Posted on 06/05/2009 3:40:13 PM PDT by pissant
As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week. But it's not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed, and the media were focused on the president's "address to the Muslim world." As it happens, these two stories are the same story: snapshots, at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It's a long time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America – What's good for GM is good for America, etc. In fact, it's more emblematic than ever: Like General Motors, the U.S. government spends more than it makes, and has airily committed itself to ever more unsustainable levels of benefits. GM has about 95,000 workers but provides health benefits to a million people: It's not a business enterprise, but a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector. As GM goes, so goes America?
But who cares? Overseas, the coolest president in history was giving a speech. Or, as the official press release headlined it on the State Department Web site, "President Obama Speaks To The Muslim World From Cairo."
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Absolutely scary for America.
“GM has about 95,000 workers but provides health benefits to a million people: It’s not a business enterprise, but a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector. As GM goes, so goes America?”
The man is absolutely brilliant!
I’m changing my ‘Dream Round Table.’
I’m leaving Ben Stein in the dust...I DO like his views on investing, but something has to give.
It’s now:
Mark Steyn to my right, followed by Dr. Walter E. Williams, Anne Coulter, Chief Justice Roberts, Thomas Sowell and Rush.
Of course, their brainpower will cow me, so I’ll just be serving the meal and the drinks and the cigars (Annie, too!) and listening in...But dang, that would be a fun, fun, fun evening! :)
There's better phrase-making in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in a coinage of Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The president emeritus is a sober, judicious paragon of torpidly conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, musing on American decline, he writes, "The country's economy, infrastructure, public schools and political system have been allowed to deteriorate. The result has been diminished economic strength, a less-vital democracy, and a mediocrity of spirit." That last is the one to watch: A great power can survive a lot of things, but not "a mediocrity of spirit." A wealthy nation living on the accumulated cultural capital of a glorious past can dodge its rendezvous with fate, but only for a while. That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.
We have been warned. Again.
“But who cares? Overseas, the coolest president in history was giving a speech.”
Will this guy ever shut up?
bttt
A BTT. What I find most disturbing is that the MSM have done their best to spike the murder of a U.S. soldier by a Muslim extremist on U.S. soil, because it might detract from the 0bama Surrenderpalooza show overseas. I expect very little from them these days but I didn’t expect that.
Mark’s gotta do a piece on ol’Judge Qar ~ he’s the jugeared bald guy pictured on that tomb in Egypt that Obama visited the other day.
When does all this end? We all it’s not sustainable. When does the poop hit the fan? I’m frickin’ scared about how bad things might get. I just have a bad feeling that Obama is going to be allowed to get away with this for two terms.
I created a Facebook quiz the other day for my friends to take about how well they know me. I had as one of the questions:
What living person would I MOST like to meet?
Thomas Sowell and Rush Limbaugh were part of the choices.
Mark Steyn was the correct answer though.
Paragraph quoted for truth.
It’s interesting how easily the words “the Muslim world” roll off the tongues of liberal secular progressives who’d choke on any equivalent reference to “the Christian world.” When such hyperalert policemen of the perimeter between church and state endorse the former but not the latter, they’re implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not merely a faith but a political project, too. There is an “Organization of the Islamic Conference,” which is already the largest single voting bloc at the United Nations and is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an “Organization of the Christian Conference” that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and Presidents, and vote as a bloc in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no “Christian world”: Europe is largely post-Christian and, as President Barack Obama bizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Perhaps we’re eligible for membership in the OIC.
How can the great Obambi speak out against a religiously motivated Muslim murderer in the US, and then traipse off to Cairo to tell the worlds Muslims how we don't see them as murdering terrorists anymore?
So the great Obambi does the expedient thing, the craven thing, the anti-American thing; he refuses to acknowledge an attack on US soil against soldiers of our armed forces. And all so he can play the messiah before foreign Muslims and appease foreign interests.
Isn't that the one that couldn't define terrorism unless it related to Israel's fight against the Palestinians. They defined Israel as terrorists, but Palestinians were freedom fighters.
nobama's wishes are getting in the way of his rhetoric.
Steyn is a treasure.
Your evening would be absolutely great...!! What a treat that would be. Steyn is new to America from either Canada or Aussie...not sure, but he writes with sure facts and outstandingly accuracy. Wish our press had a few more who can make waves like he does.
Nicely done.
New Hampshire has borrowed him. He’s about 45 minutes from me. :)
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