Boo!

It goes with Pelosi’s saying they had to pass the bill before we’d know what’s in it, offered today by Patriot Post.

These were her famous last words before “ramming [it] through.”

I’d make the hammer and sickle a fasces bundle.  As Tom Roeser notes today, citing Ron Paul in a recent “lucid moment,”

Obama isn’t a socialist but a “corporatist.” . . .   What we have now is the federal government owning just under 50% of the private economy: and if that isn’t corporatism I don’t know what is.  Socialism is the takeover of industry; corporatism is the “investment” of government in industry such as the auto bailouts, the big bank bailouts. 

And a little bit of political history:

A pioneer of this kind of thing was FDR’s Rexford Tugwell whom I knew well (he guest lectured for me at the Wharton School). Tugwell went to Italy to interview Benito Mussolini, an ace corporatist, came back and  designed the NRA whereby big business would cooperate with each other in a government-tailored design to reach markets without cumbersome and what some liberals say is “wasteful economic competition.”  

I’ve been calling O. a fascist at least since my Wednesday Journal column that precipitated severe excretory shots at the fan in October of ‘08. in which I hearken to Alinsky’s “man of action,” as in Rules for Radicals, and expatiated:

The “man of action” business is particularly foreboding. It’s a staple of fascism, of course. . . .  [FDR’s] political appeal was based on admiration for the strong man who brooked no opposition.

Mussolini was crafty about it and inspired admiration in “progressive” circles in this country, as he had admired American pragmatism in Woodrow Wilson, the college professor-become-president with a yen for power that puts even today’s tenured radicals to shame. Then came FDR, the roaring pragmatist . . . . Progressives, later called liberals, yet later progressives again — the name changes keep them ahead of the awareness curve — love the man of action.

Now they have one. He’s The One, our smooth-talking Democrat presidential candidate with a yen for deciding how much you should earn before being hit with a tax hike-to “spread the wealth around,” as he unfortunately told that plumber in

Ohio.

I delete some references that show I was only, say, 80% right, the worst of them being my finger-in-the-wind, wistful, wholly mistaken closer, speaking of what he told the plumber, “Could this be the slip that sinks Big O’s ship?”  It’s stuff like that keeps me from scaling the heights of pundit-dom.

Saturday’s session at offices of Democratic Party of Oak Park was given to seeing what Dems can do for the troubled campaign (euphemistically speaking) of U.S. senatorial candidate and incumbent state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. 

A video at Illinois Review gives “a brief history” of the troubles Alexi is seeing these days.

Watch it here.  (HT the ever reliable NewsAlert)

But you have to wonder what the fuss is about if you read and believe what’s said about him at his web site.  For openers:

Alexi Giannoulias was elected State Treasurer of Illinois on November 7, 2006, capping off one of the more improbable victories in Illinois politics. Opposed by the insiders from the very start, he won the support of voters by proposing bold new initiatives and turning his back on politics as usual.

Ending pay-to-play politics was Alexi’s first act as Treasurer.  On day one, he issued an executive order that enacted the most sweeping ethics reforms in the history of his office by banning contributions to his campaign from office employees, contractors and banks.

Etc. 

Right?

When Joe Friday talks, Obama listens.

Watch it: Joe_Friday_We_Miss_You-1

The redoubtable Abigail Thernstrom, whom an irritated President Clinton cheekily called “Abigail” in a long-ago discussion of race, does some math about Tea Party racism:

What will it take to persuade the political class to abandon its racism-is-still-everywhere picture? It remains a politically promising strategy; . . . . But playing the race card may not be such a swift idea when it comes to tea partiers.

A just-released Gallup poll found tea-party members to be quite representative demographically of the American public at large — the exception being blacks, who comprise only 6 percent of participants. But 6 percent is about half of the black population! A real surprise. [Congr. John] Lewis, Pelosi, et al., take note.

So?

Of course, if our fearless leaders were to admit that tea partiers are just ordinary Americans, quite representative of the population as a whole, they would be acknowledging an unpleasant truth: Congress was not carrying out the people’s business in passing that wretched health-care bill.

You mean they pushed it through, Chicago way?

I always said he was Cocky Locky.

In his latest show of chutzpah, Obama asks for patience with the law he rammed through.

By JAMES TARANTO

No, it was not an April Fool’s joke, but an actual headline from the Associated Press: “Obama Urges Patience as Health Care Law Kicks In.” Here’s what the president had to say Thursday in Portland, Maine:

“Every day since I signed reform into law, there’s another poll or headline that says, ‘Nation still divided on health reform, no great surge in public support.’ Well, yeah. It’s only been a week,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery. “Before we find out if people like health care reform, maybe we should wait until it actually happens. Just a thought.

Bullsheeeeet!!!!

This by Dean Russel is a 1951 analysis of how French revolutionary fervor went wrong after just two years, as freedom from government restraint was replaced by embracing another kind of constraint.  It includes this from “a holder of high political office” in 1936:

[I]n 34 months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people’s government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy, such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people.

Power to the people, but which people?  FDR knew.  The ones he gathered in Washington.

So it is today, as we hear regularly from “demagogues who promise us something for nothing.”

This by Dean Russel is a 1951 analysis of how French revolutionary fervor went wrong after just two years, as freedom from government restraint was replaced by embracing another kind of constraint. 

It includes this from “a holder of high political office” in 1936:

[I]n 34 months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people’s government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy, such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people.

Power to the people, but which people?  FDR knew.  The ones he gathered in Washington.

So it is today, as we hear regularly from “demagogues who promise us something for nothing.”

Reading about the Chi Public Schools apparatchik who took the fall for the little list of clouted applicants to elite schools, various noteworthy items:

. . . Duncan ordered admissions requests tracked over several years, creating a lengthy and detailed compilation of politicians . . .

Whazis, tracked?  Either Trib copy editor did this or was so challenged by it, he gave up.  I refer to this sequence:

The Tribune revealed earlier this week that Duncan ordered admissions requests tracked over several years, creating a lengthy and detailed compilation of politicians and influential business people who intervened on behalf of children during his tenure.

Look.  Can’t a newspaper be clear and concise and punchy?  Apparently not.

Then this, which seems to be a diminishing of the important story the Trib broke a few days ago:

The lists, used mostly in appeals cases, also show inquiries from politically unconnected parents. [How many?]

There is no evidence that principals were forced to admit unqualified students. Indeed, many applicants were still rejected after powerful patrons became involved.

Crazy.  A reader might ask, “So what’s the problem?” 

Care and prudence is one thing, pulling back Uriah Heep-like is quite another.

What also of this?

The girls were not accepted to Whitney Young, because of low test scores.

Were not accepted to?  Not by?  Or at, assuming by someone there, say, the principal?  Whazis accepted to business?

The quotes are good, supporting the obvious conclusion that this guy fell on his sword for his old buddy Arne Duncan.

The Rev. Susan Johnson, senior minister at Hyde Park Union Church who has known Pickens since childhood, said: “To sacrifice someone of his caliber and race and gender is just such a waste of talent.”

And gender?  What’s that about?  Race we get: it’s standard racialism away with which no white person could get.  But what’s the gender business?  Black male achievers so rare, or what?

Then we have an “unwieldy” bureaucracy at the Chi Board of Ed?  So stated by the reporters.  You can’t wield that bureacracy for love or money, it just won’t be wielded.  Instead “tangled”?  How’s corrupt and incompetent?  Politically infested.  Come on, Trib peoples, say something.  It won’t kill you and it could save a subscription or two.

More to the point of apparatchik falling on sword:

“David was a very honest and loyal lieutenant to Arne Duncan,” said Bill Gerstein, a high school principal and longtime friend of Pickens. “He was loyal to a fault and honest to a fault. In organizations, oftentimes the people who do the work and follow through on initiatives — they’re the first ones to go.”

I love the honest to a fault.  He didn’t lie. 

Then way at the end of the story, in hard, not digital copy:

Through a spokesman, Duncan declined to comment.

Of course not.

This anti-Coulter protester thinks she’s at the dentist:

It’s in Ottawa, where

Concerns for “public safety” forced the cancellation of American conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s speaking engagement at the University of Ottawa Tuesday night.

Hate speech, you know. 

Celebrated author Mark Steyn [was] summoned [in December of ‘07] to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone.”

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Well if you don’t want a root canal, how about a little fascism?