“I am not opposed to all wars,” Hart intoned, quoting a 2002 speech before the Illinois State Legislature in which Obama, then a state senator, had warned of the perils of invading Iraq. “I'm opposed to dumb wars.” Looking up from the page, Hart nodded his approval.
“Very Burkean,” he said, referring to the 18th century Irish political writer Edmund Burke, hailed by many as the founder of modern conservatism. “Prudential. A sense of history, and what we're up against there.” February 1, 2008
This analysis could be extended, but it seems clear to me that Obama is the conservative in the 2008 election. October 10, 2009
Mark Steyn: Re: I guess it's official
Mark (Hemingway), let's not forget Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff — "Barack Obama Is A Terrible Bore":
Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter.
That's very unfair. At this stage in 1977, even Jimmy Carter wasn't Jimmy Carter. But, 30 days in, the horror of what they'd wrought began to dawn on Brooks, Buckley, and the Obamacons. And, after a mere 60, the A-list libs are starting to figure it out, too. Mr. Wolff continues:
The hurt defensiveness (and bad script for it) that everybody in Washington "is Simon Cowell… Everybody's got an opinion," is pure I’m-in-over-my-head stuff. Even the idea of having to go on Jay Leno to rescue yourself from the AIG mess is lame. Be a man, man...
This guy is leaden and this show is in trouble.
Maybe it takes a foreigner to see it. The Ottawa Citizen's David Warren puts it this way:
As I mentioned during the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was seriously unqualified for the job of president. He had no practical experience in running anything, except political campaigns; but worse, his background was one-dimensional.
All his life, from childhood through university through "community organizing" and Chicago wardheel politics, through Sunday mornings listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to the left side of Democrat caucuses in Springfield and Washington, he has been surrounded almost exclusively by extremely liberal people, and moreover, by people who are quick and clever but intellectually narrow...
To a man like Obama, as he has let slip on too many occasions when away from his teleprompter, "Middle America" is not something to be compromised with, but rather, something that must be manipulated, because it is stupid. And the proof that it can be manipulated is that he is the president today.
Yes, but the manipulation of "Upper-Middle America" — the Dowds, Riches, etc — was key to that. They're the beneficiaries, ungrateful though they are, of the boom years. Politics is cyclical so in the fulness of time it may yet deliver up another Reagan. But, if you're Frank and Maureen's age, at the rate the Obama-Frank-Dodd crowd are vaporizing American wealth, the new Reagan may not arrive in time to enable you to make back everything Obama's costing you. But hey, that's "social justice," right? March 22, 2009
Like Sarah Palin I'm not stupid. And I know the cynics among us will protest, "Sarah didn't write that speech! A vegetarian did." And, to a smallish degree the cynics would be correct. Here's the truth on Sarah Palin's speech, not Team Obama's destructive spin:Michael Barone : Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention last night was a home run. A star was born. While the Obama campaign has attempted to disparage it by saying that it was written by a former George W. Bush speechwriter, Matthew Scully—and thus link it to the McCain=Bush meme that was one of the chief ideas thrust forward in their convention in Denver last week—it cannot be dismissed as such. Scully reportedly had written a generic draft that could have been used by whichever vice presidential candidate McCain had chosen. But once Palin was the choice, she and Scully reportedly worked together and produced a draft that was brilliantly designed to promote the McCain-Palin ticket, and not to look backwards and justify the Bush administration...According to accounts I heard, they worked together quite satisfactorily and produced a text that reflected the VP nominee's convictions and the ticket's political imperatives...The speech itself was interwoven skillfully with themes that can work for the Republican ticket this year...Who wants to say Sarah Palin is a lightweight now? September 4, 2008 Unfortunately for Messers Brooks, Hart, and Buckley, calling Sarah Palin a lightweight was not professional enough for them.David Brooks: [Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. Jeffrey Hart: ...she is completely ignorant on the principal issues...she is a religious nut...Christopher Buckley: Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that.
If Messers. Brooks, Hart, and Buckley had been more professional, I might be able to think more of them as men.
TIME TO APOLOGIZE TO HER BOYS.We're waiting...
Don't forget, It's Tuesday!
,
Mrs P, a fine roundup.
Now as to this Robert Stacy McCain, I've now read a couple recommendations re his site, here and elsewhere, and the appeal, I confess, is lost on me.
For example, his joke about David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan and the leprechaun?
http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2009/03/lucky-pot-o-blarney.html
Yeeech.
Posted by: MCNS | March 24, 2009 at 12:38 PM
The appeal of Mr. Other McCain for me?
Very simple.
He hates David Brooks.
Mr. Other McCain's humor reminds me of the guys (all Dems) who I worked with in Boston. They were gritty, sharp, and totally politically incorrect. But you could be all those things back then and be successful in advertising or in the newspaper biz. Not anymore. We have no appreciation for sarcasm or humor anymore. Men have gone girlie (read b*tchy) like David Brooks & Co.
This morning when I heard Barney Frank's opinion of Justice Scalia, I recalled the first (and only time) I ever saw Barney. A photographer had taken me out for lunch to that old Boston fish restaurant down on the one of the piers - not NoNames - a nice restaurant with heavy silver and white tablecloths. He had the Finnan Haddie. I cannot recall what I had.. So, this (liberal) photographer -heck, he lived in a loft - who is trying to date me, is in the middle of listening to some story I'm telling him and he starts laughing. I ask why because I haven't gotten to the funny part. He said, "Oh there's Barney Frank. It's just gotten out that he's gay and so here he is he's going around shaking everyone's hand trying to make sure he'll keep his job. Look at him run to each table."
I turned around and saw Barney running around to each table acting like everyone was his best friend...
I turned back to the photographer and he said,
"He's such an A**.
My answer is the same it was 22 years ago, "Yes, he is."
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | March 24, 2009 at 01:16 PM
The Buckley Who Shall Not Be Mentioned Here writes of his disappointment in The O:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-22/bonfire-of-the-inanities/
Posted by: MCNS | March 24, 2009 at 01:17 PM
Oh, and it should be noted how Justice Scalia has earned Barney Frank's ire. Scalia has said in the past that marriage is not in the Constitution so we should not be ruling on it.
For that it is perfectly acceptable for Barney Frank to call Scalia a homophobe.
Can't wait until David Brooks & Co. join the chorus.
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | March 24, 2009 at 01:23 PM
The more I think about President Obama, the more he appears to be the Pierre Trudeau of our times. Utterly and cluelessly left-wing, but charming and hip, Trudeau had a remarkable ability to make people want to put him on a pedestal, to turn him into a transformational figure. That--and his majorities in Parliament, a cheerleading press, and usual Grit arrogance--allowed him to spend the money and pass the legislation that, quite rapidly, remade Canada socially, culturally, and politically into what it is today.
Well, at least Michelle is not Margaret by any stretch of the imagination.
As to the Other Mr. McCain, as much as I appreciate his attention to PP and his weekly dismantling of Mr. Brooks, I agree with Irish Elk as to his attempts at humor in a public forum.
As to Frank v. Scalia, Frank's remarks show the all too common intellectual shallowness of the Left as well as its fascistic tendencies. Such words are not meant to engage Justice Scalia or anyone else for that matter in a reasoned debate, but to shut him up.
Posted by: Old Dominion Tory | March 24, 2009 at 01:41 PM
Barney Frank is in a safe district and can say anything he wants for the rest of his days. It makes sense for him to make absurd statements that get attention, since this will distract from his role as a Freddie & Fannie payee who earned his keep.
Of the three "Obamacons" you have quoted above, the only one with a serious body of work is Prof. Hart. His change of direction is regrettable--the other two folks were never serious men of the Right.
Posted by: Crackie | March 24, 2009 at 02:11 PM
Mark Steyn just a little while ago:
But Sérieusement, Folks . . . [Mark Steyn]
Last we heard from our old comrade Christopher Buckley, he was insisting to Peter Robinson that he had no regrets over his Obama vote. A week or two on, and there's a distinct whiff of buyer's remorse:
Let me lead with my own chin and ask: Are we a serious nation anymore? Are we becoming, finally, silly?
I voted for Barack Obama largely on the basis of his temperament, which I thought superior. He is only 47 years old, but to me seemed older than that: a man of precocious aspect and judgment. In the French wording, un homme sérieux.
But, hélas, the President seems increasingly pas sérieux. The Hyacinth Girl comments:
He’s questioning whether we are a sérieux nation and I’m questioning whether he’s a sérieux writer. Since November, Buckley’s been doing a hell of a lot of hoping. And since January, he seems incapable of indulging in even the slightest bit of self-reflection . . .
A bit of self-reflection might not go amiss. There were various theories on the enigmatic O in the run-up to his election: a) he was a post-partisan intellectually sérieux centrist with a totally awesome temperament, as Messrs Buckley, Brooks & Co argued; b) he was a doctrinaire leftie statist, as his choice of friends and associates suggested; or c) he was a man completely unqualified to be president, as his wafer-thin resume made plain. We're still debating over whether it's b) and/or c), but any homme sérieux ought by now to be honest enough to acknowledge that a) was a fantasy projected on to Obama by doting admirers. It might be useful for the smart set to ponder why they made this error, what it says about our political culture, and whether it might be in America's interest to avoid this mistake in the future.
Oh, and the Obamacons ought to give up on all the cooing over his "temperament". It makes these hommes sérieux sound like Tiger Beat reporters.
03/24 01:48 PMShare
------------
My mother never allowed us to have Tiger Beat. Every week we would accompany her to the Stop&Shop in Westport and sit on the bottom stacks of magazines in the magazine rack to read the latest Tiger Beat's latest on David Cassidy and Donny Osmond. Yeah, Brooks &Co. sound just like Tiger Beat and I bet they all wear Donny Osmond's lavender socks too....
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | March 24, 2009 at 02:32 PM
From "The Onion":
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/barack_obama_tiger_beat
Posted by: MCNS | March 24, 2009 at 02:52 PM
Mr. Steyn is entirely (and not surprisingly) correct in regards the source of the Obamacon phemoneon. At a time when the nation faces serious challenges at home and abroad, the ranks of the political class and the chattering class are increasingly made up of third-rate profoundly unserious people.
Besides, who sees Christopher Buckley as a truly serious social critic and political writer? At his best, he is immensely entertaining and irresistibly engaging (Don't believe me? Go read his novel, "The White House Mess.") but anyone who tries to group him with, say, Tom Wolfe would be doing Mr. Buckley a disservice and insulting Mr. Wolfe. Likewise Mr. Brooks. Although his entire career has had a bit more intellectual heft to it, his best work arguably has his social analysis--e.g., about the "BoBos" and "Patio Man." As to his political analysis, he has longed for McCain-Lieberman third party and elevated Barack Obama to a lofty peak based on . . . well, that's still a mystery.
Posted by: Old Dominion Tory | March 24, 2009 at 03:08 PM
Perhaps the Obamacons are coming to the same sort of epiphany as the Colonel did in "The Bridge over the River Kwai." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7O5agx5Ot0&feature=related
Posted by: Old Dominion Tory | March 24, 2009 at 05:04 PM
Crackie, read closely...
Time To Start Holding Barney Frank Accountable [Mark Hemingway]
As Ed Whelan noted earlier today, Rep. Barney Frank has caused something of a kerfuffle by going on a gay website's news show and calling Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a “homophobe.” Whelan's right in noting that the context of Frank's remarks seems to betray his casual slander of the man, but before he runs around calling anyone else intolerant, let me step forward and be the one to note for posterity that I wish Frank was personally more discriminating in his own relationships.
I don't know whether Frank is just running off at the mouth or whether he's somewhat desperate to shift the attention off of himself. Frank keeps getting reelected despite gross ethical lapses in part because he's a savvy legislator and in part because he represents Moscow-on-the-Charles, and his constituents are more scandalized by Republicans in the Harvard faculty lounge than Frank paying a man for sex who runs a prostitution ring out of his apartment.
But if Frank's considerable flaws are ever going to catch up to him, it seems about as likely now as ever. Despite his protestations, Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial mess – from living with the Fannie Mae exec in charge of dreaming up new mortgage products for seven years while being the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee in charge of overseeing Fannie Mae to his fierce opposition to the Bush administration's sensible plan to move Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac oversight away from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Treausury, where they actually have the financial expertise exercise proper oversight of runaway GSE behemoths. But Frank was in bed with Fannie Mae — literally — and was quite explicit that any close oversight of Fannie Mae was another example of how Republicans hate the poor or whatever.
The media has also been strangely silent about his relationship with OneUnited, a Boston based bank that Frank helped get federal bailout money for just before the bank was slapped with a cease-and-desist from the FDIC for among other things, paying for the CEO's Porsche and Beach House. Figuring out exactly what Frank knows about OneUnited is also of importance because Treasury officials later discovered that Congresswoman Maxine Waters also worked with Frank in arranging the bailout, despite the fact her husband once served on the bank's board of directors and may have profited off the bank receiving TARP funds. After the fact, Frank now claims he told Waters to “stay out of it.” However, the damage has already been done and forgive me if I don't trust Frank when he says he tried to get Waters to do the right thing, given his ethical track record.
Frank is about as smart as they come and is very good at dissembling, so I see why Congressional Republicans might be hesitant to go after him. Frank hardly bears sole responsibility for the current mess, but if he's going to run around demonizing others willy-nilly, it's high time Republicans make him answer some questions about his own behavior.
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | March 24, 2009 at 05:14 PM
Heh, Crackie. It gets better...
Friday, October 03, 2008 | FoxNews.com
By Bill Sammon
WASHINGTON — Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.
So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.
Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.
"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?
"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard."
A top GOP House aide agreed.
"C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?" the aide told FOX News. "No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws."
Frank’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress.
"I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus," Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. "On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover."
The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses "helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."
Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.
Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis.
"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Clinton said recently.
Bill Sammon is FOX News' Washington Deputy Managing Editor.
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium | March 24, 2009 at 05:21 PM
Wasn’t this one of Aesop’s Fables – The Rara Avis And His Three Smart Asses?
The gods are at work when your first-class Burkean mountain turns into a turnip and he still comes out looking smarter than you.
Posted by: George Pal | March 24, 2009 at 06:21 PM
Great minds. I was just referencing the styrofoam column quote to the missuz the other day, in the exact same context.
Not sure about the photo you chose though. I'm rather suspicious Christopher Buckley would enjoy being turned over that school marm's knee.
Posted by: NBS | March 24, 2009 at 09:54 PM