ReWrite!!

In grade school I learned about regimes who rewrote history. Today for the 10th anniversary of 911 we are getting a rewrite from writers.

I swear it’s like no one remembers Clinton or what path we were taking at the end of his terms. No one remembers the bitterness on the left concerning Bush’s win in Florida. No one remembers the “illegitimacy” of his presidency and the pure rage expressed by the left.

911 happened and there was a brief moment as we all recovered from that gut shot. But 911 is not what “damaged our collective soul and seems to have released a free-ranging hysteria that has contaminated our interactions ever since.” huh?

911 happened and we needed to go to war to make certain it didn’t happen again. But 911 didn’t trigger “America’s decline” a from “country [that] was in full bloom”.

911 happened and individually we took advantage of low interest rates and a great housing market and easy credit. But 911 is not comparable to the Lehman crisis. Nor does Lehman get credit from me for changing history by having a bad business model. Sorry dudes.

The fall of Lehman Brothers has resulted in far more economic damage and greater long-run consequences than the fall of the twin towers. This is not to minimize the horror of 9/11, its tragic death toll or the costs of its aftermath, but to put them in perspective. Whether the attacks of Sept. 11 had taken place or not, the world almost certainly would have been devastated by weapons of mass destruction — not airplanes hijacked by jihadists, nor the imaginary atomic bombs and chemical weapons of Saddam Hussein, but explosive credit derivatives in the hands of the world’s bankers.

911 changed a lot of people. It changed me. Similar to Pearl Harbor, only closer to home the heart of the country, we were attacked and could no longer count on being safe. I know many, many people who keep that in mind as they go about their days or plan for their futures. I know many, many people who found a love for this country that they didn’t realize that they had. I know many others who found new excuses to hate it.

It’s odd that just like people forget how much Reagan was despised by many, people have forgotten the animosity in politics during the Clinton years. Bush didn’t start it. Obama will hopefully be the last of it, but I am not holding my breath. There is a divide in this country amongst people and what we want the US of A to look like and be.
It’s not a ditch, it’s the Grand Canyon.
There are good points on both sides.
But the right wins in general as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want a nanny state. I don’t want to take money from you to use because I know better how to use it. We are a good country and millions would rather live here than their own home countries.
The piece by Michael Lind talks about how life would be without 911 and how the Taliban would still be going along and Sadaam would still be in control. He doesn’t talk about how the women in Afghanistan would still be hidden away and without a micron of power. He doesn’t talk about the fear in Iraq about the midnight knocks on doors. 911 took us to war. Wars are fool of errors, but in general we don’t need to fear being attacked by Sadaam or madmen in Afghanistan. Our armed forces, our state department our intelligence agencies have worked hard to make that happen. We have warnings out now. Warnings about car bombs. We are concerned about emp attacks and weapons that have disappeared in Libya. But I don’t worry about terror coming out of Iraq. They’re going to make it. I don’t worry about terror coming out of Afghanistan. I’m less sure about them, but they no longer harbor big terror operations and as long as we stay strong, they never will.
The world changes over time and to many of us 911 was a wake up call. It made us realize that our complacence with the world can kill us. George Will seems to think our choice to go to war was not put there by others, but was rather a “dubious” choice made by those in power.
He calls us demoralized. More so than since the 70s

Today, for reasons having little to do with 9/11 and policy responses to it, the nation is more demoralized than at any time since the late 1970s, when, as now, feelings of impotence, vulnerability and decline were pervasive. Of all the sadness surrounding this anniversary, the most aching is the palpable and futile hope that commemoration can somehow help heal self-inflicted wounds.

I disagree. We have had our bout with Obama and giving the left way a good ol college try. It’s plain as day that it doesn’t work and I suspect that the next election will show just how many people understand that. I wish the right would see many things differently but the right does see that we need to be strong and we need to be not only independent, as a country and as individuals, but also to be a part of this world. We live in it. It gets smaller every day and it can attack whenever it wants to if we let our guard down.

Don’t forget 911, but don’t forget that we were going down divided political pathways long before the attack occurred.

The Speech

Psyche! I didn’t watch the speech, I went for a bike ride.

The AP did though and did some fact checking that Ed Morrissey notes along with some commentary of his own. Now go.

My only question……did the President ask the SuperCongress if they minded finding another 500 billion? Were they given extra time to find another 500 billion? Or was all of this thrown at them last night, during a speech and now they are stuck.

You would never want me in office, because I would say….”Ok Mr. President, we’ll happily pass all of this and give these brilliant leftie ideas one more chance.” Just to prove it. I would add in a bit where he promises to repudiate these ideas if they don’t work by say August. Like I said, don’t vote for me. I like to cut off my nose to spite my face as my mother used to say.

Many, many times I wish that Glenn Reynolds would write more and link less.

See how good he is with words…..

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): New jobless claims rise to 414,000 last week. “New U.S. jobless claims rose unexpectedly last week, further evidence of a weak labor market just hours before President Barack Obama delivers a major address to Congress on the issue.” Unexpectedly!

I can’t find the link now, but somebody was criticizing this feature a while back as “juvenile.” Well, I am quite deliberately rubbing it in, as the ridiculously inflated expectations for Obama are regularly and repeatedly exposed as . . . ridiculously inflated. But what’s really juvenile is expecting that an inexperienced former community organizer could successfully execute the office of President of the United States. And if I’m peeing all over the wave of hope-and-change hype that got him into office despite his obvious unsuitability, it’s to help ensure that nothing this disastrous happens again in my lifetime. I realize that it’s painful for those who fell victim to the mass hysteria to constantly be reminded of their foolishness, but I hope it’ll be the kind of pain that results in learning. . . .

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 8:39 am

The Propaganda War

And recognizing your shortcomings.
Here are “The Five Biggest Reasons Republicans Keep losing the Propaganda War”

Maggie’s Farm pulled out this quote:

Ask yourself: when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative or even moderate political view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public, or at a large social gathering — without hedging your every word? When? Can you identify a single recent instance when you felt your conservative or even moderate views would be tolerated without provoking name-calling or public shaming into the nearest corner of societal oblivion?

I prefer a quote from #3 that looks at value systems based on the GSS (General Social Survey).

Year after year, the GSS confirms that by and large modern liberals are less charitable, less honest, less hard-working, and less reliable to their friends, families, and co-workers. By the same token, liberals are far more likely to believe that success is the product of luck rather than work and personal sacrifice. Liberals are far more focused on money than conservatives and the liberal focus on others’ perceived greed is a reflection of their own envy. Liberals are far less likely to volunteer their time to help others, in both public and in private among family. Liberals lie, cheat, and steal at far higher rates than conservatives and tend to excuse themselves with bad-luck or rigged-system arguments.
……….
In other words, for liberals the state is their church substitute. As they are inclined towards rejecting set guidelines of good and evil, they generally feel satisfied with themselves if they verbally and electorally support government “charity” as opposed to actually giving it themselves.

Links

Steamed:
We all remember Kelo and the land that the Supreme Court said it was ok for the government to take and give to a private business in order to upgrade and thus end up with more government funds due to upgraded tax dollars, right?
How’s that working out for them?
The piece of property is now a dumping ground.

ht Maggie’s Farm.
…………………….
Funny
Al Gore:

As a brutal hurricane season bears down, former Vice President Al Gore says there will be worse disasters ahead if we don’t act soon—and when it comes to national security, Mother Nature is as fearsome as terrorists.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve found it a little entertaining to purposefully use more carbon just to see how soon is “soon”. Sure, we’re having a brutal year here, but Bangladesh has been clear. Maybe Mother Nature is just giving them a little break.
ht Maggie’s farm.

He sounds like the UN. “You’d better stop or soon we will create a resolution!!!”
………………………
Because it’s only fair
I hate these stupid posts, but it IS only fair.
The Jawa Report has a video roundup of the the news post Gifford shooting. Obama is showing me that he is so scared to move that he can’t even think of crossing Hoffa to say….”hey, tone it down” after his big civility speech. And Hoffa is taking that as a green light.
Remember the days when Obama thought he could calm the seas? He actually COULD calm down the rhetoric on the left if he’d give it a try and be direct. But he won’t. That would take leadership, civility itself, and bigger than marble sized balls.
……………..

Wow

It happened just now.

I’m sitting here trying to write something about some idiotic sayings in the media and I just don’t care.

Carry on.

From Forbes on why companies don’t hire. Point number 1 without a single word about Obamacare and 2013/2014.

Policymakers have several theories about what it would take to get companies to hire:

Reduce uncertainty. The idea here is that businesses are not hiring because they are not confident about the future. If this were true, business would never hire because there is nothing certain in business — regardless of the state of the economy. When business executives make decisions, they analyze different scenarios and guess the odds of each. Blaming the President for uncertainty may be good politics, but it’s silly economic policy.

Ezra Klein making certain you know that your money is actually “our” money and equating the word “stimulus” (yes, it’s been co-opted) to “spending”.

Around the same time, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) held a hearing in which he invited Kevin Hassett, a conservative economist based at the American Enterprise Institute, to make the case for a fiscal stimulus. “The economists who studied this were quite surprised to find that fiscal policy in recessions was reasonably effective,” Hassett testified. “It is just that folks tried a first punch that was too light and that generally we didn’t get big measures until well into the recession.”

Ryan was delighted by his answer. “That is precisely my point,” he replied. “That is why I like my porridge hot. I think we ought to have this income tax cut fast, deeper, retroactive to January 1st, to make sure we get a good punch into the economy, juice the economy to make sure that we can avoid a hard landing.”

Ezra Again…neither column is labeled under the opinion section of the online Washington Post.

Politicians all over the world are finding themselves stuck in the same vise: The policies needed to help the economy now, like spending in America and further fiscal integration in Europe, are unpopular. Pass them and you might lose your job. But letting the economy worsen is also unpopular. Let that happen and you will lose your job.

So governments around the world have tried to walk the middle path. In America, we had a stimulus that was bigger than anything we had seen before, but still only a half-to-a-third of what was needed to close the output gap. The result? No depression, but a prolonged period of high unemployment. In Europe, there has been more fiscal integration than the world ever imagined possible, but it has not been enough to actually solve the continent’s debt crises — or the various governments’ political problems.

Nothing makes sense. It’s sad to be burned out at the official start of the election year and a half….

Economic Limericks

via JK.

Go, enjoy but here, have a taste.

1. People Face Tradeoffs.
“I find,” said a fellow named Grange,
“Our position exceedingly strange.”
“My dear,” said his Miss,
“If you hanker for this,
You must offer me that in exchange.”

Wow – clarity out of Dowd

I never read her, but in a column entitled One and Done, I just wanted to know if Maureen Dowd was having second thoughts, – or can we call these just thoughts? – and sure enough, she is.

Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.

The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.

The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant.

After pushing and shoving and caving to get on TV, the president’s advisers immediately began warning that the long-yearned-for jobs speech wasn’t going to be that awe-inspiring.

“The issue isn’t the size or the newness of the ideas,” one said. “It’s less the substance than how he says it, whether he seizes the moment.”

The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.

QOTD

I like this quote by Don Surber. [ht Maggie's Farm]

America is more than just her president or her federal government. Liberals do not see that. They see government in every facet of life and thus politics everywhere. They cannot see a nation where people do not care about Washington. If people did care about Washington, then the Tea Party would be twice as large and twice as angry. But Americans are a tolerant people whose patience stems from the knowledge that this too shall pass. Barack Obama caved because a president is not omnipotent. He thought he was when he controlled Congress. He no longer does. It is no fun any more being president. He caved because he no longer wants to be president. Expect more, not less, of this stuff over the next year as the man who once smiled becomes a frowning, scornful and mocked man. The beauty of the American system is that, so far, it is bigger than any one man and it can — and will — correct itself.

Just Shoot me

After the big brewhaha over the timing of the big jobs speech where the President will introduce his big jobs plan which we all know will be the same old, same old….we now hear that he’s only going to trickle out his plan. [bold is mine]

Aides say Thursday’s speech will be part of a bigger plan the White House will roll out throughout the fall with the president hitting the road for speeches and town hall appearances.

Which means that Obama can now have multiple chances to time more speeches during conflicting plans of TV/GOP/Sports groups/National Holidays. And during each speech he can trickle out another reason for another stimulus (spending your money, my way), or payroll tax holiday (you keep your money for now, we’ll collect it later – no, we’re not sure how quickly so don’t make plans with it), or investment in clean energy (because we can sure pickem)!

yay