Quote of the Day

They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—"strongest nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power," "highest standard of living"—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.

That from Peggy Noonan.

Noonan opines that the “feeling” around this recession is different than even the ones experienced in the mid-to-late seventies and early eighties because people felt that there was “a way ahead” in previous economic downturns that is absent here.

We weren’t quite that politically/culturally cognizant back then but aside from the existential state of dread displayed by Noonan there are concrete ways we can stem this tide. Gee, maybe not passing healthcare reform that keeps checking in around the $1 trillion mark each time it gets taken to the CBO wood shed might be a start.

Cap and Trade remains yet another way by which Noonan thinks that the ruling class can keep clubbing the golden goose of American prosperity and expect it to survive.

We’re not giving in. Ultimately, we remain optimistic but simultaneously baffled and somewhat disheartened that this many horrible ideas can keep cropping up and gaining legislative traction at the worst of recent times.

Noonan's quote above does a good job of explaining why.


H/T: KT

Howard Jarvis and Barack Obama.... together at last?

A belated Happy Birthday to one of the most significant pieces of legislation in California’s history. Proposition 13, which capped property tax rate increases and which saved countless families their homes turned 30 on Friday.

And knowing that Prop. 13 is a rallying cry for liberals who cite its enactment as ground zero for all the ills that we now currently face in this state is just icing on the cake.

The fear-mongering that attached itself to this ballot initiative included the possibility of scrapping summer school. And conincidentally, summer school was being pondered for the first time for a certain 5th grader whose idyllic 13 week golden summers had never been intruded upon by the mental gulag of summer school. This was our tipping point to becoming politically active. We canvassed our school mates out on the playgrounds of Golden Ave. Elementary educating them to the mutual parent-child benefits of this Proposition.

We will also note that Prop. 13 was, up until just very recently, one of three great grass-roots, populist rebellions of the past 30 years in this country and which also happened to originate out of conservative activism (not quite the acronym we all thought, eh?). Throw-in the sacking of California Governor Gray Davis and the great Rube Goldberg Amnesty Bill smackdown last summer as the other two crown jewels in the pantheon of angry white maledom. Heh.

As we alluded, though… up until very recently….? Possibly a fourth:


“But what I thought of when the friend sent the flash was something another friend told me months ago. It was the night Mr. Obama won Alabama. My friend was watching on TV, in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, looked, saw "Obama Wins" and "Alabama." She said, "Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school." She said, "That's where they used the hoses." Suddenly my friend saw it new. That's the place they used the water hoses on the civil rights marchers crossing the bridge. And now look. The black man thanking Alabama for his victory.”

Political differences aside, it would be intellectually disingenuous to ignore what an amazing and monumental event in this nation’s history is the nomination of a black man to run for President of the United States some 40 years on a year that has come to symbolize both the height and nadir of the civil rights movement.

OK, but grassroots…? This may be a little bit of a stretch considering the press has been in the tank for Obama from Day One, but also from Day One there has been vast anecdotal and empirical evidence that Obama’s “ground game” was vastly superior to that of Clinton Inc.’s. To achieve that one needs a motivated and passionate backing of supporters at the deck-plate level.

Never mind that the passion and motivation was fueled by the “change” meme that is still vague as to the actual mechanics in which to achieve “change”, the man’s charisma, eloquence and effective placement of his campaign meme effected a groundswell of support among those who were not keen on the idea of 32 straight years of either a Bush or a Clinton working in the White House in some capacity. Beyond any specific criticisms Obama may have leveled at Bush, McCain or Hillary Clinton, this specter was at the core of “change”

Obama and his campaign beat a Corporation containing some of the most seasoned and effective campaign strategists of this generation. We’re sorry, this doesn’t happen just because the press adores you.

The rest of Peggy Noonan’s article from which the above quote was pulled is here. Noonan is laudatory of the Democrats’ selection of Obama whose Presidency (and McCain’s), she believes, may be a disaster but is wholly convinced that a Clinton Presidency most certainly would be a disaster.

Let us know if you think we've completely lost our bearings on this.