Some more Mark Steyn goodness:
Simply as a matter of internal logic, this is somewhat perplexing. After all, when he isn't blaming George W. Bush, Obama blames "Washington" – a Washington mired in "partisanship" and "pettiness" and "the same tired battles" and "Washington gimmicks" that do nothing but ensure that our "problems have grown worse." Washington, Obama tells us, is "unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems."
So let's have more Washington! In our schools, in our hospitals, in our cars, in everything!
Which raises the question: Does even Obama listen to Obama's speeches?
The public does – at least to this extent: They understand that, when he's attacking the tired old Washington games, he's just playing the tired old Washington games. But, when he's proposing the tired old Washington solutions, he means it; that's the real Obama, the only Obama on offer. And everything the president proposes means more debt, which at the level this guy's spending means, at some point down the road, either higher taxes or total societal collapse.
Functioning societies depend on agreed rules. If you want to open a business, you do it in Singapore or Ireland, because the rules are known to all parties. You don't go to Sudan or Zimbabwe, where the rules are whatever the state's whims happen to be that morning.
That's why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president's proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of "health" "care" "reform" that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees' health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won't. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they're being made up as they go along – and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon's new corporate tax.
In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more microregulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.
Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliché, to "double down." That hardly does justice to what the president's doing. In effect, he's told embattled congressmen and senators to strap on the old suicide-bomber belt and self-detonate for the team this November.
That's a lot of virgins to pass out, but, with this administration, budget restraints aren't exactly a problem: Untold pleasures will await every sacrificial incumbent in paradise, or at any rate the coming liberal utopia.
What's the end game here? President Obama gave it away in his student-loan "reform" proposals: If you choose to go into "public service," any college-loan debts will be forgiven after 10 years.
Because "public service" is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C'mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into "public service."
Why?
In the past 60 years, the size of America's state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it's still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine.
Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured or marketed any product other than himself. So, quite reasonably, he sees government dependency as the natural order of things.
And in his college-loan plan he's explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you're a schmuck and a loser. In the America he's building, you'll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama's proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It's the audacity of hopelessness.
In Massachusetts, enough voters got the message. And the more speeches this one-note politician inflicts on the nation the louder they'll hear it.
Speaking to ABC News’ World News Tonight anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview on Monday, Obama denied being involved in what has come to be known as the “Cornhusker Kickback”
SAWYER: A lot of people think you must say at the end of the day, this is not who I was in 2008, these deals with Nebraska, with Florida…
OBAMA: Let’s hold on a second, Diane. I mean, I think that this gets into a big mush. So let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals. There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked. So that’s point number one.
In an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric on Wednesday, Emanuel flatly stated that he and the Obama administration were heavily involved in the Cornhusker Kickback as well as the other deals that provoked outrage from the public and helped Republican Scott Brown win the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Couric: As you know, people were pretty disgusted by deals that were made up on Capitol Hill like the one given to Ben Nelson to win his support. If the White House was so involved, was this done with your blessing? But…
Emanuel: Look, we were involved in the legislation all the way through.
Couric: Were you involved in that?
Emanuel: Yeah. I’m not gonna go through all of it…
Couric: But in the Ben Nelson deal?
Emanuel: We were helpful in getting the bill off the Senate floor. And in retrospect the things – as I said to you just earlier, things you woulda done different.
Strangers on my flight,
turbans they're packin'.
Wonderin' if they might,
plan a hijacking.
They could pull a stunt,
before this flight is through.
Something's on their minds.
I saw them mutter.
What that in their hands?
Looks like box cutters,
I'm gonna kick some ass,
if they make a move.
Strangers on my flight.
Two smelly people,
and they're not talking right;
and in a moment,
I will grab base ball bat;
and that will be that.
Swing like Joe DiMaggio,
and rip them both a new a-hole.
And if they pick a fight,
and try to screw us,
I'll punch out their lights,
just like Joe Louis.
It would feel so right,
for strangers on my flight.
Ratta Tat Tat Tat,
Budda Bing Bang Boom,
Zooma Zooma Zoom.
Send those bastards to the moon....
“You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole-vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.”
The scuffle started with Francis asking Gregg to name specific areas of the budget he would cut after he criticized the White House’s proposed freeze on nondefense discretionary spending, saying President Barack Obama has done little to reduce the size of government.
“That’s good in theory,” Francis started to say before Gregg cut her off.
“It’s not a theory,” Gregg said. “Don't tell me it's good in theory. What are you? How do you get off saying something like that?”
Francis then jumped in to offer Gregg a chance “to tell us how to practically put it to work.”
Gregg then launched into an attack of the administration for increasing spending and the federal debt, quickly getting interrupted by Brewer.
“My partner Melissa, Sen. Gregg, is really asking for specifics,” Brewer said. “If you don't believe we should have a $1.3 trillion budget, which programs are you willing to cut?”
“Are you willing to tell schools, no money for you?” Brewer asked.
“Nobody is saying ‘no money for schools,’” Gregg responded. “What an absurd statement to make, a dishonest statement to make.”
“Sen. Gregg, what we're both asking is which programs to cut?” Brewer said. “Senator, you're going to be asked to cut certain programs if you're on the senate Banking Committee — just tell us which one you'll cut?”
Gregg said he’d ‘eliminate’ the money for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, cut stimulus spending and reform entitlement programs. But after being given his chance to outline his proposals, Gregg still clearly had an ax to grind with the two hosts.
“I've made very specific proposals and I'm willing to stand by them. The problem is that this administration’s view of governance is economic prosperity created by growing the government dramatically,” he said. “Then it gets misrepresented by people like yourself that say if you do this you're going to end up not funding education. That's the most irresponsible question.”
“You can't be duplicitous about this,” he added. “You can't make a representation and then claim you didn't make it. You know, it just shouldn't work that way. You've got to have some integrity on your side of this camera, too.”
Mr. Mustafa estimates that about 80 percent of camp residents who work in construction are now unemployed, while those still working are taking jobs for 50 shekels a day ($13) rather than the 150 shekels ($40) they used to make.
“The settlement freeze has only brought more poverty,” complains Abdel Aziz Othman.
Posts
All Comments
