Obama’s new argument is that we (i.e. he) need more time. But he squandered almost four years already, with expensive pump-priming and health-care legislation. Boat has left the pier, Obama missed it.
Category: Blithe Spirit
Dick isn’t even tricky
“Madness: The War of 1812”
Trickle me, trickle me, down down down . . .
Steve Huntley in Sun-Times today on failure of “trickledown government.”
New one on me, but goes back at least to last January, when Indiana governor Mitch Daniels called Obama’s economic policies a “grand experiment in trickle-down government,” which three days later Joe Biden predictably praised effusively.
“Grand experiment” is pretty good too, I must say.
Cocky-Locky exposed: Obama’s so vain
Emanuel attacks criminals? Sorry, no.
And let us pass over in silence another Sun-Times hard-copy head, about what Obama plans for the convention this week: “MESSGAGE: LOOK WHAT I’VE DONE.”
It shows how hard it is to get good help these days.
Labor Day preacher, watch out!
Beware the Labor Day sermon with preacher reference to third rail of Chicago teachers union vs. city of same name and its impasse including strike threat, “I know it’s a complicated issue, but . . . “
Now stop right there, Father. The word you want is not the coordinating conjunction “but,” meaning complicated or not, I’m going to talk about it, but the adverbial conjunction “so,” as in “. . . so I’m not going to say anything except love your neighbor, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute and calumniate you . . .”
Demographic here, reporting on Paraddidle Joe
Mature demographic! That’s me! As in Chi Trib hard-copy caption (for Hartford Courant article by Kevin Hunt):
. . . over-size, amped-up, large-print Clarity Pal cellphone [featuring] old-school style and substance.”
That’s me too!
Oh yes, the days of early clock radio, 1946 with three brothers home from wars and waking of a morning to “Paradiddle Joe . . . beats out the rhythm in a rudimental way . . . Paradiddle Joe all the day,” about an indefatigable drummer. Wake to that sound, you’re ready for anything.
Tony Pastor and orchestra, Johnny Morris on drums. Yeah!
Where black doctors live or lived: shoot-’em-up
Four people, including an 11-year-old girl, were shot and wounded late Sunday when a gunman opened fire at a family party in the Pill Hill neighborhood on the city’s South Side, Chicago police said.
The 10:45 p.m. shooting in the 9100 block of South Chappel Avenue was only a block from the scene of a fatal shooting earlier in the day, though police said it was too soon to tell if they were connected.
Yr black and successful? No place to hide.
Personal recollection: In the 70s in Oak Park, we would sit with black neighbors to talk about problems, block from city-limit Austin Blvd. One discussion, a black guy, a CTA bus driver, told of young male passengers boarding in Pill Hill heading north, kids he’d seen at church with their parents. On the way, they would pull out the hat that tilted a certain way said what gang he belonged to or some other identification. Young men on their way to where the action was.
Nailing newsies
Russell Shaw on overdoing it at National Catholic Reporter:
News that the doctrine committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops last year adopted protocols to guide its procedures and those of its staff set the juices predictably flowing at the National Catholic Reporter. An overwritten story on the NCRwebsite let readers know that this particular USCCB committee was “tasked with enforcing church doctrine.”
Enforcing? How do you do that with doctrine? This is the way we journalists talk when we don’t like something and want you not to like it either.
It’s the narrative, you know: God proposes, Vatican enforces. The perfervid approach.