American Glob

Change!

How bad? This bad…

“Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced,” – Dennis Van Roekel President, National Education Association

That makes no sense at all. Obama is a Constitutional Law professor and a big supporter of education. Isn’t that what we were told? I mean, until now…

NEW ORLEANS — For two years as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama addressed educators gathered for the summer conventions of the two national teachers’ unions, and last year both groups rolled out the welcome mat for Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

But in a sign of the Obama administration’s strained relations with two of its most powerful political allies, no federal official was scheduled to speak at either convention this month, partly because union officials feared that administration speakers would face heckling.

The largest union’s meeting opened here on Saturday to a drumbeat of heated rhetoric, with several speakers calling for Mr. Duncan’s resignation, hooting delegates voting for a resolution criticizing federal programs for “undermining public education,” and the union’s president summing up 18 months of Obama education policies by saying, “This is not the change I hoped for.”

The Stimulus Bill wasn’t enough, huh?

Bummer.

The New York Times reported yesterday:

Among the many reverberations of President Obama’s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

And guess whose support these candidates are seeking. The evil tea party people.

Many of the candidates are trying to align themselves with the Tea Partiers, insisting that the racial dynamics of that movement have been overblown.

William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog calls this the Democrats’ Worst Fear…

The narrative of Tea Party racism has been a contrived political tactic from the start, launched and perpetuated by Democratic Party operatives and their mouthpieces in the media and left-wing blogosphere.

Their worst fear is that the race card will fail, and they will have to defend their ruinous policies. And that worst fear is about to be realized. In November.

MSNBC is -unsurprisingly- completely confused by all of this.

Maybe someone should let the talking heads at MSNBC know that all of the first Black Americans elected to congress were Republicans.

Obama and his supporters on the left still don’t get it. They seem to have no idea that a majority of Americans just don’t like their policy agenda.

That’s why we end up with stupid articles from the Huffington Post about how America has become “ungovernable.”

Bill Clinton had two years on “offense,” when he tried to push an ambitious domestic agenda, followed by six years on “defense,” after his party lost control of Congress in 1994. Barack Obama, despite his determined posture in his State of the Union address, seems to have gotten just one year on “offense,” now that Scott Brown’s Senate win has Democrats running scared. When a 59-41 Senate majority plus a substantial edge in the House is deemed too slender a margin on which to enact a relatively centrist health reform, we may as well ask it out loud: has America become ungovernable?

We also get venom from people like TIME’s Joe Klein who blames all of Obama’s failures on the American people, who are just a bunch of dumb horses, too stupid to be led to water.

Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it’s been wasted on them.

David Harsanyi posted an excellent article yesterday at Reason.com which pointed out two things.

1. Government needs more checks and balances, not less.

2. The American left is full of shit.

Observe his awesome awesomeness…

If you’ve been paying attention to the left-wing punditry these days, you may be under the impression that the nation’s institutions are on the verge of collapse. Or that the rule of law is unraveling. Or maybe that this once-great nation is crippled and nearly beyond repair.

You know why? Because the 40 percent (or so) political minority has far too much influence in Washington. Don’t you know? This minority, egged on by a howling mob of nitwits, is holding progress hostage using its revolting politics and parliamentary trickery.

Leading the charge to fix this dire problem is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who advocates abolishing the Senate filibuster to make way for direct democracy’s magic.

It had better be quick. The populace is fickle. Jacob Weisberg of Slate believes that Americans are crybabies who don’t know what’s good for ‘em, causing “political paralysis.” Even President Barack Obama, after his agenda had come to a halt, claimed democracy is a “messy” process—as if that were a bad thing.

Imagine that we were living in an America where Republicans had control of the executive and legislative branches of government. Rich Lowry of National Review pens a piece saying that America has become “ungovernable.” Sean Hannity of FOX News devotes an entire program to the subject of “ending the Senate filibuster.”

Would the Paul Krugmans, Joe Kleins and Huffington Posters of America be nodding along in unison then?

Somehow, I doubt it.

How’s that new angry populism working out for you?

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Comments like that could invoke fits of anger from staunch Obama supporters like Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Oh, wait…

There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what’s happening.

But no. If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet “the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.”

We’re doomed.

If you want to know the real reason Obama has no problem with these bonuses, be sure to check in with Dan Riehl who asks “Why should Obama care, his party is getting its cut?”

First we had the election of Scott Brown, Republican, to the United States Senate in Massachusetts. He made his initial trip to Washington, DC today.

Now we have New York Times writer Paul Krugman saying in a recent blog post, “I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama.”

Progressives are desperately in need of leadership; more specifically, House Democrats need to be told to pass the Senate bill, which isn’t what they wanted but is vastly better than nothing. And what we get from the great progressive hope, the man who was offering hope and change, is this:

“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. SNIP Now I think there’s some things in there that people don’t like and legitimately don’t like.”

In short, “Run away, run away”!

Maybe House Democrats can pull this out, even with a gaping hole in White House leadership. Barney Frank seems to have thought better of his initial defeatism. But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.

In a third and equally shocking piece of news, House Democrats are suddenly suggesting that maybe it’s a good idea to extend the Bush Tax Cuts. Say whaaaatttt?????

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Some Capitol Hill Democrats want President Barack Obama to extend tax cuts for wealthy Americans now scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, arguing that a tax increase could hinder economic recovery.

“I think there is a certain logic to leaving well-enough alone for now, given the fragility of the economic recovery,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D., Va.). ” It’s a question of prudent judgment and timing.”

White House officials are preparing to unveil their 10-year budget plan on Feb. 2, which will include a decision on what to do about the pending expiration of tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush.

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The New York Times continues its downward spiral:

“The New York Times plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs — about 8 percent of the total — by year’s end, offering buyouts to union and non-union employees, and resorting to layoffs if it cannot get enough people to leave voluntarily, the paper announced on Monday.”

I feel bad for the employees as Americans who are losing their jobs but I can’t resist pointing out that FOX News is hiring.

According to the New York Times, this painting is hanging in the White House. It’s called “I think I’ll…”

I have a feeling Obama meditates on this painting whenever he is contemplating the current situation in Afghanistan.

So when lefties smash the windows of local businesses they’re called “peaceful protesters?”

The media doesn’t demean them and call them names like “Teabaggers?”

The New York Times, covering the violent lefty rioters in Pittsburgh, paints a very pretty picture…

Thousands Hold Peaceful March at G-20 Summit

“PITTSBURGH — Several thousand demonstrators espousing and denouncing a host of causes converged on downtown Pittsburgh Friday chanting, pumping up signs, and playing instruments in a peaceful and permitted march calling for solutions to a range of problems they attributed to the economic policies of the world leaders meeting at the G-20 Summit.”

“One group held a giant replica of a dove made of white fabric and held aloft with bamboo poles. A marching band with a French horn, several snare drums, and a trombone played amid a sea of black, American and Palestinian flags.”

Then, buried down in the fourth paragraph we get this…

“Dubbed the People’s March, the demonstration was sponsored by The Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace organization. It came a day after raucous confrontations between the police and protesters resulted in 66 arrests. At least five people required medical attention, and about 19 businesses sustained broken windows or other damage.”

Those are the words of Doug A. Coulter, head of private equity for LGT Capital Partners when asked to describe Sarah Palin’s speech in Hong Kong which he attended.

The quote comes from a story about the speech in the New York Times:

“A number of people who heard the speech in a packed hotel ballroom, which was closed to the media, said Mrs. Palin spoke from notes for 90 minutes and that she was articulate, well-prepared and even compelling.”

“The speech was wide-ranging, very balanced, and she beat all expectations,” said Doug A. Coulter, head of private equity in the Asia-Pacific region for LGT Capital Partners.”

“She didn’t sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative. She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative,” he said, adding that she mentioned both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. “She brought up both those names.”

“Mrs. Palin said she was speaking as “someone from Main Street U.S.A.,” and she touched on her concerns about oversized federal bailouts and the unsustainable American government deficit.”

Something tells me Governor Palin has been following the Tea Parties in the news very closely.

File this in the department of “things that make you go, hmmm.”

Just so you know, this is not a spoof.

Charles Krauthammer really is a Psychiatrist and Maureen Dowd really hears voices in her head.