Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The wrong lessons (plus: Obama's miraculous medal)

Well, we all knew that this was going to happen: Senator Evan Bayh says that Brown won in Massachusetts because the Dems have gone all bolshie.
For Senator Bayh the lesson is that the party pushed an agenda that is too far to the left, alienating moderate and independent voters.

“It’s why moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren’t buying our message,” he said. “They just don’t believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems. That’s something that has to be corrected.”
Too far to the left? How?

Notice that Bayh doesn't favor us with any specifics. Is he talking about health care reform? That was the big issue in MA. Bayh voted in favor of it.

Maybe Bayh is referring to the second round of TARP funds. He did oppose that one. But I fail to see how shoveling money into the mitts of Wall Street bankers counts as being "too far to the left." Bush, you will recall, was the chief shoveler.

Political debate in this country has entered a weird, hallucinatory state: Ever since Obama took the oath of office, everyone has agreed to pretend that Wall Street is a nest of commies. Everyone talks as though there are red flags flying over the stock exchange and The Internationale continually plays in the Goldman Sachs lobby. Glenn Beck's spirit guide, Cleon Skousen, would have agreed with that scenario. But Skousen was a kook. It's 2010, and we're living in Kookland.

Fortunately, Bayh's maddening analysis prompted some non-kook commenters on the ABC News website to offer some rare common sense:
(By the way, it's news to us "far-left liberals" that we got everything we wanted in the Senate health bill, when almost everything liberals wanted was stripped out.) Or maybe the far-left agenda was sending more troops to Afghanistan, a wildly unpopular decision with Democrats?
You've got to be kidding. You're alienating voters because this healthcare bill is a joke written by the insurance industry.
Afghanistan. Yeah. That's another issue on which the pundits seems locked within a perpetual altered state of consciousness. Here's Politico on Coakley's failings:
Democrats concerns with Obama's Afghanistan plan forced Coakley to oppose the Afghan war in the primary, which hurt her in the general.
Yeah? You got any polling to back that up?

The media speaks as though the Afghan war is wildly popular with all segments of society except for a few left-wing wackos. But back in August, polls said that the majority of Americans thought that the war wasn't worth it. Only a quarter of the citizenry liked the idea of sending in more troops -- which Obama, in his wisdom, has decided to do.

Granted, I've cited a national poll, not a state poll. But it is a little hard to believe that Massachusetts stands to the right of the rest of the country on this issue.

So here are the lessons that the mainstream media wants us to draw: Obama is a hideous lefty (even though he's done almost nothing truly progressive), the health care reform bill was too far to the left (even though it was a giveaway to the insurance industry and even though polls confirm that the public wants single-payer), and the public just loves to see things go boom-boom-bang-bang in Afghanistan -- so don't say anything nasty about the war or you'll end up like Coakley.

Those are the lessons.

Also, 2+2=137 divided by pi. Do not question. The media hath spoken.

And now for something completely weird: President Obama, asked by Paris Match to display his pocket litter, pulled out a Miraculous Medal. This devotional item was designed by the Virgin Mary herself, who appeared to Sister Catherine Labouré (now a saint), a nun with the Daughters of Charity, housed on the Rue de Bac in Paris. As coincidence would have it, I was reading about her just last night.

Of course, the Miraculous Medal (which isn't as popular as it once was) is way outside of Obama's faith tradition -- presuming he has a sincerely-held faith tradition. (I'm not sure he does.) How did he come by the medal? Could its presence in his pocket have been part of a plan to impress the fervently Catholic segment of Parisian society -- which must number, what, maybe several dozen people right now?

Allow me to propose an alternative scenario. It's a little-known (but true) fact that the engraver of the medal used as a model a famous statue of the Virgin Mary located within the church of St. Sulpice -- yes, the same church you read about in The Da Vinci Code. Obviously, Obama has signaled his covert membership in the Priory of Zion!

6 comments:

Bob said...

I keep wondering how you can continue claiming Obama is not a leftist.

All you need do is look at all the ultra-left people he has put in his administration.

Van Jones, the self-avowed communist, is still advising the president, and he's just the tip of the iceburg.

Please explain how you think Obama can surround himself with Progressives, Socialists, Marxist and Communists and yet remain unaffected by their goals and intentions.

After all, he hired all of them for advice, based on their records.

Gary McGowan said...

Along the line of hallucinatory media stuff, Sibel Edmonds has just posted a short, powerful piece at her blog.

MrMike said...

The O-bots were against the expansion of the war until Obama was for it?

Anonymous said...

I always suspected the One was of the blood.

I imagine must get handed pieces of metal on a regular basis, and maybe they get a good anecdote to go with some of them:

"This one cured my mother-in-law's hemorrhoids."

"Thanks, will treasure."

Anonymous said...

November is gonna be really ugly for the donkey party.

What a bunch of dumb asses.

willyjsimmons said...

One would think...

Obama's outright REFUSAL to identify himself as a "liberal" would be the first clue that something isn't right.

But I shall quote Arthur Silber:

"Almost every politician lies, and most politicians lie repeatedly. Yet in one sense, Obama's speech is exceptional, rare and unique -- but not for any of the reasons offered by Obama's uncritical, mindless adulators. It is exceptional for this reason: it is rare that a candidate will announce in such stark, comprehensive terms that he will lie about every fact of moment, about every aspect of our history that affects the crises of today and that has led to them, about everything that might challenge the mythological view of America. But that is what Obama achieved with this speech. It may be a remarkable achievement -- a remarkable and detestable one, and one that promises endless destruction in the future, both here and abroad."

Further:

"So I will not vote for Obama or McCain. But for these reasons, I view Obama as one of the most profoundly dishonest and irresponsible candidates ever to run for president. He is playing with fire. It appears to me that he is well aware of what he is doing, and of what many of his supporters are doing.

These tactics may win him the White House. And these same tactics, in combination with the disintegrating, splintering American culture and economy, may turn his triumph into a notably ugly victory, a victory many Americans may come to mourn very, very deeply."

cont.

"An Obama victory will kill much of the possibility for meaningful political opposition for good -- that is, opposition that might significantly alter the existing system without destroying it (if that is at all possible, which I am almost entirely convinced it is not). But the resentments, the anger and possibly even the hatred will remain, and they may grow. What happens then?

It hardly bears thinking about."

Yep.