Condescension spill in aisle MA...

... clean-up required.

John Kerry at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor on voter anger:

"I think there's a comprehension gap," said Kerry. His point: While people may not be feeling the benefits of the bailouts and healthcare reform yet, Congress has been working with Obama to right the economic ship. Still, he sounded sympathetic to those kicked around by the economy. "There's a sense of some things unraveling" to them, said Kerry.

But he said that the D.C.-directed attacks are hypocritical, since many of those attacking Washington spending presumably want to keep their Social Security and Medicare and want Washington to play a big role in the Gulf Oil cleanup. "There's a huge contradiction on a daily basis," he said.

Maybe, he concluded, the Democrats should change their communications strategy "to better sell what we've done."

Translation: you bunch of worthless fly-over rubes aren't showing the proper amount of appreciation for the stellar and upstanding work you're benevolent overseers in D.C. are performing on your behalf.

And that last sentence from the pull quote is priceless. You're right, Senator. It's not that your ideas really, really suck or anything like that. It's just that you all haven't done a good enough job explaining the positive merits of porkulus, a hostile take-over of the domestic auto industry and a health care reform law no one wants.

Simply unreal.

Looking for some leadership

“New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country.”

- Bill Maher

Blogosphere Right is in full throat over the op-ed piece today by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer in which they call the disruptions of the townhall meetings “un-American” or more precisely, “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American”. We think our side is guilty of some broad-brushing as in reading the article, they did not expressly say that the protesters themselves were being un-American which brings us to the larger point of what Pelosi/Hoyer did say.

Now, whether or not this disruptive behavior is “un-American” is unclear to us but it is entirely beside the point. The sin Pelosi and Hoyer committed is symptomatic of what we have seen and heard recently from our nationally elected leaders and it is an ability to turn completely tone-deaf when trying to communicate the simplest of principles.

Rather than saying the arrest of Prof. Gates by Sgt. Crowder was being dealt with at the local level and there were not enough facts available to make a judgement call either way, the President barged head-long into a two-week controversy by saying the police acted “stupidly”. That was simply a ridiculous statement for a President to make.

And if Pelosi and Hoyer had said the disruptions were “not constructive”, “rude”, “uncivil”, then everything would’ve been peachy. But, no. These two idiots, with pen in hand and not being asked about it off-the-cuff at a presser, play the “un-American” card and thus alienate further a large section of the population who, even if they hadn’t attended a townhall protest, sympathise with the concerns of those who did.

Honestly, what are these people thinking?

B-Daddy and I were talking over the weekend about how discouraging the discourse regarding the healthcare debate has become. Not at the townhalls but at the national level. Instead of calling for civility and calm in light of these increasingly contentious townhall meetings where union thugs think nothing of kicking the crap out of someone because he was handing out “Don’t tread on me” stickers, our national leaders fan the flames of violence by likening the protesters to Nazis and calling their actions “un-American”. It pisses off one side and grants license to the other by legitimizing in their minds, violence upon others. See… were beating up Nazis.

And when the President has the opportunity to establish the baseline for discourse, what does he do? He tells people to get out of his way and sets up a snitch site.

More than anything else, though, this complete inability to communicate on a rational level with the American public is informed by the condescension contained in that quote by Bill Maher above.

We know who we are and we know who you are and you are simply not smart enough, America to be trusted on your own with anything as important as health care.

Its all fun and games until someone loses their Irony

We’re clearly late to the whole Obama “Bittergate” episode so any opinion we may have has probably been vented a dozen times over on radio, TV and internet, so... what’s a slacking little blog like ours to do except react to the reaction.

But first, in case any of you have been comatose for the past few days, here are the words spoken by Obama at a San Fran fundraiser that have got him into so much trouble:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them (editor: go cry that tune to the buggy whip manufacturers, pal). And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

A look at the Bittergate dust-up here by George Will who claims “Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism”. With assistance from the indespensible pollster/demographer Michael Barone, Will traces a line from what we’ll call bread’n’butter FDR liberalism through the smug Adlai Stevenson to today’s Obamamania whose campaign’s spritual overtones combined with his desire for governmental hyper-activity recalls the quote from Socialist/Communist pioneer Moses Hess: “The Christian… imagines the better future of the human species…in the image of heavenly joy… We, on the other hand, will have this heaven on earth”.

And here is an interesting and ultimately bizarre piece from WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne. Dionne takes Obama to task for his choice of words but not necessarily its intent or purpose. He then goes after Clinton for parroting Republican talking points about Al Gore, John Kerry and Obama not really respecting values/faith voters. But then in the last few lines, he completely loses it:

“It has been sickening over the years to watch Republicans, who always rally to the aid of the country's wealthiest citizens, successfully cast themselves as pork-rind-eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populists. To have the current White House occupant (Yale, Harvard Business School, son of a president) run as a good old boy should have been the final straw. But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth.”

Look. In a two party system there is naturally going to be that inherent “big tent” membership whereby each party will attract people across the economic spectrum so to start claiming which party is for the big guy/little guy will start looking like an endless tennis volley. We do have our thoughts on the matter but its beside the point of this post.

And by no means is this meant to be any cheerleading for the Republican Party as their collective behavior over the past few years has us feeling like, ironically enough, RINOs ourselves... but how does Dionne square his disgust with reality?

This reality, of course, is a Party whose leadership has consistently fought tooth and nail against any sensible restrictions on abortion (parental notification and the gruesome practice of late-term abortion), has consistently voted against tax cuts, has consistently campaigned for more gun control laws, has consistently been in silent consent with those who want to wipe religion from the public square, has consistently opposed school choice/voucher programs, has consistently offered, at best, tepid support for the military when not deriding it obliquely or directly…. Issues all that could by varying degrees be considered under the big tent of “traditional values” for rank and file Democrats and Republicans, alike.

And Dionne has the unmitigated gall to feel disgusted and sickened that despite all the above, those wascalwy Wepublicans have somehow slithered their way to the mantle of Party of the common man?

Dionne is either being intellectually dishonest with his readers or he’s been asleep at the wheel for the last 30-40 years. Policy, planks, positions… throw’em all out the window. Dionne’s attitude is perfectly exemplary of the biggest electoral problem Democrats have had since the late 60s and why it is they are setting themselves up for their 8th presidential election defeat in the last 11: condescension.

In that statement and by conveniently neglecting the choices and the battles Democratic Party leadership has fought in charting a course for the Party, Dionne exhibits the EXACT same condescension he takes Obama to task for in his choice of words and the poor dolt, most likely, doesn’t even realize it.

They still don’t get it. Its amazing. You just can’t make up this stuff.