Posted on 09/06/2011 8:29:15 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I enjoy political hardball as much as the next reporter. It’s barely concealed truth that campaign journalists, like the operatives we cover, love negative campaigning and revel in OTT insults and martial rhetoric. Even candidates often lapse into the language of “rip his throat out”, “tear his eyes out” or “drive a stake through her heart”.
It’s no secret either that many Republicans despise Democrats with a passion and vice versa. Just as British MPs hide their contempt of their opponents by referring to them as “the honourable member’, American politicians have their own, albeit less formal, ways of masking their true feelings with anodyne language for public consumption.
But the statements today by Jimmy Hoffa Jr and Vice President Joe Biden demean the presidency and, tactically speaking, are stupid own goals.
Hoffa, the Teamsters president, was warming up a Detroit crowd when he said: “President Obama, this is your army, and we are ready to march. Everybody here’s got a vote. If we go back, and we keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.”
Biden, whose mouth has long been a liability for Obama, was at an AFL-CIO rally when he told union members: “You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates…the other side has declared war on labour’s house.”
These comments were not nearly as bad as the statement last week by Congressman Andre Carson....
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
The Register-Guard http://www.registerguard.com/
JONAH GOLDBERG: In Washington, the tea party is the sober adult
Published: Wednesday, Aug 10, 2011 05:01AM
“Is this a wake-up call to Washington?” NBC’s David Gregory asked Sen. John Kerry on “Meet the Press,” referring to the S&P downgrade.
“Well, it’s a partial wake-up call. I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade.”
Shortly after pointing fingers and assigning blame, Kerry went on to lament how Republicans insist on pointing fingers and assigning blame in this national crisis.
Over on the other channel, at least Obama political consigliere David Axelrod waited a while before getting to the same talking point: “The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a tea party downgrade. The tea party brought us to the brink of a default,” he explained on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Many on the right bristle at this, and they have many of the facts on their side. After all, the tea party’s only been protesting excessive spending and borrowing for two years. Some liberals want us to think that it was Washington’s failure to raise taxes to pay for the massive increase in federal spending under Obama that caused the downgrade.
But that’s not what S&P says. “Standard & Poor’s takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.’s finances on a sustainable footing.”
Rather, what offended the fiscal pundits of S&P was the “brinksmanship” in Washington that failed to deliver a $4 trillion budget cut. That’s why we had the “tea party downgrade.” What’s odd is that if the tea party didn’t exist, there would have been no deficit reduction — and little demand for it.
And one could go on defending the tea party and the GOP in typical Beltway scoring fashion. The president’s first 2012 budget was a train wreck that would have exploded the deficit more. We’re well past 800 days without a Democratic budget from the Senate, while the House Republicans passed a serious budget — the Ryan plan — that would have avoided all of this months ago. Obama’s second “plan” was a frivolous speech. And so on.
But the usual Beltway scorecard is inadequate. First of all, we all deserve blame. This is a national foul-up of historic proportions and no party or constituency can completely avoid culpability.
And that definitely includes the tea party. A of lot people talk as if the tea partiers came out of the ground, like fully grown orcs, shortly after Obama was elected, ready to inflict “terror” and “take hostages” (to use the preferred lingo of the supposed lovers of civility).
This ignores the prehistory of the tea partiers. They’re largely core conservative voters who held their noses while spending ramped up for a decade under George W. Bush. Many rationalized their support for Bush against the backdrop of the war on terror or their fondness for the man generally. But when Obama removed what little conservatism there was in Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” massively hiking spending even more, they rebelled. Enough was enough.
Liberals see it as hypocrisy. Tea partiers see it as finally getting serious, which is why they keep threatening to “primary” any Republican who wavers from the new sobriety.
If you’ve ever known anyone with a serious addiction, the easiest thing for friends and family to do is pretend it’s not a big deal. Who wants to have a confrontation? Far easier to let things slide and have a good time. “Let’s have a nice Thanksgiving without any arguments, OK?”
The tea party is like the cousin who’s been through Alcoholic’s Anonymous and refuses to pretend anymore. As a result, he spoils everyone’s good time. For the enablers and others in denial, he’s the guy ruining everything, not the drunk.
Uncle Sam is the drunk and the tea partiers are the annoyingly sober — and a bit self-righteous — cousin. Measured by spending, and adjusted for inflation, the federal government has increased by more than 50 percent in 10 years. Some have enabled the drunken spending; others continue to deny it’s even a problem.
The tea party is sounding the wake-up call.
If America didn’t have a problem, then there really would be good cause to be furious with the forces of sobriety. Nobody likes a party-pooper, especially the people hooked on partying.
Jonah Goldberg (JonahsColumn@aol.com) is the online editor of The National Review.
Is the Pope Jewish?
Why would he condemn something he agrees with?
Whether or not Obama condemns it, applauds it, or ignores it is meaningless. The unions are fighting tooth and nail for their very survival. Obama did what he could to help. The next President will not.
If the unions were to actually act out violently in large numbers, they'd be only accelerating their own demise. And they know it.
No.
C. S. Lewis:
"...And remember who the barbarians are. The barbarians come, not over the parapet, not carrying their clubs and wielding their weapons, but they come with polished fingernails and blue pin-striped suits, gathering in well-lighted conference rooms. They are the 'good' people who say that they know how to make life better for all of us."
bttt
The hoffa mofo-pansy has NO IDEA of what he is desirous of in his declaration of war.
I'll bet his dad is rolling over in his garbage can in the Jersy swamps.
In 2010, the union membership rate—the percent of wage and salary workers who were
members of a union—was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier, the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers be-
longing to unions declined by 612,000 to 14.7 million. In 1983, the first year for
which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 per-
cent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
Unions continue to lose members and influence.
Great quote.
Oooh, so now I’m a barbarian hobbit. What an image. :-)
Sure and Vanderbilt will be SEC champions in football.
The left opposes all natural hierarchies, and replaces them with a simplistic and artificial binary of race, or class, or gender, or sexual orientation. These destructive ideas appeal to the ignoramuses of the left, .. Every non-hierarchical society is divided into two parts, and Leveling is the barbarian’s substitute for order.
..Upton writes that the evil here "has begun to manifest an inverted power." This is power in the absence of truth, virtue, sobriety, Light. This is where President Obama parks his big bus, under which are all the people who became inconvenient and are no longer of any use to him.
The hoffa mofo-pansy has NO IDEA of what he is desirous of in his declaration of war.
I'll bet his dad is rolling over in his garbage can in the Jersy swamps.
Ironically, at the rate that the economy is heading, the only surviving union shops will be for government officials.
He will do standard-issue moral equivalence. He will condemn in vague, general terms incitements to violence on both sides. He will not single out Hoffa. He probably won’t single out the TEA party either; he’ll just scold everybody as if all are equally culpable.
What do I win if I’m right?
And let us not forget the rhetoric of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that the members of the Tea Party can go to Hell.
Obama will of course ignore the comments and quickly change the subject, as the news media stoutly defends him while questioning the motives of anyone who does not. In other words: nothing different from the past 2 1/2 years.
Thanks, I agree.
Hell will freeze over before Biden will admit that he, his 'RAT Party, and all the rest of the 'ruling elites' in D.C. are part and parcel of the true "barbarians" identified in that quote by C.S. Lewis. If he did, he would have to admit that they lie in the same bed as other barbarians they don't dare name:
bttt
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