[lit-ideas] Re: Obama Critique from Hanson
- From: "William Dolphin" <dolphinw@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:08:43 -0700
Quite right, Eric; there is truth here.
Hanson is spot on when he notes Barack Obama is President. He also gets
right the names and titles of other officials.
Other than that....
-Wm. Dolphin
Who has not forgotten he owes a reply on the pedagogy thread.
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Eric Yost
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:53 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Obama Critique from Hanson
Something to rile people and provoke
rejoinders ... Tabasco sauce in vanilla
ice cream ... with nonpareil sprinkles.
In my opinion, Obama's done good things
-- I love his train project -- and
McCain would probably have been worse.
Yet there is truth in this premature
autopsy, particularly point number six. -EY
_____
What Went Wrong
Piling up debt, gaffes, and hypocrisy,
Obama & Co. are sinking
excerpted from :
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWRmMjAxNmNhZDRhMjllYmFjYTZjYmRlYTZmYWN
jYTA=&w=MQ==
We are witnessing one of the more rapid
turnabouts in recent American political
history. President Obama's popularity
has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in
some polls, while the public expresses
even less confidence in the
Democratic-led Congress and the
direction of the country at large.
What happened, other than the usual
hubris of the party in power?
First, voters had legitimate worries
about health care, global warming,
immigration, energy, and inefficient
government. But it turns out that they
are more anxious about the new radical
remedies than the old nagging problems.
.... There is a growing realization that
Obama enticed voters last summer with
the flashy lure of discontent. But now
that they are hooked, he is reeling them
in to an entirely different - and, for
many a frightening - agenda. Nothing is
worse for a president than a growing
belief among the public that it has been
had.
Second, Americans were at first merely
scared about the growing collective
debt. But by June they became outraged
that Obama has quadrupled the annual
deficit in proposing all sorts of new
federal programs at a time when most
finally had acknowledged that the U.S.
has lived beyond its means for years. ....
Third, many voters really believed in
the "no more red/blue state America"
healing rhetoric. Instead, polls show
they got the most polarizing president
in recent history ....
Fourth, Americans wanted a new brand -
youthful, postracial, mesmerizing
abroad. At first they got that, too. But
after eight months, their president has
proven not so postracial, but instead
hyper-racially conscious. Compare the
Holder "cowards" outburst, the Sotomayor
riff on innate racial and gender
judicial superiority, and the
president's Cambridge police comments.
All that sounds more like Jesse Jackson
than Martin Luther King Jr. Demagogues,
not healers, trash their predecessors at
the beginning of every speech. When a
once-eloquent president now goes off
teleprompter, the question is not
whether he will say something that is
either untruthful or silly, but simply
how many times he might do so at one
outing. ....
Fifth, even skeptics are surprised at
the partisan cynicism. A year ago,
Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi,
Harry Reid, and Barack Obama praised
organizing, dissidents, and protest.
Today they have become near-Nixonian in
demonizing popular resistance to their
collectivized health-care plans as
mob-like, inauthentic, scripted,
Nazi-like, and un-American. .... The
public is sensing not only that Obama
has failed to run the most ethically
clean government, as promised, but
indeed that he is not running as
ethically clean a government as the
predecessor whom he so assiduously
ridiculed.
Sixth, there is a growing fear that
Obamism is becoming cult-like and
Orwellian. Almost on script, Hollywood
ceased all its Rendition/Redacted-style
films. Iraq - once the new Vietnam - is
out of the news. Afghanistan is
"problematic," not a "blunder."
Tribunals, renditions, the Patriot Act,
and Predators are no longer proof of a
Seven Days in May coup, but legitimate
tools to keep us safe. Words change
meanings as acts of terror become
"man-caused disasters." Hunting down
jihadists is really an "overseas
contingency operation." Media sycophants
do not merely parrot Obama, but now
proclaim him a "god." New York Times
columnists who once assured us that
Bush's dastardly behavior was proof of
American pathology now sound like Pravda
apologists in explaining the "real"
Obama is not what he is beginning to
seem like.
Seventh, the Obama cabinet is sounding
downright uncouth and boorish. ....
Eighth, we were all appalled by Wall
Street greed and the notion that an
individual could take $100 million
rather than one or two million as a
bonus. But the Obama remedy for that
obscenity was to conflate Goldman Sachs
or AIG with the family orthodontist or
local asphalt contractor .... the
public impression is that while small
entrepreneurs may pay up to 65 percent
of their income in new state and federal
income taxes, payroll taxes, and
surcharges, those on Wall Street have
been bailed out and have cut various
deals with upscale liberals in government.
Ninth, Democratic populism turned out to
be largely aristocratic elitism. Obama
spends more money on himself than did
Bush. The liberal Congress has a strange
fondness for pricy private jets. Those
environmentalists and racialists who
lecture us about our ecological and
ethical shortcomings prefer Martha's
Vineyard and country estates to Dayton
and Bakersfield. Offering left-wing
populist sermonizing for others while
enjoying the high life oneself is never
a winning combination.
Tenth, Americans no longer believe this
is our moment when the seas stop rising
and the planet ceases warming. Instead,
there is a growing hopelessness that
despite all the new proposed income
taxes, payroll taxes, and surtaxes, the
deficit will skyrocket, not shrink.
There is foreboding that while apologies
abroad are nice in the short term, they
will soon earn a reckoning. And while
the productive classes pay more of their
income, and while government grows and
entitlement expands, there is a sense
that what follows will not be thanks for
either taxes paid or benefits received,
but even more anger that neither is
enough and that much more is owed.
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