Mar 08 2009
Clowns To The Left Of Me …
 
This is part one of a three part post title “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, stuck in the middle with you (America)“.
The current economic crisis is the result of a brewing political crisis that has been boiling for decades. We are here today thanks to the hyper-partisans, who careen this nation from the extreme left to the extreme right, an out of control meandering which has destroyed America. As each side screws up, the other claims superior extreme measures and runs the country over the opposite cliff. It has to end.
This is now so clear since George W Bush, the last moderate President hated by both extremes, has left office and the far left is now driving the country over their radical, partisan cliff. The news reporting says it all. Especially the disturbing confession from the Obama campaign administration that they are in over their heads and screwing up royally:
Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been “overwhelmed” by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.
British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.
But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama’s inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.
Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president’s surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to “even fake an interest in foreign policy”.
Emphasis mine. I wonder, has he had time to fake an interest in national security yet? Powerline and Ed Morrissey cover the obvious repercussions of this misstep, but not really much on the ‘other shoes’ to drop due to this unprepared and inexperienced team handling this major time of national crisis.Â
We do, sadly, have a good indication of where these shoes may lie. A former Australian Prime Minister (no hyper partisan hack) has a terrifying story to tell about team Obama’s financial and economic guru:
When Barack Obama announced his champion to rescue the world from economic ruin, it was the first time most Americans had ever heard the name Tim Geithner.
…
If anyone in the US media had thought to ask a former Australian prime minister for his assessment, they would have heard a different view. And they would not have been so surprised at Geithner’s performance since.
In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner’s record in handling the Asian crisis: “Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis.”
In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription.
…
[Former Prime Minister] Keating continued: “Soeharto’s government delivered 21 years of 7 per cent compound growth. It takes a gigantic fool to mess that up. But the IMF messed it up. The end result was the biggest fall in GDP in the 20th century. That dubious distinction went to Indonesia. And, of course, Soeharto lost power.”
Exactly who was the “gigantic fool”? It was, obviously, the man who wrote the program, Geithner, although Keating is prepared to put the then managing director of the IMF, the Frenchman Michel Camdessus, in the same category.
Worse, Keating argued, Geithner’s misjudgment had done terminal damage to the credibility of the IMF, with seismic geoeconomic consequences: “The IMF is the gun that can’t shoot straight. They’ve been making a mess of things for the last 20-odd years, and the greatest mess they made was in east Asia in 1997-98, so much so that no east Asian state will put its head in the IMF noose.”
So, Geitner’s biggest claim to economic fame is he screwed up and made a regional economic problem much worse than it was. Wonderful, can’t wait to see how badly he messed up here in America.
And trust me, there is a lot more screwing up that can be done. Check out this new silver lining the far left has discovered from the economic meltdown. While millions of people and families around the world are now grasping to hang on, as the long term future for the planet becomes darker and darker from the heady days of the Clinton tech bubble (another round of false hope), the greens are all giddy that industry is finally starting to fall apart!
To savvy snowboarders, Baikalsk has long been the beautiful resort where visitors are so few you can feel as though you own the mountain, at least temporarily: for about 5,000 rubles ($175), you can have exclusive use of one of the six long runs for the day and never see another soul as you schuss through forests. Of course, you’ve had to tolerate a smell that seemed to be a blend of rotten cabbage and New Jersey Turnpike. For in addition to the resort, this town on Siberia’s Lake Baikal—the oldest, largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world—is home to the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill, which has been belching foul-smelling sulfates into the air and chlorides, phenols and other chemicals into the lake since it was built during the Cold War. … But where greens failed, the global recession succeeded all too well. In November, the plant ceased production. “The economic crisis,” says Marina Rikhvanova, the head of the environmental group Baikal Wave, worked “like magic.”
What a wonderful turn of events! Forget all the jobs that were there. Forget the families now ruined. Forget the idea that if someone paid for the ecological upgrades then the jobs would be greener. No! We celebrate the suffering because now we can snow board! Nero had nothing on these fools.
And then there is the lame rationalization they propose as to why this is good:
It is no coincidence that some of the dirtiest industrial operations are falling victim to the global recession. Over the past two decades, much of the world’s manufacturing moved to where pollution standards are little more than mild suggestions. Since small, corner-cutting, inefficient facilities tend to both flout pollution laws and be most vulnerable to a sudden drop in demand, the global recession has hit such operations especially hard.Â
This makes no sense. If you are cutting corners and able to provide cheaper product you would not be hit has hard by the economy. And even if this whacked logic was right, why do we need to lose AIG, Bank of America, our real estate values, our life savings and our auto industry to get rid of these marginal outfits in Siberia? This is true Kool-Aid induced rationalizing at its best.
So why do we have an administration in over its head and out of control? Why are we going to suffer for years under the mistaken policies of the far left? Because were sold a liberal bill of goods – as the answer to a failed far right bill of goods.
[…] is part one of a three part post title “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, stuck in the middle with […]
[…] is part one of a three part post title “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, stuck in the middle with […]
I agree with this, I think most of the careening has been in the congress and not so much with the Presidency, I fact in my lifetime, I don’t think we’ve had a ‘far’ left or ‘far’ right president.
The current economic crisis is the result of a brewing political crisis that has been boiling for decades. We are here today thanks to the hyper-partisans, who careen this nation from the extreme left to the extreme right, an out of control meandering which has destroyed America.
Here’s my rating of my lifetime presidents:
FDR Almost far left
Eisenhower right of center
JFK right of center(definitely right on Econ)
LBJ further left of center
Nixon Center
Carter Almost far left
Reagan right of center (further right than any other)
GHWB middle
Clinton middle
GWB middle
Obama ‘far’ left so far. remains to be seen
Perspective is important. I think the far left things that were attempted when Clinton first took office was so repulsive that the Repubs took over the congress. But it quickly became evident that assuming power by them led to the same corruption that was already there. When the public finally got fed up, they gave it back to the even more corrupt Dems. I suspect we’ve almost already had our fill of them. So this is the first real shot the very far lefties have had, they have until the 2010 election to get full control, otherwise they’ll be history.
While the amateurishness of the admin is amusing, it’s not funny. We need to have a person in the Presidency that is fully capable. When all the talk about ‘who’ is ready during the campaign, it was clear that the order of most ready was: McCain, Palin, Biden, Obama. Yes Obama was least ready, and it is now showing. I get no comfort knowing that the man in charge is just a puppet on a string.
I was just watching a video of the Obama-Brown meeting, Obama looks like he’s fighting falling asleep, bored to tears. aaaagghhhh, how did this happen?
Some thoughts…….
LOGIC is found some where in the middle, not on the left or right, this is why rushing is a bad idea, cutting off debate is a bad idea, using strawmen and political lies are bad ideas. Bad ideas because rushing or cutting off debate cuts off logic and middle of the road solutions.
Let’s take the war in Iraq as an example. There was plenty of discussion, there was the opportunity to look at very secretive intelligence (6 members looked at it), there was Powell spending 3 days and nights at CIA, there was the discussion in both houses of congress as well as the UN. One and a half years passed before operations started. Many influential politicians voted for the war including Hillary Clinton, Rockerfeller, and others. We went to war. It was tough. Bush was reelected because Americans wanted to win and we as a people had input through discussion and being exposed to the process. The Democrats in the interest of politics pretended through lies and claiming a rush to judgment that they never supported the ill-founded war. We the people reelected Bush because we were part of the discussion, and we knew what was true.
Obama claims that he wants to fundamentally change the way America functions. He wants to expand medical care to all those who have problems paying for medical insurance and help businesses by taking over medical insurance for those companies.
He wants to save the planet by supporting solar and wind energy as our primary source of energy to replace oil. He suggest the way to afford these changes is to tax the rich, those earning $250,000 a year and I might add by cutting defense spending. He pushed an emergency spending bill of $867 billion as a down payment, little discussion, and I might add tons of lies. It has brought the far left and right in droves both exaggerating positions and scare mongering bigger then the next side to make a point.
If we are going to go to war or fundamentally change the countries financial structure then every point needs discussion at length. Many don’t like “no child left behind”, or drugs being added to Medicare, but nobody can claim they were not part of the discussion or that they were not bipartisan.
So I think the way to quiet the two extremes is to find the logical middle and allow us to participate.
Most of the anti-industrialist greens that I have met (there are quite a few here in the SF Bay area) seem to be either people from wealthy families who live off a trust fund, don’t need to work for a living, and spend their time as “activists” for the cause du jour. Or they are very poor with no skills living in some community living arrangement in a warehouse someplace where enough of them find some odd job or another delivering pizza or something so the rent gets paid at least two months out of three.
In other words, the ones cheering the demise of our economy basically either have no investment in it, or they aren’t fully aware of their investment in it until their trust fund is gone. I have yet to meet a hard working person with kids who has worked their way from nothing who wants to see the economy fail.
I would take that green anti-industrialism with a grain of salt as it emanates from a very small, albeit very vocal, group of people. In fact, Sweden has decided to crank their nuclear program back up and Germany is giving their decision to shut down their nuclear program a second look. Other countries in Europe have also vowed to restart or expand their nuclear energy programs.
Actually…
Stuck in the Middle was by Stealer’s Wheel, vocals by Gerry Rafferty. Written by J. Egan and Gerry Rafferty.
That nit aside…
When in our history has the United States not been subject to the political pendulum sweeping first one way and then another? As well complain that water is wet or demand that the tides cease ebbing and flowing.
Centrism cannot govern effectively.
.
Centrism cannot govern because it cannot please enough of the electorate.
Everyone should read this, it is found at the “American Thinker”, these are my fears and many like me who love this country and cherish our freedoms. THIS IS WHAT KEEPS ME UP AT NIGHT WHEN I THINK OF AN OBAMA AGENDA.
Obama and the Triumph of the Fabians
Michael Filozof
Barack Obama is following a path to power first traveled by the British Fabians. The parallels have much to teach us. More
“as an answer to a failed far right bill of goods”? Huh? When in the world have we ever been sold a “far right bill of goods”? Furthermore, when has ANY “right wing” policy actually failed? GWB was not “far right” or even “right wing”. The ONLY thing he did from a conservative view point is lower taxes (which created 8 million jobs) and wage a war against terror (national security). All the other crap was an ignorant attempt to ‘change the tone’ of Washington politics, and ‘get along’. THAT is were the ‘moderates’ fail, to the detriment of all.
I am praying that our allies (true allies) will surround this administration and take up the slack as well as steer them in the best direction…and protect us as well as handle our enemies for us….as we have done for them in years past.
Rodney:
That is not true, most people are not ideologues. In fact most people consider themselves centrists. That is why so many politicians go to the center when they campaign for office.
Mark:
Bush was always pro life. As a matter of fact he is socially conservative.
And Bush was a free marketer as well.
Bush was center. Right on some things, left on some things and right down the middle on others. Probably where most people want a pres to be. Unfortunately, the far lefties were not happy with him and the far righties were not happy with him. the problem, the far lefties had the media on their side and sold their bill of goods. Had everyone just judged Bush by what had personally happened to them, he would have about a 70% approval rating. Unfortunately the middle 70% were persuaded by the far lefties and the media.
Do I wish he had been farther right? I don’t know. For me, yes. for the country, probably not. Maybe more right on the economy. But the president is the president of everyone, not just conservatives and he has to do what’s best for ALL. give a little, get a little.
What other crap Mark? He campaigned on “No Child Left Behind”, Social Security reform and immigration reform. He invited others to work on how they might come about as they were really big issues. He built consensus on most big issues. Now you might call that compromise, I call it smart and democratic. As the President said, he considered himself a “Compassionate Conservative” He said what he was, and he was what he said. I different politician for sure!
What other crap Mark? He campaigned on “No Child Left Behind”, Social Security reform and immigration reform. He invited others to work on how they might come about as they were really big issues. He built consensus on most big issues. Now you might call that compromise, I call it smart and democratic. As the President said, he considered himself a “Compassionate Conservative” He said what he was, and he was what he said. I different politician for sure!
“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream–the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”
-Ronald Reagan-
I think AJ makes a fight where there doesn’t need to be one.
Frogg,
I am not the one out on a purity war – that would be the far right. Who have also succeeded in helping bring this country down.
Problem is they are too damn arrogant to admit their mistakes and blame everyone else but themselves.
My opinion is that it’s just more of the same only on a bigger scale. That’s what the change has been. Our government has been moving toward socialism for a long time and the tide has only been stemmed for a bit. Until people wake up and do something we can expect more of the same.
And we better protect our wallets because the way this government is going you can expect them to be picking it every day with new tax schemes because their printing press is running at warp speed. Inflation is around the corner.