Tag Barack Obama

This is how nothing gets done

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

OK…finally, I’m going to write; I don’t even know what’s been so important for the past week that I couldn’t find time to write, or even to start to write.  But today is different: as soon as I let the dogs out I’ll be nailed to the keyboard—about time I wrote about this amazing revolution in Egypt and linked to those articles backgrounding the Muslim Brotherhood before Mubarak flees and a new government is already in power.

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That was weird: a broken fence slat.  Looks like something on the other side of the fence, where they’re building the new road, slammed into the middle of that fence slat and broke it in two; hell, the big piece was knocked out into the garden.  I’ll just get a hammer from the garage and nail it back in, and then hit the blog—maybe something about the deafening cognitive dissonance of all the talk about “high taxes” while today’s news reports that our tax burden is lower than it’s been since 1950!

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You’d think a grown man would be smart enough to, first, change out of his dress shoes before stepping into the garden, and second, be careful enough to avoid the dog poop obstacle course between the back door and the back fence.  After I clean off my shoes and walk around to check out the other side of the fence, I’m back at the blog—gotta check on the reaction to the story that new government spending under Obama has been less than the tax cuts under Obama!

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Wow; I learned more about the neighbors in the last 20 minutes than I have in the whole nine years we’ve lived here.  Dude just kept talking, changing from one subject to another, with no apparent destination in mind.  I like the guy, but it was too cold for just standing there for a chat.  Now, just let me get this mess on the desk cleared off and I’ll get to work…I should riff on David Frum’s post about how the crazy talk on the talk shows is getting even crazier as the ratings start to slide.

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I had a nagging feeling I’d forgotten something: well, now’s a good time to get that stack of papers off of the kitchen counter.  Some think getting a  new job is a pain in the neck, but I have a much lower opinion of it.  Forms for new health insurance, and receipts, and registration info for the new 401(k).  At least I can do that quickly on line, and then start writing…what’d I do with that article about the brain being wired to resist new science?  That can mesh with the story about the people who insisted on believing—despite the absence of any evidence—that a terrorist attack was being plotted in a Port Arthur Ramada Inn conference room…15 years ago!

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OK then, I’m going to start with—was that the dryer?

Bob in the Heights, you’re on the air

Pat Ryan 20 Comments

In the short happy life of HIPRB! nothing has generated more comments (and thank you all) than the discussion of political polarization and irresponsible news media reporting which arose from the Tucson shootings this month.  DunnTower What most of you couldn’t be expected to know is that the transfer of Gabrielle Giffords here to Houston for rehabilitation has created a “local” story which Houston’s Leading Information Source can’t leave alone—so much so that my old friend Bob Eddy, who used to regularly regale a favored few with his thoughtful and entertaining rants during the Shrub Administration (until the relentless idiocy just wore him down), has been inspired by this development to return to the keyboard.  He’s given me permission to share with a wider circle.

Alright, please, enough with the teary Giffords coverage.  The vigils, the minutiae, the outpouring of sentiment, the blah, blah, blah.   It’s been over two weeks now and she’s still front page news —  even more so here, after she recently flew into Houston’s medical center.  When they ran out of anything substantial to say, the Chronicle ran stories on people that have survived “similar” brain injuries, or are even just patients at the same facility…Yaaaaawn…

Ouch, pretty cold there Bob…yes, but it’s not the congresswoman who pokes my ire, I surely wish her a full recovery and long life  —  being a Democrat.  It’s the nature of the story.  I’ve got two words — shit happens.  That’s right, in a country where any deranged nut job can legally — and in Nevada without even a permit — walk up to a political event in a crowded supermarket parking lot packing an automatic handgun with a 30+ ammo clip, you get nothing out of me other than “shit happens.”  Oh the shock, the horror, the humanity!!!  You would have to have been Nostradamus to have seen this coming!!  Let’s look at the math:

A state that even the local sheriff bravely characterized as “the wild wild west” (an opinion that got him absolutely reamed in the conservative media) + highly-charged political rhetoric fueled with blatant references to armed insurrection + everyday American sponge-brain = political vigilantism.

But you see, America loves a good story of triumph against adversity and tragedy.  We would much rather talk endlessly about Congresswoman Giffords’ time in recovery and rehabilitation hell, the incremental medical milestones with her heroic astronaut husband by her side, than why things like this keep happening.

Yes, the desperate, flaccid Democrats did themselves no favor by latching onto the kneejerk Palin connection before we knew anything about this guy.  And because they are a bunch of spineless weasels whose wallets get padded and arms twisted by the same NRA, they were powerless to take on the real nut of the issue and say “you know, after at least half a dozen similar horrific instances in the last 10 years, can we now at least all agree that America is full of nut-jobs ready to fulfill their fantasies and paranoias with a gun, and in such a volatile environment, is all the gun imagery and metaphors — sorry, used solely by the opposing party — acting in a responsible manner?  Is it even remotely appropriate in a public forum?”

The other night Bill Maher brought up a thought-worthy point:  Remember the pointy-brained tea bagger/gun nuts who showed up at all the town hall rallies during the 2008 campaign openly touting their side arms and rifles?

What if they had been black?

Ironically, poor Obama has become the best thing that ever happened to the gun market in the last 50 years.  Sales have skyrocketed ever since he’s been in office, and after this last shooting people couldn’t get to their gun outlets fast enough to purchase their own Glock 36 “before Obama tries to outlaw them!” 

Hey, Thelma Lu, believe me when I say this on my mother’s grave — Obama will propose weekly piñata parties on the White House lawn where all the scrappy immigrant kids get instant citizenship cards with every piece of candy bashed out of a hanging Ronald Reagan effigy before he even mentions in public the first syllable of  the words “gun control.”  He has waaaaaay too much other shit to stir up at the slightest provocation without tempting that bottom of the barrel wet dream.

Before closing I’d like to emphasize that what I refer to as sensible gun control has nothing to do with their abolishment, nor is it a slippery first step toward it.  Just some common sense rules for a nation that kills more people by hand gun violence every day than most countries do in a year.  Although Mexico is giving us a good run for the money…

You might not know, but Giffords’ astronaut husband Mark Kelly has a twin brother, Scott, who is currently commander aboard the space station.  After hearing about it, his official downlinked message included the sentiment “We are better than this.”  Really?  I’m not so sure.  Even as I type, there are states all over this country fighting for the right to openly carry arms into public parks, places of work, schools, restaurants and even bars.  Many have already won.  I haven’t heard churches mentioned yet, but my money says that can’t be far behind.  In 2004 we quietly let the assault rifle ban expire without a ripple.  Someone please explain to me why anyone in the 21st century should be able to legally possess an assault rifle, not to mention as many as he wants.  When America pictured itself as a modern society, did anyone really envision one where 200 years later people are still carrying side arms out in public?  Frontier justice…what does that say about us as rational, communal human beings?  Shit happens.   

And in closing, while we’re on guns, couldn’t someone please shoot Justin Bieber!?

Hypocrite or Liar

Pat Ryan 6 Comments

For a lot of you those are the only choices available to characterize your U.S. representative for his/her vote yesterday on the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act.  I am not one of you (this time), but that doesn’t mean you can’t play the game.

The Republican Party majority in the House and Speaker John Boehner made it a top priority to vote on repeal of last year’s health care insurance reform.  They did it even though they know that the Democrats who control the Senate won’t bring it up for a vote there, and that even if the Senate voted for repeal the president would use his veto.  But they wanted to make a political point, get members on the record on this issue, and keep one promise in that Pledge to America many of them took last fall.  I don’t have an issue with any of that.

I do have an issue with a party that claims to be a champion of fiscal responsibility and deficit lowering voting for repeal after they all but covered their eyes and ears and refused to believe the Congressional Budget Office report which found that repeal would actually increase the deficit and leave more than 30 million more people without health insurance.  Boehner said CBO is entitled to its opinion!

If a CBO report is an opinion, it’s the considered opinion of the experts employed by Congress to provide lawmakers with numbers that are not influenced by political needs and desires…it’s the closest thing to a truly non-partisan statement you’ll find in Washington, D.C.  What’s more, a group of independent experts found that the Republican claim that the new health insurance law will kill jobs is not justified by the facts.  The GOP offered an analysis that claims the new law “may” make the nation’s fiscal situation worse; among others, economist Paul Krugman doesn’t think much of that report’s reasoning or logic.

OK, game time.  Here’s a list of how the members of the House voted on repeal of Obamacare; check to see if your rep, who campaigned as an agent of deficit reduction, got to Washington and started off by voting for a bill that would raise the deficit (if it ever became law, which it won’t).  Then you can  ask him/her what they hell they think they’re doing.

Obama the Hustler?

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Charles Krauthammer thinks President Obama snookered congressional Republicans and Democrats with this week’s budget deal, and that they still don’t know that they’ve been had:

At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent tohuggy-obama-barack-obama-chitown-huggy-bear-demotivational-poster-1219696416 GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.

Obama is no fool. While getting Republicans to boost his own reelection chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, Tea-Party, this-time-we’re-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility.

Is he right?  Does it matter?  Do you think Barry should co-star in the next remake of “The Sting”?

This is our time

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

To call for sacrifice, the president will have to be willing to make a sacrifice himself.  Obama can offer his own political career. He can put his reelection on the line. He can make the 2012 election a national referendum on doing the right thing.

Evan Thomas, Newsweek, Nov. 13, 2010

George Bernard Shaw suggested that “If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”  I prefer the rephrasing (source forgotten) that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they’d still point in every direction.  Like me, trying to figure out what to make of the budget compromise in Washington, D.C.

President Obama and the Senate Republican leadership agreed on a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, including those for the highest-earning Americans, in exchange for a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits and a temporary reduction in payroll taxes.  Is that good or bad?  Sounds like it’s good for the highest-earning Americans and the people who’ve used up their state unemployment benefits, at least.

Do you go with the argument that Obama is too reasonable for his own good, and that although he gave in on something he wanted in order to get something else he thought was more important right now, he’ll eventually have to say no to his political opponents or he’ll never get what he needs to deliver on his promises?

How about the argument that Obama’s emulating President Clinton by siding with “the people” rather than with one party or against the other, hoping that in two years the people will hate both parties enough to vote for him?

There’s no guarantee Congress will sign off on the deal: do you wonder about the fact that the GOP leadership doesn’t have all its ducks in a row to support this compromise, precisely because it will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, especially one leading quacker who supported Tea Party favorites over establishment Republicans in the last election and might have some sway over new members?  Is it at all concerning to you that the White House finds it necessary to “warn” Democrats that not supporting the compromise could revive the recession?

Are you persuaded by the argument that this compromise, in which neither side made a truly painful political concession, means that no one in Washington is really serious about doing anything about the deficit right now?

I’m persuaded by Clarence Page’s conclusion that both sides are putting off the bloody fight until spring, when they’ll have to make a decision on raising the national debt ceiling—nothing focuses the attention quite like impending doom.

Whether the big fight happens then, or sooner or maybe later, I think I’d like to see what Evan Thomas suggested: that Obama take a stand—and yes, stake his presidency—on a call for Americans to make the necessary sacrifices to save ourselves from catastrophe.

…being honest about the real choices is the only way Obama can break through the noise and chatter. It is also absolutely necessary to save the country from very hard times ahead, or at the very least a steadily declining standard of living. Obama needs to start by explaining the mess we’re in.

Presidents have an ability to go to the people and ask us for what we wouldn’t choose to give.  And Americans stand up for their country, and for each other, in the face of a common enemy, whether we voted for the guy in the White House or not.  This could be our time to find out who the real patriots are, if only our leaders are strong enough to ask us to stand up.