March 11, 2009

BUFFETT

The few people I know who voted for Obama usually specified that his having Warren Buffett backing him up was proof that he would do a great job with the economy. So I am wondering how those same people are reacting to Buffett's rejection of all this stuff Obama is proposing: card check, criticism of corportate jets, cap and trade, etc. I mean, he was so nice and gentle, but even so there are little hints throughout the three-hour interview that his man Obama is messing up:

BECKY: David Paterson, the governor of New York, wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, and he said, "The mortgage plan that the president has proposed is the right one." Do you agree with that?

BUFFETT: Well, I don't even know all the details, but I would say that the administration ought to be willing to listen to very prompt suggestions on ways to make it a little bit better.

Bwahaha.

BECKY: I feel like I have heard that from the president, that we will stand behind the banking system and it will be here. What can he say more specifically than that?

BUFFETT: I'm not sure he said it quite that way...

This exchange was sure interesting:

BECKY: We have people asking questions about things that the administration has already put out. In fact, Bob wrote in from Baltimore, Bob Knott, who says, "On a scale from one to 10, how would you assess the value to the US economy of President Obama's recently enacted stimulus plan?"

BUFFETT: Oh, well, the stimulus plan's going to take a long time to kick in. I mean, there'll be certain things kick in fast. But the stimulus plan is part of the recovery, but it's not the most--it's important to put it in, but there's other things that need to be done now to restore confidence. You're not going to--you're just not going to see that much happen.

Fantastic. Good thing we rammed that monstrosity through.

Slate has some more shocking quotes from Buffett.

Anyway, I'm just curious. I read the whole thing, and it seems like Buffett truly likes and supports Obama -- but if he calls him "articulate" one more time, I'm gonna lose it -- so he hesitates to flat-out call him on the carpet and tell him that he's making some bad choices. But he hints at it plenty.

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March 05, 2009

WANNA TRADE?

David sent me a link called Rattling the Cage: Waiting for Bibi's New Deal:

In other countries, beginning with the US and Europe, a new economic era has begun. Laissez-faire, anti-tax, anti-government capitalism is understood to have failed (it sure as hell didn't prevent this disaster, did it?), and the response has been a turn to the Left. In other countries, it's understood that government has to step in with more liberal, social democratic, Keynesian, New Deal-style policies or the economy is going to sink through the floor.

Not here, though. Here people are scared of losing their jobs, afraid to spend a nickel, their hearts go out to the factory workers who've gotten laid off, they read about how charities that keep hundreds of thousands of poor people afloat are about to go bankrupt, and what is their idea of change, of an Israeli New Deal? Bibi Netanyahu. The world's last reigning (or soon-to-be-reigning) ideological Thatcherite.

The article is not meant to be flattering; the author apparently wants an Obama. But I must say that when I read that intro to the article, I felt jealous of Israel. They get Benjamin Netanyahu and they're complaining about it.

Dude, I will trade you leaders any day of the week.

Our ship has hit a hurricane, and this is our crew, folks. To the poor and the soon-to-be poor: Don't expect a whole lot from the incoming government. The New Deal under Prime Minister Netanyahu looks like it's going to be a copy of the Old Deal under Finance Minister Netanyahu: Every man for himself.

Yes yes yes! Oh wait, that's meant to be a bad thing?

The whole article is about how Netanyahu didn't "solve the ecominy" last time he was in office; it just righted itself eventually. That's meant to be an insult, that Netanyahu didn't do anything. But in my estimation, presidents or prime ministers ought to stay as far away from touching the economy as possible. The free market will eventually right itself, but not if you tinker with it too much.

Our new president is a tinkerer of epic proportions. I'll take their guy over ours whenever they want to trade.

Not to mention that he ain't so bad on the eyes...

netanyahu_benjamin.jpg

Rawr.

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March 03, 2009

PARTNERSHIP OF PURPOSE = SCARY

I never really bought into the idea that it was better to have Obama as president and be in the vocal opposition than to have RINO McCain in office. I have been scared of irreversible policy changes. And this partnering with the global community, crippling us while helping them, is one of them:

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will discuss global financial supervision and coordinated measures to support the economy with US President Barack Obama this week.

Brown will become the first European leader to meet the US president on Tuesday, since Obama’s inauguration. “I believe there is no challenge so great or so difficult that it cannot be overcome by US, Britain and the world working together,” Brown wrote in the Sunday Times.

“That is why President Obama and I will discuss this week a global new deal, whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York, and giving security to the hard-working families in every country.”

Brown said the two countries’ “partnership of purpose” should be directed at fighting the economic downturn as well as terrorism, poverty and disease. Britain is keen to get US support for the bold aims of a G20 summit on April 2.

Every word in this short article makes me shudder.

-- I don't want my country to promise to give security to families in every country.

-- I don't want even more American tax dollars to fight poverty and disease in other countries.

-- I don't want an American New Deal, much less a Global New Deal. Ugh, I can't stand the word global.

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February 04, 2009

HEH

Tom Elia at The New Editor:

At the dawn of the Obama Administration we have witnessed: four high-level appointees blow up over various issues, tax and otherwise (Richardson, Daschel, and Killefer get axed; Geitner stays); the appointment of at least 12 lobbyists to positions in the Administration -- in direct contradiction of campaign promises; a pork-laden economic stimulus bill without precedent in US history; and the reversal of campaign positions concerning controversial policies like rendition.

The first couple of weeks of the Obama Administration has simply reinforced my stated belief that the Obama campaign and subsequent election represents the biggest, most successful political con of my lifetime.

(via Instapundit)

And a hilarious comment from JorgXMcKie:

Democrats remind me of the old story about a baseball player-manager who pulled his right fielder from the game after the right fielder had dropped two fly balls.

The manager put himself in right field, and promptly dropped three fly balls. When he returned to the bench he yelled at the player he had replaced, "See!! You screwed it up so bad nobody can play right field."

I expect to hear this over and over and over and over and over [...] as Obama screws up over and over and over and over and over.

Heh.

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January 30, 2009

GROSSLY MISSING THE POINT

This Michael Hirsh piece made me laugh out loud:

Is it possible history is repeating itself? As House Republicans defy President Obama over his stimulus package, the party seems to be reverting to form after decades of overreaching ambition and outsized growth; think of the GOP, perhaps, as the Citigroup of politics. Many Republicans seem resigned—even content—to go back to being the party of Barry Goldwater. In other words: We don't care if we're marginalized. In our hearts we know we're right. Never mind that the party suffered terrible defeats in 2008 and 2006, some thoughtful Republicans (mainly on the Senate side, like Lindsay Graham, as well as intellectuals such as David Frum) have been fretting for some time that the GOP base is getting too narrow. These days, you hear little talk of Karl Rove's bigger tent or reinventing conservatism. Quite the opposite: it seems as though the party has decided to go back to basics. The message they're sending: "We don't care if Obama won or that he's popular; let's just wait until the country sees the truth again, as old Barry did. Until then, we'll be happy to be the righteous minority again, proudly willing to go down in flames for our beliefs: government spending never works, and tax cuts always do. Keynesian stimulus is for liberal witch doctors."

I laughed because it just shows such a gross misunderstanding of what it means to be a conservative or Republican, while stating the obvious as if it were some kind of joke. He writes about my entire worldview as if it's something to mock. As if Republicans are the only ones who stick to their guns in the face of opposition. Didn't Democrats do that for the last eight years and get lauded for it? And now we're the ones who won't roll over and die because a Dem got 52% of the vote?

We're not "resigned" to going back to being the Goldwater party; that's where we want to be! And yes, we are willing to "go down in flames for our beliefs," because we do what we think is right, not what is popular.

Actually, I don't think "right" and "popular" are mutually exclusive, but I can't really test that theory because Republicans keep trying to out-Democrat Democrats by granting them too many premises.

The article continues in laughable fashion:

True, Wednesday's unanimous GOP vote against the $819 billion stimulus package was partly driven by the peculiar politics of the Hill. Some House Republicans wanted to send a "message" to Obama, and they may come around and vote for the final bill after the Senate approves its version. But for many Republicans the vote reaffirmed the old philosophical divide. Never mind that Obama reached out, lunched with GOP leaders on the Hill, and pressed Speaker Nancy Pelosi to drop family planning and National Mall renovation. Not a single House Republican could bring himself or herself to vote with the president on a measure to prevent what could become the most serious recession since the 1930s.

Good heavens, how could the Republicans not side with Obama after he took them to lunch? Value systems and deeply held beliefs be damned; Obama invited us out to lunch! And to the SuperBowl! Let's forget everything we stand for and do whatever he says.

But reaching a new consensus would require a reassessment of basic premises, and it appears, at least for the moment, that there will be very little of that. The emerging Republican consensus suggests that Bush grew so unpopular because he strayed from, rather than stood behind, the old GOP verities by creating a vast national-security state and giant deficits. Hence the Republicans are flocking to a proposal by the House Republican Study Committee calling for no new government spending at all, and nothing but tax cuts instead.

Those bastard Republicans. If they'd just become Democrats, the world would live in peace and life would be flowers and sausages for everyone. But nooooo. They have to go and ruin it for everyone by having principles and values and other such nonsense that keeps us from consensus!

Read that first sentence again: "But reaching a new consensus would require a reassessment of basic premises, and it appears, at least for the moment, that there will be very little of that."

Translation: The last eight years, we held our ground. But now you Republicans, you need to reassess your premises. Because they're wrong.

For eight years, dissent was patriotic. Now it's a big travesty.

The laughable piece ends with this:

A little over a week after Obama's inauguration, "stale" political arguments again rule the day. So much for the post-partisan era.

Obama tried to move beyond politics and make everyone on the planet live in harmony and agree. He's tried for a whole ten days! And you jerkwad Republicans won't put aside your differences and become Democrats. If you did, the world would be perfect. But you won't. Obama tried to be post-partisan, and you Republicans ruined it.

I mean, there are just too many things to fisk here. See something you'd like to pounce on? Feel free...

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January 29, 2009

THIS GUY IS SOMETHING ELSE

First, Obama was a hypocrite about bin Laden. Now he's a hypocrite about the environment.

Last year:

We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership.

Today:

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

While looking for the original quote, I realized Ed Morrisey has already blogged about this today, and rightly notes in Heat For Me But Not For Thee:

Many people in America, especially where I live, would like to heat their homes to a comfort level where sweaters and coats become unnecessary. However, Obama and the Democrats want to impose ruinous taxes and penalties on energy production and fuel that produces carbon dioxide — a naturally-occurring element — and make that choice economically unbearable for us.

I wish my house were warm enough to wear summer clothes, but I have to pay my own heating bill, so it's not. Shame on you again, President Obama.

And also, you're from Chicago, not Hawaii. You should be used to cold weather and wearing sweaters.


[Thanks to AirForceWife for angering up my blood this morning with this link.]

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January 22, 2009

WOW

Meet the new boss,
same as the old boss.

I may actually have to start watching The Daily Show again...

(via Instapundit)

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ALL GOOD REASONS

Via Conservative Grapevine, Seven reasons for healthy skepticism about Obama. Here's #4:

4. Words, words, words

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, though starkly different men, both viewed the presidency as pre-eminently a decision-making job. Clinton often waved away speech drafts bloated with lofty language by saying: “Words, words, words.”

Obama seems to have a different view of the presidency. He thinks that the right decisions can be reached by putting reasonable and enlightened people together and reaching a consensus. He believes his job as president is to educate and inspire, largely matters of style.

He knows he is good with words. He knows he has great style. So thatÂ’s why he projects exceptional confidence in his ability to do the job.

We don’t know yet how justified Obama is in his self-confidence — or how naive.

But he is almost certain to face many tests, probably imminently, in which the test will be Obama’s ability to act quickly and shrewdly — and not merely describe his actions smoothly or impress people with nuance. And an unlike a governor — who must decide what’s in a budget and what gets cut, or whether a person to be executed at midnight should be spared — Obama has not made many decisions for which the consequences affect more than himself.

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January 21, 2009

"OH COME ON!" IS RIGHT

Via Amritas, it's Lawrence Auster on yesterday's events, which I did not watch myself:

Today, as reported at the Corner, Brokaw "compared the spirit of this inauguration to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. " In other words, replacing George W. Bush as president after a regularly scheduled presidential election is the moral equivalent of freeing your country from Communist tyranny.

Jonah Goldberg rightfully titled that post "Oh Come On!"

And another thoughtful comment by Auster:

How would an intellectually consistent race-blind conservative, i.e., a right-liberal, react to the election of the first nonwhite as president? Answer: he wouldn't make a huge deal of it. He would say, "Starting in the 1960s America ceased to place arbitrary obstacles in the way of people because of race, and the election of Obama proves what has been the case in this country for a long time." And that would be it. Going further than that, going into the ecstatic celebration of Obama's presidency, becomes a celebration of Obama BECAUSE he is nonwhite, which contradicts the right-liberal belief that race doesn't matter.

Amen to that. To quote Lileks, "I never thought America wouldnÂ’t elect a Black president." I don't give a rip what the man looks like; I only care what he does.

And he sure hasn't overthrown a regime, Brokaw. You punk.

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January 18, 2009

FAIRLY SAID

I liked Hudnall's farewell to George Bush.

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BAD IDEA

I know it's not the first time it's been proposed, but I absolutely stand firm against any effort to repeal the 22nd Amendment. And I would've stood firm in 1987 as well when it was proposed during the Reagan presidency. Twice is enough for anyone, even my guy.

MORE TO GROK:

Seems I agree wholeheartedly with what William F. Buckley, Jr. (pbuh) said back in 1988:

Two terms is enough for a President. And if we are going to change the Constitution let's have a three-term limit for senators, and a five-term limit for congressmen.

Now there's an amendment idea.

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SHAME ON YOU

Dear Obama,

You speak with a forked tongue and I will have a hard time typing this letter without resorting to swear words.

We no longer need to kill Bin Laden, claims Barack Obama

All throughout the campaign, you went on and on about how the Republican administration had failed the American people for letting Bin Laden out of their sights. You claimed Iraq was a distraction from the real goal, which was getting Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

In a presidential debate in October, he said: 'We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.'

And now that you've won, before you're even sworn in, you decide that an extremely difficult task, one that George Bush has worked on for seven years and one that you claimed was the most pressing security issue for our country, now all of a sudden it's no big deal since you're at the helm.

You, sir, are a pandering, no-good son of a bitch.

Oops. I swore.

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January 16, 2009

IT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG

I knew that President Bush was an avid reader, but Amritas sent me a link last night to an article Karl Rove wrote about their reading contests.

I'm gonna try to break Bush's 2008 record.

I had already decided to keep a log of what I read this year, prompted by k2sc1's post and also John Hawkins, who reads voraciously. But now I have a goal to work towards and some healthy competition.

You're dead meat, Bush.

Heh.

Also, you read The Stranger, Mr. President, which is totally slim. I am going to re-read Animal Farm like all those hoopleheads in high school who picked it because, like, it's only 128 pages long.

And that totally counts.

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January 15, 2009

WHAT KIND OF A REPUBLICAN ARE YOU?

This is Lindsey Graham, speaking about/to Obama:

This president's popularity and the respect that he has earned throughout the world gives America a chance to re-engage not only in the region, but in a way that will in the long term make this job easier, take some pressure off our troops. And that's a compliment to you and the way you have campaigned.

I'm sorry, but what the frick has Obama done to earn respect throughout the world? He hasn't earned squat; he was just automatically given it by nature of being a Democrat and the kind of douchebag who blathers on and on about transnational progressivism. He hasn't earned a damn thing because he's been on the political scene for about five minutes.

Holy hell, I find that annoying. It's one thing to be polite to the office of the presidency; it's a whole nother thing to fawn all over the opposition as if they're so much better than we are.

Gag.

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January 13, 2009

STARVING

Hey FbL, I'm starving. No really, I am; is it dinnertime yet? But I'm making chicken with prosciutto and Asiago, so I don't really think we're what the Obama people had in mind. And I don't even like arugula anyway, so they can keep their handouts.

(Seriously, you have to click to hear about the phone call FbL got.)

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December 29, 2008

LINK

Michelle Malkin:

Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist.
Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model.

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December 26, 2008

I'VE GOT YOUR BACK

I never wrote about the shoe thrower, but Maggie's assessment is spot on.

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November 09, 2008

TOP AND BOTTOM COALITION

An interesting election result, via Powerline:

Obama and the Democrats have assembled a "top and bottom coalition." They carried voters with incomes above $200,000, narrowly, and won decisively among those with incomes under $50,000. Middle-income voters split evenly. I find this interesting in the context of Obama's and Biden's constant invocation of the "middle class" in their campaign speeches. Maybe they knew this was the one group they were in danger of not carrying, or maybe they think it helps to talk about the "middle class" even if you're really appealing to upper or lower income voters.

I wish I had read this yesterday; I might've piped up at the Chinese take-out. Heh.

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November 08, 2008

SIGH

Overheard tonight at the Chinese take-out: "I voted for Obama. I don't make more than $250,000, so I figured what the hell. It don't affect me none."

And that is why I hate my party. We do a terrible job of explaining how it does indeed affect everyone, even a schlub in line at the take-out. And especially the Chinese lady who owns the chain of take-outs, who says she also voted for Obama.

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November 07, 2008

UNHINGED

Just imagine the squawking we would've heard if Bush had appointed a man who went slasher on a table at a political dinner. Or did even one of the Godfather-esque things in that article. Sigh.

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