Some describe the underlying conflict as Tea Partiers versus the Republican establishment. But this just begs the question of who the Tea Partiers really are and where they came from.

Reich doesn’t want to actually identify and understand the “underlying conflict” within the party (that would involve political philosophy, history and understanding of another point of view) so he begs the question by using the vague “Some describe.” I’m guessing he doesn’t watch CNBC either or know the “Tea Party” got its start in CHICAGO. Reich is just interested in doing major flame-throwing at the Tea Party – that’s the real reason for this screed.

. . . , today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.

It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy.

Did you get that? “Angry, white minority.” “Confederacy.” Let’s see how hard he pounds THAT image. So far, I count 1.

Others [tea party caucus members] are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.

This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans – only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.

So, if a Tea Partier just said “whew! at least he doesn’t mean me – I’m from the midwest!” Think again. If you’re a Tea Partier, you’re tainted because Reich believes the entire movement reflects the rural, White, Southern mindset.
I count 2, by the way.

Through most of these years, though, the GOP managed to contain these white, mainly rural and mostly Southern, radicals. After all, many of them were still Democrats. The conservative mantle of the GOP remained in the West and Midwest – with the libertarian legacies of Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and Barry Goldwater, neither of whom was a barn-burner – while the epicenter of the Party remained in New York and the East.

I count 3 now.

Same image: “white, mainly rural (low-information voter) and mostly Southern. New word: “radical.” And when the “epicenter of the GOP remained in New York and the East,” it was civil, benign. But Reich says as politics and populations shifted, the evil South began to assert its will on the GOP.

Overnight, due to Southerners such as Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom Delay, civility and compromise died. Because, no one in politics ever played hardball quite like them. Riiiigggghhhhht. Up until the Southerners appeared, for example, Chicago politics was beanbag. Boston politics were a walk in the park.

But the first concrete sign that white, Southern radicals might take over the Republican Party came in the vote to impeach Bill Clinton, when two-thirds of senators from the South voted for impeachment.

And that would be number 4.

America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.

“White Southern Radicals” I count 5.

Reich identifies the “big bad” of the Republican party (mainly Tea Partiers) as white, rural, Southern and radical. He does this five times. He isn’t at all cagey about this, no dog whistle here.

Reich surely will claim not all white Southerners are “radical” or would “stop at nothing.” But, honestly, I won’t believe him. Anyone as smart as he is supposed to be knows the effect of these words. Didn’t Obama say (sorry, repeat someone else who said) “just words?”

Reich wants everyone to know the label du jour is “white, Southern, radical.” Anyone not towing the Democrat party line on behalf of The One is, by definition a “white, Southern radical.” (Not white? Not Southern? Then you’re just brainwashed and need further education.)

And you’ll stop at nothing. Hell, you have a history of stopping at nothing. Reich directly bangs on this image five times, and that’s the only point of the entire article.

I don’t think Reich could care less about the internal squabbles of the GOP. Heavy handed and as likely to hit friend as foe, Reich’s “just words” pretty much tell you where the “high-minded people of electoral politics” are going.

The Tea Party began with Rick Santelli’s epic rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. People who agreed with Santelli’s opinions formed groups. Some of those groups had White Southerners in them. But in Reich world, the presence of those people anywhere is more telling than the genesis of the Tea Party or the conditions that lead to Santelli’s rant.

That’s dishonest. Or intellectually stupid. Take your pick. If Reich believes what he says then he believes an entire race in a large region of the country is evil. If he doesn’t believe what he says, then he’s engaged in bomb-throwing for power politics.

Either way, he’s a deficient little dude.

Well, Timberlake agreed to go – a little grudgingly – but he agreed. And he didn’t back out. New York Daily News has a small item. Here’s the picture, taken by Lance Cpl. Emmanuel Ramos.

I think the neat thing about all this is Timberlake simply attended the ball as any other person would. The Marine Corps Ball includes history, a message from the commandant, and recognition of both the oldest and youngest Marines present. It honors the hard work Marines do and the traditions that pass from experienced to up-and-coming Marines. It’s also a time to wear the dress uniform and have a party – certainly a well-earned one.

Most people have never attended one of these (I have) but it makes an impression. I’m glad someone like Timberlake got the opportunity. And I’m more impressed with him that he took the young Marine up on her offer.

If you’d rather, here is a YouTube link.

Are you watching the “Occupy Wall Street” protests/camp out? I think that situation has traveled long beyond its initial point – whatever that was. OWS is now an event in and of itself, where the issues have been buried. It’s about the people involved now and what they’ll do.

Fine. That was bound to happen given the nature and organization of this protest.

But what about those issues? Greed on Wall Street? Granted – some of the most greedy bastards on the planet can be found there. Tea partiers fingered government and politicians – also some of the most greedy bastards on the planet.

But a recent Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis lays out other actors – public servants and the rest of us.

Do you remember Meredith Whitney? She famously worried about municipal bonds (snore) and the debt towns and cities were piling up.

From 2002 to 2008, the states had piled up debts right alongside their citizens’: their level of indebtedness, as a group, had almost doubled, and state spending had grown by two-thirds. In that time they had also systematically underfunded their pension plans and other future liabilities by a total of nearly $1.5 trillion. In response, perhaps, the pension money that they had set aside was invested in ever riskier assets. In 1980 only 23 percent of state pension money had been invested in the stock market; by 2008 the number had risen to 60 percent. To top it off, these pension funds were pretty much all assuming they could earn 8 percent on the money they had to invest, at a time when the Federal Reserve was promising to keep interest rates at zero. Toss in underfunded health-care plans, a reduction in federal dollars available to the states, and the depression in tax revenues caused by a soft economy, and you were looking at multi-trillion-dollar holes that could be dealt with in only one of two ways: massive cutbacks in public services or a default—or both. Whitney thought default unlikely, at least at the state level, because the state could bleed the cities of money to pay off its bonds. The cities were where the pain would be felt most intensely. “The scary thing about state treasurers,” she said, “is that they don’t know the financial situation in their own municipalities.”

Whitney was looking at states to see which ones were in more trouble and which in less. That might be instructive about where the most economic pain would be felt and in terms of demographic shifts. Naturally, that led her to California.

In November 2005 [Governor Schwarzenegger] called a special election that sought votes on four reforms: limiting state spending, putting an end to the gerrymandering of legislative districts, limiting public-employee-union spending on elections, and lengthening the time it took for public-school teachers to get tenure. All four propositions addressed, directly or indirectly, the state’s large and growing financial mess. All four were defeated; the votes weren’t even close.. . . . the legislators now knew that the people who had elected them to behave exactly the way they were already behaving were not going to undermine them when appealed to directly. The people of California might be irresponsible, but at least they were consistent.

Many of us in other states have long looked at California as the quintessential gimme state filled with entitled people thinking they deserve more. But hold your schadenfruede and see if anything sounds familiar about your town.

But when you look below the surface, . . . the [political] system is actually very good at giving Californians what they want. “What all the polls show,” says [Joe Mathews and Mark] Paul [journalists and authors of California Crackup], “is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what [Californians] have now got.”

snip

David Crane, former economic adviser [for Schwarzenegger]. . . could itemize the result [of such politics]: a long list of depressing government financial statistics. The pensions of state employees ate up twice as much of the budget when Schwarzenegger left office as they had when he arrived. . . The officially recognized gap between what the state would owe its workers and what it had on hand to pay them was roughly $105 billion, but that, thanks to accounting gimmicks, was probably only about half the real number. “This year the state will directly spend $32 billion on employee pay and benefits, up 65 percent over the past 10 years,” says Crane later. “Compare that to state spending on higher education [down 5 percent], health and human services [up just 5 percent], and parks and recreation [flat], all crowded out in large part by fast-rising employment costs.” . . . In 2010, for instance, the state spent $6 billion on fewer than 30,000 guards and other prison-system employees. A prison guard who started his career at the age of 45 could retire after five years with a pension that very nearly equaled his former salary. The head parole psychiatrist for the California prison system was the state’s highest-paid public employee; in 2010 he’d made $838,706. The same fiscal year that the state spent $6 billion on prisons, it had invested just $4.7 billion in its higher education—that is, 33 campuses with 670,000 students. Over the past 30 years the state’s share of the budget for the University of California has fallen from 30 percent to 11 percent, and it is about to fall a lot more. . . . Everywhere you turn, the long-term future of the state is being sacrificed.

So how did this happen? Crane goes on to tell Lewis that the Internet boom produced lots of rich people. The rise in income among those people caused real estate inflation and for public sector employees to feel both undervalued and underpaid. It does all depend on who is your neighbor.

So, unionized public employees agitated to get more pay and/or benefits. Not necessarily an unfair request – certainly understandable. It is difficult to serve a community if you can’t afford to live there yourself. Binding arbitration and an unwillingness to anger firefighters, police and teachers in particular made many municipalities eager to accommodate such requests.

But what happened was a perverse change in what it meant to work for a city.

. . . “Our police and firefighters will earn more in retirement than they did when they were working,” says [San Jose Mayor Chuck] Reed. “There used to be an argument that you have to give us money or we can’t afford to live in the city. Now the more you pay them the less likely they are to live in the city, because they can afford to leave. It’s staggering. When did we go from giving people sick leave to letting them accumulate it and cash it in for hundreds of thousands of dollars when they are done working? There’s a corruption here. It’s not just a financial corruption. It’s a corruption of the attitude of public service.”

snip

[Reed hands Lewis a chart, showing that San Jose’s] pension costs when [Crane] first became interested in the subject were projected to run $73 million a year. This year they would be $245 million: pension and health-care costs of retired workers now are more than half the budget. In three years’ time pension costs alone would come to $400 million, . . . Legally obliged to meet these costs, the city can respond only by cutting elsewhere. As a result, San Jose, once run by 7,450 city workers, was now being run by 5,400 city workers. . . . The remaining workers had taken a 10 percent pay cut; yet even that was not enough to offset the increase in the city’s pension liability. The city had closed its libraries three days a week. It had cut back servicing its parks. . . . For the first time in history it had laid off police officers and firefighters.

B y 2014, Reed had calculated, a city of a million people, the 10th-largest city in the United States, would be serviced by 1,600 public workers. “There is no way to run a city with that level of staffing,” he said. “You start to ask: What is a city? Why do we bother to live together? But that’s just the start.” The problem was going to grow worse until, as he put it, “you get to one.” A single employee to service the entire city, presumably with a focus on paying pensions. “I don’t know how far out you have to go until you get to one,” said Reed, “but it isn’t all that far.” At that point, if not before, the city would be nothing more than a vehicle to pay the retirement costs of its former workers.

So, what help has the city’s unions provided to address this problem?

In his negotiations with the unions, the mayor has gotten nowhere. “I understand the police and firefighters,” he says. “They think, We’re the most important, and everyone else goes [gets fired] first.” The police union recently suggested to the mayor that he close the libraries for the other four days. “We looked into that,” Reed says. “If you close the libraries an extra day you pay for 20 or 30 cops.” Adding 20 more police officers for a year wouldn’t solve anything. The cops who were spared this year would be axed next, in response to the soaring costs of the pensions of city workers who already had retired. On the other side of the inequality is the taxpayer of San Jose, who has no interest in paying more than he already does. “It’s not that we’re insolvent and can’t pay our bills,” says Reed. “It’s about willingness.”

I ask him what the chances are that, in this pinch, he could raise taxes. He holds up a thumb and index finger: zero. He’s recently coined a phrase, he says: “service-level insolvency.” Service-level insolvency means that the expensive community center that has been built and named cannot be opened. It means closing libraries three days a week. It isn’t financial bankruptcy; it’s cultural bankruptcy.

So is this unwillingness simply taxpayer selfishness? I guess it depends on the local income levels, taxes already paid and services received for those taxes. That differs from place to place and is difficult to generalize. But whatever the case, what happens if the taxpayer is unable to meet the needs of the municipality? Can a city actually get cut down to one worker like Reed wondered? What would its citizens get then?

Vallejo, CA. (2 city employees)

On the third floor I find the offices of the new city manager, Phil Batchelor, but when I walk in, there is no one in sight. It’s just a collection of empty cubicles. At length a woman appears and leads me to Batchelor himself. . . . His day job, before he retired, was running cities with financial difficulties. He came out of retirement to take this job. . . . “I’ve been in a lot of places that have been in a lot of trouble, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says. . . . He’s now running the city, and he has a staff of one: I just met her. “When she goes out to the bathroom, she has to lock the [office] door,” he says, “because I’m in meetings, and we have no one else.”

snip

And as he talked about the bankrupting of Vallejo, I realized that I had heard this story before, or a private-sector version of it. The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans.

There you have it. Choosing one side to focus the blame on is only looking at half the picture. That will produce, if you’ll pardon the expression, a half-assed solution. It took all of us to get here, my friends.

One man with a theory about all this is Dr. Peter Whybrow, a neuroscientist at U.C.L.A. He sees such abundance as found in modern America a terrible temptation for a species not evolved for so many temptations.

The succession of financial bubbles, and the amassing of personal and public debt, Whybrow views as simply an expression of the lizard-brained way of life. A color-coded map of American personal indebtedness could be laid on top of the Centers for Disease Control’s color-coded map that illustrates the fantastic rise in rates of obesity across the United States since 1985 without disturbing the general pattern. The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction—it is all of a piece. Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.

We’re all out for all we can get, aren’t we? OWS is just the latest group to demand more for itself. Don’t think so? Well, just take a look at its “demands” and “needs of the occupiers.”

Governments should be cut, but only to a point. After that, they can’t sustain the community. What’s really missing is some sense that EVERYONE needs to chip in. The hit on the tea party has long been that they weren’t compassionate enough about the needs of others. OWS is just the other side of the same coin. They don’t care either, as long as they get their free education, universal debt-relief, free health care and melatonin.

So, where are the grown-ups? Or is it no one’s fault at all – just a lack of evolution? Are we not up to actually living in what we are capable of creating?

————————-

Lewis has written a thoughtful, yet provocative article and it’s well worth your time. Find it at Vanity Fair.

For many of us, even so little will be filtered by time and distance. That is what happens. But it is also good to take another look.

A website devoted to the names on the 9/11 memorial in New York will help you do that. The website maps out the memorial and explains how victims’ names are grouped on the stone panels marking the outline of the twin towers’ footprint.

Without knowing a single person, I found myself looking at faces and reading names. Victims were American and victims were from all over the world. The terrorists could hardly have chosen to bomb a site more international in terms of the people inside.

You can search for names or by grouping: Flight 93, First Responders, for example. As the website will tell you, names were placed based on where these people were and with whom when they died.

Birth place, birthdate and death dates are included, often with a picture. For example, panel S-69 lists passengers of Flight 77, among whom is 9-year old Zoe Falkenberg. Panel S-70 lists Asia Cottom, 11. Panel S-4 lists David Reed Gamboa Brandhorst, 3. Panel S-4 lists Christine Lee Hanson, 2.

I always knew children were victims that day, but it’s a hard thing to see their faces.

Whatever else you do to mark the day, spend at least a few minutes to look at these people and wish them godspeed.

If you’d rather hear stories of survival, Time Magazine put together an elegant presentation called “Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience.” The stories of Stanley Praimnath and Brian Clark, two men thrown together during the attack are well done. Also included are the stories of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other familiar names.

People tell their stories in black and white with no interruptions.

There have been further tragedies since 9/11 and, of course, there are tragedies every day. Some are more shared and others more private. But most Americans felt involved somehow in the events of 9/11, if only at a remove. We watched in real time, knowing people were dying, and saw the “looking for the lost” pictures flying for days after the the towers fell. But most of us probably haven’t seen the faces. It’s time to pay our respects.

WHY does Obama need TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States) for a three-minute introduction to his nominee? Did Obama never learn to speak extemporaneously at university or law school? Does he not know Krueger enough to say a few basic sentences?

Many people (me included) have made sport of the President for using teleprompters so often. Other stories about this nomination have focused on the nominee. Fair enough, but neither is my purpose here.

My purpose is to ask a simple question.

Most anyone having been in the public eye can string together a few sentences, particularly when those sentences are a mere announcement. Why can’t POTUS?

I realize the whole issue has become something of a joke, but I’m past being amused. If the President is more comfortable reading rather than speaking, why? What kind of a politician can’t speak off the cuff? I thought that was the stock-in-trade of the breed.

TOTUS for a 3 minute announcement? Really? I get the whole “he’s over-reliant on TOTUS” thing. What I want to know is WHY.

1) Please remember, during the dog days of summer, not to patronize any cherubic youngsters hawking lemonade or other drinks. It’s dangerous, don’t you know, and those youngsters haven’t got the proper permits. Forbes kindly has an article detailing authorities’ efforts to curtail this beverage menace.

I’m beginning to think that there’s a nation-wide government conspiracy against either lemonade or children, because these lemonade stand shutdowns seem to be getting more and more common. If you set up a stand for your kids, just be prepared for a visit from the cops.

—————

But it’s the shutdown of lemonade stands that I find so inexplicable. Who stands to lose from a couple of six-year-olds selling lemonade? Who stands to gain from shutting them down? Do local governments really think parents are going to pay for $400 vendor permits, or that kids can scrape together the money for food permits? Are there any actual safety risks? Kids have been selling lemonade for decades without permits of any sort. They often set the stands up just for fun, but many lemonade stands (or bake sales) are used to raise money for schools, cancer, or sick pets. Lemonade stands represent the most innocent, optimistic side of capitalism out there.

If you want a map of all the “lemonade” shutdowns, go to Selling Lemonade is Not a Crime. Honestly, I was surprised. Any “authority” shutting down a kid’s stand should be very embarrassed. And remember, if lemonade is outlawed. only outlaws will have lemonade.

2) Remember when the U.S. “killed” Gadafy’s daughter?

According to Wikipedia, there was even a question at the time whether or not this daughter existed.

According to medical staff in the nearby hospital, two dozen people arrived in military uniform and two without uniform.[16] Total Libyan casualties are estimated at 60, including casualties at the bombed airbases. Among the casualties was an infant girl, whose body was shown to American reporters and who was claimed to be Gaddafi’s recently adopted daughter. However, there was much doubt about this claim, since nobody had ever heard of her before and many people believed it was actually a “posthumous adoption”.[16][17]. After storming Gadaffi’s compound during the 2011 Battle of Tripoli, further evidence[18] was uncovered that the child killed was not Gaddafi’s daughter as claimed.

Regardless, IrishTimes says she did exist and she’s alive and well.

The adopted daughter of Muammar Gadafy, whom he claimed died as an infant in the 1986 US bombing of his Tripoli compound, appears to be alive and worked as a doctor in the Libyan capital, documents discovered by The Irish Times  indicate.

A room belonging to Hana Muammar Gadafy in the section of the Bab al-Azizia compound where the Gadafy family lived contained several documents that appear to indicate she grew up to study medicine in Tripoli and took English classes at the British Council in the Libyan capital.

Many Libyans have long doubted the story of Hana’s death, which Gadafy used to bolster the notion that he was a victim of western military aggression.

Just another version of the “Great Satan” not being either, really. Remember how Ronald Reagan and the military were excoriated for this?

3) At the Register (UK), you’ll find a story about a CERN study suggesting that the Sun plays a much bigger role in climate change than previously thought – and that man plays less.

The first results from the lab’s CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets”) experiment published in Nature today confirm that cosmic rays spur the formation of clouds through ion-induced nucleation. Current thinking posits that half of the Earth’s clouds are formed through nucleation. The paper is entitled Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation.

This has significant implications for climate science because water vapour and clouds play a large role in determining global temperatures. Tiny changes in overall cloud cover can result in relatively large temperature changes.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a politically sensitive topic, as it provides support for a “heliocentric” rather than “anthropogenic” approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth.

Hmmmmmm. Thoughts?

4) Lastly, the WSJ details government agents raiding Gibson guitars.

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. “The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier,” he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to companies. Musicians are worried too.

It isn’t just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.

If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.

So, if I see someone with an antique GIbson, can I make a citizen’s arrest? Is a dude busking at a lemonade stand a twofer? Hmmmm. I can see the new tv ads now. . .

“Are YOU being charged with soliciting illegal lemonade from a minor? Did you INHERIT an antique Mandolin from Granny? Count on US – the attorneys at ‘WTF Legal Offices’ to represent YOU in front of the feds. Call now – offices around the country are standing by. . . “

Yet another columnist says he “should have voted for Hillary.” Meh. You think? I used to find this sort of public re-thinking a little satisfying, but quite frankly now it just makes me mad.

(In 2009, I wrote about another light-bringer worshipper who kinda-but-not-yet regretted her “thinking.” In that case, she kinda regretted her “underestimation” of HRC. She didn’t yet regret her overestimation of BO. Don’t know if that has changed. These folks are making me cranky.)

Bill McClellan at STLtoday wrote about how he RECENTLY realized he should have voted for HRC.

I was splashing around in Lake Michigan last week when the realization hit me like a wave — I was wrong about Barack Obama. I should have voted for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary three years ago.

At the time of the primary, the decision seemed easy. I saw in Obama the same qualities Jack Kerouac saw in Dean Moriarty in “On the Road.” He was ‘something new, long prophesied, long a-coming.”

Hillary was not new. She represented the second act of “Billary,” and I had tired of that play long before it ended its eight-year run.

So, what brought about this epiphany as McClellan bathed in the gentle waters of Lake Michigan? A story of lost jobs in Chicago. That and the fact that Obama “backed down” to Republicans over taxes. He was too gentle.

Obama didn’t think he could win that argument? He didn’t just lose, either. He was pushed around. The speaker of the House wouldn’t return his calls. Obama whined a little and turned the other cheek.

McClellan wonders why Obama seems passive, not aggressive enough, etc, (insert your own weakened descriptors here). And he comes up with a familiar answer: the dude is smart but he wasn’t ready.

Why has Obama not lived up to the promise? He is clearly intelligent. For some reason, though, he was not ready for the rough and tumble of national politics.

McClellan goes on to say that Obama, having been protected and bumped along in elite institutions full of well-meaning white people (as opposed to. . . ), had not encountered any real opposition, personal or circumstantial before becoming President.

Dude – what was there about a non-writing law review editor, present-voting first-term-senator, sub-committee-skipping chair, no-political-history political messiah, life-long-friend dropper, and Chicago-machine operator that failed to register with you? Had you considered the politician on his merits, you COULD NOT HAVE FAILED to realize he was Not Ready.

Hillary had been tested. Eight years in the meat grinder. She’d have been a better president.

Seriously? That’s what you’re going with? And it took you how long to tip to this bit-o-wisdom? I’m not very happy you realized your error, not thrilled that you see the difference, just disgusted that another Captain Obvious has come out with his supersuit on.

But two stories recently caught my attention. Last week I read a very good piece in The Telegraph (UK) by Janet Daley. In a column primarily concerned with the future of the Eurozone, Daly’s position is that a capitalist economy is fundamentally in opposition to a welfare (or socialist) state. She also argues that this rock-bottom cognitive dissonance is the basis for the quite strident disaffection in the U.S. between the Left and, in particular, the Tea Party.

The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society? On this side of the Atlantic, the model of a national welfare system with comprehensive entitlements, which is paid for by the wealth created through capitalist endeavour, has been accepted (even by parties of the centre-Right) as the essence of post-war political enlightenment.

She has a point. At a basic level, the philosophy of a capitalist economy conflicts with that of a socialist-democratic state. Many Americans understand this, even as the nature of the conflict isn’t always clearly articulated. When times are good, such philosophical fissures between our economic system and government can be papered over – literally – by the strength of the dollar.

The U.S. government and its economy might be thought of as tectonic plates – huge, slow moving, usually part of the landscape – but possessing a capacity for enormous destruction if set on a collision course. Would people side with the fundamental philosophy of our economic system or of the current government if push came to shove?

Well, a “tea party” might form. And you might get an interesting poll like Rasmussen’s showing only 17% believe the U.S. government has the “consent of the governed.”

The number of voters who feel the government has the consent of the governed – a foundational principle, contained in the Declaration of Independence – is down from 23% in early May and has fallen to its lowest level measured yet,” according to Rasmussen.

A former Democratic pollster, Pat Caddell, called this attitude “pre-revolutionary.”

This conclusion follows Caddell’s observation last November that “a sea of anger is churning” amongst Americans who “want to take their country back” and that the nation stood on the brink of a “pre-revolutionary moment”.

I don’t know if I’d go that far. But I’d say the disagreement is one the founding fathers would recognize. Scrape away all the name-calling, and the present economics-induced fight is about what kind of government we will have going forward. Will the U.S. keep its capitalist economy or change it to suit a government going in a different philosophical direction? Or will the U.S. move its government more in line with its economic philosophy? That seems to be the fault line, notwithstanding name-calling and labeling tea partiers “racist.” But it’s a “big question” and from big questions come big arguments.

Video below the fold.

According to the Times:

A Taliban spokesman said the insurgents did not make the video. And though he expressed regrets that such things had become reality even for children, he made it clear that the Taliban approved. “We are saddened that children are playing this game, but they should do it because this is a war that was imposed upon us,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman for the northern and eastern parts of the country.
—————
Jihadi videos featuring children are hardly a new phenomenon in Islamic extremist movements. Late in the war in Iraq, the American-led coalition captured videos showing children learning how to kidnap people.

Seeing children train for fighting, though regrettable, is not unusual. I’m sure during WW II there were many children playing at killing their enemies. What disturbs me the most here is that the children are NOT learning to use weapons. They are practicing self-detonation. A fighter with a weapon, presumably, has a chance to live another day. A child practicing to be a suicide bomber must believe his life is already long enough.

Disgusting.

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.
———–

Bankruptcy could permit a state to alter its contractual promises to retirees, which are often protected by state constitutions, and it could provide an alternative to a no-strings bailout. Along with retirees, however, investors in a state’s bonds could suffer, possibly ending up at the back of the line as unsecured creditors.

———–
Discussion of a new bankruptcy option for the states appears to have taken off in November, after Mr. Gingrich gave a speech about the country’s big challenges, including government debt and an uncompetitive labor market.

A few weeks later, David A. Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, published an article, “Give States a Way to Go Bankrupt,” in The Weekly Standard. It said thorny constitutional questions were “easily addressed” by making sure states could not be forced into bankruptcy or that federal judges could usurp states’ lawmaking powers.

Wow. Bankruptcy. Although I’m not terribly surprised, given the dire finances in some states, it is still jarring to see. The article goes on to talk a little about the effects of bankruptcy on state pensions and on bonds and bondholders.

Thoughts? Or are you watching “news” networks coverage of Congresswoman Giffords’ plane trip to Texas?

Cindy Adams noted in her NYP gossip column that several lefty information stylists were invited to the White House.

A pack of wide open tonsils like Frank Rich, Arianna Huffington, Rachel Maddow were imported to the White House for a hear all, tell all, blab all q.t. meeting.

Unusual? Not really. Presidents often have friendly “journalists” visit for some stroking (both ways). It would be interesting to know which information stylists attended and which way the information primarily went: from BO TO information stylists or from information stylists TO BO? From BO might constitute “marching orders.” From information stylists would mean, what? What would Chris Matthews have to offer Obama?

And please, please, please don’t let Rachel Maddow give Obama any more tips on mugging. Obama already has the superior look down. He doesn’t need the “super snark” eyebrow-lift-with-a-crooked-smirk perfected by Maddow. I’m just sayin.

I looked around to see if Adams’ information was reported independently elsewhere but didn’t see another source. Either it’s just too mundane (quite possibly) or for some very weird reason, she is the only one who thought it worth mentioning.

Anyway, it’s open thread time!!!

The WSJ published a piece by Daniel Henninger today that I think is the best explanation I’ve seen so far for the utter loathing of the tea party by the left.

Henninger begins by saying information stylists (my term) such as Krugman, Dionne, etc came at the Tucson shootings through a particular prism, even though these men did not know anyone involved.

. . . Why attempt the gymnastic logic of asserting that the act of a deranged personality was linked to the tea parties and the American right? Two reasons: Political calculation and personal belief.
The calculation flows from the shock of the midterm elections of November 2010. That was no ordinary election. What voters did has the potential to change the content and direction of the U.S. political system, possibly for a generation.

Only 24 months after Barack Obama’s own historic election and a rising Democratic tide, the country flipped. Not just control of the U.S. House, but deep in the body politic. Republicans now control more state legislative seats than any time since 1928.

What elevated this transfer of power to historic status is that it came atop the birth of a genuine reform movement, the tea parties. Most of the time, election results are the product of complex and changeable sentiments or the candidates’ personalities. What both sides fear most is a genuine movement with focused goals.

Henninger refers to the tea party as a reform movement. I think he’s right. It is a reform movement brought about by the financial crisis and our government’s response. Only a genuine movement could exist without centralized control, and tea partiers are under no central control. But they are remarkably consistent about what concerns them. It’s still the economy, stupid. It always has been.

Henninger goes on to say Democrats expected to take losses in the midterm partly because that’s often the case and partly because it was trying to do some controversial things. However. . .

They expected to take losses in November. What they got instead was Armageddon. Suddenly an authentic reform movement, linked to the Republican Party, whose goal simply is to stop the public spending curve, had come to life. This poses a mortal threat to the financial oxygen in the economic ecosystem that the public wing of the Democratic Party has inhabited all these years.

Who believes this? They do.

And a mortal threat must be stopped by all costs. So, attack, attack, attack. If an outright blow won’t work, try death by a thousand cuts. Whatever works, period. And there is no middle ground. It’s trench warfare, where putting one’s head above ground will get it shot off and where the middle ground is effectively a no-man’s land.

The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the “intensity” that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: “Can’t we all just get along?” Answer: No.)

Henninger traces this take-no-prisoners sensibility back to a 1964 essay by Richard Hofstadter that still resonates with those on the left today. Henninger claims this essay laid out the method of attacking enemies by labeling them disturbed, extreme or just psychologically off the wall.

After Hofstadter, the American right wasn’t just wrong on policy. Its people were psychologically dangerous and undeserving of holding authority for any public purpose. By this mental geography, the John Birch Society and the tea party are cut from the same backwoods cloth.

But that standard of psychological fitness can be applied to anyone. Just ask “simpleton” Leslie Stahl.

Opposing the left becomes the definition psychologically unfit. Unfit for what? As far as I can see “unfit” gets applied anyone at all – those holding office or just making food choices for children. UNFIT labels allow information stylists and others to equate mental illness with opposition. This belief becomes all encompassing, making it far easier to completely dismiss people rather than engage them on areas of difference. In truth, it’s a classic logical fallacy these people hope you will fall for.

So, will Obama’s call to civility make a difference? In an environment of mortal threat and where opposition equals mental illness? Not. A. Chance.

Here’s the transcript on a recent 60 Minutes piece about state governments in trouble – featuring Illinois. In the piece, Meredith Whitney talks about what troubles her about state government debt.

Whitney made her reputation by warning that the big banks were in big trouble long before the 2008 collapse. Now, she’s warning about a financial meltdown in state and local governments.

“It has tentacles as wide as anything I’ve seen. I think next to housing this is the single most important issue in the United States, and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy,” she told Kroft.

A YEAR ago, Chicago Business had this video.

But the Illinois legislature starting to do something when it passed a late night measure to raise taxes, according to NYT. Whether or not you agree with this approach probably depends on your economic belief system. I’m not going to argue that point. But I suspect waaaaay higher taxes are eventually coming to us all – one way or another.

With only hours left before new state lawmakers were to take over, Illinois’s State Legislature narrowly approved early on Wednesday an increase of about 66 percent in the state’s income tax rate.

The vast size of the increase, the rarity of such increases here — the last one came two decades ago — and the hour of the vote (in the wee hours of Wednesday) all reflected the urgency and depth of this state’s fiscal crisis.
———-

The fallout of the vote remains to be seen: Will Illinois businesses really now flock to neighbors Wisconsin and Indiana as opponents have suggested? Will the increase impress investors and quickly improve the state’s sunken bond rating? And, perhaps most of all, will the change be enough to turn around the financial woes of a state where the deficit has grown to the size of half of the annual general fund?

My local government deftly (heh) points out IT hasn’t raised taxes in years. Riiiiiight. But they have created and increased fees based on other calculations. If it comes out of my pocket and goes to any government, it’s a tax. I hate that. But, I also have kids and I’d really hate if 2/3 of their income went to pay off bills – although that might happen. Between the rock of my comfort and the hard place of my kids’ future, I’ll pick the kids. But it probably won’t end up even that clear.

Good options out there? Nope. Probably just choices between bad and badder. What is going on in your state?

Well, that was a little glib, but we have all been dealing with the “discussion” ever since – exactly whom is to blame depends on one’s political outlook unless you take the position that crazy is as crazy does.

The puerile notion that Sarah Palin or anyone opposed to: Obama, liberal politics, Keith Olbermann, Markos Moulitsas, Paul Krugman or the wanna-be OB at the “daily dish” somehow brought about the deaths of six people in Arizona should be rejected on its face as beyond stupid. Instead, that idea somehow rises to the level of “concerned discourse.” Feh.

I was reminded of a column by Peggy Noonan. Musing about the removal of Navy Captain Honors from command of the U.S.S. Enterprise, she notes that it would be nice to have more grown-ups in charge.

A lot of our leaders. . . have become confused about something, and it has to do with being an adult, with being truly mature and sober. When no one wants to be the stuffy old person, when no one wants to be “the establishment,” when no one accepts the role of authority figure, everything gets damaged, lowered. The young aren’t taught what they need to know. And they know they’re not being taught, and on some level they resent it. For the past 20 years I have heard parents brag, “I brought up my child to question authority.” Ten years ago I started thinking, “Really? Well good luck finding it, junior.”

Noonan contrasts that notion of leadership with the kind depicted in the recent movie The King’s Speech. In that movie, George VI is portrayed (by the wonderful Colin Firth, BTW) as a very unhip, not-up-to-date, reluctant prince ascending to the British throne after the abdication of his rather self-pleasing older brother, Edward VIII.

It is England, the 1930s, a time of gathering crises. The duke of York, a shy man with a hopeless stammer, is forced to accept the throne when his brother abdicates. “I am not a king,” he sobs; he is, by nature and training, a naval officer. Hitler is rising, England is endangered. The new, unsure king’s first live BBC speech to the nation looms.

He will stutter. But he is England. England can’t stutter. It can’t falter, it can’t sound or seem unsure at a time like this. King George VI and his good wife set themselves, with the help of an eccentric speech therapist, to cure or at least manage his condition.

He sacrifices his desire not to be king, not to lead, not to make that damn speech. He does it with commitment, courage, effort. He does it for his country.

He and his wife aren’t attempting to be hip, they are attempting to be adequate to the situation. The king is aware of the responsibilities of his position, and demands a certain deference. When his therapist tells him they must work as equals, he stammers, “I’d be home with my wife and no one would give a damn, if we were equals.” As for personal style, the great scene is when the king, on the prompting of the therapist, screams every low curse word he knows. It’s funny because it’s obvious he doesn’t say those words. He is a person of restraint, and old-fashioned ways. He doesn’t want to be one of the guys.

The movie is a hit, gaining critical and public praise. Noonan gives one reason why:

. . . audiences love it. The Journal’s Joe Morgenstern called the movie “simply sublime,” and it is, for some simple reasons. It’s about someone being a grown-up, someone doing his job, someone assuming responsibility. It is about a time when someone was taking on the mantle of leadership, someone was sacrificing his comfort for his country.

The Arizona sheriff talks about the malign influence of far off people whose high profile will surely deflect questions about the shooter’s run-ins with local law enforcement and the fact he was a well-known local character already marked as dangerous. Others happy not to let a crisis go to waste use the story to create politically advantageous narratives for their own purposes. No responsibility accurately applied and certainly none taken by any grown-ups as far as I can see.

Back in the day, comedian Flip Wilson (you’ll have to google that probably) had a bit where one character tried to get out of trouble by claiming “the Devil made me do it.” Back then, the joke worked because no one took the argument seriously.

The AZ shooter doesn’t even need to claim the “devil made me do it.” People he doesn’t even know, like Krugman, Olbermann et al, are happy to do it for him. So, pundits the shooter doesn’t know are blaming a political figure he also doesn’t know for a crime the shooter gleefully planned and executed. It would seem this crime isn’t about the shooter at all – it’s all about the people doing the talking – how important their analysis is, how they might want “protection” from the insane (or just the disagreeable) and how their world view explains even the random.

Shakespeare wrote a wonderful line in Hamlet:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, is confused about something that has just happened. Hamlet, though, suggests that Horatio’s confusion stems from a conception of reality too narrow to make sense of the event.

Apparently, many pundits have an equally stunted worldview. Everything’s about politics and everything is about how evil Sarah Palin is to the point of long-distance influence of the mentally disturbed. Palin must be hiding her tin foil hat under a wig to affect out-of-state would-be killers.

That view doesn’t take into account mental illness, passing the buck by local authorities, that many people knew the shooter was a nutjob obsessed with the congresswoman, the shooter’s lack of clear motive or even that someone so disturbed might just take any innocuous bit of information to mean something entirely different.

But “stylizing information” is what pundits do, so I suspect most of us weren’t actually surprised by the likes of Olbermann. I just wish we had some grown-ups out there.