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From Anne Applebaum we learn more about discord in Euro-relations.
“Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks. And sell the Acropolis too!”—headline, Bild newspaper, March 4, 2010
…What he meant, though, was more accurately reflected in that Bild headline: The Germans are fed up with paying Europe’s bills. They don’t want to bail out the feckless Greeks with their flagrantly inaccurate official statistics; they resent being Europe’s banker of last resort; they object to the universal demand that they plug the vast holes in the Greek budget deficit in the name of “European unity”; and for the first time in a long time they are saying it out loud. Not only are tabloids demanding the sale of the Acropolis, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s deeply serious paper of record, has pointed out that while the Greeks are out protesting the raising of the pension age from 61 to 63, Germany recently raised its pension age from 65 to 67: “Does that mean that the Germans should in future extend the working age from 67 to 69, so that Greeks can enjoy their retirement?’ …
…Germany is still effectively in recession; unemployment is relatively high; and the new ruling coalition has sworn to curtail spending. That means that for the first time in a long time, Germans are feeling a direct pinch on their incomes, on their pensions, and on state institutions, including schools. If they don’t feel like bailing out other people at this particular moment in the economic cycle—particularly people with an earlier retirement age—no one can blame them. …
…Which is why this wave of German indignation over the Greek bailout is so important. After all, Germany is now run by a generation with no personal memories of the war. … Sooner or later, the Germans will collectively decide that enough sacrifices have been made and that the debt to Europe has been paid. Thanks to the ungrateful Greeks with their island villas and large pensions, that day may arrive more quickly that we thought it would.
In the Telegraph, UK, Simon Heffer looks at the undoing of Obama. Coming from a socialist democracy, Heffer assumes that Fox is causing part of the liberals’ problem, rather than realizing that Fox reflects the perspectives of more Americans than the left-biased MSM. But with that caveat, he has some interesting commentary.
…”Obama’s big problem,” a senior Democrat told me, “is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN.” The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. … The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganising Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr Obama’s own party are.
Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism. The sound of the squealing of brakes is now audible all over the American press; but the attack is being directed not at the leader himself, but at those around him. There was much unconditional love a year or so ago of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s Chief of Staff… Now, supporters of the President are blaming Mr Emanuel for the failure of the Obama project, not least for his inability to construct a deal on health care. …
…The root of the problem seems to be the management of expectations. The magnificent campaign created the notion that Mr Obama could walk on water. Oddly enough, he can’t. That was more Mr Axelrod’s fault than Mr Emanuel’s. And, to be fair to Mr Emanuel, any advice he has been giving the President to impose his will on Congress is probably well founded. The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. … The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being “scrubbed” (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger. …
Nile Gardiner blogs about a WaPo editorial from Jackson Diehl on Obama’s lack of foreign friends.
…Jackson Diehl is one of the most influential and thoughtful writers on US foreign policy inside the Beltway, and his latest take on Obama’s struggling international leadership will cause some consternation in The White House, not least as it comes from the heart of the media establishment.
…Diehl’s central thesis is correct. Barack Obama has failed to invest time in cultivating critically important alliances as well as friendships with key strategic partners.
One only has to look at the appalling treatment Great Britain has received at the hands of the Obama administration to grasp the scale of the problem. At the same time, though Diehl does not go into this, the president has spent a huge amount of effort “engaging” with hostile regimes, from Iran to Sudan to Venezuela, in a futile attempt to change their behaviour. …
Mark Steyn writes about how government encroachment is reaching critical mass.
… A Californian reader of mine, standing slack-jawed before the “Permit to Sell Bedding” hanging at the back of his local Wal-Mart, channeled a bit of (misattributed) George Orwell: “We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough bureaucrats from the Bureau of Home Furnishings stand ready to do violence to those who would sell us unlicensed pillowcases. “…
There is a deal of ruin in a nation, but by the time you’ve got a Bureau of Home Furnishings you’re getting awful near the limit. Of all the petty regulatory burdens piled upon the citizen in the Age of Micro-Tyranny, I dislike especially the food-handling licensing requirements in an ever-multiplying number of jurisdictions from Virginia to Oregon that have put an end to such quintessentially American institutions as the bake sale and the lemonade stand. So civic participation withers, and a government monopoly not just of power but of basic social legitimacy is all that remains. ……In this election season, if you’re not committed to fewer programs from fewer agencies with fewer bureaucrats on less pay, you’re not serious. I’d say we need something closer to Thatcher-scale privatization in Britain 30 years ago, or Sir Roger Douglas’s transformative Rogernomics in New Zealand in the mid-Eighties, or post-Soviet Eastern Europe’s economic liberalization in the early Nineties. Aside from the restoration of individual liberty, a side benefit to closing down or outsourcing the Bureau of Government Agencies and the Agency of Government Bureaus is that you’d also be in effect privatizing public-sector unions, which are now one of the biggest threats to freedom and civic integrity. …
In the New Editor we learn about Obama’s next focus. Perhaps Congress could keep him tied up with Obamacare summits for a few more months.
Look out, here comes the next big political shakedown… the Obama Administration is uneasy “with the increasing control a handful of corporations have over the nation’s food supply” and wants to “examine the concentration of power in rural America.”
Administration officials “emphasized that no action would be taken if competition was deemed fair. The point is to listen and learn.”
This ought to end well …
In the WSJ, Daniel Henninger helps rectify one aspect of American history unfairly condemned by liberal educators.
…a small classic by Hillsdale College historian Burton W. Folsom called “The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America” (Young America’s Foundation). Prof. Folsom’s core insight is to divide the men of that age into market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs.
Market entrepreneurs like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Hill built businesses on product and price. Hill was the railroad magnate who finished his transcontinental line without a public land grant. Rockefeller took on and beat the world’s dominant oil power at the time, Russia. Rockefeller innovated his way to energy primacy for the U.S.
Political entrepreneurs, by contrast, made money back then by gaming the political system. Steamship builder Robert Fulton acquired a 30-year monopoly on Hudson River steamship traffic from, no surprise, the New York legislature. …
If the Obama model takes hold, we will enter the Golden Age of the Political Entrepreneur. The green jobs industry that sits at the center of the Obama master plan for the American future depends on public subsidies… Politically connected entrepreneurs will spend their energies running a mad labyrinth of bureaucracies, congressional committees and Beltway door openers. …
…Great employment markets are discoverable only by people who create opportunities or see them in the cracks of what already exists—a Federal Express or Wal-Mart….
From News Busters, we get the skinny on Dan Rather’s watermelon remarks. We are also struck by how incoherent he was.
HDNet’s Dan Rather stepped on one mine after another in the racial minefield that exists when talking about the nation’s first black President as the former CBS anchor, on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show over the weekend, uttered the following take on the President’s ability to get health care passed and how the GOP and independents would view it. [audio available here]
DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. “Listen he just hasn’t been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.” And a version of, “Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate” this is what’s been used against him, “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
While Rather may not have been being intentionally racist one has to wonder what the reaction would be if a conservative had used similiar language on the show.
We are happy to have Dilbert back. He has more issues with his Shop-Vac.
Yesterday I decided to make some man points. (-1 for knowing I need them.) Recently we purchased online a big metal rack to hold free weights. (+1). The delivery guy left the package outside the door when we were gone. I wasn’t strong enough to carry it inside. (-1 for having no upper body strength.) So I tipped it on its end and “walked” it into the garage. (+1 for using science to move a heavy object.)
The rack required assembly. This was a problem because all of my tools had been stolen from the garage last week. (-1 for leaving tools unprotected. -1 for having so few tools that they all fit in one basket. -1 for not replacing them the same day. -1 for not having an attack dog in the garage.)
The main tool I needed was a rather huge Allen wrench. I didn’t own that sort of tool even in the days when I had tools. (-1 for inadequate toolage.) So I dropped everything, jumped in the car, and headed to Home Depot for a tool buying spree. (+1 for going on a hunt for tools. -1 for calling it a spree. +1 for intending to buy tools for which I had no immediate use.) …