Gee, What If They Aren’t Un-American?

This is fairly shocking. The New York Times discovers that a lot of people who oppose ObamaCare are not raving lunatics – something the Times has not exactly been reporting before now. There are (as many of us have said all along) good, decent people who do not want this takeover by the government of 1/5th of the US economy.

He skipped the antiwar protests of his college years, took a job as a regional salesman of paper and chemical products, and built for himself a quiet life of family and church (and hunting and fishing) in his rural hometown in southwest Georgia.

But on Thursday, Mr. Collier drove more than an hour down Route 19 to attend a health care forum in Albany, Ga., being held by his congressman, Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr., a Democrat serving his ninth term.

To his wife’s astonishment, as the session drew into its third hour, Mr. Collier rose to take the microphone and firmly, but courteously, urged Mr. Bishop to oppose the health care legislation being written in Washington.

He told Mr. Bishop that his wife of 36 years had survived breast cancer through early detection and treatment, and that he feared that her care would be rationed if the disease returned.

“She’d be on a waiting list,” he said.

“This is about the future of our country as we know it,” Mr. Collier warned, “and may mean the end of our country as we know it.”

Bob and Susan Collier have worked their whole lives (Bob has held his job at the same company for 39 years), made a good life for themselves and played by the rules. And they are genuinely worried that Obama’s plans would hurt them – and the country that made these lives possible for them –  in the long run.

The Times appears to have suddenly realized that the full-bore, 24/7/365 slime machines of the left may be a bit off. Or more than a bit off. Or actually completely unhinged.

It’s really pretty early to say this at this point, but if Obama has lost the Times, he has lost. That is not to say that this is the time to back off and lessen the pressure on Congress or Obama – it is most certainly not. But losing the Times is a very, very big deal and not easily dismissed by the White House.  

Via Memeorandum.

The Mandate Of Heaven

If you come here to the Crabitat and never actually click through to a linked article I post about and call a must read, I’d ask that you consider clicking through this time. This essay by Fouad Ajami in The Wall Street Journal really is a must read.

Nor was JFK about style. He had known military service and combat, and familial loss; he had run in 1960 as a hawk committed to the nation’s victory in the Cold War. He and his rival, Richard Nixon, shared a fundamental outlook on American power and its burdens.

Now that realism about Mr. Obama has begun to sink in, these iconic figures of history had best be left alone. They can’t rescue the Obama presidency. Their magic can’t be his. Mr. Obama isn’t Lincoln with a BlackBerry. Those great personages are made by history, in the course of history, and not by the spinners or the smitten talking heads.

In one of the revealing moments of the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama rightly observed that the Reagan presidency was a transformational presidency in a way Clinton’s wasn’t. And by that Reagan precedent, that Reagan standard, the faults of the Obama presidency are laid bare. Ronald Reagan, it should be recalled, had been swept into office by a wave of dissatisfaction with Jimmy Carter and his failures. At the core of the Reagan mission was the recovery of the nation’s esteem and self-regard. Reagan was an optimist. He was Hollywood glamour to be sure, but he was also Peoria, Ill. His faith in the country was boundless, and when he said it was “morning in America” he meant it; he believed in America’s miracle and had seen it in his own life, in his rise from a child of the Depression to the summit of political power.

The failure of the Carter years was, in Reagan’s view, the failure of the man at the helm and the policies he had pursued at home and abroad. At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that America should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores. There was no narcissism in Reagan. It was stirring that the man who headed into the sunset of his life would bid his country farewell by reminding it that its best days were yet to come.

In contrast, there is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the “Yes we can!” mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. In this view, the country had lost its way and the new leader and the political class arrayed around him will bring it back to the right path.

This is some absolutely brilliant writing and an essay worth reading. Please do.

I think  Ajami has it nailed here. There is a joylessness in Obama. The kind of bleakness that comes from someone who believes in nothing much of anything – other than himself. There’s a smugness, an assuredness that he is so very right, so very wise and so much better than everyone who has come before – or will come after.

But that mask is wearing thin on the people of this country – who are much smarter than Obama gives them credit for. Obama is at odds with the shared understanding of what America is to the vast majority of this country.

Pay No Attention To That Deficit Behind The Curtain

Economy: bad. Revenues: worse. Outlays: enormous. Deficit: exploding. Unemployment: thermonuclear.

Answer?

Spend even more, according to Barack Obama’s budget director, Peter “Pills All Around” Orszag.

U.S. unemployment will surge to 10 percent this year and the budget deficit will be $1.5 trillion next year, both higher than previous Obama administration forecasts because of a recession that was deeper and longer than expected, White House budget chief Peter Orszag said.

The Office of Management and Budget forecasts a weaker economic recovery than it saw in May as the gross domestic product shrinks 2.8 percent this year before expanding 2 percent next year, according to the administration’s mid-year economic review issued today. The Congressional Budget Office, in a separate assessment, forecast the economy will grow 2.8 percent next year. Both see the GDP expanding 3.8 percent in 2011.

“While the danger of the economy immediately falling into a deep recession has receded, the American economy is still in the midst of a serious economic downturn,” the White House report said. “The long-term deficit outlook remains daunting.”

Here’s the punchline:

“I know there are going to be some who say this report proves we can’t afford health reform,” Orszag said. “I think that has it backwards” because savings must be squeezed from the system.”

The system? Or the peasants, Pete? 

Here’s a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation you can do at home: Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the US economy. The White House is projecting 10% unemployment. And a 2.8% growth in the economy. At the same time. Taking into account the current tax rates, the current government revenues, the current government outlays and the price of tea in China, how likely do you think it is that Peter Orszag is talking out his posterior right now?

These numbers are way off – in the rosy direction. For a slightly more scientific analysis without quite as much snark, I’d recommend this.  It is not pretty.

This is why they delayed the announcement of all of this and tried to ram ObamaCare through before these numbers came out.

After The (Fender) Bender

Comes the hangover. Car dealers are bracing for the hangover after their taxpayer-funded sales bender. Sales of automobiles are expected to plummet now that the cash for clunkers spigot has been turned off.

After the heady rush of Clunkers sales, the return to normal — especially in a market where “normal” means deeply depressed — may be difficult to deal with.

“I think you’re going to be able to shoot a cannon through here and not hurt anybody,” Tonkin said.

In the short run, dealers will see sales drop precipitously, said Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of the auto Web site Edmunds.com.

“I think we’re going to see a decline of about 40% in the immediate aftermath,” he said.

That would take sales down to where they were in May, lower than they were in the month or two just before the program started.

In the long run, this program may actually lead to lower prices on cars, which may not necessarily be good news for dealers or car makers (although consumers will be happy). Back when rebates were first introduced, buyers became used to them and expected them. So it may be with this incentive program.