Glad They Passed That Amendment

During the last election, the voters in Iowa passed an amendment to their constitution that struck certain language from the Constitution. The clause banning an “idiot or insane person” from voting was removed. Which is a good thing. Since it allowed the Iowa legislature to pass a change to a department name in their government.

Lawmakers in Iowa on Wednesday raised some eyebrows when they voted to rename a department that deals with seniors, allowing it to carry the acronym DOA.

DOA is a term that stands for dead-on-arrival.

“You can’t have an acronym like this when you’re referring to elderly people,” Rep. Dave Heaton, 68, said after both houses of the legislature voted to change the name of the Department of Elder Affairs to the Department on Ageing (DOA).

I once attended a department reorganizational meeting where changes to the engineering department I worked in were announced. In order to respond to plant operational concerns faster, the powers that be signed off on creating a group who would have the sole responsibility for meeting emergent problems.

They – and I am completely serious – stood at the front of the room and announced the Fast Action Response Team. They figured out that they had made a mistake about one second after revealing the overhead for that one.

(I blame the slow response on an early meeting and not enough coffee.)

And yes, they changed the name to the Rapid Response Team. But they were still routinely called by the original acronym when I left that company.

Childishness

Jay Cost over at Real Clear Politics has this one exactly right. He’s writing about the latest, all-out Democratic smear campaign against Rush Limbaugh and, by extension, against Republicans. I never listen to the man, but have called out ridiculous attacks on him in the past. This time, the smearing is being directed right from the White House itself. Cost takes exception:

What’s the political payoff here? It’s simple. By assigning Limbaugh – who “wants the President to fail” – as the leader of the Republican Party, the White House can make it look like congressional Republicans hope the President fails, and that their opposition to his budget is rooted in this sinister desire. It’s an easy way to misrepresent Republican opposition to the President. Just as his Republican opponents wanted to do nothing in the face of economic collapse, they oppose the budget because they want the President to fail.

I understand why Democrats in Congress, the media, and the DNC are doing this. Frankly, that doesn’t bother me at all. That’s the way political games are played, and GOP politicos have certainly done their fair share of this over the years to deserve all that they get. But I am deeply disappointed that the President himself is playing this game – not just because he is the President and this kind of nonsense should be beneath him. It’s also because he is the President in part because he promised he wouldn’t do this stuff! And yet, we’ve seen this kind of immature nonsense quite a bit from an administration that has only been in place for a month.

Cost refers to this piece from The Politico that tells the inside story of the coordinated smear campaign. He also points to this particularly bad performance by Obama toward Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Britain.

The murmurs began when President Obama returned to the British Embassy the Winston Churchill bust that had been displayed in the Oval Office since Tony Blair lent it to George W. Bush.

The fears intensified when press secretary Robert Gibbs, announcing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit to the White House, demoted the Churchillian phrase “special relationship” to a mere “special partnership” across the Atlantic.

And the alarm bells really went off when Brown’s entourage landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Monday night. Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn’t grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations’ flags for the TV cameras. The Camp David sleepover that Blair got on his first meeting with Bush? Sorry, chaps.

Still, Brown kept a stiff upper lip as he sat in the Oval Office yesterday as Obama, skipping the usual words of welcome for his guest, went straight to questions from the news services. Brown didn’t get to speak for six minutes, after Obama had already answered two questions.

A President who has lots and lots of energy to direct attacks at a talk show host but projects coldness toward one of our longest, strongest allies. Amateurish doesn’t begin to describe this. The title of the post comes closer.

That Sinking Feeling

There appear to be at least some members of the media falling off the Obama bandwagon. In an unsigned editorial, the Detroit News blasts the carbon tax proposed by Barack Obama as a dagger aimed at Michigan’s heart.

The carbon tax will be paid by energy companies, manufacturers and public utilities, who will pass the cost on to their consumers. Michigan will be especially targeted. It gets 60 percent of its electric power from coal plants, and the state’s economy is still reliant on heavy manufacturing such as car and truck assembly and auto parts production.

Michigan will lose as carbon tax money is shifted to states with a greater presence of high-tech and service businesses.

The proposed tax would take effect in 2012 and has the very real potential to throw the nation back into recession, if indeed the expected recovery has arrived by then. It’s impossible to raise costs for such basics as manufacturing and energy production by more than half a trillion dollars over a decade and not have the effects felt across the economy.

No, the effects cannot be avoided. They will be drastic. This is nothing more than a huge tax increase that will be devastating on the economy and on the people of this country. Worse yet, the effects of this massive tax hike will be particularly harsh on those who can afford it the least. It is regressive at its very core.

Even the Detroit News sees the one important truth – or lie, depending on how you look at it – of this massive carbon tax: The companies will not pay the cost of it. We will. Each and every one of us who buys, consumes or uses pretty much anything.