Feeling Stirred?

Not shaken? Obama has released some “stirring” excerpts from his statement tonight.

“At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.

“That’s what clean energy jobs and businesses will do. That’s what a highly-skilled workforce will do. That’s what an efficient health care system that controls costs and entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid will do. That’s why this budget is inseparable from this recovery – because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity.

…

“We will recover from this recession. But it will take time, it will take patience, and it will take an understanding that when we all work together; when each of us looks beyond our own short-term interests to the wider set of obligations we have to each other – that’s when we succeed. That’s when we prosper. And that’s what is needed right now. So let us look toward the future with a renewed sense of common purpose, a renewed determination, and most importantly, a renewed confidence that a better day will come.”

Did these “stirring” Inspirational words come from Jon Favreau’s pen? Probably.

I actually do think we have an obligation to our fellow citizens. We have to defend one another’s rights – that common defense thing. We have to make sure we are not beaten down by a government bent on our submission to its policies. We need taxation without vindictiveness. And we need to decide for ourselves what is best for ourselves.

Apparently, too much to ask.

Phallatial Estate

We have all heard of palatial estates. This is the first phallatial estate we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have heard of.

Rory McInnes, 18, climbed on to the flat roof of his parents’ home and daubed the symbol using a tin of white paint, after watching a programme about Google Earth.

Web surfers can view detailed images from satellites using the Google software, enabling them to zoom in on their homes to see them from above.

But parents Andy and Clare did not discover their son’s rude artwork until a helicopter spotted it on top of their home near Hungerford, Berks.

The pilot called The Sun newspaper, which then contacted Mr McInnes to tell him.

According to the article, the roof was newly erected. Well, keep a stiff upper whatever!

Truth

Joe Klein has been a target of the far left all too often, despite the fact that he is an unapologetic supporter of Democrats. He’s just not far enough to the left for the left. Today, he manages to write yet another post that will doubtless endear him to the left.

So, yes, people are “angry” at Wall Street. They are also “angry” at Octomom. I wonder if the depth and quality of those two rages differ–or is this all just a television show? I mean, how many demonstrations, how many economic riots, have there been? There have been real free-for-alls, featuring real violence and bloodshed, in places like China, where the level of societal unfairness and desperation makes our own not-insignificant inequities seem like a workers’ paradise. There used to be economic riots and marches here–back in the Great Depression, and further back in the populist era of the late 19th century. But none lately. There doesn’t even seem to be significant movement in the polls, which are our own, latter-day way of marching on Washington.

This is something that has bothered me for a while now. Democrats passed their “Screw the Constitution, get AIG” bill citing “popular rage” against the insurance company. They spent a week hosing down every microphone in reach with spittle-laced anger.

Yet, there were no reports of protests I heard of other than a government subsidized tour of the homes of private citizens that dripped with envy and lust for other people’s money.

Obama’s cohorts in the media have been dutifully reporting that “one million doors” were knocked on over the weekend by Obama’s other cohorts. The idea was to get the door-knockees to sign a pledge and support Obama’s “Bankrupt America” budget bill.

But Democrats in Congress report not hearing a thing – or very little – from anyone since the Million Door March was conducted.

President Barack Obama’s army of canvassers fanned out across the nation over the weekend to drum up support for his $3.55 trillion budget, but they had no noticeable impact on members of Congress, who on Monday said they were largely unaware of the effort.

“News to me,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, a House Budget Committee member, of the canvassing. Later, his staff said that his office had heard from about 100 voters.

Klein is speaking some truth here:

If you want to be angry about something, get pissed at a media culture that goes beserk about bonuses one week and forgets all about them the next. And be worried, quite worried, about a society for whom anger is a form of entertainment.

Be angry about our currency being under assault by China and the United Nations because our government is allowing what is happening to the economy. Be angry at a Congress that specifically passes a law exempting AIG bonuses then attempts to punish those same people for the actions of Congress.

Don’t be distracted by the howling of those lawmakers who are deflecting blame onto others.

And do ask yourself how much of what you read and hear about is being manipulated right now.

Since We’re On The Subject…

Of political money not well spent, as in the previous post, let’s talk about the huge – truly huge – amounts of money unions spent to try to get their anti-secret-ballot initiative passed. Well, Arlen Specter, of all people, just killed the card-check initiative all by his lonesome.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) announced Tuesday he will oppose card check, giving an apparent death blow to the most important congressional issue to organized labor.

Specter made the dramatic announcement in a floor speech. His opposition means Democrats can count on a maximum of 59 votes to move the bill forward, one short of the 60 required to clear Senate rules.

Oh, the money thing? Just this:

To say this is a huge and unexpected blow to Big Labor is to understate the enormity of the embarrassment. They spent, by some calculations, close to a billion dollars in local, state, and federal races with card check as their Number One priority. They did not get their money’s worth.

This is the first I heard that figure, so I can’t say it was actually that much. But it was a lot. A real lot. And union rank and file gave even more in time and effort. (That may figure into the calculation of contributions).

Since it is looking more and more likely that Chris “AIG Bonuses Enabler” Dodd will be gone after the next election, the unions may have hit their high water mark.

And come up short.

Short Term Rentals

Glenn Reynolds on what Wall Street’s campaign contributions to Democrats in 2008 bought them. Nothing.

As Joseph Nocera wrote in the New York Times, “Congress, with its howls of rage, its chaotic, episodic reaction to the crisis, and its shameless playing to the crowds, is out of control. This week, the body politic ran off the rails.” They probably acted nicer when they were asking for money just a few months ago.

If these donations had been given out of love and admiration, Wall Street donors would have reason to feel jilted. But if–as is generally the case with political donations–they were more in the order of protection money, then Wall Street donors may instead feel duped. They might want to ask themselves what protection, exactly, they got for their investment.

Political donations are supposed to buy “access,” and perhaps a degree of sympathy. And, in fact, politicians often rattle legislative sabers partly in order to encourage people to invest in their goodwill. (In California, bills introduced for this purpose are called “juice bills.”) But what, exactly, did 2008’s donors get?

 Other than the shaft, they got vindictive ex-post-facto laws, government subsidized protesters driven to their doors, threats from the New York attorney general to reveal the names of anyone who did not give money back (generally known as “extortion” or “blackmail” when not called for by Andrew Cuomo) and endless howling by a berserk mob of Democrats.

 Gee, that was money well spent.

And the same howling mad, pitch fork and torch wielding mob will doubtless be asking their victims for more money as they gear up for the next election.

I’m with Reynolds on this one. The Wall Street money would be much better spent on opposition candidates next cycle. Or this is just going to get worse for them. Maybe they will be a little better off and at least not secure short-term rentals of politicians for a change.

Political Malfeasance

George Will reels off a list of the antics of the anti-constitutional Congress since the start of the year. It isn’t even complete, yet it shows just how badly Congress is behaving.

With the braying of 328 yahoos — members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate legal earnings of a small unpopular group — still reverberating, the Obama administration Monday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.

TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”

Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America’s high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country’s $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts.

 There’s quite a lot more. Do go read the whole thing.Many of Will’s points are ones I have been making here at the Crabitat.

Maybe, as the Democrats like to claim, the electorate voted for “change” in 2008. But did they really vote for the shredding of the Constitution? I think not. Did they vote for the destruction of the American economy? Doubtful. Did they vote for a chief executive who makes inappropriate jokes and giggles about the economic mess? Highly unlikely.

Madness. Utter madness.