Jul 15 2010
Politico Makes The Case For Dismantling The Federal Beast
Busy bodies live to run other people’s lives. They live to pretend their nitpicking nags about how we do things makes them somehow related to those things we accomplish. The talking head journalist is the epitome of ‘the watcher’ versus ‘the doer’. Â These people regurgitate to others the successes or achievements of others, most times nagging these accomplished people on their human imperfections. They feel they are part of the process of success through their snooty recollections and attention to irrelevant minutiae. Hollywood is another example – they play doers on TV and Movie screens. Much of the time their mathematical, engineering or scientific skills are severely stunted. Which means you don’t want an actor designing your kids car, let alone the climate of the planet.
Politicians are even worse. They rarely have a thing to do with America’s successes these days, but they love to take full credit. Remember Al Gore’s Amazing Internet? They stand with great people just to get camera time and hope some of that public admiration rubs their way. They act is if the country would fall apart without their mindless policies and nitpicking ideas. The fact is, the country would be better off without them.
Which is the real backdrop to this Politico article where the writer cannot understand why Obama is failing to make everyone just all happy and stuff:
Eric Alterman, in a column that drew wide notice, wrote in The Nation that most liberals think the president is a “big disappointment.†House Democrats are in near-insurrection after White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stated the obvious — that the party has a chance of losing the House under Obama’s watch. And independent voters have turned decisively against the man they helped elect 21 months ago — a trend unlikely to be reversed before November.
This is an odd reversal of expectations. When he came into office, the assumption even among some Democrats was that he was a dazzling politician and communicator who might prove too unseasoned at governance to win substantive achievements.
The reality is the opposite. You can argue over whether Obama’s achievements are good or bad on the merits. But especially after Thursday’s vote you can’t argue that Obama is not getting things done.
To be completely over the top – Hitler was productive too. Al Qaeda had historic achievements on 9/11/01, and Stalin was probably wins the prize mass prolific murderer ever. Getting crap done is not admirable.
This is what happens when watcher’s comment. They are amazed with the amount of motion, but cannot grasp the end product. They are not stunned and repulsed by the bribing of senators, the hyper-partisan one-party votes, the thuggery of the unions against We The People, the anger in the town halls – all of which were part of this amazing productivity. Only a clown or a propagandist would wonder why so many Americans are rejecting the liberal madness of Obama-Reid-Pelosi.
America did not support what DC did.
This is not rocket science (I should know). The liberals did not listen to America, they did not engage America, they did not gain bipartisan input and support – and worse of all they were not transparent nor pure (the senate bribes on Health Care were despicable). It has been a congressional term of politburo-like strong-arming and Goebbels-like declarations of success.
How could the Politico miss this? Because it is either a dreamy-eyed fanatic of liberalism or an Obama propaganda house. That is all the classes of supporters left to the Democrats these days. Heck, even the fanatical liberals like Alterman are jumping ship!
Government cannot appease a diverse people with conflicting views and priorities. Government can only mandate a common view and priority. It is why the left and right have been clawing for power for decades to try and use the federal government to conform the nation to their views.
The partisans have not yet figured out what America has figured out – we don’t need to chose one view or one set of priorities. We can be a country of individuals joined in a grand experiment of human diversity and competition. We don’t need central control. But to do this we need to remove the cancer of overbearing government from all our lives so no one group takes priority over others, anywhere. No common view of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No single list of priorities which will always leave someone out or on the margins.
No more will we be a nation of people feeding the federal beast. We will tame and domesticate that beast so it works for We The People. And to do that government everywhere needs to get on a massive diet – starting this November.
Another great post – and good on you for bringing up why productivity does NOT equal success!!! Just about every great failure in any walk of life will bring this up as an excuse when he’s called on the carpet – “but look at all the things I’ve been getting done!” It never occurs to these people that hard work on the WRONG things is one of the most destructive activities possible. For these people, the world would literally be a much better place if they simply stayed in bed all day and did nothing.
Tell me if you have run into these 4 types: (I certainly have!)
http://www.occamsdonkey.com/2008/01/von-mansteins-officer-types.html
Field Marshall Erich von Manstein allegedly categorised military officers into four types (I have been unable to find an original reference and I have seen the same categorisation ascribed to Von Clausewitz). These types are:
The brilliant and energetic man makes the best staff officer. He handles routine work with accuracy and completeness.
The brilliant and lazy man makes the best commanding officer. He tends to see the big picture accurately and avoids preoccupation with detail work which might distract him.
The stupid and lazy man makes the best subordinate. He will do what he is told properly, no more no less.
The stupid and energetic man, however, is to be avoided at all costs. He is quite capable of ruining the best laid plans.
I swear, AJ is starting to sound kinda good these days! Maybe he is reading History or something. Whatever it is, Keep it up! I tell everyone, study Thomas Jefferson, he was such a great lover of liberty and the best we had at following the Constitution. All presidents are flawed and human, but Jefferson, I think, had the least amount of Flaws. He truly righted the ship after the disaster of John Adams.
Tuesday, I finished the new book Nullification, by Thomas Woods. It was so awesome, I can not begin to describe it. If you like Jefferson, this book is for you.
Wednesday, I started on Bruce Fein’s new book, American Empire: before the fall. He was in the Reagan Admin. Great guy, and this book is also fantastic. Tons of Jefferson and Madison quotes.
Well, time to cook, nice post AJ. Take care folks, enjoy your day!
By the way, Reagan’s Budget Director, David Stockman, had a pretty good article a few months back. Here is a link, if interested:
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/print.php?a=26604
Take care folks.
AJ,
I starting to read this same article from Politico this morning and too was taken aback for the same reasons. Yes, he has accomplished much. But none of it healthy for the United States.
Good spot.
I am now officially sick of people who say they are giving Obama and his gang the benefit of the doubt. I think you have to be a complete idiot if you have any doubt about the man and his administration (along with the Pelosi Reid congress); they have shown themselves to be the polar opposite of what they ran on and promised: transparency, good will, and honesty. And, to add to this fiasco, we have the idiots in the press who still don’t get it; who think this is a game or a way to advance their worthless careers. Willful blindness would be just the beginining of my critique of these jokers.
And anyone who can rationalize why Janet Napolitano or Eric Holder are still in their positions no longer has any crediblity. These two are buffoons of the most dangerous kind — in charge of the defense of this nation — and the fact that no one is calling for their resignations over their statements and actions of the last 18 months just shows you the mass psychosis that has infected this country. Insanity is the only explanation.
The past year and a half should forever disabuse the country of the idea that the Democrooks have the answers to all the questions. Those morons don’t even know the questions outside of “How do we enrich ourselves and our pals at the public’s expense?” They’re the intellectual equivalent of a toxic waste dump. And that goes double for the useful media idiots who spread their economic zombie disease around like Eric Alterman.
More chaos …
Even if the Democrats hang on to Congress in Novemeber, they’ve shot themselves (and a possible new Republican majority) in the foot for the fiscal year 2011.
This could be a fatal error for hopes of using reconciliation in the lame duck session to add “cap-and-tax’ to a stripped down energy bill that Reid is now introducing.
Socialism worldwide is doing a spectacular swan dive, face first, onto the pavement. Other people’s money has run out.
Have you looked at Venezuela lately? Starvation is on the horizon. Gun and gulags are next.
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/07/senate-and-whit.html – new Senate bill approved by the committee. They want more studies on this and that before they reduce the workforce across the board.
Good point, WWS. I’ve seen that categorization elsewhere…and can say that it is correct. Creative loafing is a talent – and it is essential if you are not to get bogged down in minutia.
It’s especially important for Government, since many of the most important functions are not day-to-day, but disaster-only jobs. You pay for the fire department to be ready, but you really don’t want them putting out fires…because that means that somebody’s home is burning down.
What bugs me the most is that there is plenty of legitimate work that can be done. Congresscritters can always delve deeper into individual programs. Back in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt knew all his Generals and Admirals personally. Can any President of the last 30 years say the same?
[…] now becoming clenched fist? – hotair.com 07/15/2010 The three-year detour. more… Politico Makes The Case For Dismantling The Federal Beast – strata-sphere.com 07/15/2010 Busy bodies live to run other people’s lives. They live […]
Obama is hard to explain. He is much more enamored with being able to say “financial reform” and “national health care” than he is interested in what is actually in the bills he signs. So, too, are many of the reporters. I posted this on the Politico site:
“JOHN F. HARRIS & JIM VANDEHEI simply do not understand the Financial Reform bill. Like Obama, they are captivated by the words: financial reform. There is no reform here, only hurdles for small business and community banks while adding benefits for Democratic constituencies. If Harris and Vanderhei actually understood the bill, they would know that this is an example of big government and big bank collusion. There is nothing in this bill to address “Too Big To Fail”. There is nothing in this bill to control Freddie and Fannie. There is nothing in this bill to even attempt to understand the Fed. Remember, after holding its value from the beginning of our Union until the creation of the Fed in 1913, our money has no lost 96% of its value. What has the Fed wrought?”
I wonder where all the lefties are who complained about “crony capitalism” under Bush. Most seem to have gone silent. The verny fact the stock market prices on the big banks went up strongly after the agreement on the bill was announced should tell you all you need to know about how much reform there really is here.
re:Tell me if you have run into these 4 types: (I certainly have!)
http://www.occamsdonkey.com/2008/01/von-mansteins-officer-types.html
Field Marshall Erich von Manstein allegedly categorised military officers into four types (I have been unable to find an original reference and I have seen the same categorisation ascribed to Von Clausewitz).
# WWSon 15 Jul 2010 at 10:04 am
Quote is from:
Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord in Truppenführung circa 1933
see
Also read the entire Wikipedia entry here:
Note: in the recent English language translation of Truppenführung titled The German Art of War, I could not find the Quote when I skimmed the book. It is in the original German book.
Dan Kurt
Your first two paragraphs suggest that my oft repeated comment (by me), about the two parties…
“There truly is a difference; the type of arrogant snots who feel they must control every aspect of our lives (because we’re too damned stupid to do so ourselves) seem to infest the Democratic party far more than they do the Republican party.
is not alien to your way of thinking. 🙂
–
Here are the URLs http://tinyurl.com/29yh3p9 or ://tinyurl.com/29yh3p9,
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord or
://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord
Dan Kurt
p.s. A preview function would be nice.
“The partisans have not yet figured out what America has figured out – we don’t need to chose one view or one set of priorities. We can be a country of individuals joined in a grand experiment of human diversity and competition. We don’t need central control. But to do this we need to remove the cancer of overbearing government from all our lives so no one group takes priority over others, anywhere. No common view of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No single list of priorities which will always leave someone out or on the margins.”
So true! Too much government does alienate people with differing views. President Obama seems to be the most alienating president thus far with the health care bill, the Memorial Day absence, and now unemployment insurance.
Rick C, Obama isn’t hard to understand. He is a communist trying to bring his pappy’s vile strain of communism to America. Read his book and see what his center is.
[…] as a whole, is learning a harsh lesson these days. Where they naively thought success was measured by the amount of crap produced, they are now learning that the quality or success of their labors is the greater measure by far. […]