You knew this was coming

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Yahoo News:

Obama takes charge at hurricane command center

US President Barack Obama warned the US east coast was in for a “long 72 hours” as he led his government’s response to Hurricane Irene at a disaster command center in Washington.

Obama on Saturday chaired a meeting at the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) set up at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, which is marshaling federal and local hurricane-relief efforts.

“This is going to be a tough slog getting through this thing,” Obama said during a video teleconference including senior federal officials and local government agencies in the east coast path of Irene.

“It’s going to be a long 72 hours. Obviously a lot of families are going to be affected … the biggest concern I’m having right now has to do with flooding and power,” Obama said during the videoconference.

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It might be good optics but it’s the “before” and “after” that are so critical during hurricanes. “During,” not so much.

Before a hurricane hits you make preparations. After it hits you respond with rescue and repair operations. During a hurricane there isn’t much you can do except hunker down and wait it out.

I know I’m being cynical but I can’t help thinking that Obama’s primary concern right now is looking like a competent, “take charge” leader.

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Cognitive dissonance should hurt

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From Ace of Spades:

Michael Lewis (The Blind Side, Money Ball, Liar’s Poker) has a typically long and typically brilliant article in Vanity Fair. It’s about the European financial crisis, Germany’s role in it, the sub-prime catastrophe and the German bank’s role in that.

[...]

“There was no credit boom in Germany,” says Asmussen. “Real-estate prices were completely flat. There was no borrowing for consumption. Because this behavior is rather alien to Germans. Germans save whenever possible. This is deeply in German genes. Perhaps a leftover of the collective memory of the Great Depression and the hyperinflation of the 1920s.” The German government was equally prudent because, he went on, “there is a consensus among the different parties about this: if you’re not adhering to fiscal responsibility, you have no chance in elections, because the people are that way.”

[...]

See! See! It didn’t matter what the laws or regulations said about that type of speculation. The German fiscal culture didn’t allow it so it didn’t happen.

[...]

Back to Lewis. Like I said, it’s a great article – you should read it. Here’s a couple of tidbits to pique your interest.

Extremely smart traders inside Wall Street investment banks devise deeply unfair, diabolically complicated bets, and then send their sales forces out to scour the world for some idiot who will take the other side of those bets. During the boom years a wildly disproportionate number of those idiots were in Germany.

and

This preternatural love of rules, almost for their own sake, punctuates German finance as it does German life.

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WTF? Hello?

This:

See! See! It didn’t matter what the laws or regulations said about that type of speculation. The German fiscal culture didn’t allow it so it didn’t happen.

is not consistent with this:

This preternatural love of rules, almost for their own sake, punctuates German finance as it does German life.

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Playing the crazy card

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Philip Klein:

As he looks toward his reelection campaign with terrible poll numbers and a weak economy, President Obama may be stuck with the only strategy for an unpopular incumbent – make his opponent look worse. The predominate media narrative suggests that Sarah Palin would fit perfectly into this strategy because she’s made a number of statements that would be seen as too extreme and jarring to a national electorate. But modern presidential history suggests playing the “crazy card” won’t save Obama.

[...]

Yet when the American people are itching to throw a party out of office, portraying the challenger as too extreme is generally a losing strategy, because the challenger has to meet the lower threshold of merely seeming reasonable. John McCain, while not president, represented an unpopular incumbent party in 2008 and the effort to portray Obama as being too radical and inexperienced failed, because Obama came across as measured, reasonable, and knowledgeable whenever the public saw him – despite past statements and ties to the likes of Bill Ayers. In 1992, the electorate ultimately shrugged off attacks on Bill Clinton’s honesty, draft dodging, and inexperience because of the state of the economy.

[...]

None of this is to say that Palin is the next Reagan. My point is merely that Democrats are sorely mistaken if they think that, should he be the nominee, attacking past statements by Palin, or highlighting controversial positions she has taken, will save Obama from defeat if current economic trends continue. What’s important is how Palin performs as a national candidate once the broader electorate begins to pay attention to her – during the convention, in the debates, and on the trail. If Palin makes lots of irresponsible statements during this time that reinforce the attacks on her, then Obama can win. But if Palin can strike a more measured tone before a national audience, and come off as reasonable enough, attempts by Obama to play the “crazy card” on Palin will fail, just as they have for other beleaguered incumbent presidents.

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Okay, I have to confess that I made a slight edit to the above article – I changed the name and personal pronouns of the candidate under discussion. The article was originally written about Rick Perry. It works just as well for Sarah though, doesn’t it?

Back in 1980 the Carter campaign wanted to run against Ronnie Raygun, thinking he was too radical to win the general election. All it took was four words for Raygun to destroy that strategy: “There you go again.”

For three years now the Obots have been salivating (so they claim anyway) over the thought of an Obama vs. Palin match-up in 2012. I hope they get their wish.

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Blaming the wrong people

Has a good job already

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Denver Post:

Bachmann says she’d consider minimum wage changes

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said Friday she wouldn’t rule out changes to the federal minimum wage as a way to lower the cost of doing business and lure corporations back to the United States.

The Minnesota congresswoman told supporters at a packed sandwich shop that the corporate income tax needs to be reduced because companies are moving to other countries to save money. She was later asked by a reporter whether changes to the minimum wage should also be considered to balance the cost of labor here and overseas.

“I’m not married to anything. I’m not saying that’s where I’m going to go,” she said.

She did say she wants to look at all aspects of doing business, from regulations to tax codes, and will consider anything that will help create jobs. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

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Does Michele Bachmann have any idea how hard it is to survive on $7.25 an hour? Even a single person can’t do it alone. Minimum wage employees are what is known as the “working poor.” Minimum wage jobs typically pay no benefits and many of them are less than full time.

How much would we have to reduce the minimum wage to make it cheaper to make stuff here instead of some country where people make $7.50 a week? How would reducing it affect all the non-manufacturing minimum wage jobs out there?

Every time we discuss raising the minimum wage we hear how it will hurt business and cost jobs. Every time we raise it the economy improves.

“There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum — and livable — income for every American family.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

That will make a great campaign slogan

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Jonathan Alter shows how far progressive hopes have fallen:

You Think Obama’s Been a Bad President? Prove It: Jonathan Alter

Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president? I’m not talking here about him as a tactician and communicator. We can agree that he has played some bad poker with Congress. And let’s stipulate that at the moment he’s falling short in the intangibles of leadership.

I’m thinking instead of that opening sequence in the show “Mission Impossible,” the one where Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, gets his instructions.

Your mission, Jim (and readers named something else), should you decide to accept it, is to identify where Obama has been a poor decision-maker. What, specifically, has he done wrong on policy? What, specifically, would you have done differently to create jobs? And what can any of the current Republican candidates offer that would be an improvement on the employment front?

I’m not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about your generalized “disappointment.”

I want to know, on a substantive basis, why you think he deserves to be in a dead heat with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and only a few points ahead of Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann in a new Gallup Poll. Is it just that any president — regardless of circumstances and party — who presides over 9 percent unemployment deserves to lose?

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Little problem there, Jon. Obama is not a criminal defendant who is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He isn’t entitled to a second term either, the burden of proof is on him to make the case that he deserves one.

Best response to Alter’s challenge:

Don’t have to prove anything. I’ll just vote for whoever runs against him.

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Challenge rejected.

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This is why I’m a liberal

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Hot Air:

“Florida Senator Marco Rubio got some good press this week for saving Nancy Reagan from a fall at a Reagan Library event,” Schultz said as he teased to the segment. “But when it comes to the rest of the American senior citizens, Rubio wants to leave them high and dry.”

Schultz then took objection to Rubio’s statements on entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, saying “political hacks like Marco Rubio, who want to get rid of social safety nets” are “what’s weakening our people.”

What were the crazy words that so stirred up Mr. Schultz? Read ‘em for yourself:

These [entitlement] programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever it was institutions and society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and for your future because you had to. But all of that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. And as government crowded out the institutions in our society that did these things traditionally, it weakened our people.

That’s right. Schultz thinks it’s “psycho” to suggest the most effective social safety net is the family and a strong sense of community.

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That Marco Rubio sure talks purty, don’t he? I have a few questions for him though.

If someone in your family gets sick, who quits work to take care of them, you or your spouse? What if you AND your neighbors meet misfortune at the same time? How do you save for retirement when you can’t even afford to live paycheck to paycheck now?

Assuming you could afford to save for retirement, what do you do when your bank fails and your investment portfolio obamas? How do you survive your old age when inflation eats up your savings when you’re too old to work and too young to die?

What if you don’t have a family? What if you have one but don’t want to be a burden on them because they have kids and bills they are struggling with? If “institutions and society” were doing such a great job of taking care of everyone, why did government crowd them out in the first place?

Just for Mr. Rubio’s information, government IS an institution of society. The New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society took those lofty ideals Mr. Rubio has about taking care of one another and codified them into law. It made helping your neighbors mandatory and uniform across the nation.

That’s liberalism. It didn’t make us weaker as a people, it made us stronger.

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Hurricane Irene Live-Blog II

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This post is to discuss Hurricane Irene and related issues. It is stickied to the top of our front-page. There are other posts on other topics below this one.

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