Dragon's Teeth.
Rahm Emanuel is reportedly apologizing for his abusiveness toward the disabled. This ceremony of false contrition by a creative lout is off-center of the problem; but it is instructive as to how poorly focused the White House has become since the Scott Brown win on January 19. Spoke to Ed Luce, FT, on Thursday 4, and he told me that Jarrett, Axelrod, Briggs are the inner circle with Rahm Emanuel. Of the four, only Emanuel was not the campaign. JArrett is head of the cult; Axelrod is head of the brand; Briggs is head of the spin; Rahm Emanuel is head of vulgarity. Emanuel is also a Washington insider who boasted to the Chicago team that he could deliver. As healthcare, cap and trade, financial regs, and now the jobs bill stagger and weaken, so too Rahm Emanuel. My best information is that Rahm Emanuel is less and less useful in the White House. The expectation is a replacement. The name used consistently is Tom Daschle. Going when? I learned this evening that 5th and 10th Massachusetts are in play. The Democrats are bleeding confidence and cash. Why? Rahm Emanuel is part of the problem, and his departure is part of the solution. As for Rahm Emanuel, the remark I like best from a trusted informant, "He sows dragon's teeth."
No doubt, the Obama administration is going down in flames. Getting rid of this one and replacing him (or her) with this or that one is purely political theater – and, in this particular case, much like moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic.
It’s interesting to note that the blame game, particularly on the left, has already begun. Progressives, seeing the writing on the wall, won’t let this one go without one last salvo of the classic guilt trip directed squarely at the most sensitive part of American sensibility.
There can no longer be any question that the American people elected Barack Hussein Obama - not for his resume, but - for his skin color. In this way, they had hoped to put the lie, for once and for all, to accusations of racism that have been emanating unabated from certain quarters for decades. According to a new theory, hatched at the highest levels of academia, America’s contrition has come too late.
In a recent interview of Princeton ‘Politics and African-American Studies’ professor, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, on the Joe Scarborough morning show, he confronted her with Obama’s shortcomings since he’s been in office. Her rationalization, to my mind, was nothing short of astounding. She said that Obama had been left with a “hollow prize”; that, by the time Americans saw fit to elect a black man president, America had already been gutted, spent, used up; adding, that this is similar to blacks that have had the misfortune of having been elected mayor of failed cities like Detroit.
In other words, “It’s Bush’s fault.”
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
BHO refusal to move center will be his downfall. You cannot blame Mr. Emmanuel for that.
Professor Harris-lacewell is just preaching sour grapes, Peter. We have huge issues, but we can overcome them.
Rahm's vulgarity was bigoted, he should know better. When the White House's supporters get huffy over a racial remark, people can point to Rahm's lack of compassion for the mentally challenged.
I think we can safely bury that Keynesian Big City Liberalism that is so fashionable among the elite. EUs PIIGS are refusing to lower deficit spending. How long will Germany, France, and the UK keep feeding the PIIGS?
Wisdom.
Well, perhaps Emanuel's eventual replacement will at least teach his boss how to pronounce the word "corpsman." It doesn't seem like so very much to hope for, does it?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/02/04/obama_mispronounces_corpsman_at_prayer_breakfast.html
At least Nook-u-lar is an accepted pronunciation in Webster's dictionary.
Daschle! That's too much to hope for! Daschle is as tin-eared as Axelrod and Rahmbo and Jarrett and Reid. The guy was so dim as to refer to himself in an interview as a citizen of Washington DC. Thune's campaign got a clip of that remark and used it in his ads to illustrate how Daschle served as an uber-liberal Majority Leader rather than a representative of South Dakota. Daschle was history; he should have stayed history. Since he was the architecht of Obama's health care strategy, you know what he will be working on tirelessly: the corpse of Obamacare.
"Rahm's vulgarity was bigoted, he should know better. When the White House's supporters get huffy over a racial remark, people can point to Rahm's lack of compassion for the mentally challenged."
It was a nit. 'Retarded is not an insult;' it's a perfectly good descripter. Everytime one of these minority groups gets its back up about a perfectly accurate descripter and brand it offensive or bigoted, it weakens the language and litters it with meaningless euphemisms. Raising etiquette to the status of a moral law the breach of which requires loss of job or career is, frankly, ridiculous.
What is much more interesting than the utterance is the media's priggish response: it's a symbol of how much the bloom is off the Obama campaign rose. Media is becoming disenchanted with the whole lot. Obama is now being treated to the same kind of gotcha trivializing that Bush had to suffer.
When are we all going to get a life? I wouldn't be allowed to comment here on all the things I have been called in my lifetime. We all have. Don't know about others, but I'm still here and I'm doing just fine. There's so much truth in the saying "sticks and stones...". Why do continue to allow ourselves to be caught up and participate in this absurd "pc game". It's like we have nothing better to do than stand around and wait for someone to offend us, and then dwell on how we've been hurt. Better yet, it's like we take great pleasure in being offended. The true absurdity of it all is that typically the attack, or offense, is not even directed towards ourselves, but someone we most often don't even know. If you don't agree or like something this administration does or says, then remember it when you get in that voting booth. Just make sure that to the best of your ability, you vote for someone who has similar ethical or moral values as your own. I guess it's not that things shouldn't be pointed out, but this will be in the headlines for weeks, all while there are much more important issues going on in the background that we fail to notice. For example, the fact that some in Congress continue to try and find ways to push the Health Care Bill through, piecemeal. Let's move on and focus on the more important issues now.
I have a fix for Rahm's potty mouth:
http://stupidassnews.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/rahm-pledges-not-to-use-r-word-f-bomb-or-any-other-st/
Is anyone else reminded of the controversy from a few years ago when some famous person (I forget who) was accused of racism after using the term "niggardly"?
"Retard" was of course a perfectly good word for a long time before ever being applied to human beings at all. As applied to a human being though it can refer to a wide variety of things including genetic defects, effects of drug use during pregnancy, childhood accident and for a long time saying something was "retarded" meant no more than saying that it wasn't well thought out.
Of course to the public that has been exposed to our public education system since the 60s (conveniently leaving myself out of it) there seems to be much going on that isn't well thought out.
If you have not seen the episode of South Park where the kids starts calling a group of over-the-hill bikers, fags, find it. great satire on politically correct names. rather sarcastic re old gray bikers as well.
Retards should be thankful. Many civilizations, including Eskimos I think, would have culled the herd to save resources and protect the gene pool. Now we get to calll them The Challenged, The Special---gag me with a spoon.
Niggardly is racist, eh? One wonders if it would be acceptable to say that Emanuel has retarded the President's reelection effort?