May 25 (Bloomberg) — Former Secretary of State Colin Powell challenged former Vice President Dick Cheney and talk show host Rush Limbaugh over the future of the Republican Party, saying it must be more inclusive or “watch the world go by.”
“If we don’t reach out more, the party is going to be sitting on a very, very narrow base,” Powell said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”..
“On almost every demographic indicator the Republican Party is losing,” Powell said. “The Republican Party has to take a hard look at itself and ask, ‘What kind of party are we?’”
The Republicans continue to struggle without a universally accepted leader of the Party. Whatever happened to G. Bush? On a positive note for the GOP, turnarounds usually start when the situation appears most hopeless.
Over the last week, the true nature of Obama’s political project has come into much clearer view. He is out to build a new and enduring political establishment, located slightly to the left of center but including everyone except the far right.
Extremists on each end of the spectrum should be excluded since they lack an appreciation for the virtues of compromise. Every day someone is explaining how the President has moved to the center or adopted policies of the last President - did Obama vote for Bush in the last election?
Threats To Judges, Prosecutors Soaring
Threats against the nation’s judges and prosecutors have sharply increased, prompting hundreds to get 24-hour protection from armed U.S. marshals.
The threats and other harassing communications against federal court personnel have more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 to 1,278, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which protects judges and prosecutors, says several hundred require 24-hour guard for days, weeks or months at a time each year, depending on the case.
State court officials are seeing the same trend, although no numbers are available.
Threats to judges and prosecutors strike at the very heart of our civil liberties which are protected by the judicial system. Does the unraveling of our economic system play a role in this story?
Thought Provoking Links
Obama - A Jump to the Left, A Step to the Right
In a front-page analysis, the NYT notes that Obama is taking “a nuanced set of positions that fall somewhere between George W. Bush and the American Civil Liberties Union.” But the truth is that the combination of harshly criticizing Bush-era policies, while also taking some on as his own, has “has generated confusion and disappointment across the political spectrum,” notes the NYT.
Some good insights on the agile President’s complex policy moves.
The repudiation of the California establishment in the series of initiative defeats could hardly have been more decisive.
This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government.
Voters in our largest state spoke unambiguously, but politicians and lobbyists in Sacramento are ignoring or rejecting the voters’ will, just as they are in Albany and Trenton. The states with huge government machines have basically moved beyond the control of the people. They have become castles of corruption, favoritism and wastefulness. These state governments are run by lobbyists for the various unions through bureaucracies seeking to impose the values of a militant left. Elections have become so rigged by big money and clever incumbents that the process of self-government is threatened.
Nothing new here but a good summary of the “mess” our democracy has become. One wonders what could have been done in the previous eight years to prevent the fiscal crises that are now engulfing all 50 of the Nation’s states. The Republicans were never shy about running up monstrous deficits either.
If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush.
Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he’s doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush’s moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.
Did Obama vote for Bush? Some policies will never change.
Obama Faces Pitfalls on Detainees
In the reductionist debate in Washington, either any sacrifice must be made to win a pitiless war against radicals, or terrorism does not justify any compromise with cherished American values.
“Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people are not absolutist, and they don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems.
Perhaps one side is more right than the other. In any event, neither side seems pleased with the middle ground approach.
And, a CNN poll showed that 39 percent approved of the job Pelosi was handling her speakership while 48 percent disapproved — well below the 46 percent approval rating that the Californian scored in a CNN survey in March 2007.
Republicans are looking for someone — anyone — on the Democratic side to whom some negatives will stick given their decided lack of success in doing so to Obama. Pelosi is in the crosshairs right now. How will she handle herself in the coming weeks and months?
Pelosi seems confused much of the time. Maybe they should take polls on what the public thinks her IQ is?
Obama Is Embraced at Annapolis
There was no such controversy to confront here in Annapolis, where cheering midshipmen, clad in their sparkling summer dress whites, greeted their new commander-in-chief with hoots, hollers and raucous applause. Mr. Obama returned the show of support by praising the graduates for the path they chose — a notable contrast, he said, to the pursuit of wealth that characterized those who helped create the current economic crisis.
A good start for the President on Memorial Day Weekend!
American Dream Turning Into A Nightmare
Hard questions are being asked as we confront major issues that will challenge our concepts of traditional American culture and society. The ongoing financial crisis is exposing the myth that America has no fiscal limitations and is able to provide the benefits, wealth and security that many believe they are “entitled to”, simply because they are Americans.
The reality for many is that the “American Dream” never arrived and for many others it is about to disappear. California is the example to the rest of the Nation that every promise made cannot be kept. Governments cannot create wealth by dividing wealth nor can they create wealth through unlimited borrowing and spending. The standard of living for many will decline as promises made cannot be kept.
Our President Isn’t Quite As Advertised - Karl Rove
As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there.
These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.
We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good.
Mr. Obama campaigned on “responsible fiscal policies,” arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the “rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy.” In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to “go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work.” Even now, he says he’ll “cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office” and is “rooting out waste and abuse” in the budget.
However, Mr. Obama’s fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government’s share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.
On health care, Mr. Obama’s election ads decried “government-run health care” as “extreme,” saying it would lead to “higher costs.” Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, “It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system.”
Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging.
Terminating Illusions In California - Wesley Pruden
California is the beta state, where everything new is tried and then exported, true or not. Rap, rock, lavender love, student riots, Arianna Huffington, hot rods and the Hula Hoop. Ronald Reagan and the tax revolt. The illusion that you can have it all, and somebody else will pay for it. This week California’s voters offered a view of what happens when big government finally grinds to a noisy halt. Barack Obama could take note.
Geithner Pledges To Cut Deficit
May 21 (Bloomberg) — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the Obama administration is committed to reducing the federal budget deficit after concerns rose that the U.S. debt rating may eventually be threatened with a downgrade.
The dollar, Treasuries and American stocks slumped today on concern about the U.S. government’s debt rating. Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. “eventually” will lose its AAA grade.
How Obama Is Like Spock
President Obama has seen the new Star Trek movie. “Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out,” he told Newsweek.
Obama is often compared to Spock because he never gets too hot or too cool and speaks in the careful way of a logician. But the president and the fictional character seem to have the same kind of empathy, too.
For Obama, empathy has long been the key to delivering the change in the political structure that he talks so much about. Here’s how he explained this approach as it applies to his decision-making: “[Opponents] might not, at the end of it, agree with me, but having seen how I’m thinking about a problem, having a sense of how I’m making decisions, that I understand their point of view, that I can actually make their argument for them, and that that’s part of the decision-making process, it gives them a sense, at least, that they’ve been heard, and … it pushes us away from the dogmas and caricatures that I think get in the way of good policymaking and a more civil tone in our politics.”
Great article with insights into the Presidential thought process as it relates to decision making.
Newsweek - A Conversation With Barack Obama
Inside the mind of Barack Obama - an in depth interview worth the full read.
Obama: “One of the extraordinary privileges of not only being president but being president at a time of great difficulty is that your plate is full and the decisions we’re making and the policies we’re pursuing I absolutely know will make a difference.”
In Obama’s universe, strength and subtlety are not mutually exclusive. He may make the wrong call—things could go disastrously awry, at home or abroad, on his watch—but one of the most interesting and underappreciated things to emerge from these early days is how comfortable Obama is in making the call. He savors exercising the power of the presidency.
Obama, at least in my experience, is different. There may be some small talk, but very little; and there is none of the conventional journalistic flirtation-by-compliment. This is business, time is valuable, so let’s get on with it.
“But one of the things I’ve actually been encouraged by—and I learned during the campaign—was the American people, I think, not only have a toleration but also a hunger for explanation and complexity, and a willingness to acknowledge hard problems. I think one of the biggest mistakes that is made in Washington is this notion you have to dumb things down for the public. I’ve always been struck by the fact that, if you can get me in a room with a group of people, even who disagree with me violently on an issue, they’ll still take the time to listen.”
“What I’ve learned, I think, [is] that the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party after Ronald Reagan’s election, when it’s been in power for a long time, has trouble making an adjustment—not just to minority status but also to self-reflection. I think there’s a certain period of time where you insist on talking only to your base instead of to the American people more broadly. And I suspect that they’ll make an adjustment.”
A recent poll of Americans under 30 revealed that one third expressed a preference for socialism. The educational and income characteristics of those polled was not detailed so like every poll, the results can be interpreted differently.
I suspect, however, that those polled construed the meaning of socialism to be “sharing the wealth, regardless of effort or abilities”. An income sharing arrangement of this type would, of course, be most strongly embraced by those who have the least wealth, for whatever reason.
Do the poll results imply that one third of Americans under 30 cannot envision themselves being able to achieve success that the free enterprise system allows? To resign oneself to failure at such a young age implies either a belief in a very bleak economic future or a total lack of faith and optimism in one’s own abilities.
Winston Churchill summed it up perfectly when he said,
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
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