Tag: Politics

The Zell man speaketh — 2

More from Sam Zell on Obama and the national problem — of what he said 9/17 at U of Penn:

Zell at Penn

Obama’s America: “We have a political situation in the U.S. today that for the first time in my life represents a challenge to the entrepreneur… to the freedom that our society has created. This never has been a society of people who aren’t striving, who aren’t trying to make a difference. What has made America different is our individualism…

“I’m very concerned that the current political environment and current situation is geared toward making the entrepreneur an endangered species.”

What Obama should do: “Obama could start by announcing he’s going to do nothing for the next 24 months… If I were President Obama I would repeal health care, I would repeal the Dodd (bank reform) bill, I would go back to where we were in January ’09.”

What he wrote to Obama aide Rahm Emanuel when Obama took power:  “Dear Rahm, I met you in 1992. At the time you were working for the Clinton campaign. You sat me down and said, ‘Sam, understand, the theme of the campaign is, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Well, guess what? It’s the economy, stupid, and you ought to do nothing more than focus on jobs and the economy.

“He wrote back, ‘You want to delay healthcare, you want to delay cap-and-trade?’ I said, ‘You bet…'”

The slow economy: “The economic ‘malaise’ is the result of the fact that people who have the ability (to invest), both resources-wise and emotionally, are uwilling to take the risks because there is no certainty, there is no conviction, on the part of the government, to leave us alone. Every time you turn around, the government has a new 2000-page bill” that limits business. “That’s going to destroy America.”

Where to invest: Even smart investors lose if they don’t pay attention to “what risks they’re taking. I’m buying (U.S.) distressed debt (because) I don’t have any confidence in tomorrow for what the U.S. is going to do. “

“On the other hand, I’m buying equity outside the U.S. where it’s much clearer where we’re going. Confidence is the No. 1 ingredient. This administration… by bashing the business community… by destroying Las Vegas, by destroying the meeting business in this country (by limiting bankers’ travel junkets during the bank bailouts)… those are all stupid gratuitious acts that have materially impacted the confidence level in this country…”

How to get more people working: “Unemployment will only be solved by the private sector. As soon as you see this administration get its foot off the neck of the private sector, you will see growth returning in the United States.”  [Posted by Joseph N. DiStefano at the Inquirer and Daily News’ Philly Deal$ blog]

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Focus, people, focus!

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of th...
He's so glad he wasn't a Democrat

First, Obama’s hard-core supporters offended by his scolding, as at Talking Points Memo, relayed by James Taranto:

“It’s just too damn bad he couldn’t have gotten mad at his enemies at any point since becoming President and instead saves his disdain and anger for his allies. It’s kind of the story of his Presidency.”

“If Obama is serious about closing the gap and convincing people who are so angered about administration policy that they’re thinking of simply not voting, he needs to take their frustration more seriously, take more responsibility for things that have gone wrong, and promise something different in the next two-to-six years. Instead we get this preemptive finger pointing.”

“He is, in essence, lecturing them for using their hearts rather than their heads in the face of looming catastrophe. . . . Does the President really think lecturing them will move them to do that? If so, he is as guilty as they are of letting his passions overwhelm his judgment.”

Second, Obama’s hard-core supporters defending the scolding, also at TPM, similarly relayed:

“Obama is not scolding anybody he is just pointing out the futility in venting your frustrations in a way that will certainly ensure all you value is destroyed. Don’t vote its your choice and it is the GOP’ers choice too. . . . Sit out the election and sit in on the GOP’s plans for you. It’s that simple and it’s that stupid.”

“Wow, the folks complaining about Obama’s comments strike me as really huffy and indignant.”

“I, however, think that scolding is necessary. . . . The idea that within eighteenth months Obama was going to transform thirty years of supply-side, values-voting American politics seems foolish. We should know better.”

And this five weeks before an election.  “One group resents being talked down to by the president, the other group identifies with the president and resents the first group,” comments Taranto. “It’s about as edifying as–though admittedly a lot more fun than–watching high school girls squabble over who is more conceited.”

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Gummint autos: buy one and get Dem donation free

Logo of General Motors Corporation. Source: 20...
The logo with two names

Did you know General, or Government, Motors has started giving again to politicos?

Maybe you missed [it].  I say that because last week I saw only one story on the subject, and it was buried in the Wall Street Journal. The GM PAC has donated more than $90,000 to candidates in the 2010 cycle, and guess what, most of the candidates GM supports are Democrats.

Hey, the government that owns an auto company calls the tune.

— from the Weekly Standard Newsletter, by Matthew Continetti.  Want to receive it?  Go here. —

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“Ouch” moment, but revelatory

Cass Sunstein Speaking at Harvard Law School
Sunstein miked

This explains a lot:

Cass Sunstein (the guy who Glenn has called the most dangerous man in America because of his regulatory powers) summed up the main issue conservatives have with progressives. Glenn plays the recently unearthed clip of Sunstein saying, “Some conservative legal thinkers like Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas think that the Constitution means what it originally meant.” [italics added]

The Glenn is the Beck man. Sunstein:

taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he continues to teach as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor. [He] is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is on leave while working in the Obama administration.

His gummint job:

In September 2009, the Senate confirmed Professor Cass Sunstein to be Director of the White House OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs – the so-called “regulatory czar,” so named because all major proposed regulations go through the office for approval.

This Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs was

established in the 1980 Paperwork Reduction Act. OIRA is located within the Office of Management and Budget, which is an agency within the Executive Office of the President. It is staffed by both political appointees and career civil servants . . . . In addition to reviewing draft regulations under Executive Order 12866, OIRA reviews collections of information under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and also develops and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information technology, information policy, privacy, and statistical policy. [italics added]

Lot of power there, but his appointment “generated controversy among progressive legal scholars and environmentalists,” who feared him as anti-regulatory, says Wikipedia, citing The Center for Progressive Reform and The Wonk Room: Think Progress, who are probably impossible to please in these matters.

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The Mullahs’ man

Virginia State Seal -- Improved
Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr: Heh

Uneasy lies the head:

Ahmadinejad, who wore the same tacky suit and shirt all week, took every precaution [during his New York week]. He never set foot in the lobby. Bulletproof glass was installed over room windows. When he left for meetings at the Iranian Mission, on Third Avenue, or the United Nations, he departed by an employee entrance, the path covered in a white tent — a veritable tunnel to his vehicle. His head was covered with a white cloth. No one saw him on the street.

The entourage dined in but not on room service. Meals — mostly lamb, shish kebabs, spiced ground meat and basmati rice — were prepared by a Persian restaurant and carried in by Secret Service agents.

Lest he be poisoned or someone approach and tell him,

“Sic semper tyrannis”

with the usual accompaniment — fusillade, knife thrust, thrown pineapple [#3].

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He has no shame

Bill Ayers speaks to audience members followin...
Ayers at Fla. State U., where all is forgiven

If not for Chris Kennedy and the other U. of Ill. at Chicago trustees who did not abstain from yesterday’s vote, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers would have gotten the emeritus status he petitioned for:

Retired faculty ask for emeritus status, and it’s then signed off on by several levels of university administration before heading to trustees, [UIC spokesman Tom] Hardy said.  [Italics added]

In other words, with all his faults, they love him still at UIC.

As for faults, consider this from Kennedy after the vote:

Kennedy told the Chicago Sun-Times he and the board have not seen any signs of remorse from Ayers in the nearly 40 years since the dedication.

“There’s no evidence in any of his interviews or conversations that he regrets any of those actions . . .”

Egomaniacal professor.  No merit in him.  Deserves neither honor nor honorific.  Rather, he’s to be shunned.  But that won’t happen in the groves of academe.

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Some Bad reviews for Pledge to America

Don Irvine with Award winner Michelle Malkin a...
Michelle M: she's also smart.

From Mike Fahy:  The Republican Pledge to America is 21 pages; the Contract with America was 869 words.

David Frum at Frum Forum — “The Pledge to America is a repudiation of the central, foundational idea behind the Tea Party. Tea Party activists have been claiming all year that there exists in the United States a potential voting majority for radically more limited government. The Republican Pledge to America declares: Sorry, we don’t believe that.”

RedState — The Pledge to America is “milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama.”Club for Growth — The GOP Pledge to America is “so milquetoast that it proves to me that these guys just aren’t ready to lead.”

Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin — “It’s a real shame that the Constitution has to be re-branded once in a while – I kind of like the original.”

Hot Air — “Missing from the list of key agenda items — nothing on cultural issues. [Only] one line, buried at the end of the preamble on page one, and according to sources, even that was only added at the very last minute after Mike Pence objected.”

American Spectator — “Republicans have learned nothing from their time in the wilderness. The House Republicans are interested in attaining and then maintaining power, and not concerned with advancing the cause of limited government at a make-or-break moment in American history.”

Reader D:  Did someone expect more than half a loaf by these leftover Republicans and RINOS? It’s a first step. Get the new breed to Washington and tweak it properly. Right now it’s a start.

I think it’s also telling news from Jim DeMint that the Good Old Boys let the “Republican” who lost to Joe Miller in Alaska retain her clout:

Senate Republicans held a closed-door meeting yesterday afternoon to elect someone to replace Senator Murkowski as the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Or so we thought.

Rather than taking away Murkowski’s leadership position on the committee, Senate Republicans decided to let her keep it. One senator after another stood up to argue in favor of protecting her place on the committee — a position she will no doubt use in her campaign against Joe Miller, the conservative Republican nominee.

So what can we expect from most of what we have on the Hill today?

Blithe Sp: The Murkowski ploy is more telling than the Pledge, I think, as does D, I’m sure.

Better off the party of “no”

Erick Erickson.
Erick being interviewed

Red State’s Erick Erickson on the just released Republican “Pledge to America”:

These 21 pages tell you lots of things, some contradictory things, but mostly this: it is a serious [sic] of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama.

Other than that, he’s all for it.

He will vote Republican in November, he says, but “will not carry their stagnant water.”

Loyal opposition, therefore.

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