an assurance that we can get through this crisis.
And now, the President of the United States of America:
Can Someone Get This Man Psychiatric Assistance?
At the other end of the “sanity spectrum” is failed politician Alan Keyes. Keyes was interviewed by a reporter after a pro-life event and had this to say:
Obama is a radical communist, and I think it’s becoming clear, that’s what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true. He’s going to destroy this country. And we’re either going to stop him, or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.
Is he President of the United States? According to the Constitution, in order to be eligible for president, you have to be a natural born citizen. Uh, he has refused to provide proof that he is, in fact, a natural born citizen and his Kenyan relations say that he was born in Nairobi at a time when his mother was too young to transmit U. S. citizenship. So I’m not even sure he’s President of the United States – no, that’s not a laughing matter, neither are many of our military people now who are going to court to ask the question: “Do we have to obey a man who is not qualified under the Constitution?” We’re in the midst of the greatest crisis this nation has ever seen, and if we don’t stop laughing about it and deal with it, we’re going to find ourselves in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war. It’s time we started acting like grown-ups. …
Sorry, President… the, the person you call President Obama, and I frankly refuse to call him that, at the moment he is somebody who is kind of an alleged usurper, who is alleged to be someone who is occupying that office without Constitutional warrant to do so…
So according to Keyes, Obama is a radical communist who must be stopped. How does Mr. Keyes suggest we stop him? He says that the military is questioning whether or not they need to obey President Obama. Is Mr. Keyes advocating a military coup d’etat? If something is not done to stop this “usurper”, we will find ourselves in the midst of civil war. Really?
Alan Keyes is either an Oscar worthy thespian or a man seriously in need of intervention. I am hereby appealing to all those who love Mr. Keyes and are close to him, to intervene at the earliest possible opportunity before he crosses the line from lunatic fringe rhetoric to explicit incite-to-violence calls for government overthrow. Any ordinary citizen without the benefit of Mr. Keyes’ resume, would now be under constant surveillance by the Secret Service. If Mr. Keyes does not get the help he needs he may soon be making his crazy rants from a jail cell.
I am not a big fan of David Frum. Frankly I find him rather obnoxious. This week, however, he has at least temporarily won me over. One of the things in the stimulus package the Republicans railed against was funding of wetland restoration that would benefit among others the marsh mouse. Here’s an excerpt from Frum’s February 15 blog post:
And facing all this – we’re talking about mice?
Could we possibly act more inadequate to the challenge? More futile? More brain dead?
We in fact have a constructive solution to offer, one that would deliver more jobs faster: the payroll tax holiday, an idea endorsed by almost every reputable right-of-center economist. But that’s not the solution being offered by Republicans in Congress. They are offering a clapped-out package of 1980s-vintage solutions, including capital gains tax cuts. Capital gains! Who has any capital gains to be taxed in the first place?
Almost 70% of Americans say that President Obama will change the country for the better, the CNN poll found Feb. 7-8. Asked whether President Obama is doing enough to cooperate with Republicans, 74% said yes. Asked whether Republicans are doing enough to cooperate with President Obama, 60% said no.
In every poll I’ve seen, hefty majorities approve of President Obama’s economic performance. Approval numbers for congressional Republicans remain dismal.
If we’re to make progress in 2010, we have to look serious. This week we looked not only irrelevant, but clueless and silly.
From watching John Boehner, Eric Cantor and their buddies whine every time the camera turned on, I got the distinct feeling that the Republicans were offering little more than complaints. The obstructive party of “no” in a time when the nation needs constructive problem solvers.
Republicans, now is the time to listen to your most vocal conservative critics. Heed the words of David Frum and grow up. Otherwise you deserve to be out of power for the next ten years.
Update: The evening after this piece was written, the New York Post issued what could best be called a defiant apology:
But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism. This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.
However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.
It goes to show that in some small way it is a new day in America. When the black man you insult is the President of the United States, an apology, however begrudgingly, will be made.
Within minutes of Barack Obama’s inauguration, nix that, Barack Obama’s election, there were whites and blacks alike who declared the United States post-racial. I knew better and two events this week have confirmed my opinion.
Yesterday, speaking to the Justice Department about Black History Month, Attorney General Eric Holder said,
One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul.
Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.
…
As a nation we have done a pretty good job in melding the races in the workplace. We work with one another, lunch together and, when the event is at the workplace during work hours or shortly thereafter, we socialize with one another fairly well, irrespective of race. And yet even this interaction operates within certain limitations. We know, by “American instinct” and by learned behavior, that certain subjects are off limits and that to explore them risks, at best embarrassment, and, at worst, the questioning of one’s character.
And outside the workplace the situation is even more bleak in that there is almost no significant interaction between us. On Saturdays and Sundays America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago.
This is truly sad. Given all that we as a nation went through during the civil rights struggle, it is hard for me to accept that the result of those efforts was to create an America that is more prosperous, more positively race conscious and yet is voluntarily socially segregated.
The host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Joe Scarborough said he was “flummoxed” by these comments. How could the Attorney General of the United States say such things when he is the first black to hold this position and he was appointed by the first black US President? Joe was beside himself. Haven’t we made progress? Pat Buchanan then piped in that self-segregation is part of social freedom.
What does having a black President and Attorney General have to do with racial conditions within neighborhoods across this country? Is it progress that enough white people were willing to vote for a black man that he could become President? Certainly. Does it solve all of our racial problems? Certainly not. Buchanan’s comment as an excuse for segregation is nothing new and does nothing to advance race relations. People self-segregate as much out of fear of “other” as it is comfort among their own kind. The fact that many whites and blacks spend time together when “they have to” in the office or business-related social events, but don’t during their free time indicates that we truly have not come to accept one another. It comes down to the phenomenon of the black or white liking the guy that works in the adjacent office but wouldn’t be caught dead having the guy date his daughter.
The other reminder that we are not yet post-racial came in the form of a tasteless cartoon on the editorial page of the New York Post yesterday. The cartoon combined the two totally unrelated events of a chimp being killed by police in Stamford, CT with the signing of the stimulus bill. The cartoon shows two police officers looking down on the wounded dying chimp whom one of them has just shot. The one cop says to the other one holding a freshly fired gun, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Who is the stimulus bill most associated with? Barack Obama. What animal have blacks in this country been caricatured as for centuries? Apes. The editorial staff and the cartoon’s author, Sean Delonas deny any implication that the chimp was supposed to represent Obama. Rather than issue an apology they chose to attack their critics, in particular saying that Reverend Al Sharpton’s public complaint was just a grab at attention.
Even if we give the cartoonist and his paper the benefit of the doubt that the chimp represented Nancy Pelosi, or Congress, or as one apologist said, “any ape could have written the first stimulus package”, the incident makes clear that our racial wounds are still fresh. The incident confirms Eric Holder’s assessment that even the suggestion of outrage at a perceived racial slight brings judgement upon the wounded party, not the offender. “We know, by “American instinct” and by learned behavior, that certain subjects are off limits and that to explore them risks, at best embarrassment, and, at worst, the questioning of one’s character.” Such was the case with Sharpton. Why make a mountain out of a molehill? Our President is black, we’re post-racial so surely the New York Post could not have made a racial faux pas. We’re past that. Aren’t we?
No we’re not. A black President, a black Attorney General and forty acres and a mule for that matter aren’t going to fool blacks into thinking that everything is just peachy. There is still lots of work to be done and Holder is right in saying that the only way we can do the work is by talking to each other with compassion and empathy.
You have to hand it to the Republican party. They have found a can’t-lose approach to our current economic crisis.
Case 1: The economy recovers. The Republicans, only three of whom voted for the stimulus package, will say that markets are “self-healing”. The economy has rebounded in spite of the stimulus package. The natural ups and downs of the market have manifested themselves. Boy are we lucky the stimulus package didn’t do more harm!
Case 2: The economy continues to sink. Ah, we said it wouldn’t work! You see, that stimulus package has made matters worse. It’s 2010 folks, vote for lots of Republicans!
Do you need proof of their strategy? Look at Karl Rove’s warning to his party in the Wall Street Journal:
But if Republicans predict economic doom, they will overplay their hand. The Democratic stimulus will slow recovery, but not stop it. Recessions don’t last forever and, if history is a guide, sometime late this year or early next the economy will rebound on its own. When that happens, Democrats will argue that their untargeted, permanent spending actually revived the economy.
The emphasis in the above quote was added by me. Of course Rove here accuses the Democrats of doing the inverse of what the Republican plan is. The Democrats will take credit for an inevitable upturn to which they have made no real contribution.
Am I the only one who sees an incredible smugness and cynicism to this line of thinking? First, it confounds me how Republicans can advocate doing next to nothing while the markets self correct. How many people have to lose their jobs and their homes while we wait for this economic theory to materialize? The cynicism comes from this idea of unanimously opposing the President’s initiatives so if they don’t work, the GOP will look like geniuses who were ignored.
While I may not like the idea, partisanship is probably the best play the Republicans can make in this government ruled by contention. In six of the last eight years, they betrayed their creed, they spent us into the ground (partly on a war we shouldn’t have been fighting) and now they have their chance to be self righteous. In the words of Rove, “Over the past month, House Republicans have used the stimulus bill to redefine their party”. Doesn’t it comfort you that our nation’s dismal state provides the Republican party with an opportunity for a makeover? They can focus on their image while the rest of us struggle.
Hurry Up, I’m Late for My Plane!
Democrats are no saints in this mess either. Today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Boston based columnist Mike Barnacle expressed understandable outrage at one of the motivating factors for the rush to sign the stimulus bill. Joe Scarborough agreed with him and so did I. You see, it’s vacation time for Congress right now. Our representatives had a choice to cancel their planned vacations and read the bill more carefully and perhaps negotiate it to a better standard or they could go ski in the Rockies. They chose the latter.
According to a pundit I watched on TV last week, this mindset is not at all unusual and it is exclusive to no party affiliation. You don’t get in the way of Congress and their vacation. So when you watch congressional hearings where the various representatives rake bankers and corporate big wigs over the coals for “not getting it”, you’re actually witnessing the pot calling the kettle black.
How could anyone not be moved by Henrietta Hughes, a woman who came to President Barack Obama’s Fort Myers, Florida town hall meeting and begged for relief from her homelessness.
“I have an urgent need, unemployment and homelessness, a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in.” … “The housing authority has two years waiting lists, and we need something more than the vehicle and the parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help.”
After she finished her tearful plea, the President walked into the audience and held her for a moment. He told her she was not alone in her suffering and he told her to talk to his staff after the town hall. She was rescued at least temporarily by Florida state representative Nick Thompson, whose wife offered Hughes rent-free lodging in a vacant home she owned. The sight of Hughes breaking down in front of the President hammered home the terrible state of affairs we are in. Obama has seen many like her and for each one that met Obama over the past two years, there are 100 more. Whether you were for or against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, now that it has passed, we can only hope that it brings some small measure of relief to a nation in crisis.
And now, the President of the United States of America:
UPDATE: Since a couple of folks have said they’re having trouble hearing the broadcast, I’m popping a quick screenshot of the BTR player in here because quite frankly I don’t think the interface is entirely intuitive. If after pressing the play button shown in the pic below, you still don’t hear the broadcast, go see if you can play any of the other broadcasts and if not, see if a different browser does the trick. I’ve had no problem playing them but that really means nothing.
blogtalkradio interface
Today I launched the second new experiment for The Rutherford Lawson Blog. Earlier in the week, I tried my hand at live blogging and while the initial attempt underwhelmed me, I plan to continue the practice as I find news events worth covering live. Part of my challenge was getting used to the live blogging technology that I’ve chosen.
So today I took the blog in a new direction by launching a new show on BlogTalkRadio. Lesson 1: it is 1000 times easier to present yourself in writing (with that great editing ability) than it is to do a live 30 minutes. The result probably sounded somewhat stream of consciousness but I soothed my ego by saying “Rush Limbaugh rambles, so why can’t I?”
My goal is to do the show weekly, 30 minutes per episode. I’m hoping the more of them I do, the better I’ll get and the more folks will bother to tune in. Fortunately, BlogTalkRadio understands that we live in a TiVo age and they archive everything. So, anyone curious about my maiden voyage can listen to the first episode of The Rutherford Lawson Show.
Be forewarned, it sounds amateurish because I am, guess what, an amateur at this sort of thing. Also I ended the show sounding disturbingly like John McCain during his Republican convention victory speech “Stand up and fight!”
By the way, I’ve stated my FCC-ready policy. Anyone who calls into the show and cusses gets hung up on. Otherwise, anything goes!
Today we will introduce live blogging to the Rutherford Lawson Blog. We hope you enjoy it. To watch the live blog live or afterward click on the link below.
[Editors Note]: What follows is the last contribution I received from my blogging partner The Rigorist from back last September. Perfectionist that he is, he requested that it not be published until he had worked on it some more. Since he has been away from the blog for some time now, and his comments have become timely once again in light of the impending Geithner TARP part 2, I am publishing this article now. Rigorist, if you’re out there, accept my apologies for moving forward without you. To my readers, feel free to comment but understand that I can’t speak for the author.
From the desk of The Rigorist
September, 2008
Since my last post, I have been trying to find a way to address the “Bailout” illustratively. Searching past the wailing and the warnings of impending doom, I have been reading other people’s attempts to do the same thing, to describe the elements and the mechanics and the issues to the deliberately uninformed. It is the deliberately uninformed who present the challenge. Their attempts fail and I shall do no better.
To those that embrace Capitalism, and understand it as a human right as fundamental as speech and faith, explanations are easy. The existence and nature of such things as money, contract, and insurance do not fundamentally contradict the rest of their view of the world. The complexity of the mechanics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be made simple. The issues can be argued from one side or the other.
But to those who find Capitalism hard to accept because it is predatory, or unfair, these things must not be understood. Their worldview doesn’t permit them.
It was a friend of mine, David, who showed me a way.
What the government is buying in the “Bailout” — brace yourself — is other people’s good intentions. I am terribly serious, and this description is terrifyingly accurate. President Bush, Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and, hopefully, minorities in both houses of Congress are proposing to pay $700 billion for other people’s good intentions in order to mitigate a forthcoming recession.
A good intention is an element a liberal can understand whereas contract or loan or debt give them problems because the creditor is being uncharitable when demanding payment. Usually, there is no trouble in buying someone’s good intention. If someone has the good intention to give me $120 (thousand) in a year or two, any problem I have with buying that good intention for, say, $100 (thousand) is solved by giving me partial ownership in something I think is valuable.
What has happened is Fannie Mae has bought all whole bunch of other people’s good intentions, who unfortunately are having trouble. What has made this a crisis is that Fannie Mae screwed up in evaluating the value of the thing they got part ownership of. She’s a trusting soul, full of hope
What Freddie Mac does for a living is take bets that people like Fannie Mae will screw up just like Fannie Mae did. Yes, Freddie Mac is a professional gambler. He’s not one of those “gaming” weenies that put up casinos in Las Vegas, either. Freddie Mac is hard-core.
Well, Freddie Mac hasn’t been hard-core enough. He now finds himself in possession of a whole lot of good intentions and partial ownership in things that aren’t particularly valuable.
So, what is being proposed is that Uncle Sam ( the federal government ), who is a close relative of Freddie Mac, will buy — paying full price no less – all those good intentions — of people who can’t make good on them — and partial ownerships — of things that really aren’t very valuable.
AIG is a gambler just like Freddie Mac, but the good intentions he got are actually pretty good, and the partial ownerships are in things that are valuable. He’s just looking for a loan until payday, but nobody is in a hurry to loan a gambler money especially when he isn’t family.
People think Uncle Sam can afford this because he’s got a money printing press. He’s not a counterfeiter, but he might as well be for the effect this deal will have. It’s not all that bad, really. He does this sort of thing, running the money printing press into the night, all the time. People get grumpy about inflation, and feel all recessed — that’s a recession joke, it’s OK to smile — but they get over it.
This is a good place for a break. Can you non-Capitalists get the what and the how, understand the elements and mechanics, from this? Can any Capitalist point out where I have erred?
@chrislhayes Don't let the fools get u down on the hero thing. I know what u meant. Ask your critics how many of them signed up 2 b heroes. 2 hours ago
Obama Video Address: February 28, 2009
This weekend, President Obama discusses the budget that he sent to Congress this week. Its goals are ambitious with tons of spending and a promise to cut the deficit by $2 trillion in ten years. To say that this dynamic approach to our economic crisis has generated controversy is putting it mildly. The recent rant of CNBC analyst Rick Santelli represents the views of many in the country. President Obama’s call for citizens to be involved in their government cuts both ways. There is the loyal band of supporters who helped Obama get elected but there is also the loyal opposition. As James Pethokoukis of US News and World Report puts it:
Personally, I find Santelli’s approach uncharitable to say the least. The notion that we now lay a blanket label of “losers …. who don’t carry the water” on an entire population, many of whom were not trying to game the system, highlights a disturbing selfish streak in the current American mindset. No one has a crystal ball telling them what will and will not work to get us out of this economic crisis. If someone did, we wouldn’t be here in the first place. Let’s hope that Barack Obama and the skilled economic advisors that surround him have a plan that works.
And now, the President of the United States of America:
Respectfully,
Rutherford
WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance
February 28, 2009 at 4:51 pm Rutherford 7 comments