What Difference Does It Make?!
President Obama takes credit for killing Bin Laden. He claimed al Qaeda was “on it’s heels“.When an al Qaeda allied group killed Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi the white house blamed it on an obscure internet video. The video maker went to jail and Obama got re-elected. What difference does it make?
Treasury Fat Cat
A WSJ editorial says Treasury nominee Jack Lew, as chief operating officer of Citigroup’s Alternate Investments unit, oversaw investments designed to hide mortgage risk.
“The greatest irony is that given Mr. Lew’s crisis-era resumé, he bears a remarkable resemblance to the bankers who President Obama says created the financial crisis and deserve federal investigation. But apparently there’s an exception as long as your liberal intentions are noble and you’re a loyal Democrat. Then you can get rich at one of Wall Street’s biggest failures and end up running the entire financial system.”
Here’s a Washington Post business story about Lew’s time at Citigroup. And here’s a Forbes piece titled “Wall-Street-Bonus” Lew to replace Tax-Avoider” Geithner at Treasury
Stan the Man
Stan the Man Musial died a week after no one was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame, due to performance enhancing drug suspicions. Here’s a nice essay by Paul Greenberg on “A Gentleman and a Ballplayer”.
Straw Men
President Obama surrounds himself with highly trained straw men. Here are a few from a Michael Gerson Washington Post column:
Those who oppose this agenda, in Obama’s view, are not a very admirable lot. They evidently don’t want our wives, mothers and daughters to “earn a living equal to their efforts.” They would cause some citizens “to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” They mistake “absolutism for principle” and “substitute spectacle for politics” and “treat name-calling as reasoned debate.” They would have people’s “twilight years spent in poverty” and ensure that the parents of disabled children have “nowhere to turn.” They would reserve freedom “for the lucky” and believe that Medicare and Social Security “sap our initiative,” and see this as “a nation of takers.” They “deny the overwhelming judgment of science” on climate change, don’t want love to be “equal” and apparently contemplate “perpetual war.”
For Abraham Lincoln, even the gravest national crimes involved shared fault. For Obama, even the most commonplace policy disagreements indicate the bad faith of his opponents. In his first inaugural address, George Washington described the “sacred fire of liberty.” In his second, Obama constructed a raging bonfire of straw men.
Name Calling
President Obama’s re-election campaign didn’t defend his first term economic record. It called Romney names, like bullshitter, felon, wife killer, and tax deadbeat.
But, with his inaugural speech the president has put the campaign behind him, and he hopes you have too. ..“For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.”
